Higher banking profits outweighed weaker mail and logistics results at Swiss Post over the firstnine months of this year, helping to limit the group profits to a 1% fall, the postal operator
announced today.In the first three quarters of 2012, Swiss Post generated a group profit of CHF 712 million(€591 million), about 1% down on the previous year. Operating profits declined by 1.8% to CHF 707million (€587 million) while group turnover stagnated at CHF 6.3 billion (€5.2 billion). Theoperating margin profit slipped to 11.1% from 11.4%.
The Swiss group stressed that “in view of the challenging environment, this is still a goodachievement” and highlighted that it achieved positive results in all four of its markets.
In the communications market, covering mail, retail branches and added-value services, theoperating profit increased slightly to CHF 56 million, largely due to lower operating losses in thepost office network, while revenues grew 1.5% to CHF 3.5 billion. PostMail, the letters unit,increased revenues slightly to CHF 2.3 billion but its operating profit declined 13% to CHF 139million. The volume of addressed letters stabilised at -1.7%, while the volume of unaddressed mailincreased by 48% as a result of the takeover of the DMC Group.
Swiss Post Logistics saw its operating profits fall 9.9% to CHF 100 million due to higher costsfor shipping services and a new IT system. Its revenues, adjusted for the transfer of Swiss PostInternational to Asendia, the joint venture with France’s La Poste, grew by 2.7% to CHF 1.12billion. Parcel volumes rose by 3.8%.
The key profit contributor was once again PostFinance, the banking and financial servicesdivision. PostFinance’s operating profit increased by 7.1% to CHF 497 million, largely because oflower value adjustments to financial assets.
In the public passenger transport market, PostBus improved its operating profit to CHF 33million francs from the previous year’s CHF 30 million francs on revenues of CHF 575 million. Therise was due to orders outside of regional transport as well as the latest expansion ofservices.
Looking ahead, Swiss Post said it is currently expecting group profits for 2012 in line with theprevious year’s level. In 2011, the group made a profit of CHF 904 million on revenues of CHF 8.6billion.
