Al Root
Wall Street is defending shares of freight brokerage companies after a steep selloff on Thursday, sparked by a company that once made karaoke machines.
Shares of C.H. Robinson Worldwide lost 15%, while shares of fellow freight brokers Expeditors International of Washington and RXO lost 13% and 21%, respectively.
Catalyzing the plunge was a report from Algorhythm Holdings describing how its SemiCap AI tools can organize shipping better than traditional brokers.
The company "originated as The Singing Machine Company, founded in 1982 as a manufacturer of karaoke machines," wrote Benchmark analyst Christopher Kuhn on Friday. "The company pioneered home karaoke systems in the late 1980s and went public on the American Stock Exchange in 1994."
Today, its market capitalization is about $8 million.
Kuhn doesn't buy many of the claims in the report, including the idea that today's freight brokers use manual processes, creating inefficiency. C.H. Robinson, for instance, has performed millions of shipments with the help of AI agents, dramatically increasing productivity over the past few years.
Algorhythm Holdings didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
"We believe yesterday's selloff is overdone. and would be buyers of C.H. Robinson Worldwide," Kuhn said. That sentiment was echoed across the Street.
One of the reasons shares sold off so violently is that they had risen sharply, wrote Stifel analyst Bruce Chan. Coming into Thursday trading, shares of RXO and C.H. Robinson were up 29% and 22% year to date, respectively.
The rise and the threat of AI disruption changed "our broad view on opportunities in the space," added Chan. " Based on current market fundamentals, we remain convicted in our picks, including non-asset-based [broker] C.H. Robinson."
Wall Street sees Algorhythm Holdings as more of a DeepSeek moment. The Chinese AI caused some volatility in early 2025, but stocks such as Nvidia recovered. Still, things won't go back to normal all at once.
"We still believe C.H. Robinson Worldwide has a differentiated model and this did not change overnight," wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck. "However, we don't expect this overhang will dissipate quickly, given the hair-trigger response to any hint of AI disintermediation risk, as the burden of proof will shift to the companies deemed to be disrupted until proven otherwise."
There could be some volatility in the weeks ahead. Still, Ossenbeck rates C.H. Robinson stock Buy and has a $180 price target for shares.
Overall, 57% of analysts covering C.H. Robinson rate shares Buy, according to FactSet. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. The average analyst price target is about $196.
C.H. Robinson stock was up 1.5% in early trading on Friday, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down about 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively. Algorhythm Holdings shares were up almost 10%.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 13, 2026 10:58 ET (15:58 GMT)
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