The 1 Key Number You Should Focus On at UPS

Sometimes the media attention distracts from the key determinant of a stock's earnings. That's arguably the case with United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) and FedEx (NYSE: FDX) right now. While the so-called Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) threat attracts attention, the reality is that there's more than enough growth in e-commerce to go around -- and the key to prospects at UPS and FedEx isn't so much e-commerce volume growth, it's ensuring profitable e-commerce delivery growth. In this line of thought let's take a look at UPS' recent earnings and the key figure investors should be gleaning from it.

A quick look a chart of e-commerce growth in the U.S. shows it continues to grow at a mid-teens rate, but still only represents around 10% of retail sales. In other words, the trend remains strong, and it looks like there is a long way to run. Amazon is obviously going to be a big part of that, but it's probably not as important to FedEx and UPS as is often understood.

Image source: Getty Images.

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Source Fool.com