Yahoo Finance FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript June 25, 2024
FedEx Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $5.41, expectations were $5.34.
Operator: Good day, and welcome to the FedEx Fiscal Year 2024 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeni Hollander, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Jeni Hollander: 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 investors.fedex.com. This call and the accompanying slides are being streamed from our website where the replay and slides will be available for about one year. During our Q&A session, callers will be limited to one question to allow us to accommodate all those who would like to participate. Certain statements in this conference call may be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that 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 release and filings with the SEC. Today's presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the investor relations portion of our website at fedex.com for a 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 Raj Subramaniam, President and CEO; Brie Carere, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer; and John Dietrich, Executive Vice President and CFO. Now, I will turn it over to Raj.
Raj Subramaniam: Thank you, Jeni. Our fourth quarter performance marks a strong end to a year of successful execution. We delivered year-over-year operating profit growth and margin expansion in every quarter of FY 2024. We lowered our capital intensity, reaching our FY 2025 target of less than 6.5% a year early. With lower CapEx and higher free cash flow, we returned nearly $4 billion to stockholders. And we meaningfully improved our return on invested capital. The entire industry faced a challenging demand environment in FY 2024. Our team focused on what we could control. And as a result, we delivered full year earnings towards the higher end of our original guidance range, up 19% year-over-year on an adjusted basis. We did this despite a decline in revenue compared to our initial growth expectations.
We also advanced our network transformation, continuing to rollout Network 2.0 and finalizing the transition to One FedEx, which went into effect June the 1st. We did all of this while maintaining an intense dedication to serving our customers, a relentless pursuit of innovation, and an unwavering commitment to our people, service, profit culture. Our transformation journey will continue in FY 2025 as we build on the team's outstanding progress. Now turning to the quarter in more detail. At the enterprise level, revenue growth inflected positive this order as expected. While we saw modest yield improvement and signs of volume stabilization across segments, we have not yet seen a notable increase in demand. Continued execution of DRIVE, alongside effective expense management enabled year-over-year improvements to adjusted operating income, margins, and earnings per share.
Let me pause here to acknowledge and provide context around the team's tremendous Q4 and full-year results. Ground delivered its highest adjusted operating income in company history for both the fourth quarter and the full year. At freight, fourth quarter operating income increased despite significant demand weakness. In fact, because of our strong fourth quarter performance, freight ended fiscal year 2024 with full year operating margin equal to last year's all-time high. Adjusting -- adjusted Express operating margin increased sequentially in the quarter, but declined year-over-year as expected. We continue to take action to unlock the full profit opportunity that exists in this business. DRIVE continues to change the way we work at FedEx. We achieved our target of $1.8 billion in structural costs out in FY 2024, with approximately $500 million from air network and international, $550 million from G&A, and $750 million from surface network.
In our air network, structural network transformation and reduced flight hours drove the Q4 savings. Within G&A, we realized procurement savings by centralizing third party transportation, short equipment, and outside service contracts. Our surface network continued to maximize the use of rail. As part of that effort, freight now handles nearly 90% of the [drudge] (ph) volume, up from about 25% just one year ago. Looking ahead, we are firmly on track to achieve our target of $4 billion of savings in FY 2025 compared to the FY 2023 baseline. Let me spend a moment on Europe, where we are executing on the $600 million FY 2025 DRIVE savings target we have shared previously. I would like to thank Karen Reddington for her more than 27 years of service at FedEx, most recently as our Europe Regional President.
Couple of weeks ago, Karen announced her impending retirement. We wish her all the very best. Walter Roles, who was an exceptionally seasoned and experienced executive, will become our Europe Regional President on July 1st. Walter has been leading our Europe DRIVE domain since his 2022 inception. I'm confident that under Walter's leadership, the team will continue to advance DRIVE initiatives to support improved performance. John, Brie, other FedEx executives and I were in Europe visiting the team just last week. Our team members there are working with rigor to execute on our efficiency plans and our performance improved on a year-over-year basis. The fourth quarter route optimization, improved thought processes, and productivity gains led our Europe DRIVE domain savings.
The actions are already underway for FY 2025. I left the continent encouraged by our progress and with even more conviction in the opportunity ahead. On June 1, we reached an important milestone in our transformation, what we call One FedEx. This is the consolidation of FedEx Express, FedEx Ground and FedEx Services into Federal Express Corporation. There are many benefits. This foundational step improves efficiency and reduces cost. Allows our teams to move with speed and makes it easier for our team members to manage their FedEx couriers. In Q4, we also continued to roll out Network 2.0, including the launch in Canada, our largest market yet. In the first half of FY 2025, we will complete the Canada transition and optimize dozens of additional locations in the U.S. We expect to significantly pick up the pace into FY 2026.
Importantly, even as we streamline our structure, we are maintaining our strong service levels, and we continue to offer the widest portfolio of services with the most compelling value proposition for our customers. Our integrated portfolio offering is a long-term driver of sustained profit improvement and a key enabler of our Tricolor network design. We also continue to leverage data to create a more flexible, efficient and intelligent network. In November of 2023, we began introducing a new tool to our contracted service providers in the US to track and drive improvement across key operating metrics tied to demand, safety, service and productivity. This tool is a common platform that we plan to scale globally, providing insights and enabling outcomes that are beneficial to FedEx, our contracted service providers, and our customers.
Across the 65% of service providers currently using the platform is already driving service and safety improvements, which are translating into cost savings. Real-time visibility tools like this are critically important as we start to pull packages across our network, irrespective of service offerings. Our FY 2024 results laid a strong foundation as we kick off the new fiscal year. In fiscal 2025, we will continue to execute on our transformation strategy and expect to deliver adjusted EPS growth of 12% to 24%. John will provide more detail on our outlook and the underlying assumptions shortly. With the recent completion of the FY 2025 planning process, we have turned our focus to the next phase of our long-term stockholder value creation plans.
As a part of this work, our management team and the Board of Directors, along with outside advisors are conducting an assessment of the role of FedEx Freight in our portfolio structure and potential steps to further unlock sustainable shareholder value. We're committed to completing this review thoroughly and deliberately by the end of the calendar year. We'll conduct this assessment while continuing to focus on customers, team members, and the safety of our operations. Before I close, I want to thank our FedEx team members for their continued commitment to our customers and their focused execution in FY 2024. I'm truly excited about the value creation opportunities in front of us as we continue to win profitable share, execute on our structural cost initiatives and leverage the insight from the vast amount of data we compiled from moving more than $2 trillion worth of goods every single year.
We are firmly on track to achieve our $4 billion FY 2025 DRIVE cost savings target compared to the FY 2023 baseline. We expect another $2 billion to follow from Network 2.0. Our Tricolor strategy will improve the efficiency and asset utilization of the entire FedEx system. We expect to continue lowering our capital intensity, improving ROIC, drawing free cashflow, and delivering significant returns to stockholders. We have a clear line of sight for achieving 10% adjusted operating margin on $100 billion revenue. I have never been more confident in our future as we create the world's most flexible, efficient, and intelligent network. With that, let me turn the call over to Brie.
Brie Carere: Thank you, Raj, and Good afternoon, everyone. I want to congratulate our team on their outstanding Q4 and full year performance. Our service and speed advantages continue to attract customers in high value industries and segments. With this focus on profitable growth, we have continued to gain market share, both in the United States and around the world. We are very pleased to see revenue growth turn positive in the fourth quarter with volume stabilization and modest yield improvement. Let's review fourth quarter top line performance by segment on a year-over-year basis. At FedEx Ground, revenue increased 2% on a 1% increase in yield and a 1% increase in volume, driven by ground commercial. At FedEx Freight, revenue increased 2%, driven by higher yields.
Average daily shipments increased slightly. At FedEx Express, revenue in the fourth quarter was flat with package yield up 2%. While positive, yield growth was pressured by a tapering of international export demand surcharges and an increasing mix of deferred services. International yields were also pressured by an increased capacity in the global air cargo market. Turning now to monthly volume trends during the quarter. Volumes continue to stabilize. In US domestic package, year-over-year volume declines continued to moderate. International export package volume increased 8% in the quarter, driven by international economy, largely consistent with the monthly trends we saw last quarter. Our continued focus on reliable service at Ground drove volume improvement in ground commercial.
FedEx Freight shipment inflected positive as the quarter progressed as we lapped last year's demand softness. As we previously announced, our contract with the United States Postal Service will expire on September 29th. Until then, we will continue to meet our service commitments. We expect volumes to be near contract minimum, consistent with what we saw in the fourth quarter. After the expiration of the contract, we will implement adjustments for our operations and network that will drive efficiencies and create more flexibility. Similar to last quarter, the pricing environment remains competitive but rational. During the fourth quarter, we continue to grow yield as we focus on profitable growth and revenue quality. At Express, package yields increased 2%, driven by higher US domestic package yields, partially offset by international export yield pressure.
At FedEx Ground, yield increased 1%, driven by home delivery and ground commercial. Our value proposition is translating to increased ground commercial market share gains, which positively contributed to our yields. And at FedEx Freight, revenue per shipment was up 1%, driven by a continued focus on revenue quality as we grew share in the most attractive parts of the market. This was Freight's strongest yield performance since the third quarter of fiscal year 2023. In light of the overall pricing environment, I am very pleased to report that we had a very strong US domestic capture rate on the 5.9% GRI in January. We recently announced fuel surcharge table increases across our services, which should also benefit yields in fiscal year 2025. We continue to enhance our portfolio and value proposition to drive profitable growth.
Our world-renowned brand, the breadth of our networks, and our strong reliability, along with our digital portfolio are winning the hearts and the minds of customers around the world. A few commercial highlights I would like to share. We are very proud of our healthcare portfolio. Last year, as part of our commercial DRIVE focus, we increased focus on this attractive segment and experienced great results. We have over $1 billion of healthcare related revenue that comes from customers who utilize FedEx Surround. The FedEx Surround platform provides insights to help our customers monitor and solve their supply chain challenges. Surround gives customers real-time visibility into their shipments by combining information about the package with external data, such as weather, to predict delivery timeliness and to mitigate the risk of disruption.
Another critical element of our healthcare strategy is our ability to demonstrate our high reliability and our ability to meet customer quality agreements. A quality agreement is essentially a customized standard operating procedure for critical healthcare shipments. In fiscal 2024, we signed new quality agreements for customers tied to over $500 million in revenue. As we expand our healthcare portfolio, we'll continue to focus on high-value areas like clinical trials. Earlier this month, in the Netherlands, we opened our first European Life Sciences Center. This state-of-the-art cooling facility is the sixth of its kind in our global network, offering an end-to-end supply chain solution for temperature-sensitive medical storage and transport.
In addition to the tremendous work with our healthcare customers, our e-commerce portfolio is the most robust in the market. We have the best speed, coverage, and capabilities. Picture proof of delivery was a great new feature to improve customer confidence. We recently launched our picture proof of delivery APIs. These APIs enable our customers to expose picture proof of delivery within their own branded notifications and websites. This quarter, we signed several new pricing agreements with large retailers for our new picture proof of delivery API. This is a great differentiator and represents what will be the first of many wins for our new FDX platform. Looking ahead, in fiscal year 2025, we expect the demand environment to moderately improve as we move through the year.
Currently, we expect US domestic parcel and LTL volumes to continue to improve with the year-over-year increase growing as the year progresses. International air cargo demand from Asia accelerated in early May and is stronger versus previous expectations. We expect year-over-year growth to be driven by e-commerce and low inventory levels. Shippers are facing tightened capacity both in air and sea freight services. Red Sea disruptions have further exacerbated shipper challenges from Asia to Europe. These conditions should bring strength to the overall air freight yields from Asia. In closing, I'm very confident in our outstanding team, our strong value proposition, and our new digital solutions. These will continue to power our success as we build on our momentum in fiscal year 2025.
And with that, I'll turn it over to John to discuss the financials in more detail.
*** While we acknowledge the potential of FDX as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than FDX but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. ***
John Dietrich: Thanks, Brie. For fiscal year 2024, we delivered $6.2 billion of adjusted operating profit, which is nearly a $900 million or 16% year-over-year improvement. Adjusted operating margin expansion of 110 basis points and adjusted EPS up 19%. This is a very strong result in a year where revenue was down 3% or nearly $2.5 billion. We also reduced our capital intensity and achieved our CapEx to revenue target of 6.5% or less, a year ahead of schedule. And with the continued strong cashflow and lower capital intensity, we returned nearly $4 billion to stockholders. These results reinforce that our transformation efforts are taking hold and demonstrate our commitment to creating value for our shareholders. Taking a closer look at our Q4 consolidated performance on a year-over-year basis.
Adjusted operating income increased by over $100 million, and adjusted operating margin expanded by 40 basis points. At Ground, the team delivered another strong quarter. Adjusted operating income increased by $133 million, and adjusted operating margin expanded by 130 basis points. This was driven by continued progress on DRIVE, increased yield, lower self-insurance cost, and commercial volume growth. At Freight, operating income increased by $58 million and operating margin improved by 220 basis points, driven by higher yield. Freight's continued focus on revenue quality and cost management has enabled improved profitability, despite the soft demand environment. As directionally expected, adjusted operating income at Express fell by $92 million in the quarter and adjusted operating margin was down 90 basis points.
Express results were pressured by lower international yield, higher purchased transportation costs due to the launch of our Tricolor initiative, and a headwind from annual incentive compensation. DRIVE cost reductions and higher US domestic package yield partially offset these pressures. With respect to Europe, earlier this month we announced a planned reduction in the size of our European non-operational staffing to further support Express profit improvement. We expect $125 million to $175 million in annualized benefits beginning in FY 2027 with tailwinds starting later in FY 2026. Decisions like these are never easy, but are a necessary step to improve profitability in the region. In addition to our segment results, our fourth quarter results include a non-cash impairment charge of $157 million relating to our decision to permanently retire 22 Boeing 757 aircraft from our US domestic network, along with seven related engines.
These actions, coupled with the previously announced retirement of nine MD-11’s in the quarter, resulted in the permanent removal of 31 jet aircraft from our fleet in FY 2024. This reflects our strategy to continue to right size our air network capacity with demand and unlock additional operating efficiencies. Now turning to our outlook for fiscal year 2025. Our adjusted earnings outlook range for the year is $20 to $22 per share. Let me talk through our key assumptions and variables. Starting with revenue, we expect low to mid-single digit growth, driven by improving trends in US domestic parcel and international export demand. The primary factors that will ultimately determine our revenue growth are: the rate of yield expansion; the pace of global industrial production; and growth of domestic e-commerce.
We expect FY 2025 yields to benefit from both improved base rates and increased fuel surcharges. And consistent with what we have seen over the past year, we're anticipating a pricing environment that is competitive but rational. On the expense side, we remain committed to aggressively managing our cost structure, including the incremental $2.2 billion benefits tied to DRIVE. I'll walk you through the puts and takes in our FY 2025 operating profit bridge in a moment. But at the business level, in fiscal year 2025, we expect the newly combined Express, Ground and Services segment, now called Federal Express, to be the larger driver of FY 2025 adjusted income and margin improvement. And we expect FedEx freight margins to be up modestly year-over-year due to both yield and volume growth.
I'd also like to provide some color on our quarterly cadence in light of the US Postal Service contract expiration at the end of September. We anticipate headwinds from the expiration of that contract to begin in the second quarter starting in October. With this headwind lessening in the second half as we aggressively reduce our Postal Service related costs, including our US domestic air network costs. Turning to other aspects of our outlook, our estimated effective tax rate for the full year is approximately 24.5% prior to mark-to-market retirement plan adjustments. We're also forecasting $560 million of business optimization costs in FY 2025 associated with our transformation. Our operating income bridge shows the operating profit elements embedded in our full year outlook.
By way of illustration, we're using adjusted operating profit of $7.2 billion equivalent to $21 of adjusted EPS, the midpoint of our outlook range. To get to $7.2 billion of adjusted operating profit, we're now assuming revenue net of variable cost and continued inflationary pressures is up $100 million, US Postal Service contract termination results in a $500 million headwind, international export yield pressure of $400 million as demand surcharges diminish and mix continues shifting toward our deferred services and two fewer operating days in the year decreases profitability by $300 million. And as a side note, we've not experienced this adverse calendar dynamic since fiscal year 2001. And lastly, performance-based variable compensation increases by $100 million.
DRIVE, however, will more than offset these pressures, delivering an incremental $2.2 billion in structural costs. As a result of all of these factors, and at the midpoint, we would expect fiscal year 2025 adjusted operating income to increase by approximately 15% year-over-year. In FY 2024, we remained focused on reducing our capital intensity, increasing ROIC, and continuing to provide increased stockholder returns, all while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Capital expenditures for the quarter were $1.2 billion, bringing year-to-date CapEx to $5.2 billion, which is a decline of nearly a $1 billion compared to last year. We delivered ROIC of 9.9%, which is an increase of 120 basis points from last year's 8.7%. And we'll continue to focus on improving ROIC, and it is now a significant element of our long-term incentive program.
Consistent with our goal of increasing stockholder returns, we completed $500 million of accelerated share repurchases in the fourth quarter, bringing our total share repurchases for the fiscal year to $2.5 billion. This is $500 million above our plan that we came into the year with. For the full year, we also generated $4.1 billion in adjusted free cash flow, which is up about $500 million year-over-year. Looking ahead to FY 2025, we anticipate capital spend of $5.2 billion, which will again be down year-over-year as a percentage of revenue and we'll work by prioritizing our capital toward optimizing our network as part of Network 2.0 and further enhancing our fleet and automation to improve operating efficiency. And we remain committed to decreasing aircraft CapEx to approximately $1 billion in FY 2026.
Due to improved earnings and CapEx discipline, we expect to further grow adjusted free cash flow. This will enable us to deploy $2.5 billion in stock repurchases in FY 2025, including a planned $1 billion of repurchases in Q1. As previously announced, we're also enhancing our stockholder returns by increasing our dividend by 10%. And this is on top of the 10% increase we implemented in FY 2024. Lastly, we're planning for $800 million of voluntary pension contributions to our US qualified plans. And these plans continue to be well funded and we're at the 98.6% funding level at fiscal year-end. Finally, a quick update on our segment reporting changes. Now that we have successfully completed the consolidation of Express, Ground, and Services into Federal Express Corporation, I'm pleased to announce that our reportable segments in FY 2025 will be Federal Express and FedEx Freight with no changes to corporate and other.
FedEx Freight will include FedEx Custom Critical, which was previously included in FedEx Express. We're making this change to Freight due to the business synergies between Custom Critical and Freight. Our new segment structure reflects our commitment to operating a fully integrated air and ground Express network. And let me be clear, notwithstanding the consolidation of Express and Ground, optimizing our Express services and associated costs, including the cost of our global air network, remains critical to our profit and return objectives. This consolidated structure will support One FedEx and Network 2.0 objectives, and will provide a more flexible, efficient, and intelligent network as One FedEx. We'll continue to provide service-level volume and yield detail, and we plan to share a revised statistical book in late August, which will include our recast results for FY 2023 and FY 2024.
Overall, I want to acknowledge and thank the entire team for their efforts in delivering these strong FY 2024 results and improving profitability, despite a very challenging demand environment. I'm also really inspired by their commitment to achieving even stronger results in FY 2025 and beyond as we continue to deliver on the Purple Promise. With that, let's open it up for questions.
To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.
