{"id":4393,"date":"2018-11-15T09:21:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T09:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/royal-mail-profits-more-than-halve\/"},"modified":"2018-11-15T09:21:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T09:21:52","slug":"royal-mail-profits-more-than-halve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/royal-mail-profits-more-than-halve\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Mail profits more than halve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Half-year profits at Royal Mail have tumbled after the company failed to cut costs as quickly as hoped.<\/p>\n

Pre-tax profit more than halved to \u00a333m for the six months to 23 September despite a 1% rise in revenues to just over \u00a34.9bn.<\/p>\n

Revenue from its GLS European parcel operations was up 9%, offsetting a 1% fall in the UK parcels and letters.<\/p>\n

Chief executive Rico Back said Royal Mail had put a “range of actions” in place to improve performance. <\/p>\n

“There will be a greater emphasis on how we connect customers, companies and countries through our domestic and international businesses. There will be a clearer focus on financial performance and management accountability,” he said.<\/p>\n

Growth in online shopping helped drive a 6% rise in revenues for the UK parcels business, but total revenue from letters was down 7%. Adjusted pre-tax profit was down 27% to \u00a3183m.<\/p>\n

Performance pledge<\/h2>\n

Royal Mail warned on profits at the start of October<\/a> in an unscheduled update after revealing that cost savings would be just \u00a3100m this year rather than the \u00a3230m forecast, sending shares down almost a fifth.<\/p>\n

The company reiterated its commitment to the \u00a3100m target for the 2018-19 financial year and Mr Back said the management team was “focused on pulling all the short and medium-term levers at our disposal to improve our performance”.<\/p>\n

It said it would update investors on its strategy in March next year.<\/p>\n

“This is a great company with great brands. We have, by far, the best delivery network in the UK: our ability to deliver most of our letters and parcels together is a major asset,” said Mr Back, who took over from Moya Green as chief executive earlier this year.<\/p>\n

“Royal Mail has been in existence in one form or another for over 500 years. We have transformed ourselves many times before.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, analysts at Liberum said the firm faced “significant structural challenges with little visibility on how the business might be turned around”.<\/p>\n

They maintained a “sell” recommendation on the shares with a target price of just 250p. <\/p>\n

After initially rising, Royal Mail’s shares fell 3% to 338p on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The shares have nearly halved since peaking at 632p in May, prompting some Royal Mail staff to claim they have been short-changed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some 145,000 postal workers have waited five years to sell the free shares they were given at the time of privatisation without being taxed.<\/p>\n

The shares were priced at 330p when the company floated.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Half-year profits at Royal Mail have tumbled after the company failed to cut costs as quickly as hoped. Pre-tax profit more than halved to \u00a333m for the six months to 23 September despite a 1% rise in revenues to just over \u00a34.9bn. Revenue from its GLS European parcel operations was up … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}