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Less Amazon, more profit: UPS raises forecast after cutting millions of lower-yield deliveries

28 July 2026 at 13:18
A UPS truck makes its way through downtown Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Handling fewer packages for Amazon is boosting the financial outlook for UPS, as CEO Carol TomΓ© said Tuesday that the delivery giant has successfully completed its planned volume pullback and is pivoting toward higher-margin shipments.

β€œI want to thank all UPSers for their extraordinary work over the past 18 months as we successfully completed our Amazon glide-down and related network reconfiguration initiatives as designed,” TomΓ© said in the company’s second quarter earnings release.

The β€œglide-down” caps an 18-month UPS strategy initiated in early 2025 to scale back low-margin e-commerce shipments for Amazon. During the pandemic peak, Amazon generated over 13% of UPS’s total revenue, but executives repeatedly pointed to that low-yielding volume as β€œextraordinarily dilutive” to profit margins.

Last year, TomΓ© addressed UPS’s 30-year relationship with Amazon, saying, β€œThey are our largest customer, but they’re not our most profitable customer.”

Speaking on CNBC on Tuesday, TomΓ© confirmed that Amazon now accounts for roughly 9% of UPS’s business, marking the completion of the planned pullback.

Asked about Amazon’s growing footprint as a direct logistics rival through Amazon Shipping, TomΓ© dismissed concerns that the e-commerce giant was poaching core customers, drawing a sharp distinction between network strengths.

While Amazon thrives in lightweight, short-distance urban deliveries, TomΓ© emphasized that UPS maintains an edge across β€œevery other place” β€” from complex B2B routes to time-sensitive cold chain logistics. By shedding roughly 2 million lower-margin Amazon packages per day, UPS says it freed up critical capacity across its ground and air networks.

UPS posted second-quarter revenue of $22.8 billion β€” a 7.6% increase year-over-year that topped Wall Street estimates. The courier raised its full-year 2026 revenue forecast to approximately $91.2 billion (up from $89.7 billion).

Despite the earnings beat and raised guidance, UPS shares dropped nearly 5% in early trading as investors weighed transformation costs and broader consumer spending concerns.

Amazon reports its second-quarter earnings on Thursday.

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