Royal Mail Group PLCs (LON:RMG) freshly departed chief executive Rico Back and the postal groups shareholders and workers might all be glad to see the back of each other after what has been an uncomfortable couple of years.
The year Back took over had all seemed to start well as Backs predecessor Moya Greene agreed of a deal on pay, pensions and working hours in March, sending the shares to a high above 600p and sealing its re-promotion to the FTSE 100 index.
However, in the summer before Back took over as CEO, things were already turning against the German parcels expert.
In July, 70% of shareholders voted against the group's pay deal, including a proposal for Back to be paid a higher salary than his predecessor, and for Green to get a £0.9mln payoff.
Then, just a few weeks before Back got his feet under the CEOs desk, Royal Mail was whacked with a record £50mln fine for breaking competition law and abusing its dominant position.
Quickly on the back foot [hhmc]
That might have seemed relatively small beer to a blue chip company, but it quickly became clearer that Greene had left while the going was relatively good.
While Back's former domain of parcels continued to go great guns, trading in the UK letters business was bad, with letters volumes down sharply as marketing mail was hit by ongoing structural declines and that years new GDPR regulations.
Whats more, it was revealed that Greenes earlier deal with the trade unions was far from the panacea for the company that some had hoped, with UK productivity performance “significantly below plan” at 0.1% during the first half of the year and expected to be significantly below target for the year as a whole.
Greenes earlier target for cost avoidance of £230mln for the year was slashed to £100mln.
The shares were sent plummeting and by the end of the year the company had yo-yoed back into the FTSE 250 index.
Dividend slashed, industrial relations souring[hhmc]
By the spring of 2019, Back had been forced to take the dramatic step of chopping the dividend by 40% to pay for his new “turnaround and grow” strategy after annual profits fell 30%.
Back presented a “refreshed” five-year strategy, including an ambition is to “build a parcels-led, more balanced and more diversified international business” and to get profit margins gradually inching higher.
Analysts said that Back was pulling his punches by avoiding major job cuts to try and improve productivity, which was felt to be understandable given the risk of an adverse reaction with trade unions.
“But with staff costs circa 70% of UKPIL costs this would seem to be dodging the main issue,” said broker Liberum, with Jefferies saying the moves were “unlikely” to mitigate rising inflation in staff costs and pointing at Royal Mails UK low productivity resulting in profitability that was 70% below the sector average.
The City view was well encapsulated by Deutsche Bank: “in our view there are no easy short-/medium-term fixes for the Royal Mail as the business model is largely a fixed cost business, that is facing a material decline in letter volumes and has a unionised workforce”.
Strike called then blocked[hhmc]
Last August, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) called a vote of it members as it accused Back of backtracking on Greenes deal, something the company denied as it pointed to two pay rises over the past year and reduced the working week by an hour.
“The workforce has completely rejected the companys plans to set up a separate parcels business and allow UK postal services and thousands upon thousands of jobs to wither on the vine,” said CWU general secretary Dave Ward, pointing to increased workload pressure on members and Backs “asset-stripping plans”.
In October the CWU said its ballot saw a turnout of 76% and a 97.1% vote in favour of strike action.
Analysts at Peel Hunt said they did not believe that Royal Mail was in breach of the agreement, “but rather suspect that the planned productivity gains have not materialised, which highlights the breakdown in industrial relations at the company”.
Taking to the High Court, Royal Mail averted a strike planned for the run up to Christmas and another general election, though efforts to overturn the previous years £50mln fine from Ofcom were unsuccessful.
Patience runs out[hhmc]
In February 2020, after seeing worker productivity decline over the Christmas period, Backs patience with the unions seemingly ran out as he announced plans roll out a series of new automated parcel sorting hubs.
As the CWU corralled its members to a new strike ballot, Back said: “We want to reach agreement with CWU; but we cannot afford to delay this essential transformation any longer.”
He said the group was proceeding with national trials and local initiatives, including choosing the supplier for automation of the Warrington parcel hub, which is designed to handle 40,000 items per hour, as well as finalising the lease for a second fully automated parcel hub in the Midlands and exploring options for a third and final hub, as well as rolling out small parcel sorting machines, decommissioning letter sequencing machines and deploying “a range of much needed local change initiatives and key triRead More – Source
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