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Deutsche Post DHL posts strong interim quarterly results, will raise full-year outlook

Company to hike guidance out to 2023 when it releases final results Nov. 4

Mark Solomon
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Deutsche Post DHL posts strong interim quarterly results and will raise guidance for year (Photo: DHL)

German shipping and logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL posted strong preliminary third-quarter results on Thursday, and said it plans to raise its outlook for 2021 when it reports final quarterly figures early next month.

Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rose 28% year-on-year to slightly more than US$2 billion, the Bonn-based company said. EBIT through the first nine months was $6.6 billion, which exceeded the company’s bottom-line results for all of 2020, the company said.

Deutsche Post DHL (NASDAQ:DPSGY) said it also plans to hike its guidance as far out as 2023 when it posts final third-quarter results on Nov. 4. It did not provide specifics on the raised guidance for either year. Typically, the final quarterly numbers closely track the preliminary data.

Deutsche Post DHL didn’t address 2022 projections in Thursday’s announcement, and the company was unavailable to comment as to why.


The company’s Express unit, which provides time-definite international air services, posted EBIT of $1.12 billion, up from $870 million in the year-earlier quarter. Earnings for DHL Global Forwarding, the parent air and ocean forwarding division, more than doubled to $427.5 million. The parent’s Supply Chain unit, which had lagged its other units until recently, posted earnings of $161.7 million, up from $140 million. 

Deutsche Post DHL’s relatively new eCommerce Solutions division recorded $104 million in earnings before interest and taxes, up from $87.8 million. The company’s intra-German postal and parcel unit posted earnings of $346 million, down from $369.7 million in the year-earlier quarter.

Free cash flow in the quarter was down to $1.16 billion from $1.57 billion. However, free cash flow through the first nine months more than doubled to nearly $3.6 billion, the company said.

As with other providers, Deutsche Post DHL is seeing continued elevation in business-to-consumer delivery demand as well as an ongoing recovery in business-to-business traffic. It is also experiencing, like every other user of assets, significantly tight air and ocean capacity.


Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.