What's going on?

UPS reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Tuesday, and the American logistics company is just about ready to deliver tens of thousands of workers to a better tomorrow.

What does this mean?

The boom in deliveries still seems to be going strong in the wake of the various lockdowns, and UPS hasn�t let the day go unseized: the company�s been upping its prices, as well as shifting its focus to its more profitable business customers. And while rival FedEx admitted last month that it�s struggling to find drivers, UPS � which offers the highest wages in the industry � has remained relatively unscathed by the labor shortages. All that might explain why the company�s profit was up by a better-than-expected 23% compared to the same time last year, and why investors sent its shares up 7%.

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: UPS is planning its Christmas shopping.
UPS is confident the good news will keep coming: the company upped its profit forecast for this quarter. In fact, it�s expecting the all-important festive season to be so busy that it�s planning to hire 100,000 more workers to meet increased holiday demand (tweet this). No surprises, then, that it just upped its full-year spending plan too�

Zooming out: Buy now, grow later.
Buy-now-pay-later companies are doing equally well out of the ecommerce boom, which might be why Square and PayPal recently got in on the action by buying Afterpay and Paidy respectively. And it was Stripe�s turn on Tuesday, announcing that it�d struck a deal to partner with Sweden�s Klarna. It should be a win-win: it�ll allow Stripe � Silicon Valley�s most valuable private company � to boost its sales by offering online merchants more flexible ways of taking payments, and Klarna to exponentially increase the number of sellers it can reach.