French La Poste still only moderately profitable
La Poste, the French national postal services group, has posted a sixfold increase in net profit for 2003, to 202m euros. However, as chairman Jean-Paul Bailly pointed out, the group is still only moderately profitable and lags behind its main European counterparts.
Turnover increased by 3.4 per cent last year, to 18bn euros, but fell short of expectations. This has been attributed to problems with both financial services and with courier activities, which saw a decline in traffic for the first time in their history (down 0.9 per cent), due to the increased use of emails and mail rationalisation by the biggest users of the service. A big surprise in the results were operating costs, which came in at 16.983bn euros, 552m less than anticipated. Payroll costs, in particular, were reduced. The group plans to spend 3.4bn euros from now until 2010 on overhauling its sorting system.
