Tag: Poste Italiane

Italy’s CRM outsourcer Omnia Network earlier this week began its IPO on the Star segment of the Milan Stock Exchange. It is reported that Omnia Network will float 9 million shares (plus Greenshoe) – 6 million newly issued and 3 million from existing shareholders – at a price between euro 5 and euro 6.5 per share. This is slightly surprising as former shareholders sold their shares at euro 2.6 in mid-2006.
The subscription period will end on the 22 February. During its first nine months 2006, Omnia Network reported revenues at euro 177 million, EBITDA at euro 12.53 million, and EBIT at euro 10.02 million, with respective margins at 7.1% and 5.7%.

What can we expect from the first IPO from an Italian call centre player? Simply put, Omnia is raising capital to support its growth strategy (both organically and through acquisitions), international expansion as well as product and service differentiation. As for the latter point the company delivers services through its four business units, namely Multimedia Contact Centre (47.8% of revenues), Logistics and Transport (25.1% of revenues), Facility Management (32%) and System Integration (4%), which compete on different markets but coordinate for joint offerings. A primary target of the IPO is the acquisition of 40% of UniPosta, the company that aims to become the main rival to Poste Italiane once the Postal sector is fully liberalized in 2009 – indeed Omnia’s offering (especially the logistics branch) may be fully embedded in UniPosta, and being a new market (some analysts value it at euro 4 billion) could be a great driver for growth.

Italian state-owned postal services company Poste Italiane expects to book a profit in 2006, ending for a fourth year in a row in the red.
The information was released by Italian national audit office Corte dei Conti. Poste Italaine closed 2005 with a net profit of 248.5 mln euro (USD326.9 mln). The net worth of the company was at 352.7 mln euro (USD463.9 mln) at end-2004.
The net financial debt of Poste Italiane stood at 3.333 bln euro (USD4.384 bln) at the end of 2005 compared to 3.265 bln euro (USD4.295 bln) at the end of 2004. The net financial position/net financial debt is calculated as the difference between a company’s financial debts and liquid assets.
[Editor’s note: Poste Italiane closed the first half of 2006 with a net profit of 379 mln euro (USD498.5 mln), surging by 72.6 pct compared to the 220 mln euro (USD289.4 mln) registered for the respective period of 2005, ANSA said on October 6, 2006. Operating profit of the company went up by 43.6 pct year-on-year to 811 mln euro (USD1.067 bln), while revenue stood at 8.8 bln euro (USD11.6 bln), of which 4.9 bln euro (USD6.445 bln) generated by traditional activities.

Until recently the Italian postal service, Poste Italiane, epitomized all that was awry with the country’s public services: bloated payrolls, poor service by rude clerks and a culture that shunned innovation while prizing the status quo regardless of how inept it made the company at delivering mail.

Following a six-year modernization push ‹ including building a retail banking operation from scratch ‹ Poste Italiane has reversed five decades of losses. It is on track to report its fifth straight profitable year, recently paid its first dividend and may soon be partially privatized in an initial public offering.

Some of its moves, including into banking, have been replicated elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany and France, illustrating how the most clunky of government-owned companies can be turned into competitive businesses.

But potential pitfalls abound, some of them unique to Italy, like a nascent consolidation in the Italian banking sector. Others are shared across the Continent, like too many small branches and the EU-mandated opening of postal services to full competition in 2009.