Co-owners,

We've spun the wheel for the Europe bucket. The ticker has landed in Hedehusene, Denmark, on a company whose legal name is a timestamp: De Sammensluttede Vognmænd af 13-7 1976 A/S. The Joint Hauliers of July 13, 1976. Named after the day it was born.

Before we dive in, a reminder of what the index itself has delivered over time.

Every week, we pull one company at random from the FTSE All-World with ~4,200 companies representing 90% of global stock market wealth. We share the index's long-term returns as a reminder of why we're here: the long game. New to the newsletter? Start here.

Founded July 13, 1976 in Skuldelev, Denmark. Headquartered in Hedehusene, near Copenhagen.

Think about the last time something arrived at your door from across the world. A pair of shoes made in Vietnam. A phone assembled in China. A car part sourced from a factory in Hungary. Somewhere between the factory floor and your front door, a company arranged the whole journey: booked space on a cargo ship, cleared customs in three countries, coordinated the handoffs, and made sure the right paperwork was in the right place. Chances are, you have never heard of that company.

That company is called a freight forwarder. And DSV, after fifty years of quiet compounding and a deal completed in April 2025, is now the largest one in the world.

A few key facts:

Leif Tullberg had already gone bankrupt once with his own trucking business when he gathered nine other independent Danish hauliers in July 1976. Ten small operators, separately too weak to compete, pooling their resources to become one. The company started in an extension of Tullberg's garage in the small Danish town of Skuldelev. In January 1983, seven years after founding, DSV had eleven employees.

Tullberg came away from his earlier failure with a principle he never abandoned: no ships, no planes. Hold assets to the minimum. Let the carriers own the equipment. DSV would be the brain, not the brawn. That principle is still written into the company's DNA fifty years later.

The name was never changed. The principle was never changed.

The very first edition of this newsletter covered Old Dominion Freight Line, the American trucking company that moves goods between businesses on domestic US routes. DSV does something adjacent but global: it connects the shipper to the ship, the factory to the final destination, across borders and modes of transport. End-to-end logistics.

When a company needs to move 500 pallets from a factory in Germany to a customer in South Korea, it doesn't call a shipping line, a customs broker, and a local haulier separately. It calls DSV. DSV buys cargo space on a container ship at wholesale rates, consolidates that shipment with others headed in the same direction, handles the customs paperwork, and charges the customer a margin on the whole chain.

No ships. No planes. Subcontracted transport all the way. The business earns its keep through knowledge, relationships, and network scale, not through owning assets.

From those ten truckers in a garage, DSV spent the next five decades buying its way to the top of the industry, one competitor at a time.

The deals got bigger with each decade. A regional Danish hauler in 1997. A pan-European road network in 2006. A US and Africa-focused forwarder in 2016. Swiss freight specialist Panalpina in 2019, which vaulted DSV into the global top four. Agility's emerging-market logistics business in 2021. And then, in April 2025, the largest deal in the company's history: DB Schenker, the logistics arm of Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway, for €14.3 billion.

Combined, DSV's four largest acquisitions represent an investment of approximately €24 billion. And the pattern after every deal has been the same: absorb, improve the margins, move to the next one.

The operating margin data from DSV's own investor materials shows this clearly. It has risen, dipped at each acquisition as a lower-margin business is absorbed, and then recovered above the prior level. The 2025 dip to 7.9% is Schenker arriving. The recovery is the plan..

2025 was the first partial year with Schenker in the accounts. DSV reports in Danish kroner, where one euro buys roughly 7.5 kroner, so the numbers below are large but the euros are more familiar. Revenue reached €33 billion. Operating profit before special items was €2.6 billion, up 22% from 2024. Adjusted free cash flow came in at €2.2 billion, nearly three times the prior year.

The headline net profit looks softer at €1.1 billion, but €600 million of that shortfall is integration costs charged as special items. They are real cash costs, but temporary and expected. The underlying business is performing in line with guidance.

Earnings per share have compounded at 15% per year over the past decade. DKK 10,000 (roughly €1,330) invested in DSV shares at the start of 2016 would be worth approximately DKK 115,000 (~€15,300) today. In a logistics company operating out of a small Danish town.

The balance sheet changed dramatically in 2025. DSV went from net cash to €11.5 billion of net debt to fund the Schenker acquisition. Leverage sits at 2.8 times annual operating earnings, against a long-term target of below 2x. The plan is to be back inside that target by mid-2027, deleveraging on adjusted free cash flow of over €2 billion per year.

The integration of Schenker is running two years ahead of the original schedule. By the end of Q1 2026, 45% of the integration was complete, including Germany, which had required careful negotiation with works councils before it could begin. Management expects the whole thing done by end of 2026. Annual synergies of €1.2 billion are targeted for full effect in 2027.

The risks are real. The Middle East conflict is complicating air and sea routes. Trade tariff uncertainty is weighing on cross-border volumes. The automotive sector, which represents about 10% of DSV's gross profit, is in a prolonged slump. And carrying €11.5 billion of debt means there is less room to manoeuvre than before.

For 2026, DSV guides to operating profit of €3.1 to 3.4 billion, roughly 20 to 30% higher than 2025, as a full year of Schenker earnings and the first major wave of synergies flow through.

Every package that crosses a border, every container that moves from a factory in one continent to a warehouse in another, needs someone to arrange the journey. That job has existed for as long as global trade has. DSV has been doing it, quietly and profitably, since ten Danish truckers pooled their resources in a garage in 1976.

In 2026, the company they built turns fifty. It is now the largest freight forwarder on earth.

If you own a European or global index fund, DSV is in your portfolio. You have been co-owning a piece of global trade's invisible infrastructure all along.

Data and images sourced from DSV Annual Report 2025 and DSV Q1 2026 Interim Financial Report. Share price and market cap as of mid June 2026.

Next week, we'll be looking at a company from Developed Asia-Pacific.