WiseTech Global
WiseTech Global Limited (“WiseTech”) has historically been one of the most highly-priced shares on the ASX, reaching a blisteringly high EV/EBIT of over 99x in September of 2019. In 2026 the company has certainly lost some of its former sheen, with shares down over 70% since its peak in 2024. Consider this post a taster of some of the more interesting research I have done on the company to date.
Who is WiseTech?
WiseTech is a software company, whose primary product - CargoWise - is the lifeblood of freight forwarders around the world. It has no rivals, has almost all of the 25 largest forwarders as clients, boasts high EBITDA margins and grows like a weed.
However, in 2025 management borrowed $2.1 billion to purchase a business called E2Open, a Frankenstein’s monster of a business, which sells software to clients adjacent to CargoWise’s clients. The deal left WiseTech with a fully-committed balance sheet, and what looks to be an integration nightmare, since E2Open is the product of decades of large egos, furiously rapid dealmaking and dreams of empire building. E2Open is a substantially worse quality business than CargoWise, but if management can effectively fold the valuable parts into the CargoWise platform and squeeze out value from the rest, it could be a home run. Given CargoWise may justify the present market valuation of WiseTech, there is the free lottery ticket of a wonder-platform, that management have been hinting at building since 2022. However this is far from realised, and I am skeptical of a home run here. In fact, I worry this large acquisition was done in service of that dream, which could vaporise value for shareholders.
The big, wide world of freight and logistics.
International goods shipments are incredibly complex. A single shipment will likely pass through several operators, multiple borders each with their own regulatory requirements. This makes directly managing cross-border shipments incredibly difficult, forcing all but the largest and most sophisticated companies to outsource this process to specialised intermediaries called “freight forwarders” (“Forwarders”).
Given the increasing levels of regulatory complexity and focus on resilient supply chains, Forwarders now move at least 60% of containerised freight and 80% of airborne freight. Their continued dominance is grounded in their ability to efficiently move goods from A to B, while ensuring compliance with constantly changing regulations. In other words, they are the lifeblood of global trade. Forwarders rely on CargoWise to operate, to rip out and replicate its features with the required reliability would be obscenely difficult and prohibitively expensive. This is reflected in the fact that almost all the 25 largest Forwarders use CargoWise or are in the process of implementing its services.
As WiseTech’s future is tied to CargoWise’s and CargoWise’s to the health of the Forwarders I thought this was an area that merited a brief discussion. There will always be a tension between the Forwarders and the Carriers - who operate the planes and vessels that move the freight - since Carriers would like to capture more of the Forwarder’s margin. However, recent attempts by Carriers to build their own Forwarder divisions have met limited, mixed success suggesting the barriers to entry even for Carriers are substantial. I would argue, the relationship is analogous with that of business insurance brokers and insurance carriers; the Carriers complain about the commissions and lost revenue, but they have been unable to disintermediate them and would be far worse off without them. There’s a reason Forwarders account for most of international trade flows, and I don’t anticipate that changing anytime soon.
In winding up
Ultimately, a WiseTech investment thesis would need to be a bet on management. If they can salvage the valuable parts of E2Open and plug it into the CargoWise platform, shareholders will do incredibly well as revenue and profits should accelerate and underpin another decade of high growth in the core CargoWise and new-era E2Open products. Investors should consider, that barring the above possibility, CargoWise doesn’t need saving, the business should continue to grow in the high teens for the foreseeable future, and might justify the current stock price alone.
I think this is an interesting business, far more complicated to analyse and understand than anything I have looked at before - but it appears to be of much higher quality. I’ll have to revisit it later.
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NOTE - None of the above should be considered or relied upon as financial advice. Discussions, analyses and comparisons are limited in nature and do not take into full account the relevant information and circumstances of the companies and securities involved. While I do my best to ensure the content of my writing is accurate and relevant I cannot guarantee either. Please consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.