Poste Italiane, the Italian postal group, has announced its annual results for 2007 recording apositive performance for the sixth consecutive year with improvements across all business segments.
The company said its net profit increased by 25% to EUR 843.6 million in 2007, the operatingprofit of EUR 1.77 billion went up 19% compared to 2006 and the EBIT margin was 15.5%, which isonce again the highest among European postal services providers.
Total revenues of EUR 17.2 billion primarily reflect the improvements in operating profit(Financial Services up 2.7% and Postal services up 3.8%) and external revenue at the Parent Companyrising 3.8% to EUR 9.1 billion. The Parent Company’s net profit is EUR 704.4 million marking anincrease of 45.7% on the previous year.
The Postal Services division saw revenues rise 3.8% to EUR 5,553 million in 2007, whilstproviding among the highest quality services in Europe. The improvement marks a significantachievement in a mature and competitive market. Mail services saw external revenue rise 5.1% (upEUR 192 million on 2006), reflecting the positive performances of both basic services and the newservices added. The introduction of innovative operating processes continued, enabling thereal-time monitoring of all steps of the mail handling process (collection, sorting and delivery).
Thanks to the good performances of current account services and inflows for postal savingsproducts, the Group’s revenues from financial services for 2007 amount to EUR 4.5 billion, markingan increase of EUR 117 million on 2006, up 2.7%. BancoPosta achieved further growth with 3.5million Postepay cards and 5.9 million debit cards. The Poste Italiane Group’s capital expenditureremains high amounting to EUR 608 million, with around 44% invested in IT. A further 30% of capitalexpenditure regarded improvements to the logistics chain, whilst the remaining 26% was spent on therestyling modernisation and upgrading at Post Offices.
