Small businesses showed that they’re still in the game in the first quarter, pushing UPS to surging revenues. The growth in average daily volume for small and midsized U.S. businesses reached an all-time high. Dave Sebastian reports for the Wall Street Journal:
United Parcel Service Inc. said its revenue rose in the latest quarter, a period that saw mounting supply-chain woes world-wide, as small and midsize businesses drove gains in the U.S.
Businesses faced disruptions in the first three months of the year as the extreme Texas freeze and port backlogs compounded pandemic-driven problems. The package-delivery giant on Tuesday posted revenue of $22.91 billion, up 27% from a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street expectations.
U.S. small and midsize businesses’ average daily volume growth reached an all-time high of about 36%, outpacing larger customers’ growth rate for the third consecutive quarter, Chief Executive Carol Tomé said. Ms. Tomé, a former Home Depot Inc. finance chief and longtime UPS board member, is focusing on cutting costs and reining in spending while raising shipping rates and getting more business from higher-margin customers like smaller businesses and the healthcare industry.
“Our focus on SMB and healthcare does not take away our desire to grow our large enterprise accounts, which are many large retailers,” Ms. Tomé said on a conference call Tuesday.
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