聯邦快遞 (FDX) 2009 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the FedEx Corporation third-quarter earnings conference call.

Today's call is being recorded.

Now it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mickey Foster, VP, Investor Relations.

Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to FedEx Corporation's third-quarter earnings conference call.

The earnings release and 25-page stat book are on our website at FedEx.com.

This call is being broadcast from our website, and the replay and podcast download will be available for approximately 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 and a follow-up so we can 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 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 release and filings with the SEC.

In our earnings release, we include certain non-GAAP financial measures which we may discuss on this call.

Please refer to the release available on our website for further discussion of these measures and a reconciliation of them to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

To the extent we disclose any other non-GAAP financial measures on this call, please refer to the investor relations portion of the website at FedEx.com for a reconciliation of such measures to the most 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 Glen, Executive Vice President, Market Development and Corporate Communication; Chris Richards, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary; Rob Carter, Executive Vice President, FedEx Information Services and CIO; Dave Bronczek, President and CEO of FedEx Express; Dave Rebholz, President and CEO of FedEx Ground; and Doug Duncan, President and CEO of FedEx Freight.

And now our Chairman, Fred Smith, will share his views on the quarter, followed by Alan Graf.

After Alan, we will have Q&A.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining today's conference call to review FedEx operational and financial performance during the third quarter of fiscal year '09.

If you will recall, during our last earnings call, we discussed how FedEx faced some of the worst economic conditions in many decades.

As we all know, the global economy has been very weak during this period of time.

There are, however, positive signs supporting eventual improvement in the economy.

They are often overlooked in the midst of the current uncertainty, but we are confident the FedEx business model is solid and will deliver long-term value.

We are focused on steady gains in market share and productivity.

We are also focused on continuing to improve our customers' experience, keeping the purple promise.

And we are positioning FedEx to take full advantage of the recovery.

Because we can flex our networks and pull many other levers at our disposal, FedEx continues to operate profitably.

Our service levels are extremely high.

Our balance sheet is very strong.

We have excellent access to liquidity, as our recent $1 billion bond offering proves.

In December, we announced a series of cost-saving measures.

Today, we're unveiling additional cost-reduction actions in light of the continuing deterioration of the economy since our last earnings call.

In this regard, we will reduce the capacity of the FedEx Express and FedEx Freight networks.

We will further reduce personnel and work hours.

And I'll be happy to comment on that in greater detail during the Q&A session, if you'd like.

We will expand pay actions to include non-US employees where permitted.

We will be streamlining our information technology systems and other internal processes.

We will reduce spending and additional categories and increase economies in purchasing goods and services.

These actions are targeted to additionally reduce FY '10 expenses by about $1 billion.

When we announced our compensation reductions in December our goals were to protect our business and minimize the loss of jobs.

With industrial production and global trade trends having worsened since that time, we are adopting today's actions to secure the jobs of as many of our teammates as possible.

We have, quite frankly, the best folks in the business, and I am confident that these team members worldwide will continue to work together in these challenging times to continue to make every experience outstanding.

While our management team is steadfastly committed to reducing costs, we absolutely will not compromise our outstanding service levels.

And in this regard, we continue to work to ensure success for FedEx in the long term.

For example, in February FedEx Express improved its international and domestic services in Mexico with an expanded air cargo terminal bonded warehouse and a new hub.

In China, FedEx Express began operations at our new $150 million Asia-Pacific hub located at the new Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, China.

I am proud to say that earlier this month, FedEx Corporation was rated as one of the world's most admired companies by Fortune magazine in what many consider to be the definitive report card on corporate reputations.

In addition, in January, FedEx was once again named to Fortune's list of the 100 best companies to work for, and in December, Forbes magazine named FedEx to its honor roll of best big companies.

These honors are a reflection of the values, culture and the people who make FedEx what it is.

Now I know a number of you will have questions about the Railway Labor Act issue and other matters, which we'll be happy to take up in the Q&A session.

But let me just tie off my portion of these prepared remarks by reiterating that we are determined to act decisively so that FedEx will overcome the current economic challenges and emerge a stronger, more competitive company than before.

I am particularly proud of the strong balance sheet we have developed over the years and the measures that we have taken that have given us the flexibility to weather an economic challenge of this magnitude.

In that regard, let me now turn the microphone over to our Chief Financial Officer, Alan Graf.

Thank you, Fred, and good morning, everyone.

Today, I will discuss our third-quarter results and our fourth-quarter outlook.

Following that, I will give you a few thoughts regarding our fiscal year 2010, which begins June 1.

For the third quarter, first up is FedEx Ground, where operating results improved due to volume and revenue growth, lower fuel prices and improved performance at FedEx SmartPost.

During this very difficult time, revenue increased 4% to $1.8 billion as volumes and yields were both up 2%.

FedEx SmartPost volumes increased a whopping 44%.

Operating income increased 15% to just under $200 million, and operating margin increased a full percentage point to 10.9%.

Notably, market share increased as we believe we captured more than our fair share of former DHL traffic at higher yields than DHL had been receiving.

At FedEx Freight, the economy took its toll as shipments, yields and weights declined due to the weakest LTL environment in a very long time.

Revenue decreased 21% on a decline in average daily shipments of 13% and a yield decline of 7%.

Operating income decreased to a loss of $59 million versus income of $46 million last year.

Again, we believe we are taking market share and will be well poised for substantial profitability increases once the economy recovers.

Turning to FedEx Express, operating results declined as lower volumes and yields more than offset significant reductions in cost.

Revenue decreased 18% to $5.1 billion, a decline of approximately $1 billion from the previous year, driven by volume and lower fuel surcharges.

US domestic volume was down 3%, and yield was down 12%.

International priority package volume fell 13% from last year's third quarter and yields declined 8%.

Freight pounds declined 19%.

As a result and in spite of significant escalating cost reductions, operating income in Express decreased 89% to $45 million.

So overall for Freight and Express, it was a very tough quarter, but a very solid one for Ground.

EPS decreased 75% for the corporation to $0.31 a share.

Looking at the fourth quarter, we have provided an EPS range estimate of $0.45 to $0.70 a share.

Obviously, we had a significantly worse economy in the third quarter versus last year, and we expect continued difficult comparisons in our fourth quarter versus previous year.

I am also concerned about potential fuel price increases, as fuel surcharges have already been set for April and are about 60% set for May, and I see that oil is spiking up this morning.

We are presently in the middle of planning for fiscal year 2010.

Given the very tough comparisons with last year's first half in fiscal '10 and the uncertain economy, we are planning very conservatively.

Aside from general global economic conditions, we face significant fuel and pension headwinds in fiscal 2010.

In fiscal 2009, we benefited from the general decline in fuel prices during the first three quarters.

We do not expect that to continue during fiscal '10.

We have also seen our base Express volume and revenue levels drop sharply compared to the average of the first half.

Additionally, our pension plan, like many others, has sustained asset value losses during FY '09.

Our domestic pension plans, however, have more than ample funds to meet benefit payments and no contributions are legally required for fiscal '09.

Future funding requirements will depend on the funded status of these plans on May 31, 2009, partially mitigated by the Worker, Retiree and Employer Recovery Act of 2008, enacted into law in December 2008.

In order to improve the funded status of our principal plan and reduce fiscal 2010 expense, we may make additional voluntary contributions in fiscal 2009.

Our balance sheet is solid, and we have over $2.6 billion in cash at the end of the third quarter.

In any event, a substantial year-over increase in our pension expense in 2010 is likely based on current conditions.

Having said that, some of the projections that third parties have made regarding the potential FY '10 pension expense increase and mark-to-market hit to equity are significantly worse than what I anticipate, given current market conditions.

So recognizing these headwinds of economic conditions, fuel and pension, we are making significantly greater cost reductions beyond what we previously announced and had underway.

During the third quarter, you may recall the actions we implemented to reduce costs included base salary reductions for US salaried personnel effective January 1 and a suspension of 401(k) Company contributions effective February 1.

Throughout the year, we have also eliminated variable compensation payments, extended a hiring freeze and made significant volume reductions in labor hours and line haul expenses.

As the economy continued to worsen during Q3, we recognized that further cost reductions would be required to protect our long-term franchise, and we have announced those this morning, both in the release and discussed already by Fred.

Other than these qualitative comments, I, nor any of my partners, are in a position to comment at this time on specific numbers for fiscal year '10 as we are in the midst of our planning cycle and still monitoring the economic climate.

We will not, however, do anything to impair our superior service, nor are we reducing any coverage provided by any of our networks.

Long-term, we are extremely well-positioned for strong earnings growth and cash flow growth when the economy turns up.

With that, operator, we are happy to take questions.

(Operator Instructions) David Ross, Stifel Nicolaus.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Good morning, David.

First question is just on the Express business.

I guess how flexible is the Express network, given the downturn?

I know you've tried to reduce it and it is not immediately flexible on the downside.

How long does it take to right-size it?

How much further do you think you have to go still?

David, I'll start.

This is Alan.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Dave.

I think that what we are showing by the cost reductions we had already taken and the ones that we are about to take, we have a lot more flexibility and variability in our cost structure than most people give us credit for.

That's why the one-time charges that we anticipated in the fourth quarter are so small compared to the ongoing expense reductions that we're going to see in FY 10.

Most notably will be what we're going to do at Express, and with that, I am going to turn it over to Dave Bronczek.

Thanks, Alan.

This is Dave.

We have a lot of flexibility, to your earlier comment.

The $1 billion that Fred and Alan referenced before in cost reductions, obviously the lion's share of that cost reduction effort will be at Express, and that is all around the world.

That is Asia, Europe, here in the United States.

So we have a lot of levers to pull, we have a lot of initiatives underway, and we are moving forward on all of those initiatives.

And then just one follow-up question on the DHL business.

You said that you got a lot of DHL traffic at higher yields.

Understanding that a lot of that might have gone into the Ground network, as well, could you explain, I guess, how you see the DHL business being split up between what you got on the Express side and on the Ground side?

This is Mike Glenn.

And we were able to leverage our vast network and broader range of services, which included FedEx Express, FedEx Ground and FedEx SmartPost, to work with DHL customers to ensure that we put the traffic in the right network to meet their needs.

Obviously, given the economic situation, some of the traffic and the pricing that was in the marketplace, some of the traffic moved out of the Express network in their system and moved into other networks in ours.

Having said that, we exceeded our fair share in every segment, which includes domestic express, US export, ground, and we also added quite a bit of volume to our SmartPost, as well.

And we were especially proud of the effort by our sales and marketing team to deliver this volume at higher yields than DHL was carrying for traffic for.

That was important to us because we wanted to make sure that FedEx received an appropriate return on investment for this work.

So we did well in all segments, exceeding our fair share in every segment where we put traffic.

But our objective was to work with the customers, and our sales team did a great job of this and making sure the volume went in the right network.

Donald Broughton, Avondale Partners.

Good morning, everybody.

Well, let's ask something a little noneconomic, a little bit more far reaching.

Since it appears the Democrats in the House seem determined to pass Card Check, and it's easy to understand why Card Check would be bad for FedEx's business, FedEx's shareholders and FedEx's financials -- financial returns, Fred, can you outline for us why it would be bad for FedEx employees?

Well, I'm going to ask Christine Richards, our General Counsel, to comment on this in greater depth.

We are just one among many industrial companies that feel that the legislation is not well thought out.

Obviously, we don't agree with the concept of doing away with the secret ballot for elections.

And as I understand it, in union organizing efforts, the unions win at least half, maybe more.

Particularly worrisome is the mandatory arbitration provision.

And I think with that, I will ask Christine Richards to comment.

Good morning.

This is Chris Richards.

The most important thing that people have really not focused on with respect to this legislation is this arbitration provision.

What it would require is that when a union is elected, that the employer and the union negotiate for a very short period of time, 120 days, at which point if no contract has been reached, an arbitrator, who has no responsibility to the employees, to the management or to the shareowners of that company, would impose an agreement that would set the wages and benefits for those employees for a two-year period.

What this means is that a person who maybe knows nothing about the industry or knows little would be setting those rates for wages and benefits.

And one could logically expect that in some cases they will set a rate that is too high for the company to compete effectively in its business, or in some instances, they may set a rate that is so low that employees cannot be attracted and the employees would not be able to find compensation that would allow them to perform the work.

The most egregious part of this is that this arbitrator would have no accountability to the shareowners of a particular business.

If you look at the need for American business as a whole, and not just FedEx, to remain competitive, one of the clearest things that is apparent from this current economic situation is that businesses must be able to control their costs and balance the needs of their employees to have a stable job opportunity with a successful business against the need for making cuts in certain areas to provide an opportunity for the business to remain profitable.

This arbitration provision is not just bad for FedEx; it is bad for business as a whole.

And I think that is why you are seeing a lot of people, particularly senators up in Washington, starting to look at this and recognize that this bill has the potential to negatively impact the existence and creation of jobs in the US going forward.

Thank you.

Peter Jacobs, Ragen Mackenzie.

Good evening -- or good morning, I should say.

It feels like it is evening out here in Seattle.

Anyway, Fred, could you give a little more detail around the market share gains that you've seen in your different business segments?

Are there any numbers that you can put around those?

Let me ask Mike Glenn to comment on that specifically.

Well, if you look at volume share or more importantly revenue share, which is what we pay more attention to, we outperformed our primary competition in every segment.

Obviously, the DHL traffic had a lot to do with the share during the fourth quarter, so the market as a whole, the two primary competitors remaining in the express market in the US, gained share as a result of the DHL traffic.

However, we performed much better, again, obtaining more than our fair share, regardless of whether you look at Ground, Express, US export or for that matter, SmartPost.

So we were very pleased with our performance not only on a volume basis but on a revenue share basis.

And we felt we came out very well in that regard.

Okay, thanks.

And my follow-up question would be are there any segments of the industry that were noticeably weak?

I am sure it was weak across the board, but are there any particular outliers that you would point to?

Well, the retail sector in particular has been weak, but there has been broad-based weakness across the board.

Obviously, there are some sectors that are performing a bit better, but this is a broad economic issue, and the recession is affecting virtually every segment.

I would say one of the things in particular, as Alan mentioned in his remarks, has been our Freight business.

The Freight business is heavily tied into automotive and housing, and I don't think any two industries in the country have been worse hit with this economic slowdown than that.

I might ask Doug Duncan if he wants to comment on that.

Clearly the freight business, almost half of our market, can be tracked back to durable goods, either manufacturing or distribution.

So the downturn in the housing industry, the decline in the auto industry and now the lack of consumer spending on large-screen TVs and that type of thing have had a huge impact on the freight business.

But the freight business has actually been in contraction since 2006 because of these issues.

So this has been a prolonged period of time, but we've been able to gain market share over that period of time and we continue to gain market share, but not sufficiently to get over the year-over-year declines in overall demand.

Helane Becker, Jesup & Lamont.

Thank you very much, operator.

Thank you for taking my question.

Just on, Alan, on the outlook for the current quarter and then beyond, is there anything you can say internationally versus domestically in terms of weakness or industry groups that might be more weak than others, or is it just broad-based, every market down similarly?

Or are there any -- China showing any signs of improvement, anything like that?

I'll start, and we will probably pass this around a little bit.

I mean, what we've seen in fiscal year '09 are quarter sequential declines in international priority, where we were about flat in the first quarter; we were down 6% or 7% in the second; we are down almost 14% in the third.

We think that is about the bottom.

And as we look at our fourth quarter, we don't think we are going to see continued quarterly sequential declines.

Asia by far has been the weakest, but there is general weakness everywhere.

Dave?

Yes, thanks Alan.

Alan, that is correct.

We have actually seen some pretty good growth in China domestic, in Mexico, in the United Kingdom.

Our domestic markets are doing better, similarly to how we are doing here in the United States.

But Alan is right.

Asia Pacific specifically has been hit the hardest and is probably the weakest at the moment.

But I agree with Alan that we probably have hit the bottom.

Does NAFTA affect -- my follow-up question is on Mexico.

Does changes in NAFTA and the whole truck [slot] affect you guys at all?

Let me mention the broader strategic issue, and then I'll ask Dave to comment specifically.

We were very concerned, obviously, with what the Congress did on this -- reneging on our responsibilities under the NAFTA treaty about the Mexican truck.

These operators are as safe or safer than many other operations.

It was a solemn obligation of the United States; it entered into a treaty.

Mexico is among our largest trading partners.

So we hope that gets resolved.

We have a very good business in Mexico, one that is growing, and we think we are doing a great job for our customers south of the border and north of the border.

And as I mentioned in my remarks, we are expanding our business down there and Dave can comment further on that.

That's correct, Fred.

We are expanding our business.

We opened a domestic hub in San Luis Potosi, in the Golden triangle in Mexico and coming across Juarez into El Paso.

That business is very important for us and for US commerce.

And we would hope that that continues on the trade pattern that it is.

Thank you.

Tom Wadewitz, JPMorgan.

Good morning.

My first question is along the lines of the trends in Express.

Alan, you commented a little bit, and Dave, on the volumes maybe bottoming out in third quarter.

What about yields?

The yields were down pretty significantly in Express year-over-year and third-quarter, and the margins obviously were under some pressure.

Do you think on a year-over-year basis, third quarter is representative of what we see going forward and that yields and margins in Express have bottomed as well, or how would we look at that?

This is Mike Glenn.

In the domestic business, for example, there were several issues.

One obviously is fuel surcharge is dramatically lower this year versus last year.

The second issue would be weight per package, which is a trend that you typically see during a poor economy.

The third issue is the DHL traffic that we added.

As I mentioned before, while we were able to get this traffic at significantly higher yields than DHL had been carrying it, it still is less than our average yield per transaction.

The traffic that DHL carried also was lighter than our average weight per transaction in the US business.

So those are the factors that were impacting yield during the quarter.

Any thoughts on the margin side, Alan, year-over-year and third quarter, and whether that is representative going forward or not?

Well, Tom, obviously, when we gave you the range for the year at the end of the second quarter, the high side of that would have been the economy quit declining, and the low side of that would have been it continued.

And obviously, we are at the low side of that, so it continued at a very steep decline.

And we are chasing the revenue and volume declines with our cost programs, and they are lagging, which is natural.

However, I think we can react very quickly here, and I think that we can have a decent FY '10 at Express.

You tell me when the economy is going to turn -- if it starts to turn here at the end of the calendar year and we start getting some sequential quarterly improvements and then start eventually to get some year-over-year improvements, we are going to have great leverage in the Express network.

So it is just a matter of when.

It's not so much an FY '10 issue as when it turns and how strong our cash flows and earnings will be at that point.

This is Dave Bronczek.

Alan is right.

The variable profit improvement margins that we would get on a package, whether it is in the United States and especially international, goes very quickly to our bottom line.

So we are doing all the right things on our costs all around the world.

When some of this volume and the trends improve, not only here in the US but around the world, there's very big upside going forward.

Let me just comment on the strategic issue here, too, which I think is very important for your understanding of our business.

When we basically created the modern door-to-door Express business in the early '90s for international traffic, the segment probably was about 5% of the total market for the movement of goods internationally.

In 2007, the last full year before this slowdown, the overall market for moving goods by air intercontinentally was about $75 billion, approximately.

And the door-to-door Express segment had grown to almost 40% in terms of revenue share and about 10% to 12% in terms of the weight share.

Now what has happened when the economy has gotten very bad is the more commodity type traffic has gone down on the water, and the capacity in the traditional airport-to-airport airfreight business has been pulled down at a very rapid rate.

And when you come out of this thing, I think quite frankly that some of those business models that people were hanging onto are simply not viable.

In our case, however, being such a huge player in the market -- and we are the largest transporter of goods by air in the world -- the ability to flex our intercontinental networks as a percentage of our total flights is much greater than people who are flying a couple of times per week between point A and point B.

And that is why Dave was talking about these levers that he can pull.

We were able to take some of our capacity down over the Pacific, but we have not degraded the service capabilities that we are able to offer our customers.

The same thing is true on the Atlantic.

That's not true with some of the more traditional services that have been offered.

And it's important that you understand what is going on within the context of that strategic market analysis.

Art Hatfield, Morgan Keegan.

Thank you.

Just to follow up on the comments Mr.

Smith just made.

When we think about a recovery, though, is you have to put assets back to work.

Is there a period of time there where we don't see as much leverage in the profitability of the Company due to having to flex up the network?

That's a great question, and we see tremendous amount of leverage on the initial upside, because we will be reducing capacity in terms of aircraft not being flown.

The ones that are being flown will still have capacity in them.

So once the economy turns up, initially at Express, we will get tremendous leverage.

And then we will begin to add back flights and assets as appropriate.

So particularly, if you can tell me exactly when it is going to turn, I can tell you exactly what our earnings are going to be.

I wish I could do that.

Alan, on your pension comment, and I know you don't want to get specific, but you made a comment that the high-end estimates from third parties you've seen are too high.

I've seen numbers all over the place, and some of the high-end numbers I've seen are a little above $1.00 a share in earnings.

Is that kind of the range that you are referring to or have you seen something much higher than that?

I've seen higher than that, and I've seen $5 billion or $6 billion hits to equity.

And unfortunately, those are people who are taking May 31 data from the 10-K a year ago and have no idea how we've been managing our pension fund, have no idea what our assumptions are going to be, have no idea what corporate long-term bond interest rates have done.

So unfortunately, a pension program is a long -- I'm going to have a soapbox here, so just get ready -- is a long-term program where you are providing benefits for your employees.

And we have a very unfortunate accounting standard that makes us mark to market.

And while we got relief on funding, we got no relief on smoothing for expense.

So we pick one day of the year, and whatever the market is that day and whatever the discount rate is that day, you're stuck with.

And believe me, we could have tens of millions of dollars of swing that day, hour to hour.

So I won't know until we get to May 31, but I will tell you that we are a lot less sensitive to equities than we were on May 31.

We've been using liability-driven investing and are continuing to do that.

So we are probably in better shape than a lot of people think.

Great.

That's very, very helpful.

Thank you.

The other thing about our pension is we have a huge amount of assets in that pension fund and very little draw on it.

So it is, again, as Alan said, having to do this thing on a single day is really not very well thought out.

As you know, when the so-called Pension Protection Act was passed in 2006, one of the things that we did, and I think our employees covered by the pension program can take a lot of solace and have great confidence in, is we moved to a cash balance pension program, so that we can make sure that our pensions are fully funded and we don't have the level of volatility that we otherwise would have had.

Put a different way, we saw what this 100-year-flood level valuation could do and changed our plans accordingly.

So I am very pleased with where we are and very happy that we did it so we can ensure our folks have a strong retirement program.

John Mims, BB&T Capital Markets.

Good morning, guys.

Your competitor had talked about using DHL's pull out of the US market as kind of a lever to go after them on a global scale.

From a strategic standpoint, is that something that -- is that, I guess, a strategy that you are following?

Are you trying to attack them in Asia and Europe and elsewhere?

This is Mike Glenn.

A significant percentage of the global traffic transits the US, and obviously the absence of a US footprint weakens the value proposition of any competitor that doesn't have a presence in the US.

So that creates opportunities and we are working very hard to take advantage of those opportunities.

We have a tremendous global footprint, and has been mentioned today, despite pulling down capacity, we have not affected our value proposition.

And we are selling that aggressively in the marketplace today and having a lot of success with that.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

And as a follow-up, looking at your cash balance, what is going to be your position going forward?

I mean, do you stay defensive?

Are you cutting just back to maintenance CapEx or, at the $40 stock price, $40 range, are repurchases looking attractive?

Can you give some color on that?

You got a couple hours?

Obviously, those are all the things that are going through our minds right now as we are going through our planning process and discussing our options with our Board of Directors.

I will say this, that for FY '10, the number one objective building our plan is to stay as close to cash flow positive as we can.

Again, with this sort of the pension wildcard, how much we fund and when could swing that one way or the other.

As for CapEx, it is still very important for us to change our fleet at Express to have more 757s and 777s, and FY '10 is a fairly heavy year at the moment for deposits and deliveries.

So we are examining that and looking at that in the context of everything else and haven't made any decisions one way or the other.

But all those things are top of our mind right now.

Justin Yagerman, Wachovia Capital Markets.

Good morning, gentlemen.

We've seen a lot of bid activity on the trucking side of things in the first half of this year, and I was wondering, I've heard a little bit about some small parcel bids out there.

What has been going on on that end, and have you guys been happy with the results of that?

And I guess is that where you are seeing the visibility on the DHL pickups?

And any color you could give on that would be great.

Well, obviously we have contracts that come due on a monthly basis.

And these are typically multiyear agreements that end up being put out for RFQ or renegotiated.

And so the activity level there is certainly consistent with what we've seen in the past.

There is no question that when DHL announced that they were going to pull out of the US domestic operation, customers started to become very aggressive in looking at alternatives and we were well prepared for that.

We had planned for that for many months prior to DHL's announcement, anticipating that was a likely outcome.

So I think we were way ahead of the game in that regard, and that is why we were able to take greater than our fair share.

So clearly a lot of activity leading up to the end of January closure of DHL operations, but it has settled down since then.

And it is not outside of normal kind of trends?

No, there is a lot of activity.

Again, anytime you're in a weak economy, there is more activity than the norm.

But certainly not inconsistent with our expectations.

Okay.

And then when you are talking about volumes bottoming both on international, which got worse this quarter sequentially, and domestic, which kind of led up a little bit, what gets you confident that we are seeing that bottom?

Are you getting a better result in March here as we move into the fourth quarter for you guys?

Or is there something out there in terms of business trends from customers' activity that they are talking about that that gets you that level of confidence?

Because it feels like every time we've tried to call a bottom in this economy, that bottom tends to fall out a bit.

This is Alan; I'll start.

I am not -- when I was referring to the bottom before, I was talking about our international priority.

We do believe that quarter-to-quarter sequentially, we are going to see improvement in the second calendar quarter here in 2009 from what we've been seeing, in terms of the big, deep red numbers.

Whether it will be actually positive or not in the second quarter remains to be seen.

But by the end of this calendar year, sequentially -- not year-over-year, but sequentially -- we believe it will be improving.

One of the things that I might comment on that is that during the fourth calendar quarter, what happened was basically a hard down by a lot of people in terms of their purchases.

And so you had a huge spike in inventory, and the inventory-to-sales ratio went up to levels that hadn't been seen in years.

Now, the low replenishment levels that have been going on are not sustainable, if you assume that the economy is not going to continue to contract.

And at some point, you have to begin the reorder cycle.

And we track this very carefully.

We have a great economist in Gene Huang, who is sitting in the room here with me and pull my ear if I say anything wrong.

And when you get towards the latter part of this year, you will have to have some increase in the order cycle, if you don't have a decline in the GDP.

And we do not anticipate that there will be a significant further decline in GDP for calendar year 2009.

It will definitely be weak, probably for the year be a down year in terms of GDP coming into 2010, perhaps with lower growth.

So that is the basis on which we make the comments, because the inventory-to-sales ratios, the inventories are now being bled off and they will have to be restocked beginning later in the year if the economy stays even at these levels.

Morgan Stanley, William Greene.

I'm wondering if you can comment at all on the productivity metrics; you talked about having some metrics here improving.

How about man hours?

How much did those decline in the third quarter?

And is that the right metric we should be thinking about when you talk about productivity?

I guess we can go around the table a little bit.

Obviously each segment is different.

At Freight and Express, part of the big leverage that we have is being able to reduce hours across the board.

And of course at Ground, where we have volume growth, we are getting great productivity out of our model.

So let me turn it over to Dave Rebholz, who hasn't had a chance to talk about how great his business is yet, and let him address that first.

Well, in anticipation of the weaker economy, we contracted our normal expansion of our contract routes.

Contractors, of course, hire their own employees as business expands or if they need to diminish the hours, they diminish them.

But the equivalent value of the productivity with slower growth rates still came in at about 2.5%, 2.6%.

So we achieved real productivity on the basis of the volumes and our settlement costs as it relates to our contractors.

And at Express, how did the hours change there?

Yes, obviously, we reduced our hours a lot, and a lot of attrition and so forth.

So we've actually consolidated our operations.

Our routes have been consolidated, so we've added one or two routes together in many of our operations.

So our volumes have been down, and our productivity has actually been up, and we are looking forward to the same kind of improvement in productivity in FY '10.

Sorry -- just to be clear, you are saying the pounds flown are down but the hours worked are down more?

Well, the pounds flown are down as well.

They are 6% down.

But the productivity in my courier workforce, we've consolidated routes, here in the United States primarily, but all around the world.

So our volumes are down and our productivity is up.

Okay.

And then the Postal Service has been struggling, as we know.

Is there any chance you think they come back and ask to renegotiate the contract you guys have?

Well, we talk with the post office every month.

Lately, it has been more frequent than that.

And all I can tell you is that they are very pleased with our service and the performance that we are providing in that service agreement.

And I would say right now we don't see anything going forward like that.

I just want to add one thing to this question and it is iterative from what I mentioned earlier, but important.

We are not reducing our service levels whatsoever.

In fact, we continue to improve them.

And we are not reducing any coverages in any of our network as we do this.

So that is important for you to know, because some of our competitors in fact are doing that in various segments.

We are not.

Chris Ceraso, Credit Suisse.

Thanks.

Good morning.

A couple of items.

There was a mention in the press release about costs related to consolidation in the regional offices in freight and some severance charges.

Are these kind of one-time in nature and can you quantify the magnitude of those costs?

Yes, this is Doug.

At the end of calendar 4, we actually closed our San Jose General office and we combined our two regional operating companies.

So the general office and headquarters for what was previously our FedEx Freight West operations was ceased to exist and was combined into our operation headquartered in Harrison.

So basically, that was it.

Plus we had some headcount reductions that there was severance cost for.

So the reorganization into a single network, the shutdown of our general office in San Jose and the headcount reductions and the severance according to that was all part of that.

And I would mention to you we continue to manage our resources to our volumes and for Q3, we actually had our decline in FTEs roughly equal to our decline in average daily shipments.

So we've managed this very well.

Gary Chase, Barclays Capital.

Good morning, everybody.

Just wanted to see if we could get a little more color.

Obviously, you clarified on international priority that you think things are stabilizing.

Can you give us a sense of where you think the domestic trend is?

And specifically, I am wondering for maybe Mike, DHL, it is hard to know exactly when the volume would have spilled off DHL and to you and others, but they officially were out on January 30, which only left you with a month of time in the quarter.

Should we not see additional contribution from DHL over the span of the next quarter versus what we saw during this quarter?

Well, it is important to understand that we began planning for this departure by DHL almost nine months ago.

It became pretty clear they were going to continue to struggle, and while they were negotiating with our primary competitor on line-haul agreements, we were planning for their departure.

So we had quite a head start in that regard, and we saw volume begin to come on shortly after we initiated our plan.

So you've seen an increase in volume coming from DHL throughout our planning horizon.

So this has not been a one month or one quarter of issue.

This volume has come in over time.

And the bulk of the volume that you are going to see certainly is there already.

Now, will there be some accounts that say, well, gee, I went with one competitor versus the other, and now that I've got a little more time, I'll go out and put a formal RFQ in place?

Certainly that will happen.

There may be some movement in that regard.

But again, we are very pleased with our performance, and I think it is safe to say that the bulk of the volume has entered an alternative network.

And do you see the same kind of volume trends domestically, where you think things are bottoming out, as what you referenced in the IP market?

Well, I think Alan has already commented on the sequential GDP forecast that we have, which would suggest that it will although be difficult in calendar '09, will continue to improve.

And if that is the case, then we do believe that we've probably seen the worst.

It is difficult to say exactly what is happening because clearly the DHL volume is masking a lot of the underlying trends.

And while we believe we've got a pretty good handle on that, it is a little more difficult as a result of that.

But we are pretty pleased with where we sit right now on the domestic express side, relative to the market as a whole.

Obviously, we are not pleased with the performance overall, but relative to the market, we are very pleased with our performance.

Ed Wolfe, Wolfe Research.

I know you don't break out domestic versus international margins, but directionally, does it make sense that since the international margins have had better margins and they need better margins because there is more fixed costs, that they are probably at lower margins right now than the domestic?

I can tell you that the opportunity for us to improve dramatically our margins comes from international, so your premise is probably correct.

Ken Hoexter, Merrill Lynch.

Good morning.

In the press release, you mentioned a potential impairment coming up in the fourth quarter.

Can you talk about that?

And then similarly on that subject, Alan, I think you mentioned on the CapEx, as you look forward there were a lot of planes coming on, some 577, [77s].

Is there any move to or do you have the capability to delay any of that, or is that not something you want to do?

Let me take the second one first.

Don't want to do it because those are great pieces of equipment with high productivity, great leverage and high ROIC.

So we don't want to, and hopefully we won't have to.

But yes, we can.

As to impairments, obviously, the weak global economic conditions have had a negative impact on our overall earnings and the profitability of our reporting units and our market cap has been reduced.

So there is an increased risk there that we could record non-cash impairment losses on goodwill, and we are in our annual study of that.

And we will just have to go through that.

But there is certainly a higher risk of that than there had been previously.

David Campbell, Thompson, Davis.

I wanted to know of the status of the 757 replacement program.

Is that still a high priority for you in reducing fuel consumption?

Hi, David.

This is Dave Bronczek.

We are very pleased with our 757 program.

We are getting one a month.

We are replacing 727s as quickly as we can, and they are flying with very, very high reliability.

We are very pleased.

Thank you for that question.

And it appears that is all the time we have for questions.

Mr.

Foster, I will turn the call back over to you.

Thank you for your participation on the FedEx Corporation third-quarter earnings conference call.

Please feel free to call anyone on the investor relations team if you have any additional questions.

Thanks again.

Bye.

That does conclude today's conference call.

Once again, thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.