USPS Ends Fourth Quarter FY23 with an Average of 2.5 Days to Deliver

Pitney Bowes announced it is acquiring Newgistics Inc. for $475 million in a move to accelerate Pitney Bowes’ expansion into the U.S. domestic parcels market. “Newgistics fits uniquely at the intersection of our parcel growth strategies and will accelerate the overall transformation of Pitney Bowes,” said Marc B. Lautenbach, President and Chief Executive Officer of Pitney Bowes. “This acquisition combined with recent innovations in mailing and shipping for SMB clients, organic growth of our global ecommerce business, and expansion of our presort and parcel services network – definitively anchors Pitney Bowes in a growing space and vastly increases the value we can deliver for our clients.”

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the U.S. Postal Service will be forced to initiate “uncomfortable” price increases for market dominant USPS products such as first-class mail, marketing mail and periodicals, while shippers using Parcel Select Ground can benefit from use of cubic pricing. The USPS’s new pricing schedule goes into effect July 10, with the agency warning that twice-yearly pricing adjustments will be the norm going forward, even as the delivery service standard has slowed. The USPS delayed implementation of the service slowdown until after the peak holiday season. The recent Postal Reform Act’s undoing of mandated prefunding of retiree healthcare benefits will save $50 billion over 10 years by switching pensioners to Medicare – which many argue causes other economic liability issues. But DeJoy said that still leaves a projected $110 billion dollar USPS loss over that period.

Adams Publishing Group is acquiring The Livingston Enterprise and its parent company Yellowstone Newspapers, consisting of 13 small-town Montana newspapers. Terms were not disclosed. The deal was reached last Friday by John Sullivan, president of the Montana Group, and Mark Adams, president and CEO of Minnesota-based Adams Publishing Group (APG). It is expected to close on Nov. 1. This marks the end of a 57-year reign in the local newspaper business for the Yellowstone Group.