USPS Collapsing–A good read for SingPost Investors

There are a lot of dividend investors looking to pick up SingPost at a lower price. Current price of $1.03 is near the price that I got vested last year.

At InvestmentMoats.com, we mentioned that we think SingPost’s main business is declining.

We find that this could be a good read to contrast against Singpost’s declining mail volume as well.

USPS Business Model is so broken that it is collapsing
With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate
It relies on first-class mail to fund most of its operations, but first-class mail volume is steadily declining—in 2005 it fell below junk mail for the first time. This was a significant milestone. The USPS needs three pieces of junk mail to replace the profit of a vanished stamp-bearing letter
USPS has been unable to cover its annual budget, 80 percent of which goes to salaries and benefits. In contrast, 43 percent of FedEx’s (FDX) budget and 61 percent of United Parcel Service’s (UPS) pay go to employee-related expenses
Three decades ago, most postal services around the developed world were government-run monopolies like the USPS. In the late ’80s, the European Union set out to create a single postal market. It prodded members to give up their monopolies and compete with one another. The effort roused an industry often thought to be sleepy and backward-looking.
Many countries closed as many of their brick-and-mortar post offices as possible, moving these services into gas stations and convenience stores, which then take them over—just as the USPS is trying to do now, only far more aggressively. Today, Sweden’s Posten runs only 12 percent of its post offices. The rest are in the hands of third parties. Deutsche Post is now a private company and runs just 2 percent of the post offices in Germany. In contrast, the USPS operates all of its post offices.
Some of these newly energized mail services used the savings to pursue new business lines. Deutsche Post bought DHL, a package deliverer that competes with FedEx and UPS.
Many used their extra cash to create digital mail products that allow customers to send and receive letters from their computers.
USPS needs to create products for its wired customers if it wants to play a role in the future of communication. He acknowledges some foreign digital services are in early stages, but they are in demand, and in some cases the digital technology reduces delivery costs.
The service now predicts that total mail volume will decline from 171 billion pieces annually in 2010 to 150 billion in 2020. That’s a best-case scenario. The worst-case, according to its own projections, is 118 billion.

The US Postal Service Nears Collapse >

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Kyith

Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.

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Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.

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