Rerouting SingPost

The one-time e-commerce darling has suffered a collapse in investor confidence. Will its new CEO Paul Coutts be able to revive market interest? What are his plans?

SINGAPORE (Mar 12): When Paul Coutts took on the role of CEO at Singapore Post last June, he lost no time diving into the company’s most pressing problems. “The first thing I did was I went to the US and visited TradeGlobal [Holdings], before the annual general meeting [in July 2017],” he tells The Edge Singapore. “I sat down with the management and [told] them my experience from my previous life in turnaround situations. I told them to upgrade the plan.”

SingPost had acquired 96.4% of TradeGlobal, a US-based end-to-end e-commerce provider, for US$169 million in November 2015. But in FY2017 ended March, SingPost recorded a $185 million impairment charge for TradeGlobal. The latter had incurred a $25.8 million loss instead of a planned $9.4 million profit. It lost two major customers accounting for 30% to 40% of its revenue.