An unattended delivery system for which Business Post now has the UK licence, called eBox, is on trial with several hundred customers.
Three sizes of eBox are available, taking deliveries or outbound shipments of up to 20kg. Business Post claims this makes the system suitable for the B2B sector as well as its HomeServe customers, such as service engineers and party planners. The company hopes by this means to reduce the problem of failed deliveries.
There is a mystery over the timing of the resignation of Paul Carvell, the chief executive of delivery firm Business Post. He quit after the company issued two profits warnings in three months. But why didn’t Carvell step down in November when Business Post issued its last warning?
Perhaps he fought to stay and had to be persuaded by chairman Peter Kane, whose family owns nearly 40 per cent of the shares. Kane has intimated that Carvell wasn’t pushed, but whatever the truth, the three-week time lag between the November profits warning and the departure of Carvell has been cause for concern.
Some investors have convinced themselves that the delay was due to the fact that the company found that trading conditions deteriorated further in the last 21 days, and that there could be another profits alert around the corner. On the basis of three profits warnings and you are out, Carvell had no choice but to go.
Read MoreBusiness Post Group announces that Paul Carvell, Chief Executive, has resigned from the Group with immediate effect to pursue other opportunities. His role will be assumed by Guy Buswell, 44, who has been Managing Director of UK Mail since July 2002. Peter Kane, Chairman, commented “Since his arrival in February 2001, Paul has made a key contribution to the development of the Group and its broadening range of services. Guy has been a Board Director since 1998 and his experience of the business and considerable success in the establishment of UK Mail as the leading alternative to the Royal Mail qualify him to take the Group forward as Chief Executive.”
Read MoreBusiness Post and chief executive Paul Carvell were in the eye of a parcels sector storm this week. At issue is the degree to which its high-profile problems are specific to the company and how much they reflect a downturn in the sector. The group has been under intense scrutiny as the only pure parcels firm to be publicly traded, and stock market sentiment is clear; the share price has plummeted from a steady 690p to just 320p as the group rushed out earlier-than-expected interim results and with them a second warning on profits in seven weeks. Carvell says year-on-year volumes are falling for the first time in the firm’s 34-year history. The decline reflects the market, he says, and rivals are said to have emailed him messages to that effect when he had to issue a profits warning on September 21.
Read MoreParcels group Business Post sent its shares into tailspin today by delivering its second profits warning in three months. Investors reeled from the news that Business Post was no longer handling as many parcels a day as it was last year and its annual profits were now likely to fall 20% short of market hopes.
Volumes at its Express unit, which makes overnight deliveries between businesses, were up 8% at the start of the year but have worsened since then to be 3.5% below 2004 levels in September. This matters because 40% of the costs of operating its network of around 60 depots are fixed, reducing the freedom of Business Post to act when volumes fall.
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