Whistl saw its pre-tax profit crash by more than 400% last year after ending its foray into the final mile delivery market, but predicts it will have recovered by the end of 2016.

The company abandoned the final mile trials it was running in Manchester, Liverpool and London in June 2015 after its financial backer LDC withdrew its support.

CEO Nick Wells accused Royal Mail of “screwing” Whistl’s operation by behaving anti-competitively.

An Ofcom investigation into final mile access is ongoing.

The fallout from shutting down the operation saw Whistl make a pre-tax loss of £18.7m for the year ended 31 December 2015, compared with a loss of £3.7m in 2014.

Wells said that the results showed a “one-off hit” associated with the closure of the final mile operation.

He told MT: “That one-off hit was extraordinary items, like redundancies, and we had commitments in property – so it was a combination of the asset write-offs and the one-off losses that culminated in that big hit last year.”

The company had to make around 2,000 redundancies, which Wells said were mainly postal workers.

“It was difficult, really sad,” said Wells. “We’d invested a lot of time and resources into trying to make that work. Royal Mail clearly didn’t take kindly to us moving into the final mile. But that’s behind us, and we’ll continue to focus on what we’re doing well.”

Wells said that he expects Whistl will close 2016 on £14m Ebitda.

He said: “We started 2016 with a clean sheet. We’re back into profit, and our results will demonstrate we’re a healthy and viable profitable business. We’ll probably exceed our budget for the end of the year.”

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