- Net Loss of $5.1 Billion; Controllable Income of $1.2 Billion
- Revenue of $68.9 Billion for Fiscal Year 2015, Up 1.6 percent
- Shipping and Packages Services Revenues Up 11.4 percent
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service reported a net loss of $5.1 billion for fiscal year 2015 (October 1, 2014 – September 30, 2015). The net loss is largely due to certain statutorily mandated payments over which the Postal Service has no control. Notwithstanding the loss, total revenue was $68.9 billion for the year, an increase of approximately $1.1 billion from 2014.
“We achieved controllable income in excess of $1 billion for the second consecutive fiscal year giving us some limited flexibility to make critical investments in the future of the organization,” said Postmaster General and CEO Megan J. Brennan. “To maintain this success we will need to continue our efforts to grow the business and drive operational efficiencies. However, we will also need the enactment of legislation that makes our retiree health benefit system affordable and that provides increased pricing and product flexibility.”
Controllable income for 2015 was $1.2 billion compared to $1.4 billion last year. Controllable income is defined as net loss excluding expenses related to the mandated prefunding of retirement health benefits, actuarial revaluation of retirement liabilities and non-cash workers’ compensation adjustments, which are factors largely outside of management’s control.
However, despite the year-over-year improvement in revenue and a second year of controllable income in excess of $1 billion, the Postal Service continues to operate under substantial financial pressure which demonstrates the need for legislative reform. Large net losses continue, and controllable operating expenses increased $1.3 billion from last year. This was the result of a combination of factors, including higher compensation costs attributable to increased benefits expenses and additional work hours partly associated with growth in the more labor-intensive shipping and package business.
“Adding to the financial pressures that the Postal Service will face in the short term is the fact that the exigent surcharge authorized by the Postal Regulatory Commission in 2014 will need to be rolled back in approximately April of 2016,” said Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett. “This surcharge has provided an additional estimated $3.5 billion in revenue since its inception, and will provide a total of $4.6 billion in additional revenue at the time when the commission will require us to eliminate the surcharge.”
Selected 2015 Results of Operations Compared to 2014
· Total mail volume of 154.2 billion pieces from 155.5 billion pieces in 2014.
o Shipping and Packages volume increased 14.1 percent.
o First-Class Mail and Standard Mail volume decreased by 2.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.
· Revenue of $68.9 billion increased 1.6 percent from $67.8 billion. Excluding the exigent surcharge, revenue was an estimated $66.8 billion, an increase of 0.6 percent from $66.4 billion.
· Operating expenses of $73.8 billion increased by $648 million or 0.9 percent.
o Controllable operating expenses of $67.6 billion increased by $1.3 billion or 1.9 percent.
o Non-Controllable operating expenses of $6.3 billion decreased by $617 million or 9 percent.
· The resulting net loss for the fiscal year was $5.1 billion, a reduction of $448 million compared to the net loss of $5.5 billion for 2014.
Complete financial results are available in the Form 10-K, available at http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/welcome.htm.
Financial Briefing
Postmaster General & CEO Megan J. Brennan and Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett will host a telephone/Web conference call to discuss the financial results in more detail. The call will begin at 11:00 a.m. on November 13, 2015 ET and is open to the news media and all other interested parties.
How to Participate:
Important Notice: To ensure your computer is set up to join the event, click on the link www.webex.com/lp/jointest/
US/Canada Attendee Dial-in: (855) 293-5496
Conference ID: 63003141
Attendee Direct URL: https://usps.webex.com/usps/onstage/g.php?MTID=ed5a1d8da0fa75a16738989ec0979ae0c
If you cannot join using the direct link above, please use the alternate logins below:
Alternate URL: https://usps.webex.com
Event Number: 999 417 786
The briefing will also be available on live audio webcast (listen only) at:
http://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/cfo/welcome.htm.
bunch of high school drop out trying to run the PO into the dirt…….and succeeding. make fun of Donald Trump 2016-2024 all you want, but the guy is worth 9 Billion. what is the average net worth (assets minus liabilities=net worth) of a postal slug? with 1% raise year after year….not much. Hillary $200 million Feinstein 70 million Pelosi 400 million……….never did anything but work for govt……so why the big difference from a govt postal slug and a demonrat govt political hack?
Would it not make sense to just do away with the health prefunding? Why is it that only the Postal Service must prepay it’s health care costs? We know why! the “the free marketers” want to be able to say the Postal Service has ”lost” money for years, so it must be sold off. It is time to force the armed forces, and every other employer in America, to prefund their health care costs! We can thank ex President Forrest Gump and congress. The same idiots that started a war over the “weapons of mass deception”! Do you think congress would ever prefund it’s health care costs? No! they don’t want a taste of their own medicine.
Congress and Politicians destroying the P.O. on purpose.
This week, in a last-ditch attempt to slash costs, the United States Post Office announced plans to eliminate next-day delivery service of first-class mail.
The bleeding agency, which is facing a $10 billion deficit, needs to cut $20 billion in operating costs by 2015 in order to start making money again.
The major change may crush Americans who will have to get to used to receiving DVDs and birthday cards a few days later, but the truth is, the Post Office has been trimming services and dumping products for decades in lieu of changing technology and in an effort to combat costs.
Your use of anecdotal evidence as validation of your premise is laughable. Would you (or anyone) take a Walmart job over a USPS job?
Until the Postal Services redundant management is streamlined you will never see a healthy bottom line. If they would trim down the top heavy management and cut out all the waste and parasitic managers at the Postal service you would see a 10 to 20 Billion dollar profit. The Postal Service is doomed if something isn’t done about how it is managed.
Author and social entrepreneur Geoff Smart shared an interesting little anecdote in his new book “Leadocracy: Hiring More Great Leaders (Like You) into Government.”
When Smart was a graduate student, he had to observe two different leaders for a class project. He went to a Walmart and Post Office and compared the two.
The first was a manager at a Post Office, and what Smart saw was a management catastrophe.
He writes:
“I noticed that the boss slouched in his chair with his shoulders slumped forward, and talked with a frown on his face. He pointed his finger at the other people in his meeting. The discussion he led was all about rules and compliance — the concerns of bureaucracy — for almost the entire meeting, combined with some unpleasant nagging of the workers. He talked down to them and insulted them.
“The boss and the workers complained about customers and how much of a nuisance they were. There was no discussion of problems to be solved, results to be delivered, or accomplishments recently achieved. No mention of analyzing, allocating, or aligning people to achieve great results.”
Smart didn’t fault the workers. He blamed the boss, and the boss’s boss, and so on until you get to the voter — like himself — who puts bureaucrats into the system in the first place.
Walmart, in the private sector, was the total opposite, even though its low-level jobs are as infamous as any other retail chain in the world. There, he saw what was basically a pep rally. They talked about goals and results from the previous week. They talked about analytics and rewarded an individual who had set a record. “They looked like they were having fun,” writes Smart.
There’s one major issue at the core of this — that government agencies like the Post Office are different because they’re in the government. There’s no rule that says government agencies have to be inefficient, treat workers like crap and ignore customer satisfaction.
And yet, that’s how many people — on both sides of the counter — see it. Until that changes, the Post Office won’t either.
Work at the Post Office? Shoot an email to kbhasin@businessinsider.com and tell us if Smart is right.
NOW SEE: 11 Services That Don’t Exist Anymore At The U.S. Post Office
This seems to be a never ending battle over prefunding. The
postal service seems to be content to continue to dish out
overtime like its candy, mainly because they can’t figure out
how to get around it. They have way to many in-plant support
people with tit jobs coming in on overtime to change machine
labels, or for trucks that come in with large mailings etc., etc.
These are jobs a clerk could do at a lower level pay or the
supervisor who has the shift. To much money dished out to
supervision who rely on the craft anyway to figure things out
and get the job done. The service would be far better off
financially if lead clerks and mail handlers were directing traffic.
Managers making $90,000 with zero knowledge, Supervisor
positions given with no experience earning $70,000. Take a
look in your own backyard postal service and reevaluate your
company. Sigma 6 is a joke!, real efficiency is created by getting
your hands dirty and getting proactive with where the waste is
coming from and target those area’s, which are everywhere.
Time to take the blinders off and start looking at trimming the fat.
Code Black, sounds like to me you know what you’re talking about. But getting somebody to listen to you will be the hard part. Management doesn’t seem to be that interested in making things better