Swiss Post improved its half-year profits by 14% to a record CHF 550 million thanks to higherearnings from financial services and mail together with stable logistics business.
The group’s operating profits rose 13% to CHF 550 million in January-June 2011 and the operatingprofit margin rose to 12.8% from 11.3% in the same period last year, the company’s half-yearresults released today showed. Revenues dropped marginally to CHF 4,305 million due to exchangerate effects.
The increase in profits was due primarily to higher customer deposits and net interest income atPostFinance, as well as the group-wide efficiency gains. Swiss Post said it achieved good resultsin all four markets, albeit with differing trends, and the letters business remained strong.
The retail financial market remained the main ‘cash-cow’ for the group in the first half-year.PostFinance increased its operating profit by 20.4% to CHF 330 million, which represented 60% ofthe overall group operating profit. Its revenue increased 6% to CHF 1,235 million. Its growth wasdriven by the increase in the quantity of customer deposits and the associated rise in net interestincome.
In the communication market, Swiss Post achieved an operating result of CHF 80 million, up fromthe previous year’s CHF 79 million. PostMail improved its operating profit by 12.8% to CHF 123million thanks to efficiency gains. It handled 1% more addressed domestic letters but its revenuesdropped 1% to CHF 1,295 million.
Swiss Post International’s operational business developed positively but due to one-offwritedowns the result turned out marginally lower, falling from CHF 27 to 24 million. Its revenueswere fractionally higher at CHF 385 million.
Swiss Post Solutions improved from break-even increased its result from zero to CHF 3 millionwhile its revenues declined by 17% to CHF 271 million. This is attributable primarily to therestructuring measures taken in 2010 – namely, the transfer of the direct mail business in CentralEurope to a joint venture with the Austrian post office – and the positive business trend inSwitzerland. The restructuring measures in Central Europe were also the main reason for the declinein group headcount.
The retail network ‘Post Offices and Sales’ had worse results, with a CHF 70 million operatingloss compared to the previous year’s CHF 57 million, and a 2.7% revenue drop to CHF 831 million.The lower expenses and additional sales of non-postal brand-name items were not enough to offsetthe ongoing decline in postal counter transactions (letters and in-payments).
In the logistics market, PostLogistics achieved a result of CHF 73 million compared to theprevious year’s CHF 76 million. The main reasons for the decline were a 1.7% drop in parcelvolumes, attributable chiefly to the loss of the imported parcels processing business from Germany,and increased staff costs.
Equity was further increased but, having reached CHF 4,567 million at the end of June, was stillbelow the target level for a logistics and financial services group, Swiss Post commented. Therequirements in terms of the amount of equity will also increase now that the legislator has takenthe decision to convert Swiss Post and Post-Finance into public limited companies and makePostFinance subject to financial market supervision (FINMA).
Looking ahead, the company said it expects the results for the full 2011 financial year to be ona par with the previous year. It will continue with its efforts to build on its strong position inall four markets and keep costs in check.
