Correos, the Spanish national postal operator, increased pre-tax profits by 62% to €240.4million in 2005, its best-ever result, thanks to improved productivity and cost control. Express
subsidiary Chronoexprés continued its turnaround by cutting losses by 70%.Correos increased group revenues by 5.3% to €2,104 billion, while expenditure rose 4.1%.Operating profits rose 21.1% to €180.3 million. The profit margin, based on the pre-tax profitfigure, improved by four percentage points to 11.4%. Total volumes rose fractionally by 0.8% to5.35 billion items. Express subsidiary Chronoexprés succeeded in cutting its losses by 70% lastyear, Correos said.
Among its main achievements last year, Correos improved its letter delivery performance. Anaverage of 91.9% of urgent items and 80.3% of standard items reached their recipient the day afterposting. This was a four percentage point improvement.
