PostBus’s irregular accounting practices affected the 2017 result of Swiss Post.
According to Swiss Post it made a profit of SF420 million, by comparison to the SF558 million in 2016.
It has recently emerged that PostBus received excess compensation payments between 2007 and 2015 due to ‘irregular classifications’. The authorities have now demanded that PostBus must reimburse the full amount of SF78.3 million to the Confederation and Cantons.
Swiss Post commented: “The sum of around 78m francs claimed by the audit report of the FOT and a provision for the unrectified situation for the years 2016 and 2017 weighed on the result. Operating profit (EBIT) totalled 630m francs last year, down 74m francs year-on-year. Operating income fell to 7,987m francs. Swiss Post nevertheless managed to record a profit in its core business.”
Swiss Post is also dealing with issues that are affecting its core postal business.
As the company statement explained: “The market environment for the Swiss Post Group remains challenging: volumes of addressed letters are falling, pressure on prices in the logistics market is increasing and over-the-counter transactions continue to decline. Nevertheless, the result improved in both the letter and parcel markets. The deficit at PostalNetwork was reduced thanks to operational measures.”
Swiss Post added: “At the end of 2017, the number of addressed letters had decreased by 4.2% compared with the previous year’s figure, and the number of newspaper deliveries had also fallen (-2.9%). PostMail is combating this trend with measures such as supplementary services over the “last mile” and succeeded in increasing its operating profit from 317m to 370m francs. This means that PostMail continues to make a very significant contribution to the Group result. Operating income fell to 2,835m francs as a result of declining volumes (previous year: 2,906m francs). However, the fall in revenue was offset by consistent cost management adapted to the relevant situation, the implementation of efficiency measures and one-off effects.”
