Royal Mail, Britain's state-owned postal service, has reported its first annual profit on day-to-day operations for four years.
The group made a profit of £220m sterling in the last financial year, compared with losses of £197m in the previous year. The profit marks a significant turnaround from two difficult years during which Royal Mail was losing over £1m a day.
The improvement was largely the result of increased postage prices as well as cost cuts and a 1.6% rise in the number of letters posted.
The group has been dogged by wildcat strikes by postal workers which crippled deliveries last year, resulting in the failure of the service to meet its targets for delivering post on time.
In December Royal Mail announced up to 3,000 managerial job cuts as part of a far-reaching restructuring programme. A total of 30,000 jobs are expected to be lost within the organisation over a period of three years under the plan, which also sounded the death knell twice-a-day mail deliveries.
Royal Mail also said its top executives were deferring or waiving bonus payments until the group meets quality of service targets in the 2004/5 financial year.
