SingPost past and present: How a 200-year old monopoly got disrupted
With social media and other couriers eating its lunch, the company’s performance has been on the decline as it fights cut-throat competition
[SINGAPORE] Some have quipped that the postal service is the original social media. It facilitated widespread communication and connection over distances for centuries before e-mail, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or even the telephone, came along.
In Singapore, postal services landed with the founding of the city-state by Stamford Raffles in 1819.
For 200 years, its monopolistic or near-monopolistic operations played such a dominant role in Singapore’s daily life and industry that one can trace the beginnings of the POSB Bank and the early history of Singtel to SingPost. It was also a founding tenant of the iconic Fullerton Hotel, the grande dame of colonial architecture that once housed the General Post Office.
The company was such an investor darling at one point that it drew an investment from Alibaba, the China big tech and e-commerce giant.
But those halcyon days are long over. In 2024, ten years after it backed the company, Alibaba dumped S$33 million of its SingPost shares. A year later, it sold another 151.3 million shares, ceasing to be a substantial shareholder of SingPost.
With social media and other couriers eating its lunch, SingPost’s performance has been on the decline as it fights cut-throat competition. In FY2025, its underlying profit dived 40 per cent; in the first quarter of FY2026, its group operating profit fell by 60 per cent.
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Contributing to the shrinking top and bottom line was the group’s recent divestment of its Australian logistics business at an enterprise value of A$1.02 billion (S$862,231) at that time. While that unlocked value for shareholders, it also raised worrying questions about the company’s long-term strategic direction.
Today, SingPost’s businesses serve customers in more than 220 global destinations and employ over 3,000 employees.
The Business Times retraces its rich history:
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