FedEx Sees 13% Shipment Growth in 2012 Holiday Season

FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) is looking for the busiest holiday season yet. In a press release this morning the shipping giant said that Monday, December 10, likely will be its busiest shipping day ever. To quantify this, it sees processing some 19 million shipments through entire network with the gains being driven by e-commerce. FedEx also is adding some 20,000 “seasonal personnel” to accommodate the shipment growth.

As far as how this compares to 2011, that would be a gain of 10% as one of the most lucrative days of the year for retail companies. Last year this Green Monday was said to show that U.S. consumers spent $1.1 billion on that day alone.

And for the total holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, FedEx is now looking for some 280 million shipments to move through its entire network. FedEx is effectively projecting growth of 13% over the 2011 levels, when 247 million shipments were processed.

As a reminder, if FedEx is calling for this sort of growth, then you can count on some of the same coming from rival United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS). UPS handles the Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) shipments.

So far the market is yawning at the news as FedEx shares are down 0.3% at $91.80 and UPS shares are down 0.4% at $72.00.

It will be interesting to see what the sales expectations are from other key holiday players. If volume growth in shipments is really another 13% this holiday season, then online is continuing to cannibalize in-store retail spending.

JON C. OGG