Royal Mail is something of a safe haven in these markets, with dependable if falling revenues from its letters business and a growing parcels side reliant on the increasing volumes of ecommerce. The industry indications are that e-retail growth should continue at about twice the rate of the high street, even if the competition from such as Amazon for that parcel business is growing.
Those 700,000 investors who bought the shares in the 2013 flotation will have seen a good gain on their investment. The shares were floated at 330p. They were above £5 last summer and rose 8½p to 510½p yesterday.
They benefited from what was widely seen as a let-off from Ofcom, the regulator, which started looking at whether to impose price controls