But he said the ports of Ningbo-Zhoushan in China’s east and Shenzhen in the south were reporting 10 per cent jumps in future container bookings.
“The news and the noise is very different on the ground,” he said. “Whether there’s some stock stuck behind the bottlenecks at ports or there’s good management, container rates haven’t fallen below pre-lockdown levels.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made logistics providers scramble to adhere to global restrictions on facilitating Russian bulk exports, but Mr White said the digitisation of the supply chain was starting to keep up with the dynamism of geopolitical demands.
“The logistics supply chains are becoming very resilient and can solve themselves around problems like this,” he said.
WiseTech has become the go-to software provider for logistics giants such as DHL and FedEx as they grapple with digital disruption of global supply chains, tight capacity, cost increases and surging demand.
Its CargoWise One product, which gives freight companies visibility over their networks, systems and interactions with ports in more than 160 countries, has turbocharged the company’s profitability and boosted its share price.
But even WiseTech has been caught up in the global tech sell-off, with shares slumping nearly 30 per cent year-to-date.
Mr White said the private markets were just starting to see some of the weakness spill over from the public market sell-off, but that no strategically significant acquisition target had emerged.
“When we signalled to the market we were looking for a larger, strategic acquisition I got every investment banker in the country calling to say, do I have a deal for you,” Mr White said.
“But we don’t need to buy revenue, and we’re not in a rush, though we’re looking for anything that will help us further develop the platform, and doesn’t distract us from our knitting.”
Mr White said he would be comfortable buying something between 5 and 10 per cent the size of WiseTech, which was attracting a $13.72 billion market capitalisation on Wednesday afternoon.
But he would steer clear of leveraging his healthy balance sheet to secure a deal.
“I don’t like to borrow money, and when I do it, I like to pay it back quickly,” Mr White said.
“Good software companies around the world don’t use leverage to pay for things. I would consider it for the right target, but that hasn’t emerged yet, so I’m not thinking about it too much.”
As it stands, WiseTech has about $380 million on its balance sheets.
