The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
I very much doubt West Ham simply handed over their TV money to their shareholders? They actually made an £18m loss last season so it's unlikely his shares have risen in value.
It's baffling why DK wants to mess about buying IDS/RM when EG has just made £8B profits from its energy companies. Unless he really wants to split off RM and sell it and retain & grow the very profitable GLS, I assume he was behind last year's plans by the company to split RM from GLS ?
The Government already gave VESA the green light to increase their holding to 27% (& beyond?) ..............
"The government has previously scrutinised his holding in the company but accepted an increase in his stake from 22 per cent to 27 per cent in 2022"
Where do you get your £2 per parcel from on a Sunday? Most delivery drivers are capable of delivering 10 an hour, even covering the rural routes, and I doubt we're paying staff £20+ an hour on a Sunday?
It's interesting that RM feel parcels can be profitable when Evri still manged to lose £77m last year from a £1.46 billion turn over and Yodel had to be bailed out by new owners after nearly going into Admin. Only DPD seem to be profitable in the UK.
OFCOM have already suggested that moving to a 5 day USO could save RM £200m/£250m? Not sure RM will save the full 20% of potential staff costs savings as they'll still have to pay people to deliver parcels etc on the 6th day of the week.
They haven't in my DO, Mother's Day week was totally manic, with retail sales increasing there's no real logic in packets reducing, unless the likes of Evri are taking an increasing market share. If the latest figures show packets are dropping RM is really doomed given they've helped to destroy the latters market where they really had no serious competition.
You have to sense RM are trying to kill off non business customers sending letters, particularly 1st class, as who's going to spend £1.35 to send a birthday or Christmas card in future, when you can just drop them a text/email for free? Does OFCOM have no control over what price increases RM can put though?
The pay is no longer good enough to attract family men/women added to the working conditions really only it makes the job attractive to people who can't find something better elsewhere. We've manged to loose all our Christmas agency staff this month when they realised they can't just drive around in a van delivering parcels day in, day out.
Parcels have dropped off and mail dropped through the floor, hence why all FT's are now working 24 mins less each day, we wouldn't be working shorter days if we had sufficient work for a full days work?
Surely any office where duties are failing can't be running OK? OFCOM figures suggests over 25% of 1st class mail is no longer being delivered on time, unless it's the same 25% offices failing each day then that figure suggests a lot of offices are not working OK?
Not sure anybody wants to hear "my office is running OK" when it seems pretty clear most offices aren't? Although even the offices seemingly running OK are probably still concentrating on delivering Tracked etc over mail if they suffer any staff shortages.
Why would Labour want to re-nationalise RM, pretty certain the railways and utility companies are far more likely if Labour decided to go down that route, although they seem to have no interest anyway.
Just because you can't see the need it doesn't mean the whole of the UK feels the same way? Im not sure we need a 6 day service but alternative days seems a big leap, and what Government is going to want to be seen backing 10K's of posties losing their jobs around the time of an election?
The changes in the USO are to allow the company much less time spent delivering the measly 7bn letters per annum (that was once 20bn) 6 days a week…and to spend more time delivering parcels. That’s the fact of the matter.
Why do RM need more time to deliver parcels? They presently deliver most Tracked parcels they receive on a daily basis, if there were more parcels to deliver they would just employ more parcel delivery drivers, unfortunately there's simply no more parcels to deliver and it seems the parcels market is only growing in size at a few % points each year.
Could a headcount reduction be a part of that? Yes. But nothing even remotely on the scale you’re suggesting
How are RM going to make savings up to the suggested £650m p.a. if it's not from cutting staff numbers? If RM moved to an alternative days mail service around 50% of the posties wouldn't be required and niether would a similar number of distribution drivers, you could easily see 30K postal roles not being required.
Why when Saturday's for residential customers are far busier than Monday's which are usually half Saturday's mail? Why not think outside the box and have Monday to Saturday mail for businesses and Tuesday to Saturday for residential customers?
Peak now starts around Black Friday week and continues right the way up to Christmas, this year it also seems to have carried on into early January, as our DPR guy can't cope with the demand and have had to call in back up. Letters are dying though, not sure how the business deals with that issue as they can't extend walks indefinitely.
Why would this cost posties jobs when presently the vast majority of packets/parcels are delivered to customers each day, I'd imagine just 1 or 2% of customers would choose the locker option and, when they do, a postie still has to deliver to the locker.