Katie Schoolov

Amazon is already delivering about half of its own packages in the U.S., according to a Morgan Stanley estimate on Thursday, and will soon pass both United Parcel Service and FedEx in total volume. "Our AlphaWise analysis shows that Amazon Logistics already delivers ~50% of Amazon US volumes, focused on urban areas," Morgan Stanley said. Amazon Logistics is the e-commerce giant's in-house logistics operation. Morgan Stanley said Amazon Logistics "more than doubled its share" of U.S. package volumes from about 20% a year ago and is now shipping at a rate of 2.5 billion per year. For comparison, Morgan Stanley estimates UPS and FedEx have U.S. shipping volumes of 4.7 billion and 3 billion packages per year, respectively."

"We see more of this going forward as our new bottom-up US package model assumes Amazon Logistics US packages grow at a 68% [compound annual growth rate from 2018 to 2022]," Morgan Stanley said. That would put Amazon Logistics at 6.5 billion packages per year by 2022, according to the firm, far exceeding its estimate for UPS at 5 billion packages per year and FedEx at 3.4 billion packages per year. "To us, Amazon Logistics is already-large scale and with a fleet ~1/5 the size of competitors, it speaks to its ability to use density and technology to drive efficiency," Morgan Stanley said.

20% upside?