Ten years after its stock market debut, Poste Italiane reflects on its past, present, and future. In a wide-ranging interview with Corriere della Sera, CEO Matteo Del Fante looks back on the company’s journey, outlining the achievements reached and the next goals in sight.
At the helm since 2017
Del Fante – who has led Poste since 2017 – explains that the real turning point “came during my first year and a half, when the company was fresh from the major work done by the previous management to prepare for the IPO.” During that period, he says, “two key objectives were set: to bring on board the right management team for this journey and, together with that team, to define a medium- to long-term strategy.” Poste “followed through with investments and a strong focus on digital transformation,” he continues. “Investing to keep the company aligned with our customers’ evolving needs was the most important decision, alongside the awareness that Poste could serve as the ideal platform to drive Italy’s digital transformation.” As an example, Del Fante mentions the SPID digital identity platform, which in the first nine months of this year alone “recorded 700 million logins – and all the costs of managing those logins and the associated call centers are savings for the public administration. We have 24 million SPID accounts, and our products see 26.5 million daily user interactions.”
Logistics
Reflecting further on the past, Del Fante recalls the challenges of the pandemic and the major effort invested in mail and parcel delivery – a segment that in 2017 was losing over half a billion euros. “It was a critical issue, and there is still much work to be done,” he says, adding that there was “a need to refocus the company, going from 113 million parcels delivered to around 340 million by 2025.” From a professional standpoint, logistics remains the company’s most complex business area: “Those roughly €2 billion in declining revenues must, as mentioned earlier, be replaced in order to sustain our workforce – which, in logistics alone, includes 50,000 employees,” Del Fante explains.
Dividend policy
Regarding the company’s dividend policy, Del Fante notes that Poste “has distributed €7 billion in dividends, maintaining a payout ratio of 70%, which is moderate, and without engaging in buyback operations. Should there be a need to offer more attractive returns, there is therefore room to increase them. Meanwhile, we are increasingly appreciated abroad – and, in terms of shareholding, we now have more investors in Europe and the United States than in Italy.”
