The core business is no longer a growth driver.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf Despite its slightly declining parcel business, Deutsche Post intends to revise its earnings forecast for the current fiscal year upwards. The Bonn-based Dax group announced on Monday that the exact value would be published for quarterly reporting on November 8th.
The news was received extremely positively on the stock exchange. In the afternoon, the Bonn-based group’s shares were up more than 6.5 percent.
According to Deutsche Post DHL, the reason for the optimism is the preliminary earnings figures for the past third quarter. At EUR 2.04 billion, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were 15 percent above the comparable figure for the previous year. Analysts had expected an average EBIT of just 1.93 billion euros for the period.
For the 2022 financial year, the group had originally forecast an operating result of eight billion euros with a deviation of five percent up and down. That would only have corresponded to stagnation.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The core business Post and Parcel Germany was five percent below the previous year with an EBIT of 285 million euros in the past quarter. The foreign e-commerce business also lost 6.6 percent and only achieved a result of 85 million euros because online shopping, which had strengthened during the corona lockdowns, declined.
However, there was significant growth in the freight business (up 57 percent), in warehousing services (up 55 percent) and with slight growth in the time-critical Express segment (up four percent). Business with corporate customers is thus increasingly replacing private customer business as a profit driver.
Deutsche Post: Share is one of the biggest Dax winners
“Our diversified range of logistics services gives us the necessary resilience to be successful even in a changed economic environment,” commented CEO Frank Appel on the results.
The sustained good earnings trend led to an increase in free cash flow. In the third quarter of 2022, more than 1.5 billion euros came together in the group, according to the group – after 1.26 billion euros in the previous year.
With a temporary price increase of 6.3 percent to 32.80 euros, the Post share was one of the biggest winners in the Dax on Monday afternoon.
Just over two weeks ago, the US investment bank Goldman Sachs downgraded Deutsche Post from “buy” to “neutral” and lowered the price target from 55 to 38 euros. Analyst Patrick Creuset warned in an industry study that profitability in the logistics sector may have peaked in the third quarter. He expects a multi-year downward cycle and a new normal that could be worse than before the pandemic.
More: Trouble with the post office: the number of complaints is increasing significantly