S&P 500
7,226.20
+0.01%
Dow Jones
49,494.60
-0.62%
Nasdaq 100
27,685.40
+0.66%
Russell 2000
2,804.78
-0.02%
FTSE 100
10,364.50
0.00%
Nikkei 225
59,260.50
-0.78%

Retail

FedEx Forecasts Early Peak in Holiday Shipping

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

FedEx Corporation logo
By Tkgd2007 at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons
FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) expects December 2 to be its peak shipping day this holiday season. Most analysts believe this means e-commerce will rob bricks-and-mortar companies of sales. The activity of the last-minute mall shopper could drop, if the figures are any indication. By the same token, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ AMZN) may continue its amazing streak of sharply increased revenue again this year. However, the other way to interpret the information is that the e-commerce businesses of all retailers will be lifted to record levels. That is what traditional retailers have hoped for since Amazon became a force in the market. The question is whether these traditional retailers will be aggressive enough with what they charge for the shipping of products bought online.

The big shipper released its forecast for holiday activity:

FedEx Corp. expects to see its busiest day in company history when it moves more than 22 million shipments around the world on Cyber Monday, December 2, 2013. The 11 percent year-over-year increase will be driven by online retailers feeding the FedEx Ground and FedEx SmartPost networks.

During the busiest week of the year, December 1 – 7, FedEx expects more than 85 million shipments to move through its global networks. This is a 13 percent increase compared to last year’s busiest week. In addition to e-commerce, retail inventory such as personal consumer electronics, apparel and luxury goods will drive this increase in FedEx holiday volumes.

The largest traditional retailers have tried to move into Amazon’s Cyber Monday territory for years. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has a program that is a hybrid between e-commerce and regular store activity. Customers who order online and pick up what they ordered at a Walmart location will get free shipping. But any plan that requires the consumer to get into a car has, at best, modest appeal compared to one that delivers orders to the home. Walmart also offers free shipping service to people who are willing to wait six to nine days for their orders, if those orders add up to more than $50. However, that eliminates any chance that the world’s largest retailer will get online business the week before Christmas.

Every large retailer has followed Walmart’s lead. Most have programs that are no better, and some are worse. Dying J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP) offers free shipping to its stores for a $25 order and to homes for $99. And the shipments do not arrive for four to seven days. J.C. Penney will continue to bleed customers if it is not more aggressive than that.

The chance for brick-and-mortar retailers to grab business from Amazon this year depends as much on the price that these companies charge to get merchandise to customers as on the merchandise these retailers stock. What each traditional company has made clear is that “free shipping” really is not free. That gives them virtually no edge over Amazon at all.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Paul Ausick |

Gearing Up for Cyber Monday at FedEx

Adrian Pingstone, via Wikimedia CommonsPackage delivery service FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) said on Wednesday that it expects a 13% increase…
Sam Stebbins |

Retailers Hiring the Most for the Holidays

monkeybusinessimages / ThinkstockThe holiday season is the period from late November until early January. The season is a boon for…
Holiday Shopping Season Spending Forecast: $1 Trillion
Paul Ausick |

Holiday Shopping Season Spending Forecast: $1 Trillion

Retail analytics firm eMarketer has raised its forecast for U.S. retail sales during the 2018 holiday shopping season to just…
Only 25 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Only 25 Shopping Days Left Until Christmas

With Thanksgiving a day behind , and Black Friday is today, the holidays have already become a source of anxiety…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

The Busiest Shopping Day in History

FedEx (NYSE: FDX) expects December 12 to be the busiest day in its history, as far as shipments through its system…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

Cyber Monday–Largest E-Commerce Sales Day In History (WMT, AMZN)

It is clear that e-commerce sales growth has begun to race ahead of bricks-and-mortar revenue growth this holiday season. Comscore…
Douglas A. McIntyre |

What Walmart and Amazon Stock Prices Tell About the Holidays

courtesy of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.What happened to bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce sales this holiday season? If Wall St.’s opinion has validity,…
Paul Ausick |

Will Holiday Online Spending Yield More Revenues and Profits?

As of Sunday, December 14, U.S. consumers had purchased nearly $42.5 billion in goods online since November 1, not including…
Cyber Monday, Black Friday Sales Explode: 5 ‘Strong Buy’ Stocks Were Huge Winners
Lee Jackson |

Cyber Monday, Black Friday Sales Explode: 5 ‘Strong Buy’ Stocks Were Huge Winners

The holiday shopping season is off to a strong start, and these five companies have shined the brightest so far.…

Top Gaining Stocks

Cboe Global Markets
CBOE • Vol: 1,568,143
New Pluto Global
PSKY • Vol: 12,285,993
Seagate Technology
STX • Vol: 7,378,346
Oracle
ORCL • Vol: 26,317,675
Datadog
DDOG • Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ • Vol: 4,367,433
Clorox
CLX • Vol: 13,260,523
Stryker
SYK • Vol: 4,519,455
Mohawk Industries
MHK • Vol: 1,859,865
Amgen
AMGN • Vol: 3,818,618