{"id":653447,"date":"2026-06-12T13:02:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=653447"},"modified":"2026-06-12T13:08:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:08:06","slug":"best-news-from-the-south-african-post-office-in-13-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/government\/653447-best-news-from-the-south-african-post-office-in-13-years.html","title":{"rendered":"Best news from the South African Post Office in 13 years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The South African Post Office (SAPO) presented<\/a> an overview of its financial performance for 2025\/26 in Parliament on Wednesday, 10 June 2026, revealing a net loss of R71 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That reflected a significant improvement over the R514 million net loss it reported in the 2024\/25 financial year. It is also the lowest loss since its 2012\/13 financial year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The net loss position was R71 million compared to the prior net loss of R514 million,” said Lenny Govender, general manager for cost and accounting at SAPO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In terms of the net loss, this is one of the years that SAPO has recorded the lowest net loss if you look at the last five to six years.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state-owned entity recorded revenue of R1.54 billion, which grew by R2 million year-on-year, while its expenses declined by R168 million year-on-year to R2.52 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reduced expenses were driven by staff costs declining by R143 million year-on-year, as SAPO reduced its headcount from 5,892 in March 2025 to 5,658 in March 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reported non-operating income of R907 million, including a R309 million injection from the Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme and a R498 million subsidy to fund universal service obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post Office said its operations during the reporting period continued under austerity measures that limited maintenance and capital expenditure opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The primary focus has been on revenue generation and cost management,” it said, adding that this contributed to the reduced net loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post Office last reported a true profit in the 2011\/12 financial year and has since faced financial decline. In recent years, the losses have frequently been in the billions of rand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020\/21, it reported revenue of R2.93 billion and a net loss of R2.33 billion. In 2021\/22, it generated revenue of R3.03 billion and a net loss of R2.18 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022\/23, revenue was R2.33 billion while the loss declined marginally to R2.16 billion. The 2023\/24 financial year’s profit was an anomaly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post Office generated revenue of R1.63 billion and reported a net profit of R5.30 billion. However, this was not as a result of operational improvements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Declining finances and entering business rescue<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Mark Barnes, former CEO of the South African Post Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The reported profit came after the Post Office entered business rescue, and its creditors agreed to a compromise that wrote off 88% of the amounts the entity owed to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in a R7.4 billion write-back of creditor debt on its income statement for the 2023\/24 financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post Office’s latest published results for the 2024\/25 financial year reported revenue of R1.20 billion and a net loss of R117 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That amount appears to have been adjusted following the report, as the Post Office’s presentation before Parliament showed a net loss of R514 million for the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state-owned entity entered business rescue in July 2023, and practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons were selected to manage the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communications minister Solly Malatsi recently revealed that the business rescue process had cost R321 million since it commenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Included in this cost was an amount of R237.53 million for supporting staff in the business rescue process and R13.72 million in business rescue practitioner fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Post Office CEO Mark Barnes criticised the costs, saying the state entity could have paid the salaries of numerous CEOs working simultaneously for less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They could’ve employed 27 CEOs, all working there full time for the past three years, for less. Stop this,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His assessment assumed that each CEO would have been paid R3.96 million annually, which is roughly what the last CEO was paid in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African Post Office has reduced its net loss by R443 million year-on-year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":653466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18668],"tags":[52231,32460,65443,88130,88132,105843,3734,22355],"class_list":["post-653447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-anoosh-rooplal","tag-business-rescue","tag-business-rescue-plan","tag-business-rescue-practitioners","tag-juanito-damons","tag-lenny-govender","tag-post-office","tag-south-african-post-office-sapo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653447"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653726,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653447\/revisions\/653726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}