Handling fewer packages for Amazon is boosting the financial outlook for UPS, as CEO Carol Tomé said Tuesday that the delivery giant has successfully completed its planned volume pullback and is pivoting toward higher-margin shipments.
“I 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,” Tomé said in the company’s second quarter earnings release.
The “glide-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 “extraordinarily dilutive” to profit margins.
Last year, Tomé addressed UPS’s 30-year relationship with Amazon, saying, “They are our largest customer, but they’re not our most profitable customer.”
Speaking on CNBC on Tuesday, Tomé 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, Tomé 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, Tomé emphasized that UPS maintains an edge across “every other place” — 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 — 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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