Australia Post has announced its group revenue for the first half of $3.8 billion, up four per cent year-on-year.
Parcels and Services accounted for $2.7 billion of total group revenue. Strong growth in parcels, financial and international services has helped grow the group’s parcel and services revenue by almost $300 million or 13 per cent on the same period last year to $2.7 million.
The group stated that this is the highest revenue growth in over a decade for these services without a major acquisition.
Community Post Office revenue grew four per cent reflecting stronger performances in both corporate and licensed stores.
All these business line services operate in highly competitive markets and they now account for over 70 per cent of group revenue.
Letter revenue was down nine per cent and letter losses rose a further $46 million or 112 per cent to a total loss of $87 million for this half due to increasing costs.
Christine Holgate, Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director said the group has shown record underlying performance..
“However, the costs to operate the letter business continue to rise, as our people are still required to deliver to every home or business every day, process and collect the mail, whilst letter volumes and revenues fall,” she said.
“The 10 cent letter increase in January will support our letters business going forward, but after four years of no increases, it alone will not fully compensate for the losses.”
Christmas was Australia Post’s busiest period, delivering over 50 million parcels in December, with over 3.1 million recorded on one day.
“Ahead of Christmas we also opened the largest parcel processing facility in the Southern Hemisphere in Brisbane and invested in new automation capabilities across a number of our large processing facilities to continue to service our customers,” Christine said.
She said the group still met all service obligations for letters and parcels following unprecedented weather conditions across the country, including the bushfire crisis that devastated the Eastern side of Australia.
The company is raising funds through Bank@Post services, providing free mail redirection, mail hold services and accepting over the counter donations for the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
Australia Post said at this stage the business remains on track to deliver a marginal profit at the full year and is cognisant of the market pressures facing core customers.
Australia Post will release its full year results in August.