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Shipping News FedEx Announces Voluntary Early Retirement and Severance Programs; Annual Savings Expected to be $150-$190 Million in Fiscal 2005 and Beyond
June 2, 2003
MEMPHIS, TN—FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) today announced that its largest operating unit, FedEx Express, will offer voluntary early retirement and severance programs during fiscal 2004 to continue resizing the FedEx Express U.S. organization and improving profitability. The first program will offer a voluntary early retirement option with an enhanced pension package to certain groups of employees age 50 or older. The second program will offer voluntary severance incentives to eligible employees. Both programs are limited to salaried staff employees at FedEx Express. "In recent years, FedEx has pursued a strategy to expand and diversify its portfolio of services to include time-definite global express, small package ground and heavy freight services," said Frederick W. Smith, chairman, president and CEO. "This strategy has enabled the company to perform well during these challenging economic times by growing our revenue 10% and earnings per share by 17% for the first nine months of fiscal year 2003. By operating our networks independently, we have the flexibility to expand or contract each network as customer demand or business conditions dictate. While FedEx Express international, FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight services are growing at impressive rates, the FedEx Express U.S. domestic growth rates have declined in recent periods." "Over the past few years, we have taken many steps to bring our expense growth in line with revenue growth at FedEx Express while maintaining our industry-leading service levels," said David J. Bronczek, president and CEO of FedEx Express. "We have significantly decreased capital expenditures by reducing aircraft orders, consolidating facilities and discontinuing low-value programs. The voluntary early retirement and severance programs are yet another step in this on-going process of reducing our cost structure in order to increase our competitiveness, meet the future needs of our employees and provide the expected financial returns for our shareholders." With annual revenues of $22 billion, FedEx Corp. is the premier global provider of transportation, e-commerce and supply chain management services. The company offers integrated business solutions through a network of subsidiaries operating independently, including: FedEx Express, the world's largest express transportation company; FedEx Ground, North America's second largest provider of small-package ground delivery service; FedEx Freight, the largest U.S. provider of regional less-than-truckload freight services; FedEx Custom Critical, North America's largest provider of expedited time-critical shipments; and FedEx Trade Networks, a provider of customs clearance, international freight forwarding and trade facilitation. FedEx ranked highest in J. D. Power and Associates 2002 Small Package Delivery Service Business Customer Satisfaction Study(SM) in the categories of air, ground and international delivery services. |
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