Yodel failed to turn a profit for the eighth consecutive year in its recently closed financial year, and CEO Mike Cooper has admitted its owners regularly give him “a hard time”.

The parcel carrier has never managed turned a profit, making a pre-tax loss of £50.4m in its most recently published results, for the year ended 30 June 2016.

Asked whether the business had turned things around for the year ended this July, Cooper told MT that while Yodel hadn’t escaped the red just yet, there was a “demonstrable improvement on the year before”.

He said: “We have a four-stranded strategy. We’re working on our cost base, our revenues and driving our volumes; a bit of everything.

“In the next 12 or 18 months we will turn a profit.”

Cooper added that he believes that Yodel’s shareholders intend to continue funding Yodel despite its poor financial track record.

He told MT: “Before I joined I had some serious conversations with their representatives and they were in for the medium-term.

“They regularly give me a hard time about the amount of cash that does go in, but that’s what they should be doing.”

Cooper added that since joining in January 2016, he had presented shareholders, which includes representatives of Sir David Barclay’s son Aidan, with a “credible strategy and growth story”, which Yodel is delivering against.

“I think they’re very proud of the businesses they’ve built elsewhere, and they want to be proud of the business they’ve built here.

“They’re not giving me any signals at all that they’re getting half-hearted about this.”

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