2014/05/05
Canada Post’s 2013 Annual Report and financial results are now public.
The results confirm our serious challenges, but also reflect solid growth in our Parcels business and our achievements in service performance and safety. With the Five-point Action Plan, we also ended the year by announcing the bold changes that will address our biggest challenges and help to secure a bright future for Canada Post.
Financial loss
As early as the spring of 2013, Canada Post communicated to all employees that it expected to lose money in 2013, and that it did not expect to pay out a Corporate Team Incentive for the year.
Indeed, the Canada Post segment had an operating loss of $269 million for 2013. The loss was reduced to $125 million before tax, mostly because of revenue from selling the plant in downtown Vancouver.
The Group of Companies reported an operating loss of $193 million, and after gains that were mostly from the sale of real estate, had a loss before tax of $58 million.
Key results for 2013 compared to 2012
Transaction Mail: volumes fell by 5.3 per cent, and are down 30 per cent per address since the decline began in 2007. Our plan to convert roughly 5 million addresses to community mailboxes will reduce our costs by up to $500 million a year upon full implementation, and is a key response to the twin challenges of volume decline and high fixed costs.
Parcels: Revenue from our top e-commerce customers grew 29 per cent. Revenue from Domestic Parcels increased 7.5 per cent and volumes increased 6.9 per cent. In the fourth quarter, parcel revenues grew by 9 per cent. As our marketing campaign said, Canada Post is “Delivering the Online World.”
Direct Marketing: This business faces a lot of competition in the age of Google, and volumes in 2013 were down by 1.5 per cent compared to 2012.
We still expect our direct mail business to grow, and we’re doing a lot of work throughout the company to promote it and to improve service.
Digital: More than 862,000 Canadians signed up for epost. There’s significantly higher use of the website for customer service inquiries and for the Mail Forwarding service.
Service and safety: Our employees in Operations achieved solid service performance in 2013, achieving our targets for Domestic Lettermail, Xpresspost and Expedited Parcel and for Addressed Admail. Delivery scanning performance was 99 per cent or above for seven months in a row for Domestic Parcels. Lost-time injury frequency was reduced by 19 per cent.
See the news release and Annual Report for full details.
You will receive more information throughout the year about how we are growing our business.