DHL claims to have expanded its share of the time-definite international express market by 2%-3%compared with last year, and to have avoided the problem reported by other operators of customers ‘
down-trading’ from express to deferred products.The company yesterday reported that its time-definite international (TDI) customers sent 9.1%more shipments per day in the company’s second quarter to 30 June, compared with the previous year,with weight per shipment also rising by more than 4%. Daily shipment volumes also rose in itstime-definite domestic business, increasing by 8.5% compared with the second quarter of 2011, withsimilar figures reported for its half-year.
Responding to questions yesterday from investors at Deutsche Post DHL’s second-quarter resultsconference, CFO Larry Rosen said: “We estimate that market growth is in the mid-single-digit range.So our market share gain is in the 2%-3% range.”
In response to a question about down-trading, he said: “Certainly, down-trading is somethingthat certain other industry participants may have been experiencing, but we are certainly not. Weare very happy with the 9.1% TDI growth we achieved in the second quarter, following a similarthing in the first quarter.”
Rosen said this was probably due to two factors: “Firstly we have our very extensive globalnetwork, especially in the emerging markets, which I think is one thing that differentiates us fromour competitors. Also, our focus on network improvements, for example later pick-ups and earlierdeliveries, has enabled us to achieve market share gains in the TDI business.”
He said DHL had seen some promising TDI growth on “new” lanes. “We are experiencing some veryfast growth, particularly on new lanes between Asia and Africa, and also Latin America. These arenot necessarily the biggest, but they are the fastest-growing,” he observed.
He said one area of the business that had experienced some ‘down-trading’ was in the company’sfreight-forwarding unit, where there had been a noticeable modal shift from air to oceanfreight.
