Expeditors Q1 Earnings & Revenues Top Estimates, Improves Y/Y

Expeditors International of Washington’s EXPD first-quarter 2025 earnings of $1.47 per share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.30. The bottom line increased 26% year over year, owing to strong growth in air tonnage and ocean volumes. Total revenues of $2.66 billion beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.42 billion and increased 20.8% year over year.

Bradley S. Powell, senior vice president and chief financial officer, stated, “During the quarter, we carefully boosted headcount in certain areas to support growth in business activity, primarily in operations and sales, as well as our critical information systems. But we were again careful not to increase headcount ahead of our ability to grow tonnage and volumes and increase profitability, growing pre-tax operating income by 24% from a year ago. Our measure of operating efficiency (operating income as a percentage of revenue less directly related cost of transportation and other expenses) was in line with our 30% target.”

Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. Quote

Airfreight tonnage and ocean container volume increased 9% and 8%, respectively, year over year. Operating income increased 24% year over year to $265.85 million. Total operating expenses increased 20.5% year over year to $2.40 billion.

Airfreight Services revenues increased 18.7% year over year to $901.76 million in the first quarter of 2025. Ocean freight and ocean services revenues surged 36.9% year over year to $781.66 million. Customs Brokerage and other services revenues increased 12.1% year over year to $982.99 million.

During the first quarter of 2025, EXPD repurchased 1.5 million shares at an average price of $117.29 per share.

EXPD exited the first quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $1.32 billion compared with $1.15 billion at the prior-quarter end.

Currently, Expeditors carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

We note that another player from the broader Zacks Transportation sector, GXO Logistics GXO, will report its first-quarter earnings numbers tomorrow. (See the Zacks Earnings Calendar to stay ahead of market-making news.)

GXO Logistics, a pure-play contract logistics provider, is headquartered in Greenwich, CT.  GXO currently has an Earnings ESP of +1.18% and a Zacks Rank of 3. The company is slated to report first-quarter 2025 results on May 7.

Increased e-commerce, automation and outsourcing are likely to aid the company’s results. Cost-cutting efforts are also likely to have boosted the bottom-line performance of GXO. The company beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the last four quarters, matched estimates once and missed once, with the average beat being 1.04%.

Q1 Performances of Other Transportation Companies

United Airlines

United Airlines’ UAL first-quarter 2025 earnings per share (excluding 25 cents from non-recurring items) of 91 cents surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 75 cents. In the year-ago quarter, the Chicago-based airline reported a loss of 15 cents per share. 

Operating revenues of $13.21 billion fell marginally short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $13.22 billion. The top line increased 5.4% year over year despite the tariff-induced slowdown in domestic air travel demand. Passenger revenues (which accounted for 89.7% of the top line) rose 4.8% to $11.9 billion. UAL flights transported 40,806 passengers in the first quarter, up 3.8% year over year.

Delta Air Lines

Delta Air LinesDAL reported first-quarter 2025 earnings (excluding 9 cents from non-recurring items) of 46 cents per share, which surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 40 cents. Earnings increased 2.2% on a year-over-year basis due to low fuel costs.

Revenues in the March-end quarter were $14.04 billion, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $13.81 billion and increasing 2.1% on a year-over-year basis. Adjusted operating revenues (excluding third-party refinery sales) rose 3.3% year over year to $13 billion.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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