2023 marks the end of an era for Deutsche Post - and the record course of recent years.

Immediately before the change of CEO from Frank Appel, who has been in charge since February 2008, to Tobias Meyer, the Bonn-based company reported a significant decline in sales and profits on Wednesday. The logistics giant, which has been boosted for years by a special boom in online retail during the coronavirus pandemic, has had to pay tribute to the gloomy consumer mood and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine: In the first quarter, turnover shrank by 7.5 percent to 20.9 billion euros. The operating result (EBIT) even fell by 24 percent to 1.6 billion euros. "As expected, we have felt the slowdown in growth momentum and the normalization of the freight markets," said CFO Melanie Kreis. The Bonn-based company confirmed its forecasts for 2023 and 2025.

Appel will be leaving Swiss Post from Thursday. He will hand over his office to Post CEO Tobias Meyer at the Annual General Meeting. Appel, who has also been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom since April 2022, has shaped Swiss Post and driven forward its internationalization, among other things. The former McKinsey consultant joined the Bonn-based company in 2000. He became a member of the Management Board in 2002 and was appointed CEO in 2008. Swiss Post now generates the lion's share of its profits outside its home market of Germany. Appel has thus made it independent of the shrinking German mail business. He is handing over responsibility into good hands, explained Appel. "I have always said: I want a successor who is either better or different from me. Tobias Meyer is both."

Meyer now has a lot of work ahead of him, also in view of the economic development - after all, he has to lead the Group through a phase of economic uncertainty. US competitor UPS also lost ground in the first quarter. Turnover fell by six percent and operating income by as much as 21.8 percent. Meyer will also have to decide whether Swiss Post will set its sights on Deutsche Bahn's logistics subsidiary Schenker should it come onto the market.

In the first quarter, Swiss Post felt the effects of the economic slowdown above all in its freight division, which has been booming for years, and in the parcel business. "In air freight, the decline in volume was particularly noticeable on trade routes between Asia and the USA and between Asia and Europe - in sea freight, especially due to the decline on trade routes coming from China," said CFO Kreis. "At the same time, inflation has dampened consumption and slowed down online trade." In the German letter and parcel business, Swiss Post also recorded declines due to the wage dispute with the Verdi trade union.

(Report by Matthias Inverardi, edited by Sabine Wollrab. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).