FFEX

We’re Considering FedEx for the Dividend Growth Newsletter Portfolio

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Image Source: Valuentum By Brian Nelson, CFA During the past several weeks, we’ve grown increasingly concerned about the health of consumer-tied entities across the consumer staples and consumer discretionary spaces. Many consumer staples entities, while raising prices, aren’t raising them fast enough to drive operating-income and bottom-line expansion, while many consumer discretionary companies may be facing higher freight and logistics costs and weaker performance in Greater China, as that exposed in Nike’s (NKE) most recently-reported quarter, where inventory advanced 23%. The tell-tale sign about the health of the consumer may be Amazon (AMZN) Prime Day, which is coming up on July 12-13, but based on many of the reports we’ve monitored this past earnings season, consumers may be willing to spend … Read more

A Tale of Two Package Delivery Companies

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Image Shown: Shares of both FedEx Corporation (FDX) (indicated by the orange line above) and United Parcel Service Inc (UPS) (indicated by the blue line above) have come under a tremendous amount of pressure over the past year as the industry navigates the fallout from the US-China trade war. Both companies are investing heavily to improve their offerings to stay ahead of the game as large tech companies increasingly encroach on the shipping industry’s traditional turf. The S&P 500 index is indicted by the purple line above. By Callum Turcan The past year has not been kind to the air freight and logistics industry. The price of shares of FedEx Corp (FDX) have fallen by more than a third during … Read more

Our Reports on Stocks in the Air Freight & Logistics Industry

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Structure of the Air Freight & Logistics Industry The highly competitive air freight and logistics industry is heavily tied to cyclical domestic economic expansion (primarily from retail good shipments). The international freight market remains a critical growth engine for air cargo providers, while all constituents deal with the cost of rising fuel (diesel) prices and potentially price-sensitive demand during periods of economic weakness. Firms with freight-forwarding, asset-light operations and/or large difficult-to-replicate shipping networks can carve out sustainable competitive advantages while generating high returns on investment. We generally like the group. We’ve optimized our industrials coverage. Our reports can be found here.

FedEx Ships More Packages as Economy Strengthens

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Wednesday morning, shipping goliath FedEx (click ticker for report: ) announced better-than-anticipated fiscal first quarter results. Revenue rose 2% year-over-year to $11 billion, slightly above consensus expectations. Earnings per share increased 5.5% year-over-year to $1.53 per share, also slightly above consensus estimates. Free cash flow was decent at $357 million, equal to 3.2% of total revenue. FedEx Express Express revenue was roughly flat year-over-year at $6.61 billion, but segment operating income jumped 14% year-over-year to $236 million as the firm benefitted from 50 basis points of operating margin expansion. Management cited lower pension expenses and lower maintenance costs as the main drivers of earnings expansion in the face of flat top-line performance. This ends two consecutive quarters of top-line growth, … Read more