The post office has been earning a lot lately – but not with the delivery of letters and parcels in Germany. The shortage of workers is causing problems for the company. Post boss Appel is concerned about the upcoming collective bargaining round.
Thanks to brilliant business with freight, Deutsche Post DHL has made a lot of money. The company announced that group sales in the third quarter rose by 20 percent compared to the same period last year to around 20 billion euros. Although domestic letter and parcel delivery weakened again, revenue in the freight division soared by 38 percent, and other areas were also doing well. Company boss Frank Appel spoke of a very good quarter. Group profit rose by 13 percent to 1.2 billion euros. The fact that the businesses were less profitable overall was partly due to unfavorable currency effects.
Post’s core business – domestic letter and parcel delivery – weakened again. Sales stagnated at 3.9 billion euros and the operating result (EBIT) fell by 3 percent. If you deduct the additional costs for a special corona bonus paid to the workforce in the same quarter of the previous year, the minus is even 18 percent.
Due to corona failures and a difficult situation on the job market, the staff shortages were so great in some places that letter delivery in particular came to a standstill. The post spoke of local problems. The parcel business, on the other hand, which experienced an enormous growth spurt in the Corona years 2020 and 2021, has already weakened over the course of the year to date.
In view of the extraordinarily tight labor market and high inflation, CEO Appel expects difficult negotiations in the forthcoming collective bargaining round. In the mail area
Despite the successful third quarter, Swiss Post lowered its profit target for this year. The operating result (EBIT) should therefore increase by around five percent to around 8.4 billion euros. By the beginning of October, Appel had aimed for an operating profit of between 7.6 and 8.4 billion euros and had not ruled out that things could go even better. On October 10, the group then announced that it would raise its forecast if business development continued to be solid. Analysts had recently expected an average of 8.6 billion euros.
