Tuesday's Market Minute: Holiday Shopping, Holiday Shipping

FedEx Corp. FDX reports earnings today after the closing bell, with Zacks reporting an EPS estimate of $2.80 and revenue of $17.57 billion. The stock is nearly flat year-to-date, despite e-commerce retail orders increasing across the board. Holiday shopping season is a busy time for shipping companies – the USPS expects to deliver 16 billion packages between Thanksgiving and New Year's – and thus, potentially a lucrative time for FedEx.

However, the Wall Street Journal reports Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN is preventing its 3rd-party sellers, which make up around 50% of the platform, from using FedEx's ground delivery network for Prime shipping as it develops and implements its own delivery service. Another logistical headwind for FedEx is the traditional holiday shopping season, which is the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is six days shorter than last year's.

This could result in fewer online orders, or perhaps even more of them as last-minute shoppers scramble, relying on ever-quicker expectations of delivery. Setting aside whether FedEx can fulfill all the orders, can it profit enough on them as more consumers demand free, fast shipping, with a tight labor market driving up wages?

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Image by John R Perry from Pixabay