Exclusive: Royal Mail Posts £100m Letters Loss

[fishtank]

When most companies invest in modernisation the cost is shown as a "one-off" loss and again most companies would be quick to defend such losses as necessary and an investment in the future.
It seems that in Royal Mail land it suits the agenda better to downplay any positive and for Royal Mail Letters to be seen as a major loss-making portion of the business to continue to promote the "letter volume is plummeting/we need privatisation" myth.
I've honestly never known a business that enjoys wallowing in doom and gloom like Royal Mail.

[Lincox]

The whole point of running a business as a group of companies headed by a holding company is that you can shift all the costs on to the part of the business that you are looking to offload, and all of the profits/sell off of capital assets into the company,s that you are looking to hold on to. Creative accounting.

[chunk]

You can bet that one off vr payments for thousands are included in these figures.
2 years salary seems to be the going rate for long service.
£40,000 + for a postman 70000 for a dom?.
our office has lots of expensive delivery equipment thats not yet been brought into use.

maybe it had to come out of last years budget.

I delivered 6 d2ds last week,including a newspaper sized mag a booklet and fat charity envelopes containing pens
and i worked out that would have netted me £60.00
on the old payment scheme.
My point is RM are saving £40 now on getting it delivered and they still cant make a profit?
Something stinks in the world of RM accounting.

[banni]

i bet any money there will be a management buyout by greene and her friends,i,e clegg and camerons buddies,for a pittance,then within 2 years we will be making massive profits again,they will sell us on and bank the lolly!,we all know its a scam but the public believe it

[Night Tonic]

Don't kid yourself. The public are not interested. They have worries of their own.

[chunk]

you right
The public dont care and their apathy means means no opposition to privatization.
its a good job i trust the politicians to safeguard the USO .

[George door to dawes]

I would love to see the books to find out how much we spent on modernisation. Only 100 million loss when you have just spent a fortune on industrial machines and thousands of vans is probably quite a good result! Its very easy to spin fincial results when you have an agenda for privatisation!

[Indy]

Surely Quadrant's profits can even up the losses from the letters side of the business - 75p for a bag of crisps - 75p for a yorkie bar - 40p for a coffee - raking it in that side of the business is.

They're closing down our canteen next month as they say we're not using it enough:(

Now thats interesting! RM are on the brink (well, foregone conclusion really) of closing ours as well....would seem like theres a policy in action here!

[Danelectro]

Don't kid yourself. The public are not interested. They have worries of their own.

We are part of the general public.So how can we not be interested?

[fishtank]

The investment in 24,000 vans for park&loop cost almost £170million.

[chunk]

The investment in 24,000 vans for park&loop cost almost £170million.

I didnt know what an RM van costs but 24000 times £7083 =£170,000,000.