Australia Post back in black

Australia Post has returned to profit despite a record decline in the number of letter volumes, the national postal service said on Friday.

In an announcement to the ASX, Australia Post attributed its growth to the parcels business and changes to its mail delivery service, which helped the postal service deliver a 36 million Australian dollars (27.47 million U.S. dollars) net profit for 2015/16, a turnaround from the previous year's of 222 million Australian dollars (169.37 million U.S. dollars) loss.

Australia Post managing director and chief executive Ahmed Fahour said the return to profit follows a strong financial discipline applied across the business resulting in one of the biggest transformations in the organization's history.

"Returning to profit is a pleasing result for our employees, post office operators, and our other important stakeholders, and shows that Australia Post is on a more sustainable path for future growth," Fahour said.

"Changes to the letters business introduced earlier this year were an important factor in the group returning to profitability."

"While the letters business is in structural decline, we have reduced our forecast cumulative losses in letters from around 5 billion Australian dollars (3.81 billion U.S. dollars) to 1.5 billion Australian dollars (1.14 billion U.S. dollars) over the next five years," he said.

He also confirmed Australia Post was continuing to experiment with drone technology to deliver parcels, putting it in direct competition with the likes of Amazon and Google.Endit