Dive Brief:
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UPDATE: FedEx Wednesday announced that it is acquiring international e-commerce company St. Peterburg, FL-based Bongo International. FedEx said Tuesday that it is buying Pittsburgh-based Genco, a supply-chain management company that boasts expertise in “reverse logistics,” or product returns.
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UPDATE: Bongo International will become a subsidiary of FedEx. The company provides tax and duty fee calculations, export compliance management services, currency conversions, and other international e-commerce logistics.
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No terms of the Genco deal were released, although analyst Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group Inc., estimated to Bloomberg that FedEx paid $2 billion. The company said that Genco will retain its CEO. FedEx said that Genco has $1.6 billion in annual sales and manages 600 million product returns annually.
Dive Insight:
E-commerce has been growing for a while now, and seems to be only booming as more brick-and-mortar retailers get in the game. UPDATE: That makes these moves by FedEx smart ones. Especially, in the case of Genco, says analyst Satish Jindel, if it allows Genco to continue to run itself.
“There’s a good management team in place,” Jindel told Bloomberg. “As long as they leave them alone and let them run themselves, like they’ve done with FedEx Ground, it should work out well.”
