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Royal Mail’s owner has failed to publish its full-year results, causing consternation among investors as the loss-making company faces a takeover bid from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský.
Investors had been awaiting an update from International Distribution Services at 7am on Thursday, after Křetínský’s EP Group launched a $5bn takeover bid this month.
But during a chaotic morning the owner of the UK’s 508-year-old postal service repeatedly put off the results, whose publication date is now uncertain.
Shares in IDS dropped about 1 per cent in morning trading.
The delay marks the latest in a string of disruptions for Royal Mail and its investors, some of which have been taken aback by Křetínský’s bid for the former state-owned postal group.
It has added to shareholders’ frustration with Royal Mail as the company struggles to turn a profit amid declining demand for letter deliveries and an acrimonious dispute with workers that led to 18 days of strikes in 2022.
Even after reaching a deal with the postal workers’ union last year, management has faced difficulties restoring service levels and profits in the face of growing competition from the likes of Amazon and DPD.
“What a shambles at IDS,” said one top investor, referring to the delayed results.
With the results unpublished, Royal Mail told the Financial Times at 7.20am that a media call to discuss the results at 8.15am “may be delayed”.
About 20 minutes later it told reporters this call would also be postponed but that it expected to release the results “in the next hour or so”.
By midday, the results remained unpublished and Royal Mail said that it “can’t give anything definitive” on when they would be released.
The delay to the results comes after IDS chair Keith Williams said last week that the group was “minded to recommend” an upgraded offer from EP Group, which currently holds a 27.5 per cent stake, setting the path for a potential foreign takeover that has drawn the attention of UK politicians.
After meeting IDS’s management, business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch “emphasised the importance of the Royal Mail in British society”, while welcoming commitments to maintain its UK headquarters and its universal service obligation to deliver letters and parcels across the country for the same price.
Raising the spectre of business disruption, the postal workers’ union has threatened further strike action if Křetínský fails to follow through on these commitments.
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