Business

Balance sheets – Post earnings were down 20 percent

The state-owned Austrian Post AG had to give up significantly with a result minus of 20 percent in the corona year 2020, but is looking to the future with confidence. In two to three years, the parcel business will generate more revenue than the mail sector, and by 2030 the post is expected to be a three billion euro company. Post manager Georg Pölzl is today very satisfied with the initially much-criticized shöpping and Bank99 projects.

There is still a lot to be done. At Bank99, for example, three to four times the number of currently around 70,000 customers is needed to break even. It should be ready in around three years, with start-up costs of 39 million euros in the previous year. As an appetizer, Pölzl announced fund products for savers at the annual press conference, but did not want to reveal any details yet. There will be no special offer for the private customers of ING Diba, which is discontinuing this line of business.

Pölzl today reported around 1,600 dealers to shöpping, most of them very small companies. The turnover tripled in the previous year to 44 million euros. The parcel subsidiary Aras Kargo in Turkey is also developing very well, with around 6,000 employees delivering 37 percent more parcels compared to 2019.

The Post’s employees received great praise. You will receive a corona bonus of up to 700 euros for the previous year, plus a profit bonus of 500 euros. And the shareholders can also look forward to the fact that the dividend for 2020 should amount to 1.60 euros per share. The distribution corresponds to 75 percent of the net result. The state, which holds 53 percent of the former monopoly, can also cheer.

According to Pölzl, the US online giant Amazon is Post’s most important competitor and customer in the parcel business. Amazon currently has a market share of around five percent in the parcel market, and this will probably increase. Looking at the market as a whole, 90 percent of all returns would be handled by Swiss Post.

“Nobody was spied on”

In the ongoing legal dispute with the republic about an alleged data protection breach by the Post, Pölzl continued to be confident of victory today, with a provision of 20 million euros at present. Background: In 2019, in the data scandal surrounding the storage of possible party affinities of millions of Post customers and the sale of this data to campaigning parties, the Swiss Post received an administrative fine of 18 million euros from the data protection authority – and took legal action against it. “Nobody was spied on,” Pölzl emphasized once again today.

Regarding the 2020 business figures of Post AG: The net result fell by 20 percent to 115.3 million euros, the operating result (EBIT) also fell by 20 percent to 160.6 million euros.

The bright spot was the parcel business with a 44 percent increase in sales to 913.6 million euros. The mail business, on the other hand, fell by 7.4 percent to 1.22 billion euros, while the branch business fell by 20 percent to 64.7 million euros. Sales climbed a total of 8.3 percent to 2.19 billion euros, adjusted for the Turkish parcel subsidiary Aras Kargo it was plus 3.3 percent.

Personnel expenses amounted to 1.04 billion euros, an increase of 6.6 percent or 64.7 million euros. 22,966 full-time employees were on the payroll in 2020.

For 2021, an increase in sales of eight to ten percent and an improvement in earnings by ten percent are targeted. Sorting capacity in Austria is to be expanded by a further 30 percent by the end of 2022. (apa)

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