Willens said a better way to gauge the USPS' financial condition is to look at its cash flow, which tracks how many dollars are going in and out of a company (or in this case a semi-detached arm of the government). Since then, it has lost $77.8 billion. A lot — and its stash is growing. In 2006, Congress mandated that the USPS expense the potential cost of those benefits annually, even though, according to the May GAO report, the agency hasn't spent any money funding those future benefits since at least 2014. The income statement won't tell you that.". When might you get Biden's $1,400 stimulus check? UPS annual gross profit for 2019 was $56.377B, a 5.79% increase from 2018. The USPS quarterly operating profit of $1.3 billion, he added, “builds on back-to-back years of operating profits each exceeding $1 billion, without a dime of taxpayer money.” Last year, it delivered 142.6 billion pieces, a 31.4% decline. If it doesn't put away any additional money by then, the USPS would still be able to fund its retiree benefits out of its excess cash flow for a while. The leaked documents, however, indicate that USPS does make a profit on Amazon shipments. Use Click-N-Ship ® service to pay for postage and print a shipping label from your printer or at a Post Office ™ location. USPS has become a focal point for Congress and the 2020 election https://t.co/sCnjaLeWXv pic.twitter.com/OBMxnYS1rl. 1. There is no special form to fill out each year when renewing the fee Paying the annual mailing fee gives you permission to mail a certain class of mail from a certain postal facility for 365 days. ICE Limitations. Meanwhile, the plan to eliminate Saturday service is dead. If that had happened, then the Postal Service could — without any financial adjustments — have been in danger of running out of cash. In April, the Postal Service did warn that it could run out of cash by October. The fact that the USPS can come close to profitability while charging only 55 cents to mail a letter across the country is nothing short of astounding. If the USPS was a private sector company, that would translate to a pretty healthy profit. Newsroom › USPS Service Alerts › Forms & Publications › Careers › Site Index › ON USPS.COM. But it didn't. WASHINGTON - The U.S. All figures are for one fiscal year. The Postal Service's net losses include retiree pensions and health care, as well as other benefits. If the USPS was a private sector company, that would translate to a pretty healthy profit. By 2002, the majority of Americans were already using email, yet USPS made a pretty penny in the years that followed. This shows the need for policymakers to address two public policy issues – the stamp price rollback and the congressional mandate that USPS prefund future retiree health benefits decades into the future. "I think growing losses at the Postal Service is a problem that is not going to go away.". USPS posted a net income of $307 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2016, the first such gain since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011. Last year, USPS reported total losses of $8.5 billion—but without the pre-funding and work-ers’ compensation adjustments, the shortfall would have been a more modest $374 million. In response, Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday, "I think it's really important for the American people to know this: When they talk about the Postal Service, they say 'Oh, they're losing money, we have to make this, this and this.' Excluding losses so far this year, the USPS last had a surplus in 2006. While the ballot controversy is new, the financial problems are not. Expenses are actually up $2 billion, or just under 3%, in the past nine months due in part to an increase in paid sick leave as a result of the pandemic, as well as the purchase of personal protective equipment and other services to keep workers safe. In the first six months of 2020, the USPS' operations generated $2.3 billion in cash, an increase of $700 million from the year-ago period. But that 10 year period ended in 2016, so it can’t be blamed for current USPS woes. Yet the private shipping giant's cashflow has proved less resilient, falling 12% this year as the coronavirus pandemic slammed the economy. Postal Service "have to" raise prices for delivering packages for Amazon. June 2, 2014 postal, postal finances 24 Comments. Postal Service in Fiscal Year 2019 ($8.8 billion) is largely the result of external factors, not the normal operations of the agency. / MoneyWatch. Seven months into the current fiscal year, the US Postal Service’s revenue exceeds its expenses by $1.353 billion. Instead, revenue for the Postal Service has risen more than $500 million in the past nine months, driven by a 20% jump, or $3.4 billion, in sales from shipping packages that has more than offset the drop in first-class mail. January 16, 2021, 5:36 PM. Based on that, the Postal Service is a cash cow, generating a total of $13.5 billion over the past five years. "What financial measure you look at depends on why you are looking," he said. Earlier this year, the Postal Service Board of Governors asked for $25 billion in additional aid, but that was based on their earlier prediction of huge coronavirus-related losses, which has proved excessively dire. But nearly all of those losses stem from how the Postal Service accounts for its pension and health care obligations. Behind on rent? UPS annual gross profit for 2018 was $53.293B, a 5.33% increase from 2017. USPS.com Home › Buy Stamps & Shop › Print a Label with Postage › Customer Service › Delivering Solutions to the Last Mile › OTHER USPS SITES. But that warning was based on a projection that the USPS' revenue would drop by $13 billion this year because of the coronavirus. USPS year to date profit from operations reaches $1.4 billion. It's not a business. President Trump says the U.S. Statement of NALC President Fred Rolando On USPS Financial Results for FY 2019 The large loss posted by the U.S. Legal Statement. What's lost in the political furor is this: The Postal Service is on track to have its best year in more than half a decade — that's even after taking a severe financial hit, like businesses around the country, from the coronavirus. That's not the point. President Trump recently criticized Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos, claiming that USPS loses money whenever Amazon ships a package to a customer. The 1993 law would have required taxpayers to provide the USPS a total of $1.2 billion over 42 years. Despite a solid 1.5 percent rise in revenue compared to last year, USPS reported an operating loss of $1.951 billion. June 2, 2014 postal, postal finances 12 Comments. In fact, the USPS annual report detailed not only challenges but also several highly positive trends. August 20, 2020 / 7:03 AM Today, the U.S. Notably, none of that is from cost-cutting. In June, the Postal Service updated its outlook to say that it could run out of money by the end of 2021. History. The post office has seen a surge in demand for package shipping, even as regular first-class mail has dropped. That was up from roughly $8.4 billion in mid-2019. Not quite, at least not in the way that accountants normally calculate profit and loss. Chart 1. Yet the question of whether the Postal Service is a good investment is not the issue. He also points out that until 1970, no one expected the Postal Service — never a for-profit enterprise — to break even. The information comes from internal emails and financial statements obtained by the American Oversight watchdog group and shared in a report from the Washington Post. "Here you are interested in solvency and whether the Postal Service generates sufficient cash to fund its operations. Despite the USPS' improving financial condition this year, its long-term retiree benefit obligations — at over $60 billion — are large and growing. How to apply for federal pandemic aid, $15 minimum wage a sticking point as Biden pushes COVID rescue plan, Post Master General Louis DeJoy suspended, California Privacy/Information We Collect. Postal Services (USPS) fluctuated around 70 billion U.S. dollars. Postal Service (USPS) ran a deficit of $3.9 billion. The 18-wheelers were developed by startup company, TuSimple. 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Postal Service lost money in six out of the 10 years from 2001 through 2010, according to its financial reports. The Postal Service also owes $11 billion to the Treasury and more than $59 billion in required but unpaid contributions to its employee pension and retiree-health funds. Postal Service "has been failing for many decades." Plus, you can schedule a USPS ® pickup from your home or office. as Reddit group causes mayhem, YouTube has paid out more than $30 billion to content creators over the past three years, Average US household now spends $47 a month on streaming services, Intel's Iris Xe desktop graphics cards are shipping to OEMs, Zen 3 scalpers made almost $1 million profit from 8,720 eBay sales, Crypto enthusiast installs mining rig in BMW's trunk "to annoy gamers". USPS makes profit in October, predicts 50% cut in losses this year. What's more, the USPS was already authorized to get an additional $10 billion earlier this year under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which it has yet to tap. Fiscal 2017 marked the first time in five years that the Postal Service failed to turn a profit on controllable operations. All this red ink has flowed despite USPS’s aggressive move [1] into the parcel delivery business. Meanwhile, Amazon has been building up its own logistics arm: in June last year, we heard that Amazon Logistics was delivering some 48 percent of its own packages. These five charts depict the immensity of USPS’s financial challenges. However, the last year the Postal Service recorded any profit was 2006, and its cumulative losses since then totaled $83.1 billion as of March 31. ***Includes Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, First-Class Packages, Package Services, Parcel Return Service and Parcel Select. By comparison, between December and May FedEx brought in $3 billion. — Bloomberg (@business) August 17, 2020 The leaked documents, however, indicate that USPS does make a profit on Amazon shipments. TECHSPOT : Tech Enthusiasts, Power Users, Gamers, TechSpot is a registered trademark. In May 2019, the Postal Service announced that it will be releasing a pilot of self-driving trucks to haul mail across the U.S. USPS was profitable every year between 2003 and 2006, averaging a net income over two billion dollars.This is in stark contrast to its losses in 2001-2002 that averaged over a billion dollars. Email adoption numbers simply don’t correlate with USPS’s downturn in business. That was up from a loss of $5.9 billion in the same period the previous year. Ethics Statement Terms of Use Privacy Policy Change Ad Consent Advertise. Unfortunately, losses are the rule rather than the exception for the agency. President Donald Trump tweets that the U.S. Last year, the U.S. Powered and implemented by FactSet. * As of September 30, 2019 **Mail bearing postage stamps — bill payments, personal correspondence, cards and letters, etc. Part of the reason for that jump, though, is that the Postal Service borrowed an additional $3.3 billion earlier this year. But the GAO does note that the money the Postal Service has set aside to fund its retiree benefits will run out by 2030. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the busiest time of the year for the USPS with the agency delivering an estimated 900 million packages during the period of 2018. But that, too, is based on a projection of possible virus-related losses. The first USPS Building Bridges Special Postal Cancellations was issued on May 29, 1996 in partnership with Dan DiMiglio, the USPS Manager of the Pacific Area, Corporate relations, at a special ceremony unveiling the Breast cancer research stamp in Contra Costa County. USPS says it's removing mailboxes and suspending mail collection in several major cities ahead of Biden's inauguration . GameStop stock hits record high as Reddit group causes mayhem, The complete list of alternatives to all Google products, Ring rolled out end-to-end encryption for some of its cameras today, Customers can keep certain products under new retailer return policies, GameStop stock hits record high (again!) UPS gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2020 was $61.221B, a 10.62% increase year-over-year. But eventually it would have to either renege on benefits or get federal assistance. That was up from roughly $8.4 billion in mid-2019. © 2021 TechSpot, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Sarah Al-Arshani. The bulk of those benefits won't be owed for a long time. USPS records its first quarterly net profit in five years, but warns losses are not over. But, wait, there’s more… What if you couldn’t increase your pricing based on changing market conditions (such as rising fuel costs or competitive pressures)? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called a vote this weekend on legislation that would deliver $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service. According to the information, USPS delivered 1.54 billion Amazon packages in the 2019 fiscal year, amounting to 30 percent of the company’s volume. © 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. To be sure, the USPS faces real challenges. Accounting expert Robert Willens, who runs his own consultancy, said net income is an especially important gauge for investors as a measure of whether the bottom-line value of an investment has gone up or down. Still, he thinks Mr. Trump is right to raise concerns about the USPS' longer term financial viability. Address that and its financial situation improves dramatically. But lawmakers skipped or cut the payments for four years, leaving the USPS with a $1.6 billion IOU. Trump also claimed that USPS “have to” raise their prices for delivering packages for Amazon. Postal Service reported operating revenue of $71.1 billion for fiscal year 2019 (October 1, 2018 - September 30, 2019), … On Tuesday, Post Master General Louis DeJoy suspended what he said were "longstanding operational initiatives" meant to cut costs at the USPS. The United States Postal Service reported Feb. 9 “controllable income” of $522 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, which ended Dec. 31. "The Postal Services' expected losses this year were not as bad as what people predicted," said Christopher Edwards, an economist at the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute. The US Postal Service made a $61m profit in October, and even achieved 5.6% growth in its mail and services revenues compared to the same month last year. Send Mail & Packages Convenient Domestic Shipping. UPS annual gross profit for 2017 was $50.598B, a 5.19% increase from 2016. "If it wasn't for the retiree benefits, the Postal Service would be break-even, or perhaps even a little bit better," post office historian and policy analyst Christopher Shaw, told CBS MoneyWatch. ", First published on August 20, 2020 / 7:03 AM. The upshot: Much of the tens of billions of dollars in net losses that the Postal Service has racked up in the past decade are paper losses — not cash expenditures. At the time, the USPS’s contribution had dropped from 60 percent to 35 percent. Postal Service (USPS) released its financial report for the 2017 fiscal year in which its leadership detailed a greatly concerning loss of $2.7 billion. The basic issue is that revenue … Dec 10 The USPS reported a loss of $2.3 billion loss in the most recent quarter, with pre-funding health-care retiree obligations as a major factor. But it's not clear where that figure comes from. Revenue came to $69.6 billion, down from $71.5 billion last year. Market data provided by ICE Data Services. The U.S. Want to save time and ship from home? The USPS had $13.3 billion in cash as of June 30, according to its most recent financial statement. News provided by The Associated Press. For the first nine months of its current fiscal year (which ends in September), the Postal Service lost $7.5 billion. A May report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office described the Postal Service's financial condition as "poor."