More Deals Like Chef Boyardee May Be on the Menu
Welcome to CFO Briefing, a newsletter devoted to corporate finance and what leaders need to know. This week, I take a closer look at the outlook for divestitures and spinoffs and chat with UPS CFO Brian Dykes.
But first, here are some other stories that caught my eye:
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
UPS surcharge updates impact fuel fees, bulky packages and more
This story was originally published on Supply Chain Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Supply Chain Dive newsletter. UPS has rolled out a barrage of surcharge changes since May that could introduce further pricing pressure for shippers. The carrier has hiked its fuel fee calculations, added a new international levy and tweaked the list of ZIP codes in which delivery area surcharges apply, among other adjustments. Updates to how fees on bulky packages are calculated will take effect Aug. 17. "UPS rate updates help to support ongoing expansion and capability enhancements as we strive to maintain the high service levels you expect from UPS," the company said on its website. Surcharge What's changing Effective date International Fuel Surcharge Fuel surcharge calculations increased for ground and air imports and exports. May 12 Domestic Fuel Surcharge Fuel surcharge calculations increased for ground, air and Ground Saver packages. May 26 Delivery Area Surcharge List of ZIP codes the fee applies to changed. June 1 International Collect on Delivery Fee The new $12 fee is charged to the U.S. consignee, unless duties and taxes are billed to a UPS account or paid electronically prior to delivery. June 2 Additional Handling and Large Package Surcharges Higher fees for Zone 7 and above shipments began applying. June 2 Remote Area Surcharge Ground Saver deliveries now have this fee applied to ZIP codes deemed as remote areas in the contiguous U.S. June 2 Domestic Large Package Surcharge No longer calculated based on length plus girth. Instead, packages weighing over 110 pounds or with a size greater than 17,280 cubic inches will be subject to the fee. Aug. 17 Domestic Additional Handling Charge No longer calculated based on length plus girth. Instead, packages with a size greater than 8,640 cubic inches will be subject to the fee. Aug. 17 Source: UPS UPS and rival FedEx have accelerated the frequency of surcharge changes over the past few years in a bid to boost profitability, experts have told Supply Chain Dive. Although discounts offered by the delivery giants are softening the blow, the fee hikes are contributing to customers' higher shipping expenses. "You keep getting these changes forced into this network, and you haven't budgeted for it, along with all of the other stuff you're dealing with as a shipper, and it is difficult," said Adi Karamcheti, a senior consultant of professional services at Shipware. Fuel surcharges have been a particular thorn in shippers' side recently, with several increases levied since 2024. UPS increased its fuel surcharge calculations for domestic shipments by 100 basis points on May 26. The carrier adjusts the index-based fees weekly based on average diesel fuel and jet fuel prices. Those prices determine the surcharge rate UPS applies for deliveries. This means if the diesel fuel index's price per gallon is $3.20, a UPS Ground or Ground Saver delivery now incurs an 18.75% fee instead of a 17.75% markup under previous calculations. The move comes less than three months after UPS increased its domestic fuel surcharge calculations by 50 basis points. Beyond fuel prices, UPS customers need to keep up with upcoming changes to how large package and additional handling fees are calculated. Now those surcharges consider a package's cubic inch total rather than a combination of length and girth. Shippers with bulkier items, like patio furniture, aftermarket car parts or recreational equipment, should pay extra attention to how the new calculations will influence what charges apply and when, said Gene Pawlak, who is also a senior consultant of professional services at Shipware. Shippers have ways to blunt the impact of rate and fee hikes, according to a post on the website of Reveel, a parcel spend management provider. This includes focusing contract negotiations on the surcharges they are most heavily exposed to, minimizing empty space when packaging products and leveraging warehouses closest to end customers. Recommended Reading Parcel delivery rates: What 2025 could bring FedEx, UPS shippers Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
7 hours ago
- TechCrunch
Figure AI CEO skips live demo, sidesteps BMW deal questions on stage at tech conference
Brett Adcock, co-founder and CEO of the humanoid robotics startup Figure AI, made a rare public appearance at the Bloomberg Tech conference on Thursday. Figure has recently been the subject of a couple of news articles that questioned its progress with marquee customer BMW. Figure objected so strenuously to at least one of these reports that Adcock publicly threatened to sue the publication. When asked about the skepticism surrounding the BMW relationship and whether it is a pilot or has commercial value to the company, Adcock replied with an explanation of the technical benefit of having robots on a factory floor but didn't provide specifics about the contractual relationship with BMW. 'We get a lot of value, and it's really important that we need to figure out how to run robots every day. We get to see how well they perform. We get to track all the metrics,' he said. Two months ago, Figure also published a YouTube video showing a couple of its robots working in a BMW factory. Adcock did, however, say that Figure AI has signed a contract with a second, unnamed customer for initial deployment, a customer that Bloomberg has reported to be UPS. Figure AI has drawn attention for making claims that its AI-powered robots possess human-like fine motor skills and can manipulate objects with precision. Despite releasing numerous videos of its robots at work, the company hasn't done a live demonstration of the humanoids. The interviewer, Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow, pointed out that while two other robotics companies, Agility Robotics and Boston Dynamics, showcased their robots at the conference, Figure AI did not. 'It kind of goes back to our whole philosophy around we don't go to a lot of events,' said Adcock. 'I think it's a giant waste of time. To be frank, I have to bring a team here to bring robots here. They could be at the office,' he said, adding that the company is showcasing the robots in videos. Adcock confirmed that Figure AI is expecting to manufacture and deploy roughly 100,000 units within four years. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW The skepticism about Figure's commercial relationship comes amid the company's attempts to raise a $1.5 billion round at a $39.5 billion valuation, sources told Bloomberg, a fifteenfold increase from the $2.6 billion valuation it achieved in February 2024. TechCrunch reported in April that Figure AI has been issuing cease-and-desist letters to secondary market brokers, demanding they stop marketing its shares because they are not authorized to do so.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
Is Amazon Paying $4 Billion to Break Up With UPS?
Amazon is planning to spend up to $4 billion to enhance its ability to deliver in rural areas. The e-commerce giant has forged a partnership with FedEx on the delivery front. United Parcel Service is dramatically reducing its relationship with Amazon. 10 stocks we like better than Amazon › Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an online retail powerhouse, selling and delivering its own products and acting as a middleman for other retailers. The company's delivery trucks are ubiquitous in some areas of the country. But it has even bigger aspirations when it comes to getting products to customers. So why did United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) decide to stop handling as many Amazon deliveries? As with any good breakup drama, the story between Amazon and UPS, as United Parcel Service is called for short, is hard to call. UPS says that the Amazon business it was doing was high volume, but low margin. That meant that it didn't add enough to the bottom line to make it worth the top-line benefit. UPS says it plans to step away from half of the business it does with Amazon over the next couple of years. That effort is in keeping with UPS' goal of improving the quality of its business. But management highlighted that it will still work with Amazon on some things. Notably, Amazon is increasingly good at delivering its own wares, but it doesn't have a strong handle on returns. With a large retail store network, UPS can still provide return services to Amazon at an attractive return for UPS shareholders. So the relationship isn't dead -- it's just different. Or, you could say, they will still be friends. UPS' decision to put limits on its relationship with Amazon is a problem for Amazon. While it is true that Amazon has been growing its distribution capabilities, it now has to step up more quickly than it might have planned. To that end, Amazon recently announced that it was making a capital investment of up to $4 billion to enhance its ability to make rural deliveries. And it inked a deal with UPS' peer FedEx (NYSE: FDX), where that carrier will handle larger packages for Amazon. The market saw all of this as a win for FedEx and a loss for UPS. For Amazon, it wasn't too big a deal, noting that the stock is widely adored on Wall Street right now. While Amazon's stock is about 15% below its all-time high, its price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios are both above their five-year averages. And they are both fairly lofty on an absolute basis, as well. Still, it looks a little like Amazon is scrambling to take on the distribution services that UPS is willingly giving up. So what about UPS? The company's stock has lost more than half of its value since hitting a peak in 2022. In fact, it made the Amazon announcement just as it appeared it was getting its business back on track following a period of weakness that led to a corporate overhaul. Indeed, revenue had started to grow and margins appeared to have stabilized. Moving away from low-value Amazon business was a preemptive move made at a time when UPS had shifted from business weakness to business strength. In other words, UPS is being proactive because it sees the writing on the wall. Its Amazon business was going to keep shrinking anyway, so why not get ahead of it? The costs Amazon is incurring to make up for the loss of UPS as a delivery service is a sign that this was a big deal. But it will be a bigger deal for Amazon than UPS, since UPS was clear that the business wasn't very profitable. In fact, UPS could end up the big winner if the ability to slim down allows it to further improve its margins, even if the top line of its income statement shrinks along the way. Wall Street loves Amazon, and perhaps for good reason. But the stock is trading with a premium price tag. UPS, which could actually end up being the big winner in its breakup with Amazon, is deeply unloved. Notably, its price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios are well below their five-year averages. The stock's dividend yield, meanwhile, is historically high at around 6.7%. There's no question that UPS has extended the length of its turnaround by breaking up with Amazon. But the near-term pain could be exactly what it needs to rise up again. Contrarian investors, dividend investors, and value investors should all be doing a deep dive into UPS today with the idea of adding this unloved delivery service to their portfolios. Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $668,538!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $869,841!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 789% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and FedEx. The Motley Fool recommends United Parcel Service. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is Amazon Paying $4 Billion to Break Up With UPS? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
