FedEx - Q1 2013

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the FedEx Corporation first quarter fiscal Year 2013 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to Mickey Foster, Vice President of Investor Relations for FedEx Corporation. Please go ahead.

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning, and welcome to FedEx Corporation's first quarter earnings conference call. I would like to remind everyone that our investors and lenders meeting will be held here in Memphis on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 9th and 10th. Therefore, we ask that you please save your cost reduction and profit improvement questions, which we will cover in great detail, for the October meeting. The first quarter earnings release and our statistical supplement book are on our website at fedex.com. This call is being broadcast from our website, and the replay and podcast will be available for approximately 1 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.

If you are listening to the call through our live webcast, feel free to submit your question via email or as a message on Stocktwits.com. For example, please include your full name and contact information with your question and send it to [email protected] address. To send a question via Stocktwits.com, please be sure to include FDX in the message. Preferences will be given to inquiries of a long-term strategic nature. 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 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. To the extent we disclose any non-GAAP financial measures on this call, please refer to the investor relations portion of our website at FedEx.com for a reconciliation of such measures to the directly comparable GAAP measures. Joining us on the call today are Fred Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO, Alan Graf, Executive Vice President and CFO, Mike Glenn, President and CEO of FedEx Services, Chris Richards, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary, Dave Bronczek, President and CEO of FedEx Express, Dave Rebholz, President and CEO of FedEx Ground, and Bill Logue, President and CEO of FedEx Freight. Now, our chairman, Fred Smith, will share his views on the quarter.

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Thank you, Mickey. Welcome to our discussion of operating and financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013. Following my re-remarks, Mike Glenn will highlight our views on the Economy, and Alan Graf will detail our financial results and outlook. In the quarter just ended, while FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight improved their profitability in the first quarter, the slowdown in the global economy and global trade constrained revenue growth at FedEx Express and affected overall earnings. We have significant efforts underway to reduce costs in the Express segment, some of which we'll talk about today, and all of which we'll talk about in detail at our investors and lenders meetings on 9, 10 October, and we hope most of you can come to that meeting. Now, let me turn it over to Mike Glenn.

Mike Glenn (EVP of Market Development and Corporate Communications)

Thank you, Fred. On the economic front, we continue to see modest growth in the global economy. Our calendar year 2012 U.S. GDP growth forecast is 2.2%, and 1.9% for calendar year 2013, which is 0.5 points lower than our fourth quarter earnings forecast. For industrial production, we expect a growth of 4.2% in calendar year 2012, slightly below last quarter, and 3% in calendar year 2013, 0.5 points lower than our fourth quarter forecast. Our global GDP forecast is 2.3% for calendar 2012, and 2.7% for calendar 2013, 0.3 points lower than our last call. Turning to yield and revenue management. Excluding the impact of fuel, year-over-year Express domestic package yield increased over 4.4%.

The increase was driven by pricing and rate discount improvement, followed by a favorable service and customer mix changes. The Ground package yield increased 3.66%, excluding the impact of fuel. The year-over-year increase was driven by list and discount improvements, followed by an increase in extra services charges. Excluding fuel, international package yield declined 2.3% year-over-year due to the impact of exchange rates. And finally, excluding the impact of fuel, FedEx Freight yield per hundredweight increased 2.4% year-over-year. The increase was primarily driven by pricing and rate changes. And now I'll turn it over to Alan Graf.

Alan Graf (CFO)

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. For FedEx Corporation, revenues and operating income increased slightly in the first quarter due to improved profitability at FedEx Freight, strong performance of FedEx Ground, and partially offset by the impact of reduced demand for Priority services at FedEx Express. Revenues increased 3% to $10.8 billion, primarily due to yield increases, which Mike discussed, and higher volumes at FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight. Our EPS closed at $1.45 per share, which was a little better than we anticipated two weeks ago, slightly down year-over-year due to the tough global economy. Looking at Ground, revenues increased 8% to $2.5 billion as a result of yield and volume growth at FedEx Ground and volume growth at FedEx SmartPost.

Average daily volume at FedEx Ground increased 5% to 3.9 million packages per day due to market share gains, resulting from continued growth in our commercial business and our FedEx Home Delivery service. FedEx SmartPost volumes grew 18% to 1.7 million packages per day as a result of growth in e-commerce. Ground operating income increased 9% to $445 million due to yield and package volume growth, and operating margin improved year-over-year to 18.1%. Turning to Express, although Express revenues increased, operating income and margin decreased due to declining U.S. domestic package volumes, the demand shift toward lower-yielding International Economy services, and increased depreciation in employee benefits expenses, which more than offset significant ongoing cost containment activities.

Recent acquisitions and exchange rate fluctuations affected both revenue and expense, but had little net impact on operating income for the quarter. Fuel costs decreased 8% during the first quarter due to decreases in the average price per gallon of jet fuel and lower aircraft fuel usage. Based on a static analysis of the net impact of year-over-year charges in fuel prices compared to year-over-year changes in fuel surcharges, fuel had virtually no impact to operating income at Express in the first quarter. Despite lower U.S. domestic package volumes and unfavorable exchange rate impact and lower fuel surcharge revenue, Express revenues did increase 1% due to the impact of new acquisitions, U.S. domestic package yield growth, growth in our Freight forwarding business at FedEx Trade Networks, and higher International Export package volumes.

U.S. domestic package volumes decreased 5% due to weak economic conditions, resulting in reduced demand for our services. Meanwhile, international domestic revenues increased 49% due to recent business acquisitions. In order to increase transparency, we have provided the details for Priority vs economy package for international and collectively refer to them as international export. You'll be able to see that International Priority volume fell 2%, while international economy grew 13% year-over-year. This trade-down has been hurting our Express margins. Looking at Freight, revenues increased 5% to $1.4 billion as a result of higher average daily less-than-truckload shipments and yields. Average daily LTL shipments increased 4% due to market share gains as customer demand increased for our economy service offerings. Priority volumes were flat, while economy increased 12%.

As a result of the increase in average daily LTL shipments, LTL yield growth and ongoing efficient improvements, efficiency improvements in our integrated network, Freight's operating income increased an impressive 114%, and operating margin increased 320 basis points to 6.4%. Also new this quarter, we have provided details for Freight's priority and economy yields, which show that our composite LTL yield grew 2%, while our economy yield grew 10%. Turning to the outlook and looking ahead, we're expecting earnings per share of $1.30-$1.45 for the second quarter and have lowered our guidance for the year to $6.20-$6.60 per diluted share.

This guidance assumed weaker economic growth in the economy than we had expected when we first gave you guidance for FY 2013, as Mike described earlier. We are taking significant actions to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and adjust our networks to match anticipated demand. These actions and opportunities build on the actions taken in 2012 and during the first quarter, including our recent announcement to implement a voluntary buyout plan and decisions to retire certain aircraft and modernize our fleet at Express. We have a very strong cash position, especially after our $1 billion debt issuance in July, at historically low interest rates for the company. Half of those funds were from our first 30-year bond offering in over two decades at 3.875%, and the other half was from our 10-year bond offering at 2.625%.

During the first quarter, we paid a little over $500 million in cash for our acquisitions in Poland, France, and Brazil. Out of our cash from operations, we paid $972 million for capital expenditures and repaid $300 million of unsecured notes at 9.65% in June. We also repurchased 2.7 million shares of FedEx common stock for $246 million. We look forward to seeing you here in Memphis at our October investors and lenders meeting, where we will discuss our cost reduction and profit initiatives in very great detail. I'm sure you will enjoy the time spent with us. Now, we will open up the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing the star key followed by the digit one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Also, if you pressed star one earlier during today's call, please press star one again to ensure our equipment has captured your signal. We ask that you limit yourself to one question to allow others the opportunity to pose their question. You may also submit your question via email to [email protected]. And we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and then one if you have a question. We'll take our first question from Tom Wadewitz from JPMorgan.

Tom Wadewitz (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, good morning. So I wanted to ask you about how you think international trends will develop the next couple of quarters. You seem to be cutting the guidance for the full year fairly aggressively, relative to what seems to be about a half percentage point cut in your overall economic view. So I'm wondering if you can give us some more thoughts on what your assumptions are within international and, you know, how you think that, I guess, the trade down effect will take place, if that's gonna be a continuing issue going forward, and if that's part of the reason that your guidance has come down as much as it has.

David Bronczek (President and COO)

Yeah. Hi, Tom. This is Dave Bronczek. I'll start off, and then Mike Glenn will add some color to it. First, on the international numbers, and I think it was appropriate that we split them out, and Alan already talked about the international priority and the deferred, the economy. You can see, sort of what happened in our mix shift, a 2% down in our very high, very profitable international priority packages, and a dramatic increase, 13%, in deferred that actually grew and drove our linehaul per pound. The pounds went up 4% this quarter. So we're taking a hard look at it, and you'll see some of the decisions we've made on moving some of our traffic onto ocean, through FTN. Our customers have talked to us about that.

Putting the right freight in the right networks. We're very pleased that the customers are talking to us about their package content, their high tech customers, and in terms of their value per pound and their shipments, so that we make sure we get the right network for the right customer at the right price for the right profit. So yeah, we were a little bit surprised that the international deferred package volume went up so much, and it drove some of our line haul, an increase of 4% in our pounds. But that's a good thing as we adjust our network.

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Tom, I'd just add that when we see weakness in the economy, not unlike what happens in the United States, we see a shift from our premium services in the priority network to deferred services to take advantage of lower transit times and lower rates. That's just one way that customers manage their supply chains in difficult economic conditions, so I think that's what we're seeing.

Frederick Smith (CEO)

This is Fred Smith. Let me weigh in here, Tom. I mean, fundamentally, what's happening is that, exports around the world, have contracted, and, the policy choices in Europe and the United States and China are having an effect on global trade. Global trade is, grown faster than GDP, except for the, 2000, 2001 meltdown in 2008 and 2009 for 25 years. And over the last few months, that has not been the case. So that's what's really going on, is that, that exports and trade, have gone down at a faster rate than, than GDP has.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Justin [Yagerman].

Speaker 22

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. So piggybacking here on Tom's question a little bit, I'm just trying to reconcile the outlook. I understand that over the last quarter and over the last several quarters, we've seen this contraction, but what we're hearing in the tech and telecom world is about all of these different product launches, Windows 8, iPhone 5, iPad Mini, if that gets released in the back half. You know, these should be all high value, high priority goods. I guess the big question is whether or not there's demand there for it. Your guidance would imply that there really isn't, and that we're not gonna see that pick up in the International Priority side of things, where you really get that margin expansion. Is that what you're hearing from your customers? Is that just based on a gut feel right now?

Can you give us a little bit of insight into why you think, you know, that this big step down as we head into what should otherwise be a fairly productive time of year?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Well, let me elaborate on what I said just a moment ago. I mean, systemically, the policy choices that have been made in Europe and the United States and China are having effects on world trade. The episodic product launches that you referred to, we've been talking about for two years, and we are carrying a huge amount of that traffic, but it is episodic. At the same time that you have that going on, you have a declining value per pound and a lot of electronic equipment. You have fuel going up, partly in response to the quantitative easing. I mean, as the Fed puts more money out there, people put money into commodities and drive the price up.

So you have products that are getting lower in value per pound, which is the key correlation for goods being moved by air. And so they're going on the water to an improved container liner system that's been developed over the last few years. So you've got a lot of things that are going on there, and the product launch of Apple's and Microsoft is not going to provide the type of sustained growth in international trade that the world has seen historically. So when that turns back around, I think is directly related to the economic macro system in Europe, North America, and particularly in China.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Nate Brockman from William Blair & Company.

Nate Brochmann (Partner and Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to talk and follow up on that a little bit, maybe, Fred. I mean, what's your long-term view of global trade and the opportunities to get that going again? And I understand all the near-term policy issues, and obviously, fully agree with that, and those are big headwinds. But what do you think in terms of the long-term opportunity to get that going again? And how do you think, you know, of global trade and then the investments, you know, kind of long term?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

You know, I think that that remains to be seen. I mean, the global trading economy is still the largest single economy in the world. But over the last several months, particularly as we went into this fiscal year, it's been disappointing. And I think it's reflective of the low growth in the United States. You've got, you know, contraction going on in Europe. And because of North America and Europe, China's export economy, which has been driven by the consumer economies in the United States, North America, and Europe, are reflected in the lower trade numbers. So I think until some of these macro issues get resolved, you'll see relatively low international trade numbers. Now, having said that, we're actually taking market share.

We'll talk about this at the October 9th and 10th meeting. We're taking market share in the intercontinental trading area. The problem is, as Dave pointed out, the mix of traffic, the configuration of our networks was set on one set of assumptions, and those have turned out to be correct. So you'll see at the October ninth and tenth meeting, where we have a significant initiative underway in Express to take, you know, huge amounts of money out of the Express networks, reflecting what I just told you about.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from David Ross from Stifel Nicolaus.

Bruce Chan (Senior Analyst)

Yes, good morning, everyone. This is actually Bruce Chan for David Ross. I just wanted to change gears a little bit and talk about freight. You know, you all did a nice job there. Your margins were, you know, certainly better than we expected, and it looks like much of that came from progress on the expense side. You know, although maybe revenue per 100 weight was a little bit less than what we had assumed. I'm wondering if you can comment on the yield environment. You know, are you seeing any softening there of the pricing momentum the carriers seem to have been joining up till now? Or is that, you know, somewhat of a mix effect or, you know, an issue with the composite economy and priority figure?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

I think our sales team is doing an outstanding job, balancing the traffic growth levels and yield improvement in the freight sector. Yields in any one quarter are impacted by a variety of issues. Since a tremendous amount of the traffic is contract-based, we deal with contracts that come up during any given quarter, and so we have an opportunity to influence different amounts of traffic during any given quarter. There's also some mix issues there. We saw strong growth in the economy segment, and not as much in the priority segment. But we're really, really pleased with the job that our sales team is doing, managing yields in the freight segment.

Bill Logue (Company Representative)

Hey, Bruce, this is Bill. Let me jump in for a second. Again, as Mike said, we're very pleased with our quarter. I mean, volume was up 4% all up, yield up 2%. You know, a lot of the focus we have is on making sure that, as obvious, the customer is embracing our new offering in choice, and that's clear. And our objective is to make sure that whether the customer picks a priority or economy shipment in any length of haul, that we'll be profitable. So very focused, and a lot of our. We made a lot of changes back in July on our network design, and it's all designed for that. So as far as the quarter, we're very happy about it.

The yield is, as Mike says, it's a very important focus for us, and the sales team is doing a nice job at managing the environment out there. And as far as the pricing environment, again, I think it's rational, and we're very, very focused on it.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Helane Becker, from Dahlman Rose.

Helane Becker (Managing Director)

Thanks very much, operator. So just to understand something with respect to the,

You know, lower growth in the GDP outlook and so on and so forth. Does this in any way change your thought process about international expansion? I mean, I think one of the big things is, you know, the revenue growth you saw with some of the recent acquisitions. Would this in any way change that?

David Bronczek (President and COO)

This is Dave Bronczek. No, thanks for the question, though, Helane. No, we're actually adding some super express freighters in October and November. One out of Taipei that gives our customers there 2.5 hours of later service and cutoffs for them into North America and into Europe. And actually, another one that starts in October out of Munich that comes up into Milan and directly heads into our hub here in Memphis. So our customers continue to see great value and great service, and we keep adding more and more traffic. As we've pointed out before, the shift has been different.

So we're going to spend a lot of time with you in October talking about our international network and how it redesigns around the mix and the product types that we have going forward so that we're much more profitable while we gain more volume and more business.

Frederick Smith (CEO)

I should add, though, that those super express freighters Dave talked about are not additions of capacity. They are changed routings in order to take advantage of the 777s nonstop capabilities and give our customers better value. And going back to the question about Apple and Microsoft and so on, these product launches, a part of what Dave is saying to you, we manage that by adding extra sections and extra capacity. So we have been very reluctant in the recent past to add schedule capacity and meet these requirements with variable capacity. And that's probably gonna be the case for the foreseeable future. I mean, we'll probably put up very little incremental schedule capacity. And Dave, you might want to add to that.

David Bronczek (President and COO)

No, that's right, Fred. And, of course, our FedEx Trade Networks organization is becoming very, very successful at bundling the customer's products, and a lot more traffic is moving on the ocean now, and our same technology, great value-added service. So we'll talk a lot about all of these initiatives that we have going forward. I think you'll be very pleased with how profitable our international divisions around the world will become.

Helane Becker (Managing Director)

Thank you.

David Bronczek (President and COO)

Fred, is there any question you want to ask?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Okay, we've got Mickey gave me some email questions from Ken Hoexter. Let me give Dave Rebholz one of these. Where do you see ground margins trending from here? If volumes and pricing continue on this path, can they operate at a 20% level?

Dave Rebholz (President and CEO of FedEx Ground)

Thank you, Fred. This is Dave. Clearly, our goal is to be moving towards 20%+. We see an expanded growth of our product across all product lines that we have, both Ground, Home, and SmartPost. We feel that we have the right cost structure in place to be able to manage through that process. Each and every quarter is a different set of circumstances, but quite frankly, I think we've proven to you that we're fairly consistent, and we're very successful at producing the kind of financial returns. And as we continue to gain market share, I have nothing but very positive and very comfortable feelings as we move forward to achieve the goals that have been set out for us.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Ben Hartford from Robert W. Baird.

Ben Hartford (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about yield expectations in the International Express segment, kind of paying mind to the fact that capacity utilization among the more heavy heavyweight air freight providers still appears to be pressure. Capacity has come out of the market, but as you guys have talked about, volume is weak, and as we understand, there's going to be some capacity redeployment potentially into these lanes as well. So can you talk a little bit about what the expectations are for the yield dynamics in that segment over the course of the next couple quarters?

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

This is Mike Glenn. I think the main thing is our goal is to strike the right balance between yield improvement and volume growth to maximize the operating profit within each segment of our business. The main issue that has put pressure on yields in the international segment is the mix shift that Dave talked about earlier, where we're seeing strong growth in our deferred services and slight decline in our priority services. Obviously, as the economy remains weak, it is tougher to grow those premium services in our priority, in the priority network, so we'll have to manage through that going forward. But that's the main issue, putting pressure on yields at this point.

Operator (participant)

And our next question comes from William Green, from Morgan Stanley.

William Greene (Managing Director and Lead Analyst)

Hi there. Good morning. Alan, can I ask you for just a little bit of color around some of the guidance numbers? If we look at the second quarter, it's quite a bit below what normal sort of sequential change would suggest. And if we sort of follow that through, it kind of leads to either an assumption that there's a pickup you're assuming in the second half or we'll be toward the low end of that guidance number. So is it fuel in the second quarter that's causing that below seasonality? Or maybe you can add some color around kind of near term and long term.

Alan Graf (CFO)

Well, I think the key here is what we've talked about several times. When IP is in a declining mode, and IE package is in a strong growth mode, that's a big factor, and we think that's gonna continue. I mean, we took significant haircuts that Mike mentioned earlier to our calendar year 2013 numbers. And so we see the economy not improving from here. And I watched Mr. Fisher this morning, the ex-Fed member, saying that he thought the economy was at stall as current. And I think that it's not a voting member. He's still currently there. I think that's what we're seeing. So we anticipate more of the same in the second quarter for Express.

And also, we'll have some fuel headwinds vs the previous year at Express, the way the fuel surcharges and our bands are working out in terms of price increases and the lag. So, fuel's definitely an impact, but not gonna see much improvement in Express in the second quarter as we keep our service levels high. And we'll be telling you in October what we're gonna do and when we're gonna do it at Express. So those are the two keys.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Kevin Sterling, from BB&T Capital Markets.

Kevin Sterling (Managing Director of Equity Research Analyst)

You guys have spent a lot of time talking about customers shifting to deferred services. Are you seeing more customers maybe take it a step further and shift from the air to the ocean? Mr. Smith, you briefly mentioned you guys are taking market share. Does that imply maybe you're taking market share from the Freight forward community as you build out the FedEx Trade Networks?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Well, what's going on in the movement of goods internationally in the air cargo segment, the door-to-door express part of it is taking share from the traditional airport-to-airport cargo segment. And that's gonna create a lot of issues. There's a tremendous amount of capacity that's been brought into the market, a lot of new aircraft by the traditional airport-to-airport providers, whether they're combination carriers or the pure Freighter operators. That market is not growing at all, and in fact, in the last several months, it's almost contracted about 3%, I think, something along those lines. So that's what I was talking about, that Express is taking market share. And there are three major Express networks.

We're the biggest in terms of, of transporting goods by air, and then you have UPS and, and DHL. And then, there is clearly a diversion of traffic from traditional airport-to-airport air freight onto the water. And, that's being caused by the, falling value per pound of the traffic that's being moved. I mean, we all benefit, particularly in the electronic sector, with improved pricing because of technology. Well, the, the thing that is most correlated to air freight demand or the air cargo market demand, is the value per pound. So there is traffic that's moving onto the water because of that, and at the same time, over the last 10 years, the container liner services have gotten a lot better.

I mean, there's now daily service from almost every major port in Asia to the major ports in the United States and in Europe. This will be even more pronounced once the Panama Canal is expanded to the so-called Panamax size ships in 2014. So that's what I was talking about, market share. The, the Express segment is taking market share from the traditional air freight segment, and the traditional air freight segment is losing some traffic to the sea freight area, and that's our strategy. We're participating in both of those with FedEx Trade Networks in the sea freight area, which has been a major expansion effort over the last few years. It's, it's really fantastic what our team has done there. And, and we're now an increasingly big player in that segment.

At the same time, our Express system has grown, but the customer has selected the less expensive of the two, two services that we offer, and it's, we have to modify our system and our capacity to reflect that changed demand. So long answer, but you have to understand a lot. Dave, you want to add something?

Alan Graf (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks, Fred. And to add to that, our FedEx Trade Networks organization has done a tremendous job of opening up. I think we're up to 51 markets, 125 cities now. And of course, the visibility and the technology that we provide at FedEx across the board in all of our networks is something that the customers value very much. So when they're moving on the ocean, they still see the visibility, they still see the tracking, they still see the reliability of the service commitment on deliveries. So it's a movement for our customers that adds more value to them, and we'll be talking more about that in October.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Keith Schoonmaker, from Morningstar.

Keith Schoonmaker (Director of Industrial Equity Research and Equity Research)

I wanted to follow up more on, FTN network development. I think the latest K mentioned 130 offices, and you say 125, locations. This must be 100 more than just two or three years ago. And I recognize you'll continuously position offices to capture shifting trade patterns, but could you please comment on sort of near term, what kind of expansion is required before the network is sort of completed?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Well, we're in very good shape right now. You're right, we've added over 100 cities probably in the last three years, and we're in very good shape right now in all the major markets around the world. We'll add some more. We'll continue to open more cities. But by and large, in the main ports and the main lanes, we're already there and just adding customers, and, and with our bundled capability internationally, it's really positive and up. We have a lot of upside potential with FTN.

Alan Graf (CFO)

This is Alan. Look, we're gonna continue to build scale at FTN, and we're gonna continue the expansion. But there is not a customer out there right now that FTN can't compete for, which is a position we haven't been in until just recently. So that's gonna be an important part of our game plan, as Fred mentioned.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Christian Weatherbee, from Citi.

Chris Wetherbee (Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Question maybe on the domestic side, just looking at the Express side from a volume standpoint. When you look at the, the 5% decline there, I was just wondering if you could give some color around the, you know, trade down you may be seeing out of Express and into the ground, and maybe how much of that 5% is kind of being captured there relative to the overall weakness in the economy? Just trying to parse that out, maybe a little bit more color on that would be great.

Alan Graf (CFO)

Sure. I'll let Dave get some specifics. This is Alan. Let me just say again and iterate this, we manage the U.S. domestic business as a portfolio, and if you combined our Ground and Express domestic businesses, you would have one heck of a great profit story. And in fact, Express domestic's profitability is good, even despite there's a 5%, volume decline because we're managing the heck out of it. So I'll turn it over to Dave.

Dave Rebholz (President and CEO of FedEx Ground)

Yeah, I'll answer that, and then Mike Glenn will jump in, too. Yeah, Alan's exactly right. I mean, our FTEs, and you can see that, is down 3% year-over-year. It's 3,450 FTEs. The service has never been better. The quality of our customer care has never been better. Our line haul in the United States is down 2%, as well, so... And our, and our aircraft maintenance is better. So across the board, we've, we've been diligent at reducing our costs, commensurate with the, where the volume is, but the volume is between Express and Ground at FedEx, so that's a good thing.

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Christian, I think it's important to point out that almost half the year-over-year decline during this quarter was due to one customer in the cell phone industry shifting from a total Express solution to a combination of ground and SmartPost, in order to manage their supply chain during this economic period. Beyond that, the weakness has been relatively broad-based among industry sectors and is largely economic-based.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jeff Kauffman from Sterne Agee.

Jeff Kauffman (Managing Director and Equipment Equity Research)

Thank you very much, thanks for taking my question. Congratulations on a difficult quarter. You know, a fair amount of my question has been answered at this point. What I'd like to do is drill down a little bit more into your international forecast change. There was a slide you put out, I think over the summer, where you were looking for Eurozone to contract about 0.5% and emerging markets to grow at about just over 5%. I was speaking to a gentleman from China the other day who had expressed to me that he had thought that the Chinese economy was gonna be stronger in the fourth quarter and first quarter, and they were seeing changes in real estate market, what have you.

Could you talk a little bit more about where you've incrementally changed outside of the U.S. and in particular with some of your emerging markets?

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Just from an economic perspective, as I mentioned, our global forecast is for calendar year 2012 is 2.3%. In the developed countries, we're expecting 1.3%. In emerging markets, which is 5.1%. Again, this is slightly lower than we were last quarter. In 2013, we're looking for 2.7%. Again, developed countries, 1.5%, and emerging markets, 5.7%. We've certainly seen a growth slowdown in the emerging Asia sector in the first half of Q1, but that's probably run its course, and domestic demand remains robust into global headwinds, but obviously, there are a lot of policy issues that will impact that.

Frederick Smith (CEO)

I can tell you this, on China. The locomotive that has driven China's growth is its export industries. With the situation in Europe, and to a lesser degree, in North America, that is a significant issue for the Chinese economy. Now, the consumer consumption in China is not increasing at a significant rate, contrary to everybody's hopes. While exports from, say, the United States into China have grown, they're dwarfed by the exports from China into the United States. As the big economies in Europe and the US have grown or contracted, grown at a far lesser rate, or in the case of certain European countries, have contracted, that's reflected in the numbers in China, and you can't escape that.

I've been somewhat amused watching some of the China observers, I think, completely underestimate the effects of the slower exports on the overall China economy.

Dave Rebholz (President and CEO of FedEx Ground)

Jeff, this is Dave. And to add something else that you'll see in October, that you probably don't see now, is we've on purpose added a lot of investments in Europe. Our organic European plan that's going is very successful, and you're gonna see a lot of the benefits to that, and also in Asia, organically, in terms of more sales people, more stations that we've opened. So it's we've added some cost and some investments that we are very confident will pay off in a big way, and you'll see more of that as well. So that's somewhat into our numbers, too, that you probably can't see at the moment.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Scott Group, from Wolfe Trahan.

Scott Group (Managing Director)

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. So first, Fred, thanks for the breakout of IP vs economy. It's helpful, and if you have any more history going back before fiscal 2012, it'd be helpful for us. And then my questions on the restructuring. So there's been this view that I think it'll be largely a domestic express restructuring. Is there a chance now that it can be broader and touch international to help manage some of the structural headwinds we're seeing as we see the shift from international priority to economy? Can you do much to address the cost structure of an economy product vs a priority product?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Well, first, let me, let me clarify something. The management of FedEx has never used the term restructuring. That's something that you have mentioned and the media has mentioned. We intend to take a significant amount of cost out of the express system, and on October the 9th and the 10th, you'll see how we're doing that. But it, it's not the, you know, we're not gonna lay off people, and we're not going to, you know, take some draconian steps. All of the things are very well thought out and we're very confident we can achieve them, and I think you'll be surprised at the magnitude. The ex-organic expansion in Europe and China, they make great contributions with IP or IE. That's not the issue with the domestic operations.

The issue is the line haul operations because it costs the same amount of money to put up a unit of capacity, whether you're flying it full of IP or IE. And so I think you will see, commensurate with the outlook that we're talking about, you know, FedEx Express being very cautious about adding capacity unless it's competitively differentiated, and then moving the lower-yielding traffic into the right network, which is what Dave was talking about. But we'll see you on October the 9th and 10th, and you'll get a lot of detail on that.

Alan Graf (CFO)

Just to finish up the thought, yes, there will be a significant amount of SG&A reduction around all of FedEx Corporation on top of what we're doing at Express, and that would be my part of the show.

David Bronczek (President and COO)

Yeah, and Alan's right, and Fred, of course, is right. We're gonna talk about international opportunities there and how our line haul and our networks reposition to handle the right products and the right networks. The same is true in the United States. We have worked on this for many months, and you'll be, I think, surprised, as Fred pointed out, the magnitude of the numbers. And of course, our aircraft fleet, we're gonna talk a lot about that as well. That's been a big upside to our profitability going forward, too.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Brandon Oglenski, from Barclays.

Brandon Oglenski (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Maybe just to follow up on the themes that we're hearing on this call. Should we be thinking this push towards deferred air products is more structural in nature? You know, as shippers try it in these softer times, you know, what are some of the fences that you guys can enact when things maybe get a little bit more urgent in the future to push people back into those higher revenue segments?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

The movement between priority and economy is essentially driven by the macroeconomic situation relative to the capacity. If the economic outlook changes, people buy the priority services in order to assure that they get moved on the time frame that they're looking at. It's really an arbitrage. Now, having said that, on a systemic basis, as the price of fuel has gone up inexorably, almost over the last decade, what you're seeing are these big trends that I talked about a little earlier. The air cargo market and its traditional definition is not growing. The door-to-door express portion of it is growing relative to the overall market, and a lot of traffic is moving onto the water because moving goods by air is very energy intensive.

So, a huge part of these things of what's going on is driven by the price of fuel, and that's gonna change people's decisions on manufacturing and supply chains, and we're gonna talk about that on October the 9th and 10th. But you can't have jet fuel going up to, you know, close to 4 dollars a gallon on occasion without it having a big effect on the choices people make in terms of the speed, price trade-off and the decision as to whether to move bulk commodities by air or on the water.

Brandon Oglenski (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Chris Ceraso from Credit Suisse.

Chris Ceraso (Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning. Actually, that, that leads into my question. It seems like you're in a bit of a tough spot where there are some secular shifts, like you said, towards ocean, away from air, and at the same time, you also need to make your air network more fuel efficient, so you're upgrading your air fleet. But in the short run, that seems to be leaving you with very little excess cash flow. You're running, you know, close to 9% CapEx as a percent of sales. Do you expect it to persist at that level, leaving you with limited free cash flow over the next two or three years?

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Well, I don't know where you come up with the term limited cash flow. I think our cash flow is very strong, and we have done two major things with the Express fleet. One is we have deferred deliveries of the 777s because we are not going to escalate the scheduled aircraft in the near term, and we have accelerated the replacement of the MD-10s with 767s, which provide a high ROIC and they're 30% more fuel efficient. And we're gonna continue to do that. And the reason we're gonna continue to do that is because we have such strong cash flows. I mean, our EBITDA is gonna be very large this year, so it's not like we're not making money.

I mean, we've given a $6.20-$6.60 range, and if you do the math, I think you'll find out our cash flows are very strong.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from David Vernon, from Bernstein.

David Vernon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Just a question on the domestic volume change. It looks like the deferred volumes are the weakest of the bunch, and I'm wondering if that was sort of a customer-specific thing, or if that is something else that's going on in the U.S. domestic landscape.

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

David, this is Mike. As I mentioned earlier, almost half the decline in the Express domestic segment was due to one large customer who shifted from a largely deferred Express solution to ground and SmartPost as a way to optimize their supply chain during the weaker economy. So that was the primary driver during the quarter regarding the deferred traffic.

David Vernon (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

So you're not seeing a greater than sort of market decline in Express in deferred outside of that one large count?

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

We're certainly seeing some pressure on deferred traffic levels, as you would expect to see anytime when you have a weak economy. There's some trade down from deferred to ground, there's some trade down from ground to Freight in the larger shipments, shipments. So, certainly the economy is having an effect on that, but the primary issue was one large customer.

Frederick Smith (CEO)

Let me just say what I've said on a couple of occasions here, and again, we'll talk more about it in October. The company doesn't view its individual segments as standalone businesses. I mean, we manage the system as part of a portfolio. And I think we've been pretty good in forecasting where the market was going. I mean, that's why we bought Caliber, that's why we upgraded FedEx Ground so that it's now, you know, the fastest ground system out there. It's making a lot of money. It's because we understood that that's where the market was going. As Dave Bronczek mentioned, we've expanded over the last three years, our FedEx Trade Network significantly.

So we're now a major player in a much broader international trade marketplace than we were just a few years ago. I think the one thing that that has changed faster than than we would have anticipated, and it is directly related to the policy choices made at the at the governmental level, is the price of fuel. And and the price of fuel is. If you plotted over the last 10 years, it's really quite astounding, and it's a little bit like a frog being boiled quickly or boiled slowly. I mean, it jumps out if you boil it quickly, but when you do it slowly, it sits there and gets cooked.

So the world economy has absorbed an incredible increase in the price of fuel, and that has had very big implications on the way people think about supply chains, on their decisions to move ocean or whether they move things by air. There's a great logistician up at MIT that said, if it keeps going, the places where you ought to put manufacturing plants are Mexico and Eastern Europe. So it's not by accident that FedEx made a great acquisition in Mexico, which is just going gangbusters, MultiPack, and in Poland, in Opek. So I think the only thing that's been at issue here is that the growth rates have been far below what everyone would have wanted because of policy choices.

And secondarily, the increased price of fuel, combined with those macroeconomic issues, have slowed the growth of exports, and secondarily, they've made people trade down, whether it's in the domestic market or in the U.S. market. But none of this was. We didn't miss any of it. We did all of the right things. It's just hit late in the last few months; it's been very disappointing in terms of the macroeconomic environment.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mickey Foster for any closing remarks.

Mickey Foster (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for your participation in our first quarter earnings, release conference call. We look forward to seeing you at our investor meeting here in Memphis on October 9th and 10th. Please feel free to call anyone on the investor relations team if you have any additional questions about FedEx. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation today.