Fedex Corp (FDX) — Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon, and welcome to FedEx Corporation's second quarter earnings conference call. The second quarter earnings release, Form 10-Q and stat book are on our website at fedex.com. This call and the accompanying slides are being stored on our website, where the replay and slides will be available for about one year. Joining us on the call today are members of the media. During our question-and-answer session, callers will be limited to one question in order to allow us to accommodate all those who would like to participate. I want to remind all listeners that FedEx Corporation desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Certain statements in this conference call, such as projections regarding future performance, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the act. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which 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 releases and filings with the SEC. 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 Subramanian, President and CEO; Mike Lenz, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Brie Carere, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to remember our colleague, Jeff Smith, who passed away on November 17, after a courageous battle with brain cancer. Jeff's contributions to the Investor Relations and FedEx team were immeasurable, and our hearts remain heavy at his loss. He will be greatly missed. Separately, I'd like to congratulate Elizabeth Allen on her upcoming retirement at the end of the month after 32 years at FedEx. Elizabeth has been instrumental to the Investor Relations team, and she will be missed by our FedEx colleagues and the investment community alike. And now Raj will share his views on the quarter.

Thank you, Mickey, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin by thanking our more than 550,000 employees who are working diligently to deliver another strong peak season for our customers. I'm extremely proud of the team's ability to sustain excellent services this season while we continue to transform our global network with the FedEx team. I'm encouraged by our second quarter results and the momentum underway against our Deliver Today, Innovate for Tomorrow strategy. We exceeded our Q2 earnings and cost action goals shared in September, even as the environment remained challenged. At the same time, there is more work to be done. The declining demand trends we saw at the end of Q1 softened further in the second quarter, and we are moving faster and with more determination than ever to accelerate our cost actions. Today, we will provide more detail on those cost actions and our plan to structurally transform our network to be nimbler, leaner, and more efficient, supported by our DRIVE program. Turning to Slide 6 for a snapshot of the quarter. Volumes declined across all segments, primarily at Express, which was down low double digits. As such, revenue was down 3%, driven by a decline at FedEx Express, which was partially offset by growth at FedEx Freight and FedEx Ground. Adjusted operating margin and EPS declined with volume weakness, partially offset by higher yield and cost management actions. All of this said, we knew coming into this quarter that we would continue to be challenged by volume softness and high inflation. I'm exceptionally proud of the team's execution to date, which enabled us to exceed the second quarter earnings and cost targets. A great example of our meticulous focus on cost actions was a result at FedEx Ground, where, despite volume being down 9% in the quarter, we were able to grow both operating income and margin. FedEx Freight's operating margin improved 320 basis points due to the continued focus on revenue quality, aligning the cost structure to lower volume levels and delivering an outstanding customer experience. Now I'll provide an update on our aggressive and decisive plan to cut costs in fiscal '23 relative to our June plan. In Q2, we achieved over $900 million of savings, exceeding the cost target we shared with you last quarter. This brings our total year-to-date progress to $1.2 billion. As we look to the remainder of the fiscal year, we have identified additional savings, bringing our target for fiscal year '23 to be approximately $3.7 billion in cuts. Turning to Slide 8. As we execute these cost actions, we are also laser-focused on delivering upon the superior service that has defined FedEx throughout our nearly 50-year history. As I mentioned, our team is performing extremely well this peak season, with ground time in transit in the U.S. at just two days. FedEx Ground is delivering holiday shipments faster to more locations than our nearest competitor. Our ground service is now back to pre-pandemic levels, supported by continued enhancements to our route optimization and package handler scheduling technologies. Service levels also continued to improve at Express. In Europe, we have made significant progress with Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and the U.K. showing sustained high levels of service performance. The service challenges at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport have been largely alleviated, and we are capitalizing on efficiencies in the network to further improve service. We're taking swift action to address the remaining issues for our intra-Europe service, including the reopening of our Netherlands ground hub in October, which will continue to improve transit and depressurize the rest of the network and completing the Novara Italy road hub in February of 2023. Moving to Slide 9. I'll now provide an update on our ongoing structural transformation. We have spent 50 years building our networks and growing our portfolio. As a result, we now have the most extensive network of any provider in the industry. We are focused on optimizing this network to realize our full value potential. This includes advancing our global transformation through DRIVE, our comprehensive program to support long-term profitability and deliver on our fiscal year '25 financial targets. DRIVE is how we are executing that strategy, achieving more than $4 billion in annualized structural cost reductions by fiscal year 2025. I'm confident I have the full commitment of our executive team, our Leading DRIVE with purpose and a sense of urgency and Sriram Krishnasamy, our Chief Transformation Officer, who is facilitating the program. We have identified 14 specific focus areas, which we call domains to target for efficiency improvements. Each is led by an executive sponsor and is aligned around a strategic vision for the business. We are measuring success against each domain's FY '25 permanent cost savings target in addition to using clear operational metrics to track financial and service level progress. Our focus within DRIVE is in three main areas: FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, and shared and allocated overhead expenses. At Express, the team is transforming the network to be more agile, efficient, and digitally led. An initial priority is to optimize the global air network, where we expect to generate approximately $400 million in savings. This work includes deploying digital assets that allow us to efficiently balance our Purple Tail airplanes and third-party lift as we build the network of the future. We are also addressing our express pickup and delivery operations globally to improve efficiency. In February, we will implement a new U.S. network design that will improve P&D efficiency and result in cost savings of approximately $300 million annually. In Europe, where we expect over 1/3 of Express' drive savings, we have spent the last several years bringing the networks together. With integration behind us, we have shifted to optimization. We're adjusting our network, deploying route productivity tools and investing in digital capabilities for planning and automation. Additionally, we are rightsizing our intra-Europe air network and improving processes to enhance the end-to-end customer journey. This will all serve to improve both service and profit of our European business. Now turning to FedEx Ground. We are focused on every portion of the package life cycle. For instance, in line haul operations, we are applying new tools, technology, and processes to drive increased packages per trailer. Within Ground, we have a dock domain. This team's responsibility is to improve packages per labor hour. In Q2, that metric increased 3.5% year-over-year, and we expect continued improvement as we deploy additional capabilities. Across both the Express and Ground focus areas, we are leveraging our operational insights platform. This provides the foundational data, tools, and insights critical not only for delivering DRIVE savings goals but also for sustaining those savings and transforming the way we operate. Finally, shared and allocated overhead expenses are a significant opportunity. This includes procurement and digitizing and centralizing support functions. One example of digitizing support functions is our ability to reduce customer service calls by redirecting customers to best-in-class digital applications, a win for FedEx and a win for our customers. Within procurement, we are reducing spend through our operate collaboratively model and creating a central function to optimize our enterprise spend. For example, we are setting up a cross-OpCo initiative to consolidate our contract transportation spend to realize value in the second half of fiscal year '23. In conclusion, there is strong momentum underway as our team focuses on cutting costs immediately and structurally transforming our network. We will continue to provide updates on our DRIVE progress, and we plan to host a DRIVE deep dive call in the first half of calendar 2023 and to provide additional details on our ongoing transformation.

Thank you, and good afternoon. As expected, the operating environment in the second quarter was challenging. The trends we saw toward the end of the first quarter persisted through November. As a result, we experienced lower demand for FedEx products and services, but we acted with urgency to adjust our network while continuing to deliver for our customers. Revenue at FedEx Express was down 3% year-over-year, primarily due to volume and yield softness in Europe and Asia. In Europe, we're making steady progress as volume trends improved quarter-over-quarter. I am confident in our momentum as we have a robust sales pipeline in Europe. We are leveraging our faster road network and our unique ability to bundle parcel and freight. As we anticipated, the softening demand created yield pressure, especially in Asia. Despite volume softness, I am pleased with the team's ability to manage volume, share, and margin in our trans-Pacific lane. At FedEx Ground, revenue was up 2% due to higher yield driven by fuel surcharges, base rate increases, and improved product mix. It was partially offset by lower volumes. We once again delivered strong service levels and best-in-market transit times. At FedEx Freight, we delivered solid performance despite the operating environment beginning to moderate. Pricing discipline across the LTL industry is strong, and we expect the market to remain rational. Revenue was up 8% as the team remains laser-focused on driving improved revenue quality and profitable share growth. While navigating the current environment, FedEx Freight continues to innovate. We're expanding dimensional capture and piloting dimensional weight-based pricing. We believe this simplified pricing is the future of the LTL industry, and we're leading in this transformation. I also wanted to provide an update on our enterprise pricing strategy and the initiatives to improve revenue quality. We remain disciplined. We are focused on growth in the right segment to optimize network profitability. We announced a 6.9% general rate increase in September, and I remain confident in a continued high capture rate. We are also continuing to leverage surcharges to align our pricing to cost. Our recent announcement for demand-based large package and U.S. export fuel surcharge are good proof points. I'm also very pleased with the team's progress to create new capabilities. A great example is the partnership between pricing and DataWorks to build a price anomaly detection engine. The team has had success detecting overbilling and correcting invoices before they are sent to our customers. This is a significant customer experience improvement. We are now adapting these capabilities to identify underbilling opportunities, which will increase revenue quality. As we look toward the back half, service improvement has translated into good momentum for our sales team. In addition, we have a robust pipeline aligned with our strategy, which includes small and medium and European segment targets. In Q4, we will be lapping the impact of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, as well as the air integration disruption we experienced in the region. As a result, our year-over-year volume comps will improve as we move through the back half of this fiscal year. However, in Asia, we do expect to face continued yield pressure due to lower demand for priority services. In the current economic environment, the market is increasingly shifting to deferred services. We have the deferred portfolio to capture the shift in demand, and our DRIVE program will ensure we have the right cost to serve to profitably manage through this market transition. In conclusion, we remain prudent in our expectations for volume and yield in the second half of the fiscal year. That being said, our service value proposition relative to our competition will remain strong. In fact, our relative market position will improve in the back half of the year.

Thanks, Brie. I'll start on Slide 16. In the second quarter, we delivered improved alignment between variable costs and lower revenue amid a more challenged volume environment that impacted our profitability. Second quarter revenue was approximately $700 million below the lower end of the range we expected coming into the quarter. Approximately $300 million of this variance was due to an accelerated decline in forwarding revenue at FedEx Logistics. The remaining variance versus our Q2 outlook was driven about half by Express and the balance by Ground and Freight combined. We have moved faster to offset this shortfall with cost reductions, reducing the lag between incremental volume softness and the savings offsets realized. This, combined with an additional $200 million in discrete cost actions, led to improved earnings relative to our Q2 outlook. Turning to the Transportation segments. Starting with Express, profitability continues to be pressured. Adjusted operating income declined 65% due to lower volumes as cost reductions lagged accelerating volume declines. Volume pressures were partially offset by yield management actions. Package yield grew 8% year-over-year, primarily driven by higher fuel surcharges and base rates, partially offset by exchange rate impacts. Yield improvement slowed from Q1 levels across nearly all products and regions. In Ground, operating income increased 24% and operating margins expanded 130 basis points to 7.1%, supported by yield growth of 13% as higher fuel surcharges, product mix, and pricing initiatives drove improvement. Our cost reduction actions, combined with solid execution by the ground team to adjust near-term variable costs amidst greater volume declines also supported margin improvement. These factors were partially offset by increased costs, including higher purchase transportation and other operating expenses. And at Freight, the team continues to drive strong profitability with operating income increasing 32%. This was driven by yield improvement, including higher fuel surcharges, partially offset by decreased shipments as well as higher wage rates. Turning to Slide 17. I'd like to build on what you heard from Raj on our near-term cost savings, reviewing our progress by category. As mentioned, we've identified $3.7 billion in discrete cost reductions relative to our plans going into fiscal '23, which is $1 billion higher than our prior projection. Express is where we have the most work to do and where the majority of the reductions are focused. A large portion of those savings is coming from reduced flight frequencies. Year-to-date, we've reduced eight international routes and 32 U.S. domestic routes, while parking five additional aircraft. This translates into pulling down U.S. domestic flight hours by 6% and international flight hours down 7% in the second quarter year-over-year. Moving to Slide 18. In addition to the expense actions, we are also lowering our FY '23 capital spend forecast by an incremental $400 million to $5.9 billion, which represents an approximate $900 million reduction from our initial plans for the year. With the lower demand environment, we're deliberately deferring and slowing the pace of projects as we maintain the emphasis on using our assets more efficiently and reducing our overall capital intensity. Our liquidity remains a source of strength, and we ended the quarter with $4.6 billion in cash. We continue to generate solid cash flows supporting our capital return strategy. We executed a $1.5 billion accelerated share repurchase transaction, which will be completed by the end of this calendar year. Our capital return strategy reflects our commitment to reducing capital intensity and creating value for shareholders while continuing to reinvest in FedEx for today and tomorrow. Provide additional context for the changes in demand during the first half and what we are planning for in our outlook, on Slide 19, we've shown first half monthly volume trends for our major product categories. Volume declines continued to accelerate across major product categories, both in the U.S. and internationally throughout the second quarter. As we look to the second half of the year, we expect volume declines to begin moderating in Express and Ground by the end of the third quarter with comparisons easing further in the fourth quarter as we lap the onset of softer volumes. Yield growth will be increasingly pressured as year-over-year fuel surcharge comparisons normalize and customer demand shifts most prominently in Asia. This brings me to our outlook on Slide 20. While we continue to aggressively drive cost reduction actions, we expect business conditions to remain challenging in the second half of FY '23. Our current expectation for full year adjusted earnings per share is between $13 and $14. On a quarterly basis, we expect results to follow our historical seasonal pattern with lower earnings in the third quarter versus the second quarter and highest in the fourth quarter. Second quarter adjusted expenses were essentially flat year-over-year as inflation impacts, particularly fuel, offset our activity reductions on an absolute basis. As we move through the second half, we project year-over-year expenses to increasingly decline as our cost initiatives accelerate in conjunction with lapping certain inflationary increases. Closing, I'd like to reiterate that the entire team continues to aggressively identify and implement both immediate cost reductions as well as structural cost efficiencies to drive improved performance. With that, we'll open it up for your questions.

Yes. Wanted to see if you could give a sense of what drives the $1 billion in cost take out. And then I don't know if you look at the broader frame. Raj, you talked about some of the split. But can you give like the detail or a bit of breakout from Express, Ground and shared services on the $4 billion number also?

Hey, Tom, this is Mike. So first, for the additional $1 billion for FY '23 relative to our plans coming into the year, that's mostly at Express. It's a combination of further flight reductions, incremental sort cancels, particularly post peak, adjustments to our ground operations primarily in the pickup and delivery space. Another piece I'd highlight too was further reductions at our FedEx services shared services organization, where they're doing a great job of really clamping down on cost relative to what we were contemplating earlier in the year. As it relates to the $4 billion in DRIVE, we've highlighted $1.4 billion is for Express, $1.1 billion is Ground, and then $1.5 billion is in the shared and allocated expenses. Keep in mind that as we approach those, those are structural cost reductions that are irrespective of the demand environment assumption that you would make going forward so that we can achieve a path towards the FY '25 objectives that we outlined. Thanks for the question.

Just one question related to the reduction in CapEx, Mike. To clarify, you're adjusting your spending, and although you will not spend it this current fiscal year, you will still allocate that money. Is that correct?

So, we certainly have deferred a number of facility projects and initiatives. So that is a component there as well as looking to pause other certain major projects at a phase of completion as we evaluate the changing circumstances. Another piece of it is a change in our aircraft payment schedule as well. So, we've pushed that out further, but the number of deliveries remains unchanged, just a timing in that sense.

Okay. Could I ask a follow-up regarding salaries, wages, and benefits? I noticed a decline that seemed acceptable, but you mentioned in your prepared remarks that salaries were actually up. Can you clarify that?

Well, so Helane, we will see mitigating in terms of the year-over-year increase in wage rates relative to what we were seeing earlier in the year. In addition, as we flex down the networks, particularly post peak, we'll have a ramp down in terms of the resources deployed there as we typically do, but certainly going to move quickly as we come past the successful peak that we're in the middle of right now. So expect further progress in that line going forward as well.

I have a question about the $13 to $14 range. You performed well in the second quarter and are increasing your cost savings by $1 billion. How should we view this from a conservative standpoint? Is it conservative? Could you provide some context regarding your outlook on the economy? Are we factoring in a recession in those projections, especially considering the noticeable decrease in volume? It seems like the cost savings will primarily contribute to the operating profit in the second half. I'm curious if you've adopted a very cautious approach.

Sure. Thanks, Jordan. Well, I would highlight, certainly, the environment remains fluid. We outline our expectations on the trajectory of volume and yield and considered a range of outcomes within the corridor for both of those. In conjunction with the cost take out you highlighted, we're very confident with the $13 to $14 range. While it's true, the volume declines, we expect those to moderate as we move through the rest of the year, particularly in Q4, we're going to have more yield pressure relative to the increases we saw in the first half of the year. So when you bring all three of those elements together, that's what gets you to the bottom line projection there that we've highlighted. But I guess I would also say that while the declines moderate on the volume, we're in essence projecting the same demand profile that we're currently experiencing. So hopefully, that puts it in full context for you.

If we could elaborate on this, it seems that Jordan pointed out you have $1.2 billion in savings to date. With your $3.7 billion target and the remaining $2.5 billion, this means all of the savings for the second half. I want to clarify that the $7.30 or whatever figure refers to all cost savings, correct? And does this newfound $1 billion imply that your initial target was perhaps $10 to $11 in earnings before this adjustment, considering it impacts the second half? Mike, could you specify what portion of that is structural versus adjustments for takeout based on the volume trends you are observing?

Okay. Ken, how I would address that is as you saw in the second quarter, the revenue environment was below our expectations. Therefore, we are assuming that going forward into the second half of the year, which motivated further near-term takeouts of cost relative to what we had planned for FY '23. We will project revenues to be down year-over-year in Q1, but we're also going to see a ramp-up in absolute expense reductions as we move through Q3 and even more so into Q4. So that's the absolute basis when you look at it for year-over-year.

Are these just reactions to the slowing revenues, indicating that it's cyclical? I'm trying to understand what structural moves FedEx is making versus merely responding to the decelerating revenue environment. Can you clarify that?

Well, Ken, maybe we talked about a permanent reduction of $1 billion from FY '23. That recognizes we were operating in very unique circumstances over the last 1.5 years, 2 years. Those takeouts would not return under any range of normalized demand scenarios that you might consider. Most of that is in Express. I mentioned that we parked five additional aircraft during the second quarter. By the end of the fiscal year, we're projecting to park 11 additional aircraft. So hopefully, that gives you a little more context for how we're thinking about resizing the network, and most of those will be wide-bodies.

Great. Condolences on Jeff, he will be missed and good luck to Elizabeth.

Thank you, Ken. Really appreciate it.

Mike, can you just talk about the margin expectations for the segments in the back half? Can Ground continue to improve? Can Freight continue to improve? Can Express get back to margin improvement? And then Brie, sounds like you were talking about pricing slowing. I wasn't sure if that was a parcel comment, an LTL comment. So if you could just give us a little bit more color.

Okay. Scott, I will start. Express margins will remain pressured in the second half. I would say more so in the third quarter versus the fourth quarter, given some of the factors we outlined, including ramping up more of the discrete cost reductions into the fourth quarter. We're fully seeing traction in Europe, plus lapping the challenges from last year with the air network integration as well as lapping the volume inflection there. So, Express remains where we have the most work to do. I would say at Ground we're past the rapid growth and labor challenges that the Ground team was executing on over the last two years, and now they are laser-focused on driving improved productivity and efficiency within a declining volume environment. We saw great progress in that regard here in the second quarter and expect to see continued improvements going forward in the second half of the year. So hopefully, that gives a little dimensions to the pieces of it. Brie, do you want to take?

Sure. Fair question, Scott. From a yield perspective, let's talk front half versus back half. When we look at the domestic parcel market, we are still anticipating in the back half that we will have growth both Express and Ground in the parcel market, although less growth than we did in the first half. The same holds true for FedEx Freight domestically. Back half, we are still anticipating yield growth in the inflationary environment, although much less than the front half. As we go to the international markets, the largest change that we will experience in the back half is we are anticipating that we will see our Asia yields decrease in the second half. Now I want to be really clear that we've accounted for that within the range that Mike has given us, and we also anticipated this. The Asia team does a really good job of managing volume, yield, and margin. Our trans-Pacific lane is still a very profitable and healthy lane for us.

And I second Ken's thoughts on Jeff and Elizabeth. Guys, can you just help us understand, I mean, if you're going to achieve $3.7 billion this year, isn't that very similar to the 2025 DRIVE target? I think that might be the confusion that a lot of folks aren't fully understanding here. And Mike, we heard you that $1 billion are permanent this year. But can you talk about maybe the other $2.7 billion that might come back, but then you're going to shed an incremental $3 billion between now and then?

So Brandon, let me first thank you for the kind comments regarding Jeff and Elizabeth. We will certainly miss both of them. Let me get a little more context about the $3.7 billion reduction. Appreciate that's reference to our plans coming into '23. The purpose of that was to illustrate the scope and magnitude of the cost initiatives that we have undertaken to address the changed circumstances from where we started the year. We highlighted we have $1 billion of the permanent reductions. In a demand environment as we are today, much of the structure, the flight takedowns that we have made at Express, you wouldn't see those coming back. I think you may recall, we said there will always be cyclic ups and downs. But as we come out of the current circumstances when it comes back, it would come back in a different way, and we would be using less of our own Purple tail lift and more of partner lift in order to flow traffic in the most efficient manner possible. Again, the $4 billion of DRIVE, think about that in the context of a greater emphasis on cost reduction rather than the degree of modest revenue growth we were assuming back in June when we outlined the goals for FY '25.

I just want to follow up on the last comment. So just to clarify, the fiscal '25 targets are certainly the balance of revenue and cost based on sort of the macro deceleration. Is that also clearly changed in terms of how you reach those targets through fiscal '25 just given some of the structural cost actions and challenging growth right now?

Yes, you are correct, Allison. We have been increasing our efforts around structural cost reductions. We have made significant progress in identifying these areas and plan to leverage the insights gained to find even more opportunities. If the situation changes, we will respond, as we did in the second quarter, to make further adjustments in the near term.

So Raj, I was wondering if you could maybe kind of bring this stuff up a level, right? If we're talking about $13 to $14 in adjusted earnings in this fiscal year, is that a base from which you can start to build in fiscal '24 and '25, or are we still got a little bit of risk in terms of chasing the ball down the hill from an economy standpoint? As you think about the longer-term targets that you put out there, is there any contemplation of actual changes to the product portfolio or the composition of the many different companies that make up FedEx as part of this transformation effort? Or are we just kind of doing the same sort of mix of stuff a little bit better?

So David, thanks for the question. I'll just say that I'm just delighted to see how fast we're performing in terms of taking our structural cost down. I'm simply going to comment on the DRIVE program here because that's what gets us going to the FY '25 goals. Our strategy is to drive profitable growth and reduce our structural costs while we innovate digitally that helps us get to those goals. All of this is built on a strong foundation of service. DRIVE is how we execute that, and I'm extremely thrilled to see the progress we have made and the level of engagement of the entire executive team. We have, as I showed in the slide earlier, the 14 domains each with an executive sponsor, KPIs are identified, we have about 1,200 people involved. This is not a one-and-done exercise. From initial idea to an executable plan with KPIs, this is like a conveyor belt. There's a significant amount of will, scale, and rigor as teams move towards execution. This is very important as we think about FY '24 and '25. We are fundamentally focused on restructuring our cost base, driving profitable growth, and improving our operating margin performance. We can't control what the external environment is. We are focused on things we can control. The base that we have in '23, we will use that to come out of this external environmental situation much, much better than we went in. The DRIVE program is a significant component of that, and I'll talk to you more about that Drive deep dive update you in the first half of calendar '23. We are constantly looking at the portfolio to see what opportunities exist. When there's something to talk to you regarding that, we will definitely communicate.

I guess I wanted to take maybe a higher level of macro question here. You mentioned continued yield softness in Asia. I'm surprised, I guess, to hear that the China reopening wasn't mentioned at all as potential tailwinds. I'm kind of curious what your guys thoughts are in terms of what's continued to drive that age happening if kind of potentially come back online as an economy and then maybe noting that we haven't talked about broader economic outlook and you guys giving the monthly economic updates. Maybe if you had any thoughts on just general U.S. economic conditions here looking over the next 12 months.

Let me provide a brief overview before Brie adds more details. On the macro front, we've identified two key issues: the industrial economy is experiencing a slowdown globally, with Europe the most affected, and there is a reset occurring in e-commerce. These developments unfolded exactly as we anticipated. The positive aspect is that we responded quickly to these changes. Our focus remains on elements within our control, and I am very proud of the progress we have achieved. We recognize that there is still work ahead, and we will keep enhancing our cost structure. Concerning China, we have not observed any significant changes in volume trends recently. We are closely monitoring the situation, but it is too soon to provide further insights. Brie, do you have anything to add?

No, I think that's exactly right. We have the team poised and ready to benefit from any potential. But right now, the demand signals have been pretty consistent over the last couple of weeks, and so that's how we're planning for the back half.

Okay. Great. So I guess, Raj, this one's for you, and I love Mike's thought as well, but I would be curious to kind of get your take on structurally what's changing as you look out over the next several years with how the Company is allocating capital. I get that there's a greater emphasis on capital efficiency overall. I think everyone appreciates the fact that you guys are monitoring the CapEx issue very carefully. But as you think about your decisions to invest for both organic and inorganic opportunities, there have been some challenging sorts of investments over the past decade. How is the sort of the framework around how you're thinking about capital allocation changing, if at all, as you look forward, Raj?

Thank you, Jack. The approach we take in our work is evolving, and every project we consider is encountering significant hurdles to ensure plant approvals. It's crucial that these projects make sense both financially and in terms of return on invested capital. The positive aspect is that the projects we have approved so far are yielding very high returns, fundamentally altering our perspective on how we move forward. Mike, would you like to add anything to that?

Jack, the rapid growth we experienced at Ground in recent years is now behind us. We will reduce our spending on facility expansion moving forward. Our major initiatives in the next couple of years, which will decrease after fiscal year 2025, focus on fleet modernization. We do not have any confirmed orders for new aircraft beyond fiscal year 2025, and the modernization of our Memphis hub, which Richard refers to as the heartbeat of the Express network, will also be completed in a few years and will provide long-term efficiencies. These are the key components of our capital allocation that we have a clear understanding of. Therefore, as we mentioned, we anticipate reaching 6.5% in 2025 and expect to go lower after that. We are dedicated to enhancing our payout ratio and increasing the dividend to reflect our progress and direction in this area.

Raj, I wanted to get in on what you think about the domestic economy. It seems like the step-down in volume activity in the second quarter seemed to be more driven by domestic across the segment. So kind of curious if we're seeing some of the softness that you had originally flagged in the late summer and into the fall in international sort of cascading here into the U.S.? Or are there maybe some specific customer actions or revenue quality actions that you're taking here in the U.S.?

Well, let me just talk about the macro environment. I think the main macro issue in the United States is really the e-commerce reset. If you were to just follow along here, prior to the pandemic, e-commerce represented about 16% of retail. During the pandemic, it peaked at about 22%. Since then, it's been kind of going down. We are probably about 18% or 19% right now. It's still higher than 16%, but not quite as high as 22%. That's the part of the reset that's going on in the U.S. domestic package business. Of course, we have also taken certain revenue quality actions on some of the traffic, specifically FedEx Ground economy. That's the only other part that would be unique to FedEx. But other than that, I would say the biggest macro factor here is the e-commerce reset.

So Mike, I just wanted to ask maybe a couple of quick ones. I wanted to understand the drag in Express coming from the European Ground business, so basically the legacy TNT business? Because I understand there's cyclicality in the air network, and you're bringing flight hours down, which is great. But I'm just trying to understand what the legacy TNT business, what the overall impact that has had or will have on the express proper profile. I don't know if that means that you can give us an idea of what that business is making or losing or the contribution of that is to the overall Express profit, but I think that would be helpful. And then the follow-up I wanted to ask was on the Freight business. And I don't ask a lot of questions about the Freight business, but it's a big piece of the profit pools today? I don't know if Lance is on, but what I noticed is the yields in the freight business were down sequentially, which is something we typically haven't seen quarter-on-quarter. And of course, this is in the context of FedEx being part of kind of that pricing war 12 years ago in the LTL business. Is this an indication that FedEx is lowering price to get more volumes in Freight? Can you talk about the pricing discipline in the Freight business, both with respect to FedEx and also as the industries you see it as well?

Sure, Amit. I will address Europe first, and then I'll let Brie address your question about the LTL business. So look, the opportunity in Europe is a significant driver of the upside potential for Express. We've highlighted the challenges that we had earlier in the calendar year. We have worked past those. The team has momentum there. The leadership team is very focused on winning business, driving more efficiency activity in both the air and the ground network, and we are fully confident that we will see significant contributors to improvement in Express' profitability going forward with some initial traction on that coming in Q4 in terms of seeing a year-over-year improvement. That is absolutely an opportunity for Express, and we certainly are confident of getting there. It's taken longer than we would have anticipated, and we've had some events develop along the way, but we're past those, and we're looking forward. Brie?

Thanks, Mike. Fair question from a FedEx Freight perspective. When we looked at Q2, the one thing that we did see that was slightly different from Q1 is weights actually were slightly down in Q2. From a revenue quality perspective, however, we have to remember, number one, that we are seeing all of the public carriers behave very rationally, and the market is very disciplined. Number two, within that market, FedEx Freight has the premium value proposition. We have two types of service. We have a great opportunity that is very profitable for FedEx for allowing customers to move from our priority to our economy service. We've got two great opportunities within FedEx, right? We've got FedEx Freight Direct, which we're still seeing high demand for. We've got a very profitable service into Canada that we're very focused on. We are going to continue to be disciplined. We absolutely know the history, and we are focused right now on doing our part to be very disciplined within the industry.

Raj, one for you and then one for Brie. Raj, you've given a good overview with regard to DRIVE. I'm just curious when in the first half, we may expect this update call and what type of information we'll receive there, these 14 domains you're targeting, maybe you could speak to that, I'd be curious to hear? Then Brie, the question for you is you spoke about improving service levels and a really good pipeline for small and intermediate-sized businesses. Could you delve into that a little bit more on how that's working for you and the sales team domestically and in Europe?

Thank you, Scott. Regarding our DRIVE initiative, we are very enthusiastic about our progress. Under the Express segment, we are focusing on restructuring our air network to enhance its agility and flexibility in response to demand changes, particularly as deferred parcel and freight become more significant. We're working on improving our loaded density and leveraging our partner network to handle deferred traffic. Europe is another critical area of focus, representing $1.1 billion of our FedEx Ground operations. There are compelling opportunities in enhancing line haul and dock productivity, among other areas. Additionally, our back-office shared services account for $1.5 billion, with a focus on procurement and overall efficiency improvements. While I won't go into all the details now, we will schedule a meeting soon, and during that session, we’ll provide more detailed insights, including specific KPIs we aim to achieve and a comprehensive overview of our program.

Thanks, Raj. So I love this question. Let's talk about our momentum. Here in the United States, as we talked about, we've had a great peak. The ground team and I know the operators who are listening, I know we're not done yet. I know we have a very, very busy week still to execute. But as I sit here right now, we've had just stellar service in the field, and I couldn't be more proud of the team. As we turn the chapter on this calendar year to next calendar year, domestically, we have the very best value proposition, moving faster than our primary competition. We have this great new feature, which is getting great response in the field for picture proof of delivery. We have Sunday service. We have brand-new digital capabilities called estimated date of delivery, which gives our e-commerce retailers greater accuracy on their delivery times, and we're getting really great feedback. As you all know, our primary competitor has to manage through a significant labor challenge. We are going to come out of this peak very strong, and we are very confident in the momentum that Jill and her team are building in January. The same is true as we look into Europe. We have got quarter-over-quarter momentum. We've got three primary lines of business that we sell. From a domestic perspective, we are there for the profitability of international and we have an opportunity to optimize those networks and put some volume in the domestic networks, with service being excellent in the domestic networks in Europe. I'm very pleased with Karen and the team there. From an intercontinental perspective, we have a product called FedEx National Connect Plus, and it has done really well for us. The team has continued to get the right business from Europe into the United States. From an intra-European perspective, that has been where we're challenged. But I can tell you the brand has done a lot of hard work for us. Customers want to do business with FedEx. Quarter-over-quarter, we've seen service improvement, and with that, we have seen our pipeline and the confidence grow, and I believe that you will continue to see quarter-over-quarter improvement out of our European division. So yes, I'm looking forward to January, and I think we have the best sales team in the business to go and execute the plan I just talked about.

Maybe just a follow-up with Brie. Can you talk about your confidence in getting that high capture rate from a domestic price perspective? And how you're going to balance that with our relation and the declining volume environment? And maybe you can talk a little bit about competition. Do you think there's room to see more of that creep in here as more packages go that are lighter-weight and shorter distance and the e-commerce growth you continue to see? And then separately, you mentioned the team's negotiation. I would really like to hear more about how you're approaching that both in the near term to make sure that you're able to protect your own service and longer-term, if that presents any opportunities to gain share?

Yes. From a pricing perspective, we do anticipate a high capture on our GRI here in the United States and around the world. Our GRI was 6.9% in the U.S. and is about that around the world, a little bit higher in some places, a little bit lower. With the inflationary environment, most customers understand the need for a high GRI. That being said, I really pick out the team focused on two things. One, as I mentioned a moment ago, is differentiation. We command a higher yield when we have better service and a differentiation and the marketing team is very focused on executing that. So we can command a higher yield in the market. Two, as I talked about in June, the anomaly detection engine, we are building new capabilities to ensure we align cost and price closely, and we're continuing to build new features out this year, which will also help us get a lift from a revenue quality perspective. We want to be really balanced. We also acknowledge that some of our customers are going to have to choose our deferred portfolio, and we're working really hard to get the cost and the margins right in that product. As far as how we're going to handle the negotiations, we're going to do it professionally and with grace. We want to bring customers on that want to do business with us for the long term. For our target segment, small business, health care, B2B, we want them to be prepared. We want to protect, first and foremost, our loyal base right now. Jill and her team will have thoughtful conversations with those customers and make sure that they know we are here for them if they plan ahead and they want to do business with us in the long term.

Well, thank you very much. I'll just say in closing that our team is moving with urgency to accelerate our ongoing transformation. We have made strong progress to date and we'll build on this momentum as we move into the back half of the year. We all know there's a significant opportunity ahead, and I'm very confident in our team's ability to execute. Thank you all for your time today. Thank you for your interest in FedEx, and happy holidays, everyone.