FreightWaves, the leading provider of market data and analytics to the global supply chain industry, reports its fourth-quarter financial update.
For the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2021, FreightWaves reports that the company ended the quarter with $7.9 million in GAAP revenue, up from $3.9 million in the same quarter of 2020. The 103% year-over-year (y/y) increase was a result of accelerated growth in SONAR, the company’s proprietary market analytics platform. FreightWaves is one of the fastest-growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies in the data and analytics industry. At a $32 million annual revenue run-rate, FreightWaves is also the category king for freight market intelligence.
SONAR and FreightWaves Media
SONAR grew revenues y/y by 94%, while the FreightWaves Media business segment saw growth of 109% compared to the same period last year.
SaaS gross margins for the quarter were 79%, up from 57% in the same period last year. Media margins also saw significant expansion, reaching 66% for the quarter, up from 41% in the previous year. The company’s consolidated gross margin was 72%, up from 48% in the previous year.
FreightWaves achieved new profit milestones with a near-EBITDA positive result for the entire quarter while accelerating into triple-digit growth. On a Rule of 40, FreightWaves was a 100.
Over 99% of the year-over-year revenue growth was from organic go-to-market efforts. To date, acquisitions are an insignificant contributor to revenue growth for the company.
FreightWaves TRAC
FreightWaves introduced FreightWaves TRAC, or Trusted Rate Assessment Consortium, in November, which provides customers with the freshest and most transparent data of any trucking spot rate information in the market. When combined with other SONAR data sets, the FreightWaves TRAC data offers an unmatched level of market intelligence and perspective on market rates and capacity.
Craig Fuller, Founder and CEO of FreightWaves stated, “I am incredibly excited about our performance over the past year. FreightWaves TRAC was the most successful product we’ve ever launched in terms of customer adoption and helped to accelerate new bookings and improve retention metrics. With supply chains experiencing unprecedented disruptions, customers are finding that having the freshest and most transparent data available enables them to respond to market dynamics quickly and manage a resilient supply chain.”
FreightWaves finished the year with a very liquid balance sheet, retaining nearly all of the capital raised in the past two rounds of financing. The company plans to maintain high growth, but low burn rate orientation.
FreightWaves is expecting the growth momentum to continue; the company plans to add over 100 jobs in 2022. Interested candidates in open career opportunities at FreightWaves should take a look at https://www.freightwaves.com/hiring. Other industry roles are found at careers.freightwaves.com.
