CTT's First-Half Profit Falls 41.6% to €12.9 Million Even as Revenue Grows, With a New EU Parcel Fee Looming Over the Second Half

CTT — Correios de Portugal, the former state postal monopoly now listed on Euronext Lisbon — earned less in the first half of 2026 even as it sold more. The company reported a consolidated net profit of €12.9 million for the six months to June, down 41.6 percent on the same period last year, while revenue climbed 12.9 percent to €674.3 million. It is an unusual split: the top line is growing at double-digit rates, but the profit at the bottom has been almost halved.

The company traces the fall to two mechanical drivers. Operating profit (EBIT) shrank by €6.3 million, and financial results worsened by a further €1.4 million. On a broader measure, EBITDA slipped 3 percent to €84.1 million. Put simply, CTT is handling more volume and booking more revenue, but the cost of doing so — and a less favourable financial line — ate into what reached shareholders.

Parcels are the engine, and the pressure point

The growth story is e-commerce. CTT's express-mail-and-parcels arm lifted operating income 29.6 percent over the half to €343.6 million, helped by the consolidation of the acquired businesses Cacesa and DHL Parcel Portugal; stripping those out, the underlying growth was still 22.3 percent. In the second quarter alone, operating income there rose 25.2 percent to €179.4 million. That is the part of the business CTT has spent years and several acquisitions building into an Iberian parcel network, culminating in its joint venture with DHL that closed in May.

Yet the same cross-border flows are now the source of a headwind that CTT and analysts flagged alongside the results: the new European handling charge on low-value parcels from outside the bloc. Since 1 July, packages worth under €150 — the sort ordered in bulk from Chinese platforms such as Temu and Shein — face a per-item fee as Brussels closes the duty-free window that let them in untaxed. The Portugal Brief covered that change when CTT was urging shoppers to clear their orders before the deadline; the company publicly called the levy a "structural obstacle" to e-commerce. The concern is not just the fee itself but the way it is reshaping the map, pushing the Chinese platforms to move slices of their logistics to lower-cost Eastern European hubs and away from the Iberian gateways CTT has invested in.

The bright spots: the bank and the buyback

Not every line moved the wrong way. Banco CTT, the group's retail banking arm, grew its income 8.1 percent to €74.1 million, which the company attributed to a larger and more active client base, brisk lending, a jump in the placement of public debt, and continued growth in its business-solutions and payments unit. The bank has become an increasingly important counterweight to the mature, structurally declining letter-mail business.

CTT also signalled confidence in its own shares, enlarging its share-buyback programme even as half-year profit fell — a way of returning cash to investors and supporting the stock while the parcel market resets around the new rules.

The half-year figure follows a first quarter in which profit had already dropped 17.6 percent to €4.5 million, a period CTT blamed partly on the winter storms and on turbulence in global trade. Six months in, the pattern is consistent: revenue driven higher by parcels and banking, profit held back by costs, integration, and a regulatory shift in cross-border commerce whose full effect will only show in the second half of the year.