저자: JohnSmith · 외국인
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FedEx Freight(FDXF) 분사 상장 후 독립 경영 효과를 강조. LTL 최대 사업자로서 네트워크·속도·신뢰성 우위를 주장하고, 2029년 영업이익률 15% 목표를 제시. 자율주행 간선 트럭 테스트 진행 중이며 픽업·배송 기사는 대체 불가라고 언급. 진행자 Cramer는 트러스트 보유 및 긍정적 평가.
다듬은 글
Today the long-awaited breakup of FedEx finally arrived as FedEx Freight, their former less-than-truckload business, began regular way trading on the New York Stock Exchange. That's under the ticker, write this down, FDXF. I've said repeatedly that I like this move for FedEx, one of the newest positions in my charitable trust.
But what do we do with the spin-off, the largest less-than-truckload, that's called LTL, carrier in North America? Now we have spent years mired in a prolonged freight recession. But in recent months, the whole group's been making a nice move higher. So for FedEx shareholders who now find themselves holding some FedEx Freight, what do you do with it?
Let's take our questions straight to the source. That's John Smith, the president CEO of FedEx Freight, so we can get a better read on the situation. Mr. Smith, that's on the new day and welcome to Mad Money. Well, thanks for having me on the show, Jim. Well, I'm so glad you're here, John. First, maybe you can tell us what it means to be unlocked.
Uh I you know, we think the world of FedEx. I know everyone does, but it's also good if you're going to run an independent company to be free of FedEx. So what do you see happening? Well, absolutely. And being part of a $90 billion company you're about 9 billion of that, you know, there's certain things that get prioritized before the 9 billion.
And the things that we are going to be able to control now, especially from a capital and investment perspective, be able to put it dollars into the LTL company that are LTL specific. And that's going to get us back on and help us leapfrog the competitors out there in the LTL market. So we're super excited about being independent.
Now, there are some good companies. There's Old Dominion has really good margins, and you've got a a couple of companies that are scrappy that we know about. What you would be looking at to be able to measure your performance against say a J.B. Hunt or against some of the other companies that are like an ArcBest that we've all at.
Yeah, that's a great point in this industry, the LTL industry is a strong industry and that's one of the reasons that you know, look at from a value perspective why we did spin this company off to be independent so that we can unlock that value. We we you know, we always watch our competitors. We respect our competitors, but we feel like that we have advantages especially from a network perspective when we're the largest by far and the fastest as well as most reliable.
So when you think about what we're spinning out with and that iconic FedEx name, we are really excited becoming independent. And I don't know. I I think as someone who's used truckers to have priority versus economy. Economy when I'm not doing that well frankly, priority when I am doing well. It's a great opportunity and great I think that's something other guys don't have.
Absolutely and it's a differentiator because it gives the customer choice and we have several customers that use both. Some that use all priority, some use economy, but a great example, we've got customers that ship from B2B, warehouse to warehouse and use economy because they can plan further ahead.
But we've also that same customer will ship priority because when they go to their customer from the warehouse, they want that speed that we give them and that reliability. So we've got customers that use both, some that use only priority, some that use economy. So it does give them a great choice. Okay, so what do you think will we should be looking at as shareholders?
Margin improvement, debt pay down, customer growth, new vertical success. What are Those are some of that I've been focused on to be able to keep track of your progress. I think all of the above. And when you think about back in 2009 when we integrated all the back offices and the sales team into the enterprise, we basically just run it been running this company as an operation.
And so now we have we're getting back control. We've hired an LTL sales force. We have been improving our customer facing technology. All those things that we're doing that we know the website used to take five clicks to get to the freight website within the enterprise and now it's one and it's a lot more useful than it was in the past.
So all those things that are going to to level the playing field and also allow us to leapfrog. We've been working on those very hard for the year. Now we've got several things left to pull leverage out of this company to do and that's why you know over the next 3 years we laid out a plan to be at a certain point in 2029 with a 15% margin.
However, that's not the ceiling and you know, we've got a lot of work to do to get off the TSAs, the transitional service agreements and some of the technology that we need to build to really truly update our systems. Now there were some other things I read that would tell me that you're that it wouldn't work unless you made changes.
The dashboard they have where you would have customers and they would be seeing FedEx stuff and FedEx Freight. They don't need to see FedEx anymore. Obviously, you've got to change their technology. Yeah, not only that but when you we built a ton of new technology but when you're parcel business is 80 billion of the 90 most of that technology spend's going to be in there rightfully so.
Right. And so what we try to do with the LTL company is try to work that technology in there and we just basically made it more complicated and that's what we we're doing right now. We're you know, we're untangling that plus we're leapfrogging cuz we're building two neck new platform type technology that's going to give us the ability to utilize AI and machine learning.
All right. Now I know in in all of your publications, of course you always start with safety first, which is the way it has to be and I was curious to know whether you thought that that self-driving trucks are safe because that maybe some people say that's the future. Can't find as many drivers and like other people just say, "Listen, drivers get tired but they the machines don't." I'm trying to feel whether you think they're safe.
Well, when you think about the two types of drivers in the LTL business, you have a pickup and delivery driver that will never be replaced by an autonomous vehicle. The other the line haul, right now we've been testing that that technology at at FEC and Remainco, we've been running retail business from Dallas to Houston and back, Dallas to El Paso for the last couple of years.
And I'm telling you Jim, that technology's there. It is. We can leave that yard in Dallas and it navigates to the interstate, runs down to Houston, navigates to that facility and 99.9% of the time drivers never touch one thing. Now that truck does have a safety driver in there. So what we're doing, we're looking at that, but what we like about the autonomous um vehicle technology is the other safety technology that they had to develop in order to be autonomous.
And we've got those all on our trucks now, so it's made our company drivers more safe. That's great. Now also you mentioned something that I think people should recognize that I think is a huge advantage for you. There is uh you said that people uh the the first kind of driver, someone who you know drop off, pick up, they're wearing the uniform.
Yes. Which I think we like to see. I think that we are kind of like who's that guy? I don't want the who's that guy in my house, you know what I mean? So it's a big advantage for you. Yeah, and I and all our drivers have uniforms and you will know it's a FedEx driver. And uh I'll tell you when you think about our workforce, we've got the best in the industry.
Our drivers uh have shown that when we compete in the National Truck Driving Championships. Just last year in 2025, we had more than 50% of the total winners just from Freight. And of course we have the 2025 National Grand Champion at Freight. So read that competition, so I got to know more. They should be showing that.
I should be following that more. Now uh profitable growth is your North Star, said twice in the conference call. How do we measure what profitable growth is? Well, I think you know when we talk about where we're sitting today and where we're going to go to 2029 from an operating ratio, we want to be able to grow revenue and take market share, but we also want to improve our operating ratio every year.
And so that margin is really important for us. And one of the ways that we feel really good about that is the verticals that we talked about that we have not been able to sell in due to the fact that we didn't Yes. Really important. have an dedicated LTL sales force to do that. Plus the way we're incenting our sales team is a little different than what we've done in the past.
We're going to to incent them on growth as well as increasing profit by by by the area that they're in control of. So, you know, you got to do both. You can't just grow. You got to You got to grow profitably. So, we're excited. obviously I'm worried I want the company to perform no matter what the environment is, but you do have to deal with the fact things have gotten slightly better as you said in your own handouts, but things aren't necessarily strong yet.
How do you feel about the economy and X FedEx Freight? Well, with our strategy we feel like that we can grow in a down economy. That's why I like And and that's why we feel good about our short, medium, and long-term strategy. We have been watching the truckload market capacity's been going out of there because a lot of the regulatory regulatory break uh you know, the downs that we're we're looking after the illegal CDLs, illegal CDL schools, the cabotage out of Mexico, the non-domicile drivers, all of that has been taking capacity, and normally that will transition to help the LTL business when the truckload capacity is tight.
That's when we get the bigger shipments into the LTL inch. Well, I can tell you after spending a long time since we met personally when when you had your day, we decided for the trust that we're keeping. We think it's a great opportunity. We think that there's so many ways to rationalize. We think you guys are amazing operators, and we want to have some leverage to a better economy, and I think that this can that would be a cherry on top so to speak for what you're doing.
Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much to John Smith, president and CEO of FedEx Freight. We think this is a keeper for those of you who bought FedEx with us. We like it. Mad Money is backing it. Thanks, Neil. Thank you. Coming up, it's T-minus two weeks until a potential SpaceX IPO. So, Cramer's breaking down a key technical component of its arrival for the markets. Next. Don't miss a second ed something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.
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