Royal Mail says that strike action cost it more than £1m each day over the past 12 months, as disruption helped send the group’s owner to an annual loss of more than £1bn.
International Distributions Services (IDS) revealed Royal Mail swung to an operating loss of £1.04bn for the year to March 26, compared to earnings of £250m for the previous year.
On an underlying basis, Royal Mail recorded operating losses of £419m – more than £1.1m for every day of the year – versus profits of £416m the previous year.
IDS said the losses were largely down to the impact of industrial action. The company booked a £539m writedown on the value of Royal Mail due to the impact of strikes and the “current risk backdrop”, while it took a hit of around £200m from 18 days of strikes.
The group also revealed a cyber attack in January cost it £20m in lost revenues after it was left unable to send international parcels and consumers and businesses faced lengthy delays.
IDS overall posted a £748m annual operating loss, against profits of £577m the previous year, but IDS said it was targeting a return to underlying earnings over the 2023-24 financial year.
The figures come after Royal Mail last month agreed a deal with the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
But it faces further turbulence after chief executive Simon Thompson announced he will step down by the end of the year and news earlier this week that Royal Mail is being investigated for failing to meet its delivery targets in the past year.
Keith Williams, chairman of IDS, said: “We apologise to everyone for not delivering a quality of service to the standards that we expect.
“It's been a difficult year for Royal Mail, in particular for customers and our people and shareholders.”
He added: “We are absolutely committed that we do improve our quality of service and start to deliver to customers the service that they pay for.”
It revealed on Monday that only 73.7pc of first class mail was delivered within one working day across the year. The target was 93pc.
He said the group is not blaming the CWU for the failures but added that “clearly the strikes didn't help”.
He said strikes accounted for around eight percentage points of the first class target miss.
But Mr Williams added there were “grounds for optimism”, with management expecting Royal Mail to return to profit in 2024-25 following the deal with the CWU.
He insisted that Royal Mail “does have a future in the group”.