Freight forwarder FedEx Corp.'s results for the fiscal third quarter ended Feb. 29 saw revenues increase by 2.9% year over year but included a 22.7% plunge in EBITDA. Panjiva's analysis of company data shows that the firm's freight division saw a 5.3% year-over-year slide in volumes in the fiscal third quarter, making for a third straight quarter of declines. In terms of number of shipments, it was the worst performance since the same quarter of 2017.

The firm cited the impact of coronavirus disruptions in its quarterly results already. The loss of Amazon as a customer was also likely a major drag to performance. The latter comes at a bad time in terms of the lost opportunity for volume growth with the rise of delivery shopping linked to the coronavirus outbreak.

More broadly, the company has suspended earnings guidance due to coronavirus-related uncertainties, a similar move to that carried out by DSV Panalpina as discussed in Panjiva's research of March 18.

FedEx's EBITDA margin was better than expected, S&P Global Market Intelligence data shows, but still fell to 8.0% from 10.8% a year earlier. The company has said that in order to "mitigate these near-term headwinds and position the company for future earnings growth, we are attacking costs throughout the company."

The impact of coronavirus-related disruptions has been seen in a drop in exports from China. Panjiva's data shows that U.S. seaborne imports linked to FedEx from Chinese ports fell by 23.9% year over year in February.

There is likely to be a more widespread disruption in March and beyond given the global nature of coronavirus-related distancing policies and knock-on effect on manufacturing and supply chains.

China accounted for 59.5% of FedEx's U.S. seaborne business in 2019. Imports from Asia excluding China represented 22.9% and surged 41.2% higher in February, while shipments from Europe accounted for just 6.7% but slid 26.1% lower in February.

Christopher Rogers is a senior researcher at Panjiva, which is a business line of S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. This content does not constitute investment advice, and the views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Links are current at the time of publication. S&P Global Market Intelligence is not responsible if those links are unavailable later.