FedEx Q4 FY21
Earnings Call Transcript – June 24, 2021
A.
Mickey Foster
Vice President, Investor Relations, FedEx
Corp.
Good afternoon, and welcome to FedEx Corporation's fourth quarter
earnings conference call. The fourth quarter earnings release and stat book are
on our website at FedEx.com. This call is being streamed from our website where
the replay will be available for about one year. Joining us on the call today
are members of the media. During our question-and-answer session, callers will
be limited to one question in order to allow us to accommodate all those who
would like to participate.
I want to remind all listeners that FedEx Corporation desires to
take advantage of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act. Certain statements in this conference call such as
projections regarding future performance may be considered forward-looking
statements within the meaning of the Act. Such forward-looking statements are
subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual
results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. For additional information on these factors, please
refer to our press releases and filings with the SEC.
Please refer to the Investor Relations portion of our website at
FedEx.com for reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on
this call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.
Joining us on the call today are Fred Smith, Chairman and CEO; Raj
Subramaniam, President and COO; Mike Lenz, Executive VP and CFO; Mark Allen,
Executive VP, General Counsel and Secretary; Rob Carter, Executive VP, FedEx
Information Services and CIO; Brie Carere, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing
and Communications Officer; Jill Brannon, Executive Vice President and Chief
Sales Officer; Don Colleran, President and CEO of FedEx Express; John Smith,
President and CEO of FedEx Ground; Henry Maier, former President and CEO of
FedEx Ground; and Lance Moll, President and CEO of FedEx Freight.
And now Fred Smith will share his views on the quarter and year.
Frederick
W. Smith
Chairman, President & CEO, FedEx
Corp.
Thank you, Mickey. Fiscal 2021 was truly
unprecedented, and we're enormously proud of our 570,000 team members who
performed magnificently to keep global healthcare, industrial, and at-home
supply chains open and more recently allowed significant additional commerce to
flow. The FedEx team's role in moving PPE, vaccines, and international release
shipments has been perhaps this company's finest hour.
Our financial results speak for themselves. Raj
and Mike will have more to say about the numbers of course. Our pride in the
FedEx team and our performance for shareholders is greatly tempered, however,
by our continuing grief over the 15th April senseless
murder at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis of eight FedEx team members. The
lingering sorrow among their families, friends, and colleagues throughout FedEx
can never be erased. Raj will also comment on this tragedy in a moment.
The strategies we've executed over the last
several years were carefully developed and have been executed at a high level
with great success overall. As we mentioned previously, the pandemic simply
brought many of the market trends which informed our strategies forward. Brie
will be more specific about these trends in a moment.
As reported, FedEx revenues for FY 2021 were
$84 billion and we project FY 2022 revenues over $90 billion. We believe FedEx
margins will continue to improve this fiscal year. However, as Raj will cover
momentarily, the labor market in the US over the last several months has been
quite challenging, adversely affecting hiring and leading to significant
reengineering of parts of our networks to deal with the lack of these
resources. And while the situation has begun to abate, delivering a successful
peak season when we anticipate significant year-over-year volume increases will
require additional flexibility and creativity on the part of our management,
staff, and front-line team members while maintaining our safety above all
culture.
To handle future Ground volumes, we are
significantly increasing capacity to deliver both great service and improved
financial results. This summer we are intently focused on improving network and
delivery operations prior to the volume surge in the fall. There's great focus
on revenue quality at FedEx. However, our focus solely on yields does not give
a complete picture of our profit upside. As Brie will explain, our alliances
with retailer partners generate significant amounts of short-haul traffic, much
of which is now shipped from stores.
Our Innovate Digitally initiatives are gaining
steam particularly Surround and SenseAware. Let me thank Henry Maier for more
than 34 years of loyal and dedicated service to FedEx and RPS, which we
acquired in 1998. At the conclusion of this call, I'll have additional comments
about Henry's remarkable career and countless contributions to FedEx's growth
and success. Of further note the Biden administration has recognized an
exceptional talent in our board member General Chris Inglis who was confirmed
by the Senate last week to serve as the National Cyber Director. We benefited
from Chris's cybersecurity and information technology expertise since he joined
our board in 2015 and we wish him well in the hugely important role for which
he has been tapped.
Now, Raj, Brie, and
Mike will give their remarks, after which we'll answer your questions. Raj?
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
Thank you, Fred, and good afternoon, everyone.
As Fred stated, we continue to mourn the tragic loss of eight team members
killed at FedEx Ground facilities in Indianapolis on April the 15th. Let me
take a moment to remember each team member we lost that day. Matthew R
Alexander, Samaria Blackwell, Amarjeet Johal, Jaswinder Kaur, Amarjit Sekhon,
Jaswinder Singh, Karli Smith, and John Weisert.
Our most heartfelt sympathies and condolences
remain with the families, team members, and friends of these individuals. They
will forever be members of the FedEx family.
Now turning to our results. Fiscal year 2021
was a pivotal year for FedEx as we delivered incredible financial performance
including record revenue and profit in Q4 and for the full fiscal year. This is
in no short measure due to the outstanding work by our global team members. Let
me take this opportunity to say thank you to the FedEx team, especially those
on the front-lines for going above and beyond the call
of duty in these difficult times. When I look back at fiscal year 2021, I'm
proud of the role FedEx played in saving lives, helping small and medium
businesses get back on their feet, and keeping the globe connected.
The exceptional financial performance was
driven by our robust growth strategy and focused execution on three key areas:
e-commerce, operational excellence, and digital innovation. Let me take a
moment to highlight each strategic focus area and the progress made in Q4.
Firstly, e-commerce. The acceleration of trends experienced in fiscal year 2021
highlight the importance of our ongoing strategic initiatives to win globally
in e-commerce. This includes FedEx Ground seven-day operations, investing in
technology to optimize last mile deliveries, expanding capabilities to better
handle large items, offering the first FedEx branded through-the-door service
with FedEx Freight Direct, and accelerating the expansion of our retail
convenience network.
Ground's full seven-day operations including
weekend residential delivery coverage that reaches 98% of the US population on
Saturdays and 95% on Sundays give us a distinct competitive advantage. We are
working very closely with customers to leverage the full flexibility of weekend
operations, so they can meet the demands of e-commerce every day of the week.
This is evident in the growth we saw in Ground Sunday deliveries with 56% more
packages delivered on Sunday in Q4 than last year.
We are also winning in e-commerce outside the
United States by leveraging the strength of our global networks and the
expansion of our portfolio. Brie will cover additional details in this regard
shortly. The second strategic focus area is operational excellence. Our
competitive advantage in the marketplace is fueled by a relentless focus on
operational excellence and customer service. While service is a hallmark of
FedEx, like many businesses, we are facing challenges with labor availability,
which have contributed to the recent service levels that do not meet our own
high expectations of the quality we expect to deliver to our customers.
The inability to hire team members,
particularly package handlers, has driven wage rates higher and creates
inefficiency in our networks as we use overtime to cover open shifts and route
volume around known constraints just as a few examples. As such, we're taking
bold actions across the business to address service issues and prepare for
sustained volume increases including continued investments in people, capacity,
and technology to optimize our networks.
FedEx Ground strategic focus on efficiency
continued to reap benefits in Q4 as seen in our ongoing improvements in
density. These improvements are driven in part by both B2B and B2C volume
growth as well as enhancements in route optimization technology, which drove up
the average number of stops the service providers made per hour by 3.6% versus
Q4 of the previous fiscal year. Along with the revised service provider
e-commerce rate structure, these efficiencies contributed to a 3% reduction in
cost per stop compared to the same quarter last year.
Further collaboration to improve efficiency
continued across our businesses as we expanded our Last Mile Optimization
program. In addition, FedEx Freight provided approximately 70 million linehaul
miles and delivered 1.75 million packages for Ground in fiscal year 2021.
Another significant opportunity in further
enhancing our operational excellence is the improvement in the profitability of
our international operations, which starts in Europe with the completion of the
physical integration of TNT. While the TNT integration has seen its share of
setbacks, including a 2017 cyberattack and the delays due to the pandemic, we
are certain of the value this combination creates for the FedEx of the future.
The European restructuring announced in January 2021 is set to deliver $275
million to $350 million in benefits on an annual basis starting in fiscal 2024.
The cost of the severance benefits under this program which will be incurred
through fiscal 2023 will be in the range from $300 million to $575 million in
cash expenditures.
In Q4, we introduced overnight service from
Europe connecting 90% of European businesses to major US markets. It's an
unparalleled next-day connectivity that nobody in the marketplace matches. As
you can see, we continue to enhance value for our customers while restructuring
our European business.
Said simply, the upside in the profitability of
our international business is tremendous. Finally, our third strategic focus
area, digital innovation. We are reimagining our digital capabilities and
infrastructure in a manner that will deliver market-leading customer
experiences that are simple, personal, and proactive. We made great strides in
fiscal 2021 as we continue to drive new value through strategic technologies
including: increasing capabilities and products through sensor-based
technologies like FedEx SenseAware ID and FedEx Surround which provide
unmatched visibility and predictive capabilities most notably seen during the
transportation of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines; building off ShopRunner
integration and Adobe Magento extension to enable a more open e-commerce
ecosystem; and furthering development of our portfolio of services in the
autonomous vehicle space as illustrated with ongoing Roxo testing and this
month's announcement of testing with Nuro.
In fiscal 2022, we'll continue to deliver on
our strategy around e-commerce, operational excellence, and digital innovation
as we execute on the following key initiatives. First, we expect to
substantially increase capacity for this peak by investing in FedEx Ground's
infrastructure, with the addition of 16 new automated facilities and the
implementation of nearly 100 expansion projects at existing operations and key
technological enhancements.
Second, we will complete the air network
integration in early calendar year 2022, which will bring the physical TNT
network integration to a close and provides the inflection point for long-term profit
improvement in Europe. Next, we are exercising existing options to purchase 20
additional 767Fs, 10 for delivery in fiscal year 2024 and 10 for delivery in
fiscal year 2025, as we continue to modernize our fleet and improve service to
our customers. And we finally continue to identify areas to adapt, collaborate
and utilize different elements of our global network to increase efficiency and
reduce cost-to-serve.
Our networks and capabilities reflect decades
of investment, innovation and expertise that are differentiated from our
competition. It's incredibly difficult to replicate and provides a significant
advantage over others in our industry. When we knit it all back together,
despite some of the cyclical factors, we remain very confident for fiscal year
2022 and beyond. The e-commerce market will continue to be a growth engine
globally, and if anything has become clear over the past year, it's the
contribution our industry provides to the e-commerce value chain.
We remain focused on differentiation, building
customer solutions and improving revenue quality, as critical long-term levers
of profitable growth. In addition, the transformation efforts in Europe and US
domestic will generate margin improvement opportunities. And finally, we're
just getting started on unlocking value with digital innovation. Our robust
growth strategy positions FedEx to deliver superior sustainable financial
returns and drive shareholder value for years to come.
With that, I will turn it over to Brie.
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Thank you, Raj. Good afternoon, everyone. In a
year of extraordinary challenges and change for our business, I continue to be
immensely proud of the team's ability to execute our commercial strategy while
developing solutions to help our customers grow their businesses. Before I move
into fiscal year 2022, I wanted to reflect on our truly exceptional results of
2021. Fiscal year 2021 parcel volume was very strong across our portfolio of
e-commerce solutions. Average daily volume grew across all our customer
segments, with US small and medium leading the way at 32% year-over-year
growth. E-commerce also drove 28% year-over-year
growth in our returns business through April. As more consumers shopped online,
enrolled FedEx Delivery Manager users grew by 43% year-over-year.
With this backdrop and the momentum from fiscal
2021, our fiscal 2022 outlook calls for robust growth. Enterprise growth in
fiscal year 2022 will be primarily driven by US domestic e-commerce growth
followed by strength in B2B and international and a focus on revenue quality.
In the United States, the flourishing US domestic parcel market will continue
to provide opportunity in the coming years. The US domestic parcel market is
expected to surpass 107 million packages a day in calendar year 2022 with
e-commerce contributing 88% of total US market growth.
Excluding Amazon volume, the US domestic parcel
market is expected to be 72 million packages a day in calendar year 2022. As we
look beyond calendar year 2022, we forecast that the US domestic parcel market
will reach 172 million packages a day in calendar year 2026. In fiscal year
2021, FedEx total US domestic residential package volume mix was 67% versus 62%
a year ago. As we look beyond this fiscal year, we expect residential volumes
to grow significantly faster than commercial volumes. However, with retail
inventories relative to sales at historic lows, we expect solid B2B volume growth
this fiscal year.
In fiscal year 2022, we will continue to
execute against our revenue quality strategy. In fiscal year 2021 Q4, we
increased FedEx Ground Economy yields by 28% and overall US domestic
residential yields by 16% year-over-year. It is important to note when
reviewing composite US domestic yields that weights and zone will decrease
putting pressures on yields as we grow in e-commerce. We are managing total
network profitability. Short zone e-commerce and our FedEx Ground Economy
service will enable us to spread our assets and maximize sortation capacity.
Within our pricing strategy, we continue to
prioritize capacity for commercial and small and medium customer segments. To
support the network amid ongoing capacity constraints, we have increased our
peak surcharges as of June 21 and will monitor and adjust our strategy as
capacity and demand warrant. We will continue to confidently renegotiate our
large customer segment contracts to increase profitability. This means
balancing product, day of week and lane mix at the customer level, while
ensuring appropriate surcharges and rate increases cover rising labor costs.
Most large customer contracts in the US are three years. Almost half of our
total large segment volume had pricing agreement implementations in the past 12
months, leaving upside for fiscal year 2022.
Now turning to international. Global trade
volume has surpassed pre-pandemic levels and is on course for its fastest year
of growth in over a decade. Global air cargo capacity remained down 10%
year-over-year as of April, mainly due to the reduction in passenger belly
capacity. We expect air cargo capacity to remain constrained through at least
the first half of calendar year 2022. Recovery will be slow, potentially
episodic, and a full recovery is not anticipated until 2024.
We believe a favorable pricing environment
should continue through fiscal year 2022. We will continue to manage demand
internationally using yield management and continuation of peak surcharges,
especially on trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic lanes. We are seeing a very good
capture rate on these surcharges.
While peak surcharges played a significant role
in our international performance in fiscal year 2021, it was not the majority of our revenue growth. In fiscal 2021, we
improved parcel and priority mix versus freight and economy, grew our small and
medium customer base while penetrating e-commerce. In fact, we grew e-commerce
parcel volume by more than $1 billion year-over-year out of Asia and Europe. To
a large extent, due to its lightweight nature and limited relative linehaul
capacity requirements, we were able to price e-commerce very competitively. I
believe that the e-commerce volume as a result is quite sticky. That being said, we continue to refine our commercial and
network strategies to be prepared for when commercial capacity does come back.
Overall demand for exports from Asia have recovered to pre-COVID levels. In fiscal year 2022, our
network plans include six intercontinental daily frequencies from Asia to
provide more consistent, predictable capacity based on our demand forecasts.
This will eliminate some of the ad-hoc nature of our flights in fiscal year
2021. Intra-European B2B volumes have recovered to pre-COVID levels while our
growth is further accelerated by significant B2C volumes on our
intercontinental lanes. With reduced pandemic-related uncertainty and
industrial activity on the rise, we expect the overall European economy to be
back to pre-pandemic levels in late calendar year 2021.
Raj covered our new European value proposition.
Customers are very interested in both our new Europe to US overnight service
and e-commerce product expansion. On the Europe to US lane, we have strong
demand with a healthy mix of small and large businesses. We have deployed
incremental capacity to serve this high-yielding segment. Our e-commerce value
proposition, anchored by our new FedEx International Connect Plus product is
very compelling. We continue to gain new customers and have a very robust sales
pipeline.
In summary, we had a stellar fiscal year 2021,
and the strategies we have in place will help us to win what's next in 2022 and
well beyond. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike for his remarks.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Thank you,
Brie, and good afternoon, everyone. Our fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 results
reflect the tremendous momentum in our business and reinforce our growth
strategy and investments across our network to grow our capabilities, improve
collaboration and drive efficiency. Our full-year results include over $1
billion in variable incentive compensation expense, as we reward our team
members for their invaluable contributions.
In the
fourth quarter, FedEx continued to drive higher profitability with increased
margins across the board. Consolidated revenue grew 30% year-over-year in the
quarter, while adjusted operating income was up 117% even with higher cost to
support increased demand, increased variable compensation expense of $380
million and our previously announced $100 million contribution to Yale
University to support our carbon neutrality goals. Drilling down into those
numbers, the rise in US parcel volume was the greatest driver of our revenue
growth and through the incredibly hard work and ingenuity of our team members,
we took a significant portion of that revenue growth to the bottom line.
Ground
revenue grew 27% in the fourth quarter, with operating margin increasing 310
basis points to 13.6%. Ground substantially improved margins and earned the
most operating profit in their history.
As our
international business and e-commerce in the US continued to grow, Express
revenue grew 32% over Q4 last year, with adjusted operating margin up 340 basis
points. Freight blew out this quarter with 38% revenue growth and their highest
quarterly operating margin ever at 16.1%. They also topped $1 billion in
operating income for the full year for the first time.
With our
overall profit growth, we generated a record $4.6 billion in adjusted free cash
flow, while balancing continued investment in the business, funding our pension
plans by $300 million and strengthening our balance sheet. During the fourth
quarter, we executed a debt refinancing and extinguishment transaction,
underscoring our focus on reducing our financial leverage. In the fourth
quarter, we reduced our outstanding debt by $2.6 billion or 11% of the total
outstanding liability, eliminating all debt maturities through FY 2025 and one
in FY 2027.
This transaction
resulted in a $393 million charge in Q4. However, it will lower our interest
costs over the next three years with a positive payback on the transaction. In
FY 2022, we will continue to drive a robust growth strategy capitalizing on
global economic recovery and e-commerce. This focus will flex all levers of our
business including volume growth, yield management, operational efficiency, and
network optimization.
The FY 2022
adjusted EPS range we provided corresponds to 13% to 18% year-over-year growth
on top of record FY 2021 earnings. I'd make the following highlights behind
that. We expect margins in all our transportation segments on an adjusted basis
to exceed FY 2021 levels driven by several key areas. We expect e-commerce to
continue to drive higher profitability and we will continue to invest in our
FedEx Ground network to improve efficiency and utilization through expanded and
new facilities as well as technology enhancements.
We also look
forward to incremental benefit from the completion of our physical integration
of TNT which will enable us to offer more and better services to our customers
internationally. This key milestone will continue to drive momentum and provide
a launch point for even better profitability down the road. Integration
expenses will be lower in FY 2022 than in FY 2021 and total integration
spending is expected to be $1.8 billion slightly higher than our previous
estimate due to additional opportunities identified to further optimize legal
entity structures and improve back-office automation.
We expect
continued improvement at FedEx Freight through our ongoing revenue quality and
profitable growth strategies. Our outlook includes substantial funding of our
incentive compensation programs for our team members. That said, variable
compensation expense is not expected to be a headwind for fiscal 2022. While we
have clear growth opportunities, the wide spread labor
shortages impacting many companies and industries across the US is also
impacting us through higher wage rates and lower productivity, particularly in
the first quarter. And this is reflected in our overall outlook for the year.
Earlier Raj
talked about our innovate digitally initiatives. The
spending related to these important projects is included in our outlook and
will largely be recorded in the corporate, eliminations and other section of
our P&L. Further, we estimate a higher effective tax rate for fiscal 2022
of approximately 24% prior to the mark-to-market retirement plan accounting
adjustments.
Finally, I
will address our capital allocation starting with capital expenditures, which
is expected to be $7.2 billion in FY 2022. This projects to 8% or less of
revenue, which is the target level for the CapEx to revenue component of our FY
2022 to 2024 long-term incentive plan and remains below our historical capital
intensity. Approximately half of our expected capital spending this year will
be for growth, with the remainder for important projects like replacement of
our aging FedEx Express aircraft, which not only is expected to have a high
financial return but is an important part of our strategy to reduce our carbon
footprint.
We will also
continue to invest in the modernization of our key Express hubs and upgrades to
other facilities in all our transportation networks to drive efficiency. We
will increase replacement of vehicles across the enterprise which we largely
deferred in FY 2021. We will add safer more energy efficient equipment. All
these projects will yield benefits in the near-term and long-term. We ended
fiscal 2021 with $7.1 billion in cash and as such our leadership team is laser
focused on enhanced capital allocation opportunities including our 15% dividend
increase for fiscal 2022, which raised the dividend to $3 per share as we
announced on June 14th.
Next, our
plan to restart our stock buyback program during the first quarter which we can
do without having to increase leverage and our focus primarily to offset
dilutive effects of our equity compensation programs and our plan to
voluntarily contribute $500 million in FY 2022 to our pension plan, which was
funded at 95% on May 31st.
In closing,
we are adding shareholder value by driving profitable revenue growth, expanding
margins, generating strong free cash flow, focusing capital spending into the
greatest areas of return, strengthening our balance sheet, and improving cash
return to shareholders.
Based on
record fourth quarter results we just covered and the future strategies we have
in place, I can say with confidence that we fully expect FedEx to continue
delivering sustainable and superior financial returns in the future.
Next, we
will be happy to address your questions.
QUESTION
AND ANSWER SECTION
Operator: And first we will go
to Brian Ossenbeck from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Brian P.
Ossenbeck
Analyst,
JPMorgan Securities LLC
Hey, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question.
Mike, wanted to see if you could give some color as it relates to the Ground
margins in the guidance. Obviously, some considerable operating leverage here
in terms of incrementals year-over-year. You've talked about the right sort,
the right package, the right truck but clearly there's some inflation working
its way through the system. So can we think about double digits on the way to
teens or would you guide us to something a little bit less than that
considering what you're outlining on inflation side which does seem to be a
little bit front-end loaded.
So maybe if you can address that and also
about the surcharges that you might be able to install to offset some of those
costs. Thank you.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Well, Brian, I'll kind of hit the first part and just
reiterate a few things we've said and maybe try to tie it together in a
different way. But as we've said, the pandemic accelerated the dramatic and
rapid shift in the growth of e-commerce. And at the same time as you noted
there, put some pressure in areas along the way as well, which is really why the performance at Ground in 2021 has been
nothing short of stellar. ADV increased an astounding 23% driven by e-commerce
and we still improved margins.
So, Brie highlighted that US
domestic parcel growth will continue to be the primarily driven by e-commerce,
and we're very confident in our strategy to profitably execute against that. So,
we expect margins to improve in 2022 and beyond as we continue to increase
density, further improve the facility and on-road productivity, enhance the
utilization of our assets. And I kind of emphasize those aspects as Ground is
generating exceptional ROIC margins. And so, we remain very confident in the
future opportunity and will continue to innovate and differentiate the
capabilities there. There was something about surcharges that you asked as well? Maybe you can clarify that.
Brian P.
Ossenbeck
Analyst,
JPMorgan Securities LLC
Yeah, right, earlier this week we saw your main competitor
announced some surcharges for peak season that were instituted earlier than
last year, and they're also bit higher. So, with the inflation you're talking
about with capacity in the system, maybe you can address that as well and what
you assumed in this guidance here.
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Thanks, Brian. It's Brie speaking. From a structural
pricing perspective, we believe that peak surcharges are kind of the new normal
and that we have to rely on our pricing to our costs.
I think I've covered that in previous calls that we do anticipate every peak
that there will be e-commerce surcharges. As we – right now we already have
peak surcharges in market, and we continue to evaluate changes that we need to
make based on demand and capacity. We implemented some changes on June 11th and
we continue to monitor the environment.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Bascome Majors from Susquehanna. Your line is open.
Bascome
Majors
Analyst,
Susquehanna Financial Group LLLP
Yeah, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. It's pretty clear that we're in one of the best trade-up
scenarios we've seen from logistics customers with all of your higher yielding,
higher priority products doing exceptionally well in this environment. Can you
talk a little bit more about how you protect that profitability from both mix
and pricing whenever the inevitable partial being reversion to a more stable
and sustainable demand and priority environment comes?
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Sure. Happy to take the question. I think we have to separate it between the domestic market and the
international market. Here in the US, you heard me quote some just outstanding
growth numbers from a parcel perspective. So, we think we actually
have quite a sustained growth environment while demand will outpace
capacity in the domestic market. Structurally, as I mentioned, we will continue
to use surcharges. Not only for peak but to cover large package and to really just make sure that our pricing quite frankly aligns
to our cost.
We think we have the very best value proposition in the
market full stop. We have the best weekend coverage. And so, as a result, we
think the demand that we are planning for will be there for quite some time
here domestically.
On the international side, it's a little bit of a different
story and far more complex. We do believe as I mentioned that commercial
capacity will come back episodically. It will not be a straight line up and we actually have we believe until 2024, the longer it takes for
commercial capacity to come back quite frankly the longer we have to make sure
that this customer base is sticky. I pointed out in my opening remarks that we
had $1 billion growth in e-commerce.
We priced this e-commerce volume at future price. It is
going to be very sticky. It was very competitively priced. So, we don't believe
there's any risk there and our small business growth, we've also had
internationally. We also believe that volume is very sticky. So as commercial
capacity comes back, we'll adjust the network. We'll bend the cost curve to
offset some of the surcharge risk. But overall, we feel quite good about the
strategies, and we have some time to implement them.
Operator: And next we'll go to Helane Becker from Cowen. Your line is open.
Helane
Becker
Analyst,
Cowen & Co. LLC
Thanks very much, operator. Hi, everybody. Thank you for
the time. So, I have two questions. My first question is, given the labor
shortages that we're seeing and the expectation that it's likely to continue,
is this a good time to pivot aggressively into more – the use of more robotics
and accelerate the implementation of automation and so on?
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Well, Helane, this is Mike. I'll just highlight that within
that CapEx projection, a good amount of that is to enhance the efficiency of
the facilities, which is what exactly aspect you're hitting on. I'll give it to
Raj to talk more broadly about the broader point you raised.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
Well, I think the point that I want to make here is that
the labor environment remains challenged right now. And we're doing everything
we can possibly do, whether it is from wages, from technology, from routing and
all things associated with it to make sure that we can get our service
improved. We expect that over the next two, three months, that situation gets
better and that we get ready for peak. And of course, we are considering longer
term opportunities that Mike talked about in terms of technology as well. Thank
you.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Ravi Shanker from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Ravi Shanker
Analyst, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
Thanks. Good afternoon everyone. Can you give us a little
bit of color on what the two halves of fiscal 2022 look like, first half versus
second half, given that you probably have a little bit kind of, say, pandemic
conditions continuing through the next couple of quarters but then some of the
comps start getting a little bit harder in the back half of the fiscal year?
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Yeah, Ravi, look, we're giving our best middle of the
fairway estimate of what we think the year looks like. As you highlight,
there's any number of moving parts. So, I don't want to try and parse various
elements along the way there. But certainly the recognition
that the first quarter here with the labor challenges and the productivity
impacts as well as keep in mind we are continuing to still have to make
accommodations in the Express air network as well for layover requirements and
that. So, there's a number of related aspects there. So,
I'll leave it at that in terms of what's at play here.
Operator: And next we'll go to
David Vernon from Bernstein. Your line is open.
David Vernon
Analyst,
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC
Hey. Good afternoon, everyone. So, Mike, maybe just to
follow up a little bit on that, is there a way to dimension whether in margin
terms or in overall sort of like cost impact? Both the productivity and the
wage impact from the inflation that you're seeing in the marketplace and the
difficulty in getting sortation kind of labor into the network? I'm just trying
to – anything you can give us that would help us to further kind of dimension
how big of a headwind that would be, would be extremely helpful.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Well, I wish we could break it down into the simple
buckets. But to amplify what Raj mentioned earlier, when you don't have the
people, as many people as you would optimally staff the facility with, then of
course your throughput is lower. And then maybe you're not getting the density
within trailers and that that you might otherwise expect. So, then you're
getting incremental cost there in terms of running the network, the linehaul
and that. So, it's not as simple as saying, okay, we're X heads short and that's
impacting us this way and wage rate is Y percent of it. It's
an iterative ongoing exercise we have to adapt, adjust, and configure around
that. So that's how we're managing it.
Operator: And next we'll go to
David Campbell from Thompson Davis & Company. Your line is open.
David Pearce
Campbell
Analyst,
Thompson Davis & Co., Inc.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. I'm just curious, UPS
sold their LTL division to a Canadian company few months ago. Is that expected
to have any impact on your marketing or your share of the market in the LTL
business?
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Well, David, first – this is Mike. Let me just say, our
commitment and value of our Freight business, given the results that I just spoke
to, is absolute. So, I'll let Brie address what we think how the market evolves
going forward.
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Well, honestly, this doesn't impact our Freight strategy.
We are the market share leader because we have the best value proposition. We
have had just a stellar year for the Freight team. They have done a tremendous
job managing despite the tumultuous year we have. And while they did that, they
introduced a new product that is growing rapidly. And in addition to growing
our share with small customer, we intend to grow our share with the cross threshold FedEx Freight Direct product and grow our
residential share. So, we are tremendously excited about our FedEx Freight division,
and we're just going to stay the course.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Scott
Schneeberger
Analyst,
Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.
Thanks very much. On the labor topic and
also this does tie into Freight as well. Mike, you mentioned that it
looks like it's largely affecting first quarter. You mentioned you adjusted the
guidance for the first quarter. I'm curious on your confidence of – I think
much of the country's hopeful that this labor dynamic ends at the end of the
summer. But just curious how conservative you were, or maybe a little bit more
color about how you're considering it and if you hope to get whole by, say, end
of first quarter. And then the follow-up question but thematically the same, is
in Freight, you had some customer suspension. And it looks like that's largely
alleviated. But could you put a little bit more color on what occurred and your
comfort that that's back in a good situation? Thank you.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Okay. Scott. I'll kind of take a swing at the first part,
and then I'll give it to Lance, our CEO of Freight for the second part. I mean,
look, it's not a unique phenomenon that we're experiencing. It's all the
aspects we highlighted. It's in the – obviously it impacts the first quarter
the most and the general expectations that everyone has is that this will
mitigate as we move into the fall and the markets return to more normalized
conditions. So, look, we're at it every day. But there's no unique
consideration there beyond just you see a lot of people suggesting that coming
September, October, we'll have a more expanded workforce. Lance?
Lance D. Moll
President & CEO, FedEx Freight, FedEx
Corp.
Thanks, Mike. Well, since Freight hardly ever gets any
questions, I'm going to take this opportunity to add to Brie's comments and
recognize our team for an exceptional year. They successfully battled through
what has been the most challenging year I've ever seen in my almost 30 years in
this business, and I grew up in it. So, I want to recognize all
of the points they put on the board.
Now, I'm sure you all have read the multiple articles
written over the last several months about the tightening in the trucking
industry, and it starts with the truckload sector. They are five times the size
of the LTL divisions, and when they get full, the spillover comes into LTL. We,
as the largest LTL carrier, get the majority of it. And
so when you have it combined with what the broad
actions our competitors have taken to embargo entire sections of the country
without any notice, impacting all customers, we decided to take an implemented,
temporary, targeted volume control to try to minimize the network disruptions
and balance capacity to avoid the backlogs across the entire country.
So, with record growth, there comes some tough but
necessary decisions to protect our employees, reduce our backlogs and staff to
our business volume. This continues to be the driving force behind our business
decisions. Now, in hindsight, I would not have wanted to make
a decision back in a corner like this and we're taking measures to avoid
it going forward. I hope that provided a transparency.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Tom Wadewitz from UBS. Your line is open.
Thomas
Wadewitz
Analyst, UBS
Securities LLC
Yeah. Good afternoon. Brie, you commented – you provided
some comments on pretty optimistic view on tightness
in the domestic market. I think the sense is that tightness is going to
continue. How do we think about the approach to pricing? I mean, you've had
tremendous momentum in pricing. I think was it 14% rise in revenue per piece in
Ground? How do you think about the pricing dynamic the next couple years? Would
we expect continued kind of stronger than normal pricing gains in Express and
Ground? And is it fair to view that as a pretty important
driver of margin expansion that you would expect to continue as we look at the
domestic package businesses?
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Absolutely. As we look at 2022 and 2023, we absolutely
think that you're going to see a greater than our historical average from a
year-over-year price increase. As I mentioned this past year when we look at
our domestic volume, we repriced about 45% of our large customer segment and
quite frankly we actually did most of that in the back
half of this year. So, we're going to have some lapping. You're going to get
benefits of those renegotiations in the back half of this fiscal year. We're
going to get them in the front half of 2022. In addition, we still have to reprice the rest of the large customer segment.
And really importantly, as Fred
mentioned, it's not just about the top line yield. It's about really making
sure that our price matches our cost. And we're getting very, very focused on
that, very disciplined, making sure the customers that have large package, we
have the right surcharges, the right structure there. Those that have the
highest peaking factor really pay for the incremental labor at peak. And so,
it's not just about the top line which I am – I want to be clear, I'm
optimistic about. But it's really about aligning our
price strategy with our cost. And we do think that that is going to have
tremendous momentum next year and, quite frankly, the year after as well.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Chris Wetherbee from Citi. Your line is open.
Chris
Wetherbee
Analyst,
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Ok thanks. Maybe I could just follow up on that point. So,
with the tightness in the market and it seems – maybe you can correct me if I'm
wrong, it seems that you and your major competitor are the biggest influencers
on capacity in the market. And if you can sort of meter that capacity out over
the course of the next couple of years, it should support sort of a relatively
robust pricing environment, certainly above cost inflation if we go out into
the out years. So, I guess what would sort of take away from that potential
opportunity to bring those domestic margins back up to maybe where we had seen
them a couple years ago? Is there some other impediment that we're thinking
about? Or is it really just a dynamic of trying to
match capacity with a volume growth that you outlined that is fairly robust and
maintain just a very, very robust pricing environment for the foreseeable
future?
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Go ahead, Mike.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Yeah, Chris. Let me just highlight one aspect when we talk
about capacity too. The CapEx growth at Ground is focused on smaller units than
kind of going back the historical legacy large hubs. We have one opening, but
it's targeted to efficiently and effectively execute on a lot of this growing
shorter zone demand. And so that's why when we talk about having the right
targeted investments to align the cost with the – where demand is going, that's
how we're thinking about it. And then, of course, it has to
be matched on the pricing side, which as Brie has covered, I think, pretty
comprehensively.
So, again, it's an integrated planning process and
assessment here. Look, the finance team is part of the discussions and
assessments that go on in that as well. So, it's a very integrated with
operations, finance, sales, pricing and marketing. So, the team really has a
collective focus.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Jack Atkins from Stephens. Your line is open.
Jack Atkins
Analyst,
Stephens, Inc.
Okay. Great. Thank you. Maybe a longer-term question for
either Raj or Mike. But in the past, we found a very high correlation between
return on invested capital and a stock's evaluation multiple within the
transportation sector. And at Analyst Day earlier this month, UPS laid out a
plan to get its return on invested capital up to 26% to 29% versus about 20%
today. Your LTM return on invested capital is between 7% and 8%. So, Mike, what
do you think's a realistic target for ROIC for FedEx when you look out over the
next three years?
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Jack, I'm not going to go put out any sort of targets or
guidance beyond what we've gone with today. But I will reiterate that the
investments that we're making, we're highly confident will generate a high
return on invested capital. And I alluded to the fact that we continue to
expect to see margins grow in all the business segments. So that's
what we have to do to continue to get that to where we want to keep seeing it,
the trajectory. So, I think that's where we'll leave that one.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Amit
Mehrotra
Analyst,
Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.
Hi, guys. Sorry about that. I was on mute. Thanks for
taking my question. Brie, I just want to see if you could talk about the
re-contracting process for enterprise customers. I know you mentioned they come
up every three years. Does the company have an ability to kind of change
pricing inter-period with 60 or 90 days’ notice? Or is
this just really at the end of the contract period? And then separately, Henry
can you just share – I don't know, sorry if I missed it, but just the B2B and
B2C mix, where B2B is today relative to where it was pre-COVID, just to give us
some runway on some of the density benefits you'll get as B2B continues to
recover? Thank you.
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Hi, Amit. It's Brie. So, from an enterprise contract
perspective, each contract is very nuanced. We have opened some contracts out
of cycle, when the customer has looked for increased demand. And so of course
when they want to do something different than what has kind of been our
historical average with them, of course, we're going to have those
conversations. I think it's really important. Yes, we
want to grow our price. Yes, we want to grow our yield, but we also want to
have really happy, satisfied customers. And so, we're
trying to strike that right balance. And so, some customers, yes, they did
require changes in their portfolio, a change in mix, to meet their business
needs because many of them saw explosive growth, especially in our retail
segment and of course in our healthcare. So, of course, as required, we do
reopen accounts and have those conversations every Thursday morning. As Mike
mentioned, Mike and Jill and I get together, and we review what's necessary to
run the business. So, I'm very pleased that the team has been incredibly agile.
I think the second half of the question was about B2B and
B2C. So, I think the answer from a domestic perspective is we are going to
continue to make Express more Express. We're going to lean into commercial. We're
going to lean into premium and healthcare. We're very optimistic about our last
mile optimization strategy, which will allow us to continue to put some
residential business into the Ground network. When we – and I guess the other
thing that I can share is that if you look in May of this past year, it was our
highest absolute commercial volume in the domestic network since September
2019. So, we're very confident about the return of our commercial business here
in the United States.
However, as I mentioned, 90% of the market growth will be
e-commerce and so there will be no settling of the B2C volume within the Ground
network. We're going to continue to drive that growth. We're going to lean into
it, grow yields. And as Mike's mentioned, our goal is to grow the margin while
we do that. So very, very, quite frankly excited to lean into the e-commerce
growth for FedEx Ground.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
This is Mike. I should add one thing for those of you that
are asking about the sequencing or trajectory through the year. Just as a
reminder, I mentioned that we accrued $380 million of variable compensation
expense in Q4. And so if you add up the prior Qs and
that, that gets you to $1 billion or so for the year. So Q1, we were not
accruing as much last year, understandably amidst the uncertainty. So just kind
of keep that in mind as you think about modeling through.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Ken Hoexter from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Ken Hoexter
Analyst,
BofA Securities, Inc.
Hey, great. Good afternoon. So, in the outlook, you talked
a lot about Ground. But what about Express? So, if we normalize for the $100
million donation, the rebound in FedEx Europe with the TNT integration, the
aircraft efficiency, what's the timeframe to get back to double-digit Express?
Maybe detail the progress at TNT as well. And then just an update within that
the blending of Express into the Ground network both on the package and
facility side.
Michael
C. Lenz
Executive Vice President & CFO, FedEx
Corp.
Well, I'll – there have been a
number of milestones on the TNT. We had the road network. We completed that
milestone. And that helped facilitate the enhanced commercial proposition that
was highlighted. And again, the air network is another key enhancement, and
that comes toward the end of this fiscal year. So, there's value coming this
year, more to come. And then as we highlighted with the business realignment,
that hits full stride into 2024. So, it's a multiple year of significant
opportunity and increases there.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
Yeah, Ken, let me just add that we are very excited about
where we sit with TNT. The combination of the physical integration this year,
this fiscal year and next calendar year is an inflection point, like I talked
about. And at the same time, we are also improving – continue to improve our
value proposition, the one I just talked to you about, overnight service from
several markets in Europe to US is unmatched. So, we continue to make great
progress, and we really think that we should see it relate to margin expansion
beginning in fiscal 2022 and building into FY 2023.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Allison Landry from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Allison M.
Landry
Analyst,
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Thanks. Good afternoon. So, Raj,
you talked about lower cost per stop at Ground. So, is there any way to parse
out how much of that was driven by the increased B2B mix versus increased
density and e-comm residential volume related to the last mile optimization,
improved asset utilization from the seven-day operations? And then if you could
just maybe address how we might be able to gauge the improvement in cost per
stop in fiscal 2022. Thank you.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
Allison, I'm going to have John answer that question.
John A. Smith
President & CEO, FedEx Ground, FedEx
Corp.
Allison, thanks for the question. If you go back, when we
talk about LMO, FY 2020, we only delivered 1.2 million packages of LMO. Through
fiscal year 2021, we delivered 21.6 million packages of LMO. Now, that's one
factor, that's improving our optimization. The next, if you remember, we
integrated SmartPost, which is now our economy product. And plus, the surging
residential growth since the pandemic. And all these factors has
helped us improve our residential density.
Now, one of the things to remember, we're seeing package
matching where we have commercial, residential, economy, or LMO packages, where
they're destined to the same address or a nearby address for another Ground
package. And we fully continue – expect this to continue to increase. Now, we're
also confident that our weekend residential delivery coverage, which is already
mentioned, reaching 98% of the US population on Saturdays and 95% on Sundays
truly gives us a distinct competitive advantage.
Operator: And next we'll go to
Allison Poliniak from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Allison
Poliniak-Cusic
Analyst,
Wells Fargo Securities LLC
Hi. Good evening. One of the issues that we heard on the
manufacturing side is really the supply chain constraints and sort of the
impact that maybe those increased volumes have had. Is this something that's
been I guess, one, noticeable to you? And is it starting to abate? Or is it
still sort of a level of volume that you continue to expect particularly on the
Express side as we move through the rest of the balance of the year here?
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
The supply chain constraints are, of course, real. The
other thing to keep in mind here is the inventory to sales ratio. It's an
all-time low. And so we do fully expect that as the –
especially as the supply chain starts to get organized here and we still have
opportunity to grow because especially on the Express side of the business, as
the inventory sales ratio still remains very, very low, and that drives a lot
of Express traffic. I hope that answers the question. If not, just ask again
what was not clear.
Allison
Poliniak-Cusic
Analyst,
Wells Fargo Securities LLC
The Express part of it, like is it starting to normalize
somewhat where you're seeing that sort of fall off here? And obviously, the
inventory to sales ratio might not be as sort of next day just in time based on
some of the issues we've had over the past few months. Just didn't know if that
was noticeable on sort of the volumes you were seeing at this point.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
Don, want to take that?
Donald
F. Colleran
President
& CEO, FedEx Express, FedEx Corp.
Sure. The intensity of the demand has not abated, and it's
driven by the factors that you and Raj both mentioned. One, on the inventory
side, not only is it finished product, but it's raw materials, i.e., chips and
other things that are going into finished products. So, they remain at
historically low levels. The demand also hasn't abated, and so the demand cycle
that we're seeing both domestically and internationally continues to be
extremely strong. And then the combination of the supply being light, both in
the air and the ocean, that has trickle down and trickle up effect certainly is
factors that have us remaining optimistic that there's no short-term change in
what we're seeing. As a matter of fact, I'm seeing an intensification of that
in our international business.
Operator: And our next question
comes from Bruce Chan from Stifel. Your line is open.
Jizong Bruce
Chan
Analyst,
Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.
Great. Thank you, operator. And good evening, team. It's
nice to be back in the mix here. Brie, I want to go back to the pricing
discussion for a moment but maybe more specific to Europe. It seems like a
meaningful commercial opportunity for you over there, but some of your
competitors are also looking at expanding in that region as well. So, my
question is, are you seeing any signs of a land grab
or any competitive pricing pressure develop on that front? Or are you seeing
the same sort of structural differentials between demand and capacity that
you're seeing here in the US?
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Great question. And, no, from a European perspective, we're
kind of the underdog. We actually see and have had
tremendous momentum as I mentioned the $1 billion growth from an e-commerce
perspective between Europe and Asia, and that's intercontinental. So, when we
look at the Europe business, Raj has mentioned, number one, we now have – we
already had but we even strengthened it further. We have the best coverage
across Europe into the United States from a commercial perspective, and the
sales team is really excited about that value proposition. So, we have upside
potential on both the B2B and the B2C market share into the United States from
Europe.
From an intra-Europe perspective, we are predominantly
focused on B2B. We're just getting going on B2C. But we see upward potential
there and we actually also are seeing improving yields
in the intra-European theater. So, from an intra-Europe perspective, we're
feeling optimistic. And then from an Asia to Europe, that's our third focus
area for the European team. We have historically been under-shared in that
lane. We have seen a tremendous relationship between our Asia and our European
teams. Actually, our Asia team has taken share from
DHL the last four quarters. So, we're pretty pleased
with them. We see a great pricing environment, and we see some really strong momentum.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
And, Bruce, if I can just add, in some ways the European
markets are the late bloomers of post-COVID-19. But we now expect them to be
back to pre-pandemic levels this calendar year versus what we thought. So,
there's going to be the demand especially B2B coming back sooner. And again, I
think we're in a very good position for that.
Operator: And next we have Duane
Pfennigwerth from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
Duane
Pfennigwerth
Analyst,
Evercore Group LLC
Hey, thanks. Thanks for squeezing me in here. On the Ground
facility investments, as you tilt to smaller facilities, which I think you
talked about being driven by ship from store, where the demand is headed, can
you talk about utilization of your existing assets? What does churn look like
in those? And how often do you exit a facility? And is there any geographic
focus to your Ground investments?
John A. Smith
President & CEO, FedEx Ground, FedEx
Corp.
Thanks, Duane. It's John. First of all,
we've already talked about this, but let me re-mention the brick and mortar
that we're adding. We're adding a very large hub in Chino, California, and
we'll end up with 16 regional sortation facilities this year as well as four
new automated stations. It's already been mentioned that we're expanding over
100 of our existing facilities, but that's not just how we're attacking our
capacity. We're also expanding our operational solutions that maximize how and
when we're using these existing buildings, for instance, like when we run
multiple preloads in an existing building.
Also, technology is a huge play for us here. It's going to
provide the solutions that are critical to enable these solutions to work. And
in addition, we're refining tools that use real-time data to help us streamline
multiple aspects of our operation, all the way from staffing through package
routing to trailer as well as mode optimization. And we're also collaborating
with our customers on solutions that will leverage the full flexibility of our
seven-day operations and benefit from our expanded regional and local solutions
through our e-commerce shippers that will allow them to reach their customers
both quickly as well as cost effectively.
Rajesh
Subramaniam
President & Chief Operating Officer,
FedEx Corp.
And, Duane, if I can answer the strategic point here, I've
long talked about how we work strategically with some of the retail customers
as they see their online growth. And again, that's exactly what we're doing.
And this – when you see stories of retailers showing tremendous online growth,
you can bet there's a FedEx story right behind that.
Operator: And our next question
comes from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Jordan
Alliger
Analyst,
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC
Yeah, hi. Given the investments you're making in Ground and
the automation facilities and preparing for a strong peak, can you give some
sense against obviously what's difficult year-over-year comparisons, what sort
of big picture volume that you might be looking at in terms of growth
perspective? Is it a mid-single-digit type of number better? Just curious.
Thanks.
Brie
Carere
Chief Marketing and
Communications Officer & Executive Vice President, FedEx Corp.
Well, we're expecting a pretty
robust peak. I think last year we called it Shipathon. I think we're looking
forward to another Shipathon quite frankly. So especially in the Ground network
we are absolutely expecting a robust peak in volume growth. I think Fred
mentioned in his opening remarks, the goal is over $90 billion for the year,
and I'm looking across the table at Jill, my commercial
partner, and we're pretty confident in that number.
Operator: And I'll turn it back
to you for closing remarks.
Frederick
W. Smith
Chairman, President & CEO, FedEx
Corp.
Thank you very much for participating on this analyst call.
As I said, I'd like to take a moment to personally thank Henry Maier for his
dedicated service to this organization. Henry's various roles were pivotal at
key points from the time we bought RPS until today. I think even Henry and I
would be amazed looking back in time if we thought FedEx Ground was going to be
the enormous entity it is today, with substantial growth prospects and an awful
lot of that, Henry, is due to your leadership and insights.
You're a remarkable
professional in an area which is very arcane and very poorly understood and
many, many quarters because of the topology of networks and how they actually
operate. I've had a lot of fun just on a personal basis with our repartee, and
I'm going to continue that with you, as we talked about the other day. So, all
of us wish you and Diane great success in retirement and on behalf of all of
us, well done and we are deeply grateful to you.
So, let me end with one administrative announcement. In
reviewing the format of these calls, we've made the decision going forward,
Raj, Mike, and Brie will handle these quarterly calls. I'll be available on the
midyear December call and year-end call next June to answer any questions. The
rest of our SMC, we're going to give this time back to them in order to run the
railroad because the size and scope of this operation needs every minute that they
can devote to their day job rather than to these reports, which will be very
adequately handled, as we just demonstrated, by Raj and Brie and Mike. So back
to you, Mickey.
A.
Mickey Foster
Vice President, Investor Relations, FedEx
Corp.
Thank you for your participation in FedEx Corporation's
Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Feel free to call any one on the
Investor Relations team if you have additional questions about FedEx. Thank you
very much.