Last Mile Brief 17/03/2023: Despite inflation, Austrian Post anticipates this year’s earnings to match 2022’s

Austrian Post has issued its 2022 results and 2023 forecast, which revealed the company’s EBIT had fallen by 8% last year compared to 2021.

“Austrian Post faced challenging overall geopolitical and economic conditions in 2022. High inflation and the war in Ukraine, together with the related energy shortages, affected consumer behaviour. Similar to other companies, Austrian Post needs to address in the current situation both revenues and costs to maintain operational stability,” the company said in its trading update earlier this week.

CEO Georg Pölzl added:

“Against this backdrop, 2022 was satisfactory with stable revenue of EUR 2,522.0m. Although revenue was down by 4.0 % in the first half of the year compared to the very sound half-year figures of the previous year, second half-year revenue increased by 4.2 %.”

As for 2023, the company says it aims to grow in the low to mid-single digit range based on the Group revenue of EUR 2.5bn in 2022. Despite the expected increase in costs due to the ongoing inflation, Austrian Post believes earnings (EBIT) of about the same level as last year should be achievable with planned revenue growth in 2023.

Moreover, Austrian Post has confirmed that its capacity expansion programme in Austria should also be completed by the end of 2023, resulting in a sorting capacity of around 140,000 parcels per hour. Finally, the company stated its intention to grow its fleet of electric vehicles in the coming year.