Dutch postal firm PostNL (PTNL.AS) lifted its 2023 operating profit forecast on Monday, pointing to higher volumes of parcels.
The company, which delivers parcels and letters across Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, expects its normalised earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to be between 100 and 130 million euros ($142.92 million) for the full year, compared to a previous estimate of between 70 million and 100 million euros.
The Hague-based postal service reported 18 million euros in core profit for the second quarter, an 80% increase year-on-year. Ten analysts polled by the company had expected a normalised EBIT of 4 million euros.
"Our adaptive measures to mitigate inflationary pressures are successfully paying off and volumes at Parcels returned to growth earlier than expected," PostNL CEO Herna Verhagen said in a statement.
Earlier this year, the Dutch group announced plans to cut 200 to 300 jobs in a restructuring effort. The company said on Monday the plan is ahead of schedule and revised down its estimated cost to 10 million euros at most, from an initial assessment of 20 million euros.
PostNL's main source of income, mail delivery in the Netherlands, dropped more than 9% during the quarter to 409 million euros, though the result was better than expected according to the company-compiled consensus.
The group's chief executive acknowledged a drop in mail delivery service quality, attributed to high rates of employee sick leave in a tight labour market. PostNL employs around 25,000 people to deliver mail and is short of about 1,000, Verhagen said in a call with journalists, adding that a significant portion of recruits were students working part-time.
PostNL has "historically disappointed" with urgent hiring, a Barclays analyst said in a note.
In July, the unemployment rate in the Netherlands stood at 3.5% of the labour force.
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