A healthy financial performance is the best guarantee of high-quality services

We take our financial responsibility into account by ensuring sustainable and profitable growth in a long-term and effective manner. A healthy financial performance is the best guarantee of high-quality, competitive services for all our customers – households, corporate customers and communities. By maintaining profitable and sustainable business growth, Itella ensures that it will continue to be a competitive company and a good employer.
 
Itella Corporation is wholly owned by the Finnish State. Itella’s operations are financed by customer revenues. In Finland, the state does not provide any subsidies to postal service providers. Postal services are also subject to value-added tax, unlike in most other EU countries. The Finnish state requires that its corporations conduct a profitable business that adds shareholder value. Itella has shown favourable profit performance for several years now.

Competitive and sustainable growth

Itella Group’s consolidated net sales for 2007 amounted to EUR 1,688.3 million, a rise of 8.9% on the previous year. Operating profit totalled EUR 101.8 million. Due to streamlining measures, the profitability of operations improved: EBITDA margin was 6.0%. All business groups posted a positive performance.

International operations account for 25% of Itella’s net sales. From its 2007 profit, Itella will pay its owner, the Finnish State, EUR 39.0 million in dividends. The taxes paid on this result amounted to EUR 29.0 million. In addition, value-added tax is collected on the services provided by Itella; for postal services, this tax is 22%. Salaries paid by Itella in 2007 totalled EUR 647.3 million.

Research and development on a wide scale

In 2007, Itella Group spent a total of EUR 100-135 million, or 6-8% of its total turnover, on research and development. Research activities focus on annually-repeated analyses which are aimed at evaluating Itella’s strategy execution, competitiveness, business and consumer customer satisfaction as well as employee commitment and well-being. In 2007, the most important research topics included mobile, localisation, sorting process automation and tracking technologies.