A record number of holiday packages are on track to arrive this year and package delivery companies appear to be handling the load well.
FedEx Corp offered the latest update on Tuesday on its busiest time of the year as it released its fiscal second-quarter earnings report.
“We are on track for another record holiday shipping season and customer service levels have been outstanding,” FedEx chairman and CEO Fred Smith said. “We plan year around to meet the intense challenges of the peak season as average daily volumes can more than double.”
Aside from some short-term delays at United Parcel Service Inc (UPS) last month because of a surge in online orders after Thanksgiving, few delivery problems have been reported this year.
UPS restored normal delivery times after the initial surge.
So as long as consumers placed their orders in time, their gifts should make it on time, said Satish Jindel, founder and president of ShipMatrix, which tracks the shipping industry.
“There should be no concern about packages not getting there by Christmas Eve,” Jindal said.
UPS spokesman Steve Gaut said the company expects to deliver about 750 million packages during this holiday season, up from 712 million last year.
FedEx has not released an estimate of how many packages it would handle during the holidays.
ShipMatrix estimates that together FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service are delivering about 60 million packages per day during the holidays.
FedEx on Tuesday said that its second-quarter earnings grew 11 percent to US$775 million, or earnings per share of US$2.84.
That is up from US$700 million, or earnings per share of US$2.59.
The Memphis, Tennessee-based company said its earnings would be US$3.18 per share if one-time costs were excluded.
The 13 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected earnings per share of US$2.87 on average.
The package delivery company reported revenue of US$16.31 billion. Nine analysts surveyed by Zacks expected US$15.67 billion.
FedEx boosted its outlook for full-year earnings per share to a range of between US$12.70 and US$13.30.
The firm had earlier predicted fiscal earnings next year would fall to between US$11.05 and US$11.85.
The company’s stock was up US$3.36, or 1.4 percent, to US$245.90 in extended trading after the release of the earnings report.
FedEx shares have increased 30 percent since the beginning of the year, while the S&P 500 has increased 20 percent.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the