How the money flows

Your question: “SP charges SPL and SPL charges the end customer, is my understanding correct?”

Where every number comes from Management shared The contract PwC Combined sources Claude analysis Grey is the exact reference

Added 2 Aug

Who faces the customer, and the fund flow map redrawn

Your question: does Saudi Post deal with end customers directly, or does everything go through SPL?

The answer is both, in three different ways, and they are worth keeping apart because only one of them is the arrangement your question describes.

Way 1. For the commercial postal and logistics products, SPL is the seller. Here your understanding is exactly right. The master agreement says Saudi Post provides the postal and logistics services and SPL markets and sells them to end customers, and that SPL pays Saudi Post. The customer’s contract is with SPL, and the customer’s money lands with SPL. Postal services agreement between Saudi Post and SPL, effective 1 September 2021, p.3 (“primarily, but not exclusively”) and Annex 1 price cards pp.21-38. Read by eye
Way 2. Saudi Post is the shop. Its own post offices sell SPL’s products and take the customer’s cash. A separate signed agreement puts SPL’s products on sale through Saudi Post’s branch network to individuals and small companies. Saudi Post collects the customer’s money, keeps a fee per item, and passes the rest to SPL. The same shape runs through international outbound and through packaging, where Saudi Post also supplies the branch space, the space for the staff member doing the work, and the electricity.
So on this leg the person paying is standing at a Saudi Post counter, in front of a Saudi Post employee — but the sale belongs to SPL, and Saudi Post books only its commission. Customer-facing in every practical sense, and not customer-facing at all in the accounts. Sale of services agreement through the retail branches, effective 1 January 2022, cl. 4.1 p.7 and Appendix 1 pp.3-9 (the full retail tariff and the collection mechanism). Packaging annex 2022, Saudi Post’s obligations list. Both read by eye
Way 3. Saudi Post has a large trading business of its own that never touches SPL. This is the part your question did not cover. In 2025 Saudi Post earned 856.92MM from selling goods and services. Everything it earned from SPL and NAQEL for services in the same year was 147.80MM. That leaves 709.11MM, about 83 percent of its trading revenue, coming from parties outside the group. On the most cautious reading, counting the group rents in as well, the outside figure is still at least 706.39MM.
The accounts do not say who those customers are. There is no breakdown by customer type anywhere in the 2025 statements, so I cannot tell you how much of that 709.11MM is the walk-in public and how much is government or corporate contracts. That is now a numbered ask. Saudi Post financial statements FY2025, note 26 (sale of goods and services 856,915,352) and note 23-1 related parties (SPL services 146,904,521 and NAQEL services 899,585). The subtraction is mine

So, in one line. SPL sells the commercial products and pays Saudi Post to carry them; Saudi Post runs the shop where a lot of that selling physically happens and is paid a commission for it; and separately Saudi Post sells around 709MM a year of its own services to people who are not SPL.

Why it matters for this review. Any cost-to-serve test has to split Saudi Post’s branch network, staff and premises between the three, because the same counters and the same people serve all three at once. Nothing in the file does that split.

The fund flow map, plain boxes and arrows

Every arrow is one payment in one direction. Each label carries its amount, its year and its audited source.

SPL also owns National Parcel Stations Network at 50% and Subul Ant Saudi at 40%. Both are confirmed, and both are left off the map to keep it readable.

Saudi Post also buys directly from NAQEL and SPL Digital. Those two flows are in the table below rather than on the map, because they are a separate question this review has not opened yet.

Every flow on one line

↓

Customers → SPLWhat SPL’s customers paid the group, consolidated, so NAQEL and SPL Digital are already inside it

1,750.84MM2024 audited

↓

Customers → Saudi PostSaudi Post’s own sale of goods and services. About 709MM of it is from outside the group

856.92MM2025 audited

↓

Ministry of Finance → Saudi PostBudget, grants, subsidies and transfers. Nothing in the transfer pricing work touches this pipe, and it is larger than everything else on the map combined

3,152.90MM2025 audited

→

SPL → Saudi PostWhat SPL paid Saudi Post for services, mainly delivery

146.90MM2025 audited

←

Saudi Post → SPLSaudi Post’s operating expenses with SPL: consultancy, the management fee and the national address

141.24MM2025 audited

↓

SPL → NAQEL and SPL DigitalConsolidated away. Any payment between them is eliminated in the group accounts, so no audited figure exists. Drawing an amount here would be inventing one

not stated—

The two flows below are not drawn on the map. They are Saudi Post buying directly from SPL’s subsidiaries, which is a separate question and is not part of this review yet. They are here so the map is not read as complete.

→

Saudi Post → NAQELOperating expenses. More than doubled in one year, from 126.59MM in 2024

271.49MM2025 audited

→

Saudi Post → SPL Digital ServicesOperating expenses. Also roughly doubled, from 43.23MM in 2024

85.54MM2025 audited

Saudi Post figures, all financial year 2025. Financial statements for the year ended 30 December 2025 with the independent auditor’s unqualified report. Budget revenue 3,152,898,437 and customer revenue 856,915,352 from the statement of financial performance, p.4, notes 24 and 26. Total expenses 3,038,064,536 on the same statement. Intercompany and subsidiary amounts from note 23-1, p.59-60. Read by eye after text extraction, Arabic normalised.

SPL figures, financial year 2024. Consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2024, audited by KPMG, report signed 25 June 2025. Revenue 1,750,844,763, gross profit 534,016,209, net profit after zakat 105,462,695, all from the consolidated statement of profit or loss, p.4 of the statements. Read visually because the text layer in the copy held is corrupted.

My own figures, three only. The trading gap of 2,153.39MM is Saudi Post’s 2025 operating expenses of 3,010.31MM less its customer revenue of 856.92MM. The 709.11MM and 706.39MM outside-the-group figures are subtractions from note 26 and note 23-1. Nothing else on this map is mine.

Direction of the intercompany amounts. Note 23-1 shows amounts in brackets for operating expenses and without brackets for services and rents. I have read bracketed as Saudi Post paying out and unbracketed as Saudi Post receiving. That reading is confirmed by note 27, where the site rentals appear as Saudi Post’s own income.

A correction to what this page said yesterday. The 1 August version said 2023 was the latest year carrying an audited related-party note. That was wrong. Saudi Post’s own 2025 financial statements carry one, note 23, and it is fuller than SPL’s. Every intercompany arrow above is now on 2025 audited numbers rather than 2023.

And two ownerships are no longer unverified. That same note confirms National Parcel Stations Network at 50% and Subul Ant Saudi at 40%, the latter new in 2025 and shown at 0% for 2024. It also shows two companies Saudi Post holds directly and which had not surfaced before: Ersal Financial Transfers at 50%, sold under an agreement of 6 November 2025 at a carrying value of zero, and Ittihad Joraa for Communications and IT at 30%.

What each subsidiary contributes to the group

Every ownership percentage below is now confirmed from Saudi Post’s own 2025 audited accounts, note 23. The last two were marked unverified until today.

Subsidiary	Owned	What the accounts reveal about its result
NAQEL	100% by SPL	Nothing Wholly owned, so there is no minority share to reveal its result, and the accounts carry no segment for it. The only NAQEL-specific number visible anywhere is a 164.38MM goodwill impairment in 2023. Meanwhile Saudi Post paid it 271.49MM in 2025, up from 126.59MM in 2024. Impairment: SPL consolidated statements FY2024, statement of profit or loss, 2023 comparative. Payments: Saudi Post financial statements FY2025, note 23-1. Goodwill arose on the 2022 acquisition, but the accounts do not name the entity
SPL Digital Services	55% by SPL	Only indirectly The minority 45% share of results is disclosed: a loss of 2.95MM in 2023 and a profit of 2.76MM in 2024. Grossed up at 45%, that implies a full-company loss of about 6.56MM in 2023 and a profit of about 6.14MM in 2024. Saudi Post paid it 85.54MM in 2025, up from 43.23MM. Minority figures: SPL consolidated statements FY2024, statement of changes in equity, non-controlling interests column, p.5, read by eye. Payments: Saudi Post FY2025 note 23-1. The gross-up is mine and assumes the minority interest relates only to this company, which the accounts do not state
National Parcel Stations Network	50% by SPL, now confirmed	Nothing Absent from SPL’s 2023 subsidiary list, so it is a later addition and no result is available. A related-party line of 123.51MM exists with it in SPL’s 2023 accounts with the direction unclear. In 2025 Saudi Post paid it 1.71MM and collected 0.56MM of rent from it. Ownership: Saudi Post financial statements FY2025, note 23. The 123.51MM: SPL consolidated statements FY2023, note 13.3. The 2025 amounts: note 23-1
Subul Ant Saudi	40% by SPL, new in 2025	Nothing Shown at 40% for 2025 and 0% for 2024, so it was acquired or formed during 2025. No result, and no transactions with Saudi Post appear in the 2025 related-party note. Saudi Post financial statements FY2025, note 23, ownership table. Financial and insurance activities

The point of that table. Saudi Post owns SPL, which owns four companies. In 2025 Saudi Post paid three of them 358.74MM directly, on top of everything it pays SPL. Not one of those four has its standalone result disclosed anywhere in the accounts we hold. The only window is the 45 percent minority share in SPL Digital, and even that has to be grossed up to mean anything.

So the group can be asked whether these companies are profitable on Saudi Post’s business, and the accounts will not answer. The 358.74MM is my addition of the NAQEL, SPL Digital and parcel station lines in note 23-1.

Saudi Post also holds two companies directly that are not under SPL: Ersal Financial Transfers at 50%, sold under an agreement dated 6 November 2025 at a carrying value of zero, and Ittihad Joraa for Communications and Information Technology at 30%. Neither has appeared in this review before.

The one thing this map still cannot tell you. Who is subsidising whom between Saudi Post and SPL. The two directions are close in size, 146.90MM out and 141.24MM back, and settling it needs shipment volumes and a cost-to-serve model. Neither exists. Until they arrive, anyone naming a subsidy figure in either direction is guessing.

What the map does settle: the largest pipe by a wide margin is the Ministry of Finance, and it is nearly four times everything Saudi Post earns from selling. Whatever the two companies charge each other, the network is funded by the state.

Added 31 Jul

The simple picture: who pays whom

All figures financial year 2025, from management’s own tables, not audited. Kept for the plain shape of the relationship. The audited map above is the authority.

Your picture is half right. Yes: customers pay SPL, and SPL pays Saudi Post for doing the delivery. That half is exactly as you described it.

Here is the other half. Money also runs back the other way, from Saudi Post to SPL, and it is almost the same size. And on top of that, Saudi Post buys directly from two companies that belong to SPL, which nobody has ever counted as part of this.

1
Your half is right.Customers pay SPL, and SPL pays Saudi Post for carrying the post. That is the leg the audit is looking at.
2
But Saudi Post pays almost all of it straight back.141 million a year for management support, marketing and the address database. After both directions, only about 5.8 million actually moves between them.
3
And Saudi Post buys 721 million from SPL’s own two companies.NAQEL and SPL Digital Services. Nobody has ever counted this as money going into the SPL group, because everyone treated them as outside suppliers.

Where these come from. The 2025 figures for customer revenue and the two directions between Saudi Post and SPL are management’s own, from EY Requests (SP-SPL TP Arrangements).xlsx, sheets “Operations (SP to SPL)”, “Sales & Marketing (SPL to SP)”, “OMD (SPL to SP)” and “National Address (SPL to SP)”, forwarded by Aasem AlRajhi on 23 July 2026. The 141.06MM and the 5.84MM net are my additions of those figures. The ownership percentages are from SPL’s audited consolidated financial statements for 2023, note 1, which also carry the 2022 comparatives. The contract totals of 515.79MM and 205.67MM are my own sums of the signed contracts, read directly, with each value confirmed against the written-out Arabic wording.

What is deliberately left off. Two further part-owned companies are reported to sit under SPL, and Saudi Post is reported to hold stakes in two other businesses. None of that appears here because I could not verify it in the documents held. Nothing on this page is estimated or inferred beyond the three additions named above.