France’s Groupe La Poste announced yesterday it expects a significant drop in revenues and profitsthis year due to lower mail, parcel and express volumes and is targeting a stabilisation of its
results in 2010.La Poste expects group revenues to decline about 3% this year on last year’s figure of €20.8billion, mostly due to lower volumes in its mail business (-5.8%) and parcels/express (-4.5%). Thefinancial services business, La Banque Postale, continued to grow this year with a 4.5% revenueincrease that partly compensated for the lower revenues in the other activities.
In 2008, La Poste’s mail revenues decreased by 1.8% to €11.3 billion along with a 3% drop involumes. In the express and parcels sector, it increased revenues by 7.1% to €4.7 billion lastyear. Revenues from financial services went up 1.3% to €4.77 billion in 2008, making it La Poste’ssecond largest business.
The French postal group said it expects to make an operating profit of about €500 millionthis year. This would be an operating profit margin of about 2.5%, which is below the originalplanning and resulting from a stronger than expected drop in mail volumes. In 2008, it had anoperating profit of €886 million, which represented a 4.3% operating profit margin. The 2008 netprofit was €529 million.
La Poste said that it had implemented various cost-saving programmes this year but had alsoimproved its mail and parcel delivery performance in France. It invested about €900 million andalso contributed €240 million to the French economic recovery programme.
Looking ahead to 2010, La Poste said it aimed to stabilise its consolidated revenues, basedon diverse trends in its different businesses. It will try to limit the decline in mail revenues to3% based on an expected 5% volume fall and the introduction of new offers to compensate for thisfall. The parcels and express business (GeoPost and Coliposte) is expected to return to growth andincrease revenues by 6.2%. La Banque Postale is budgeted for a 6% revenue increase.
“The objective of La Poste will be to stabilise its operational margin compared to the 2009business year in an uncertain economic and competitive environment,” the organisation declared. Itwill continue to seek cost savings and develop new activities. La Poste will invest about €1.1billion as part of the planned €2.7 billion capital increase, including in modernisation of mailoperations and post offices, external growth for the express business (GeoPost) and furtherdevelopment of La Banque Postale.
Following yesterday’s board meeting to discuss the 2009 results and approve the 2010 budget,the full 2009 results will be announced on March 11, 2010.
