«We are awaiting instructions and indications from the shareholder. We manage the company and have presented our 5-year industrial plan.” Matteo Del Fante, CEO of Poste Italiane, conducted a roadshow in London on 16 and 17 April, together with the group’s financial director, Camillo Greco, following the presentation of the 5-year industrial plan which took place last 20 March. On this occasion, he gave interviews to the local media, thus answering – precisely that he was awaiting instructions from the shareholder Ministry of Economy – to questions regarding the possible sale of a new tranche. However, the attentive eyes of the operators of the London market did not miss the fact that the number one of the Post Office had not been seen on an official visit for quite a while. Generally, it was more usual to see the financial director at the roadshows to present the year-end results. And then there are the interviews with the local press. In short, the feeling is that the management has conducted a test on institutional investors, perhaps even with London-based branches of American funds, with a view to selling a further share of the company’s capital. According to unconfirmed rumours, the management is initiating all initiatives to be ready to launch a sale operation, if the conditions arise, as early as the summer. During an interview with Bloomberg, Del Fante reported the impressions gathered from investors. Asked whether he had tested investor interest in the sale, he said that the feedback collected was that “if and when there is an operation they will certainly be interested”.
Del Fante: foreign investors today are much more informed and interested in our history
Regarding how foreign investors welcomed Poste’s transformation plan, Del Fante returned a very positive impression. «7 years following we launched the Deliver 2022 plan, investors have begun to understand the idea of building a multi-product platform. We’ve found that we’re showing them that we’re getting, in every single product vertical, the benefits of the platform strategy. I have found investors to be much more informed and more interested in our story and I think this represents good momentum for us. We are very different from postal operators in other countries, because we have diversified since the end of the last century. The first real diversification of the business began at the end of the 1990s towards financial products, starting with postal savings which are guaranteed by the government, then with life insurance products and then towards payments. We are the largest issuer of payment cards in Italy and also services for families. The post office is everywhere in Italy and they are places where everyone can come and purchase products and services for the home such as fibre, electricity and gas at retail.”
The drop in mail? «Started 7 years ago with the end of sending invoices»
The manager then summarized the main actions taken in recent years. «We have managed to stabilize our investment portfolio: we have no credit risk, we invest in mainly fixed-rate government bonds, we are not very sensitive to interest rate fluctuations. In our industrial plan, the area where we will grow the most in the next 5 years is precisely the one that aims to satisfy the needs of families, regarding payments, electricity and gas. This is in terms of volumes. In terms of contributions to net profit, the lion’s share is obviously made by insurance and postal savings, which remains central. Now we need to focus on executing two lines: We need to be closer to customers in our service model in financial products. We need to become more dynamic, not transaction-oriented, but relationship-oriented in post offices. And then there is the great transformation in the delivery sector: Italy has very low volumes of correspondence and this is pushing us to be more reactive than the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the United States.”
«We must be more reactive on contact details than the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the USA»
Del Fante then provided a fairly new representation of the reasons for Poste Italiane’s weakness in correspondence. «There are historical reasons: 7 years ago we reached the minimum level in sending invoices by correspondence, in Italy there have been no paper receipts for 7 years. Furthermore, Italians do not use the post for private or personal reasons, unlike what happens in Europe. The result is that an average of 35 letters are sent per year per capita compared to a European average of 130. This is bad news in terms of volumes and business and we must transform it into an opportunity to change our network and make it do another thing. And that is the delivery of parcels.”
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2024-04-22 15:01:02
