Grounds for optimism

Although we continue to face many ongoing challenges as a business, we have many opportunities too.

The half year results we have just announced demonstrate that Royal Mail can make the most of the opportunities in our market, even in challenging circumstances. But equally, we need to increase our pace of change.

The growth in online shopping during the pandemic, combined with our increased focus on delivering more of what our customers want, has led to a performance that has been above our initial expectations.

Working together, we have seen our total revenues – that is the income we are paid by customers to deliver our services, rather than profit ­­– grow almost five per cent year on year. For the first time ever, in our more than 500-year history, we now make more money from parcels than letters.

Your hard work has helped us to deliver this improved performance, so thank you. We know it has not been easy given the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

While this uplift gives us some ground for optimism, unfortunately, the fact that we have not changed quickly enough means that even though we have increased our revenue, this benefit has been more than cancelled out by our increased costs.