Record profits and sharply rising revenues for Poste Italiane. The company led by Matteo Del Fante closed the first quarter of 2021 with a Net income of 447 million euros, an increase of 46% compared to the same period last year. Up 9,8% to 2,9 billion euros the revenues, while the operating result it grew by 40,8% to 620 million euros. The company underlines that the "solid performance" achieved "reflects the business recovery trend" and already registers a "strong start in the implementation of '24 Yes'", the new four-year strategic plan "2024 Sustain & Innovate" launched in the month of March.
In general, revenues from mail, parcels and distribution they rose to 917 million, an increase of 18,9%. Records for the packages, whose revenues grew by 74,5% to 368 million. In the negative financial revenues (-3,8% to 1,3 billion) due to the "lower contribution of the investment portfolio", explains Poste, while revenues from insurance services recorded strong growth (+40%) rising to 496 million, driven by the Life business (+44% to 459 million). Total gross premiums amount to 5,7 billion, half generated by multi-line products. Finally, revenues from payments and mobile phones increased by 16,5% to 192 million thanks above all to card payments (+30,3%).
Slightly down (-1,4%) correspondence revenue with contributions from Nexive offsetting the decline in mailing. Speaking instead of parcel volumes, B2C increased by 88%, B2B increased by 45% while C2X increased by 41%.
The total of masses managed reached 572 billion, up by three billion since December 2020. Finally, the number of e-commerce transactions in the first quarter it grew further, reaching 123,3 million (+51%).
“We have decisively launched the execution of the new strategic plan '2024 Sustain & Innovate'. By seizing business opportunities and riding on the improvement in the economic outlook, we achieved a solid financial performance already in the first quarter", commented the managing director Matteo Del Fante, underlining that the results "are particularly positive if we take into account that during the quarter several Italian regions were subjected to partial lockdown measures".
“In this phase of the pandemic- continued Del Fante we continue to be a reference operator to support the economic recovery. I am also particularly proud of our collaboration with the Italian Army in the context of national vaccine administration plan: a potential pool of 37% of the population will be vaccinated thanks to the doses booked on our Cloud platform and delivered by Poste Italiane".
Responding to analysts' questions, Del Fante said: "We are making good progress towards an agreement" with CDP relating to the postal savings collection service. "We keep the focus on postal savings, we are having excellent results and this will lead us to a good agreement with CDP, we want to maximize fees", he added.
In Piazza Affari, after the publication of the quarterly, the title Post sells 1,5% at 11,05 euro per share.
The company also announced that the board of directors has approved the merger by incorporation of Nexive Group and Nexive Servizi into Poste Italiane and the partial demerger of Nexive Network in favor of Poste Italiane as regards the business branch relating to mail delivery activities , which include the equity interest in Nexive Scarl, and in favor of Postel SpA as regards the company branch relating to printing activities.
