PostNL sees 2022 earnings in-line, excluding pandemic boost

(Reuters) – Dutch postal firm PostNL set on Monday its core profit targets for 2022, as it ended 2021 in line with expectations after a robust December holiday season for parcels.

The Dutch postal company, which aims to accelerate the expansion of its parcels business, benefited from a boom in e-commerce driven by COVID, reporting record 384 million parcels delivered in 2021, while traditional mail volumes have been in steady long-term decline.

“We are satisfied with our strong operational performance in Q4 2021, thanks to the well-managed execution of our peak season,” the company’s CEO Herna Verhagen said in a statement.

PostNL, which delivers parcels and letters across Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg now targets normalised earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of between 210-240 million euros ($234-268 million) in 2022, having guided for a figure in line with that of 2021.

Excluding the non-recurring parcels related to the pandemic, fourth-quarter volumes grew 9.1% on the year, and around 21% when compared with pre-pandemic levels over the same period in 2019.

However, an expected recovery in cross-border activities has not yet occured, mainly due to global supply chain disruptions and increasing freight costs, the group said, adding they are expected to show limited recovery in the first half of 2022 compared with the second half of 2021.

PostNL’s parcels division sales reached 2.36 billion euros in 2021, in line with company preliminary estimates and slightly up from 2.05 billion euros last year.

The group’s 2021 normalised EBIT came in at 308 million euros, or 226 million euros excluding the assumed non-recurring COVID impact.

($1 = 0.8961 euros)

(Reporting by Diana Mandiá; Editing by Kim Coghill and Louise Heavens)