bpost reports an excellent fourth quarter 2015

Fourth quarter 2015 highlights  

• Normalized operating income (revenues) at EUR 642.9m (-1.9%) thanks to better Domestic Mail trend and strong Parcels performance, despite lower SGEI compensation and curtailment of International Mail since the first quarter of 2015.
• Improved Domestic Mail underlying volume trend at -3.9% (-5.4% for the first 9 months) driven by better performance in Transactional and Advertising Mail. Full year underlying domestic mail volume decline came in at -5.0%.
• Excellent Domestic Parcels volumes growth at +13.9% (+12.6% for the full year), driven by e-commerce, positive evolution from catalogue sellers, C2C and particularly strong December at +15.7%. Improved price/mix effect of -2.3%.
• International Parcels up EUR 6.4m, mainly driven by lanes from the US, supported by peaking December sales and positive FX contribution.
• Continued impact of the curtailment of the International Mail business in Additional Sources of Revenues while overall profitability improved.
• Cost savings (EUR -18.5m) continued to deliver with an average FTE reduction of 704 for the quarter in productivity improvement (excluding 224 additional FTE and interims for end of year peaks in parcels and new solutions).
• Normalized EBITDA up EUR 6.1m. Reported EBITDA (up EUR 32.2m) positively impacted by gain on sale of sizeable property of EUR 26.1m.
• Normalized net profit of bpost SA/NV (BGAAP) for the full year came in at EUR 303.6m.
• Proposed total dividend of EUR 1.29 gross per share based on 2015 results, composed of an interim dividend of EUR 1.05 (paid in December 2015) and a final proposed dividend of EUR 0.24, subject to the approval of shareholders.