Britain's state-owned Royal Mail posted a first profit in four years at its core letters and parcels business.
This helped its annual earnings more than quadruple as the group shapes up for privatisation.
The postal operator, edging toward a sale or flotation in early 2014, said today it made a group operating profit after modernisation costs of £211m sterling in the year to March 25.
This was up from £39m a year earlier.
Royal Mail's UK parcels and letter business has struggled in recent years as customers increasingly turn to email, but improvements to its sorting processes, staff reductions and price increases helped the unit swing to an operating profit of £23m from a loss of £120m a year ago.
The group, which delivers around 59 million items a day to 29 million UK addresses, said it was now cash positive for the first time in four years, holding £234m, boosted by the proceeds from disposals.
Royal Mail, which has shed around 50,000 staff in the last decade, said profit at its European parcels business GLS and Post Office branch network were up 8% and 3%, respectively.
"We expect that continued growth in online retailing will benefit our domestic and international parcels businesses. The decline in our core letters business is expected to continue. We will press on with our modernisation programme, cutting costs in the network," chief executive Moya Greene said in a statement.
Momentum behind Royal Mail's privatisation has gathered pace this year with the European Commission clearing government to take on its hefty pension fund. It also received approval to rise stamp prices to help stem losses from declining letter volumes.
Under the privatisation plans employees will get a stake of at least 10%, while the Post Office network will remain in the public sector and may be mutualised.
