Pos Malaysia courier business fuels 38% profit increase

Post Malaysia has said its profits grew 12% year-on-year in the three months to the end of September 2012, driven particularly by growth in its courier business. According to unaudited figures, the company made MYR 30.4m ($9.9m USD) in net profit during the second quarter of its fiscal year, on sales of MYR 300.4m ($98.2m), which grew 2.7% compared to the same period in 2011.

It means the first half of the year has seen Pos Malaysia’s revenue up 5.6% to MYR 611.8m ($200m), and its net profit up 38% to MYR 67.2m ($22m).

The company said the results came as the Malaysian economy beat expectations to grow 5.4% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2012, a little stronger than in the first quarter of the year (4.9% growth), amidst a “slowing global economic climate”.

Divisions

Pos Malaysia’s mail business generated MYR 351.3m ($115m) in revenue during the first half of 2012 (about 57% of group turnover), while its courier division generated MYR 147.3m ($48.2m, 24% of group turnover) and the retail division MYR 87.7m ($28.7m, 14% of turnover).

During the year to date, Pos Malaysia’s courier division has seen its profits jumping 67%, to MYR 33.5m ($10.9m), but profits slipped 3.5% in the mail division, MYR 58.7m ($19.2m).

Pos Malaysia’s retail division has nearly doubled its losses in the first six months of this year, to MYR 21.6m ($7m).

The company said its mail division has faced higher depreciation and staff costs, along with a drop in revenue for its prepaid, franked, registered and ordinary mail products of respectively 3.4%, 4.7%, 11.8% and 5.7%, although international mail has grown its revenue by 12.6% and business mail by 13.3% year-on-year during the first half.

The courier business has benefited from online transactions and from extended counter hours at certain retail outlets for Pos Malaysia’s courier brand, PosLaju, in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. Sales have grown 28.9% among on-demand customers and by 12.7% among contract customers.

Pos Malaysia said the higher losses in its retail network were mainly due to higher labour costs, despite an improvement in sales. The company has recently signed a deal with US firm Escher Group to upgrade the point-of-sale IT systems for all its post offices.

Elsewhere, Pos Malaysia said in its latest financial report that it has been seeing good grown in its sale of digital certificates, with sales up 41.6%, and its printing and insertion business has seen sales up 36.7% so far this year.

“Encouraged”

Pos Malaysia’s board said during the second half of its 2012 fiscal year it was expecting domestic demand and consumer spending to grow at a slower pace, but said the higher than expected growth seen in the second quarter boded well for the remainder of the year.

“Pos Malaysia is encouraged by the improvement in contributions from the courier segment and may see better contributions in the second half of 2012,” the company said.

“To manage increasing cost, the group will continue to explore further enhancement in productivity and implement cost optimization for its relevant business units for future growth.”