"We do not believe the optimism is yet justified," Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker wrote in a recent note. Those plans helped FedEx report better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results on Dec. 20, sparking a stock rally that offset a swoon in mid-September, when the company retracted financial forecasts issued just three months earlier and blamed a swift pullback by customers. Analysts are skeptical that FedEx can deliver a repeat performance in the fiscal third quarter that ended on Feb. 28, as demand from e-commerce and other sectors remains soft. He expects FedEx to report adjusted earnings of $2.52 per share for the quarter - about 20 cents less than analysts' average estimate complied by Refinitiv IBES. Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill BerkrotOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

---