FedEx (NYSE:FDX) forecasts Monday will be its busiest day of the 2021 holiday season.
"We’ve seen a lot of people actually starting their Christmas shopping in the month of October, which is fundamentally different than we have seen traditionally in the past," Ryan Kelly, vice president of global e-commerce at FedEx told reporters.
"What you see is a lot of messaging about shop and ship early, pulling sales forward, pulling promotions forward. A lot of retailers have really leaned into that this year."
In October, FedEx delivered approximately 96% of packages on time compared with 99% for UPS and 99% for the U.S. Postal Service, according to data from ShipMatrix. On-time delivery above 95% is considered a sign of an efficient network, especially with 70% of e-commerce being delivered to homes, which is generally more time-consuming and less profitable than business delivery.
FedEx estimates it will deliver 100 million more packages this year than it did from Black Friday to Christmas in pre-pandemic 2019 and 10% more than the record 2020 season during COVID.
According to ShipMatrix data, overall e-commerce will increase 13% from the record 2020 holiday season to 3.4 billion packages shipped. However, the daily number of delayed e-commerce shipments or packages exceeding the available capacity on all shipping networks will fall 82% from 7.3 million packages in 2020 to 1.3 million package this year.
FDX shares jumped $3.07, or 1.3%, to $244.11
