The UK budget update from oct-23 hit Royal Mail with extra costs making its money problems bigger. The company (which has about 130k workers) now needs to pay £120m more each year for worker taxes; this hits them harder than other delivery firms
Their boss Martin Seidenberg says this makes changing mail rules super-important: “We really need to update our old-style delivery rules“. The company still has to bring mail to every UK house 6 days weekly for the same price - which isnt helping their money situation
The companyʼs trying to get more modern with fancy parcel spots and robot-sorting places. Their numbers show some good news though: they made £61m in profit for first-half 23 compared to losing £169m same time last year. However GLS (their world-wide delivery part) isnt doing so well because of higher worker costs in places like Germany; Italy
The companyʼs ready for x-mas deliveries and stays on track with its yearly goals. Meanwhile that big deal where Daniel Kretinsky wants to buy them for £3.57b is still moving forward - they think itʼll all be done by early-25 when they get ok from rule-makers
This makes Universal Service reform even more urgent
The companys shares dropped a bit (0.8%) after all this news came out. Its clear theyʼre gonna need to think hard about prices; automation to handle these new costs