UPS C-suiters reveal how the company thinks about acquisitions - and hinted that there might be more to come as the package giant doubles down on drones and next-day delivery

• UPS is scaling up its next-day delivery and drone delivery networks - and it's investing $20 billion on automating its facilities.
• In doing that, UPS is looking for new partnerships with companies that are leading the charge in those "mega-trends."
• Scott Price, UPS' chief strategy and transformation officer, said the package giant looks for capability - not capacity - when acquiring a firm. "We are finding partnership very valuable right now," he told Business Insider.
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DAVOS, Switzerland - UPS shook the logistics world when it bought Coyote Logistics, a Chicago-based freight brokerage, for a whopping $1.8 billion in 2015.

But since then, the package giant hasn't made any big-name (or big-dollar) acquisitions - even though the company is investing $20 billion on automating its package sort facilities, and significant funds on its drone delivery expansion.

But UPS hinted that there might be more merger and acquisition activity in coming years.

"So with our API integration, coming up with digital products that we are organically developing, as well as partnerships with leading providers, it will be a combination, and there will be some M&A opportunities," Kevin Warren, UPS' chief marketing officer, told Business Insider.

"We always have a very active M&A portfolio," Scott Price, UPS' chief strategy and transformation officer, told Business Insider. "Clearly, I'm not going to comment on anything today, neither confirming or denying."

UPS moved some 5.2 billion packages and documents globally in 2018. Across all parcel movements in the US, companies like UPS and FedEx are on track to double the amount that they move in the next decade, Price said.

And in expanding that volume even further, Price said UPS' knowledge base from 113 years of operation will provide the necessary knowledge into where to invest - and what trends to skip out on. He referred to moves like next-day delivery and drone delivery as "mega-trends" that the package giant should focus on.

That distinction is necessary "to take on more volume, but yet create more profit versus necessarily some of the other players out there," Price said.

"Where we are going to invest, and we've invested very heavily in the last three years ... it's from the foresight of knowing what that mega-trend is going to do and the need for incremental capacity and incremental volume," Price said.

Still, it's all about finding those players with capability, the executives emphasized. Generating $58 billion in revenue in 2018, the Atlanta-based Fortune 50 doesn't necessarily need to acquire capacity.

"We acquire when it makes sense and you acquire when you are trying to acquire capability and skill," Price said. "We don't need to acquire scale or capacity, we can build that into our network in the United States, where we would look for is capability."

UPS is emphasizing technologies around enabling customer delivery demands, as well as drone technology, which has mainly been used so far for health and B2B applications.

The most-recent public investment from UPS: a minority stake in autonomous trucker TuSimple. Since the summer, TuSimple has been moving UPS Freight loads in Arizona.

"We are finding partnership very valuable right now," Price said.