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UPS shares have surrendered nearly a third of their value over the past five years.
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Revenue growth has failed to top 3% in any of the past four years, but analysts see the bottom line growing again in 2026.
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If it can keep its streak of annual dividend increases as well as its turnaround strategy going, UPS can beat the market in the next five years.
The past five years have been challenging for United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) investors. Shares of the package delivery giant have plummeted 32% in that time. Is the outlook brighter if we look out to the next five years? It would be hard not to be.
Recent momentum is promising. UPS has risen 9% through the first six trading days of 2026, climbing 32% since bottoming out three months ago. At least four analysts boosted their price targets on the stock just last week. With a juicy dividend yield of 6.1%, UPS may offer a potent combination of capital gains alongside a hefty quarterly distribution.
Turnaround stories are never easy and clean, and a lot can happen with UPS. But let’s start by taking a look back at the past five years before turning our attention to the future.
UPS was initially an early leader in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Folks turned to e-commerce and home delivery, and UPS was one of many transportation stocks to benefit. Revenue rose in the mid-teens for UPS in 2020 and 2021, following a decade of steady but uninspiring positive single-digit top-line growth.
Then the wheels started to come off, metaphorically speaking. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) outgrew its dependency on UPS, so the two mutually agreed to a lighter load of the online retailer’s growing shipping volume. Its SurePost program with the United States Postal Service for last-mile delivery also came undone at the end of 2024. It averted a 2023 strike by the UPS Teamsters union, but the subsequent five-year agreement locks in escalating labor costs annually through 2028. Throw in the tariff-saddled landscape of 2025 — and the end of the U.S. de minimis exemption that ended duty-free status for low-value imports late last year — and it’s been a rough few years for UPS.
The scoreboard, as all of these events unfolded, is telling. UPS’s revenue growth decelerated to 3% in 2022, and things only got worse after that. Revenue would decline 9% in 2023 and clock in flat in 2024, and by the time the numbers are in for last year it’s expected to be a 3% top-line slide.
Around the time its shares were bottoming out in the fall, UPS warned of a 13% decline in shipping volume during the seasonally spiked fourth quarter. That outlook was upgraded to a relatively better 11% as the holiday season played out.
