Fedex Q2 Earnings Conference Call Highlights: CEO Sees Increased Earnings, Returns, Cash Flows For Next Few Years

The following bullets are some of the highlights from FedEx's FDX second-quarter earnings conference call:

Michael Glenn: “Our U.S. GDP forecast is 2.4% for calendar 2014 and 3% for calendar 2015.”
The past three Mondays, December 2, December 9 and December 16, were record days for average daily volume, with this past Monday setting a record of more than 22 million packages.
The seasonal increases in volume, revenue and operating income related to Cyber Week will be realized in this year's third quarter versus the second quarter last year.
Yield improvement and cost management at Express were the primary drivers of the profitability improvement.
Fuel cost decreased 8%; due to 6% lower jet fuel prices and fewer flight hours. 3% fewer gallons were used year-over-year.
Express is implementing a 3.9% average list price increase effective January. Ground and Home Delivery will be implementing a 4.9% average list price increase effective in January.
We're raising our earnings per share guidance for the full year to 8% to 14% from the FY 2013 adjusted results. This compares to our previous growth range of 7% to 13%.
Policy risk remains high, but improvement is ongoing in Europe and China. We estimate global growth of 2.8% in calendar 2014 and 3.2% for calendar 2015.
Fred Smith in response to a question on the possibility of companies, such as, Amazon becoming a competitor in the future: “The first thing I will say to you is, there are two enormous transportation networks that are built around moving light packages and freight and they are FedEx and UPS.”

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