UPS CEO says Amazon 'reinforced' demand for 24-hour shipping services

UPS CEO David Abney told FOX Business on Thursday that Amazon helped strengthen the 24-hour shipping industry.

“That started and we could see it a few years ago it was going to continue to swing in that direction. Now it’s become a structural change – everybody expects 24 hours. Whether Amazon started it or others started it and Amazon reinforced it – it’s here,” he told Maria Bartiromo.

Abney added that future growth will come from the shipping aspect of the business.

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“It’s shifting to next-day air and next-day ground and it’s coming from second-day and deferred options and it’s moving into our network,” he said. "We happen to have the capacity. We've added 11 new aircraft this year and so when you have a structural change and you have the capacity it just doesn’t work much better than that. So it caused our air volume to surge 30 percent the last quarter which caused our financial improvements that we reported yesterday.”

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UPS reported second-quarter net income of $1.69 billion, or $1.94 per share, compared to $1.49 billion, or $1.71 per share, it reported the prior year.

Revenue rose 3.4 percent to $18.05 billion.