TNT Express: snail mail - FT.com Exclamation marks in corporate slogans are best avoided. They inject an air of surprise and immediacy, when most investors rate reliability a greater virtue. But that aside, TNT Express's "Deliver!" tag for the restructuring programme that it launched this year after UPS's €5.2bn bid failed for antitrust reasons, sends the right message. The revived strategy puts the focus on European operations; plans to overhaul TNT's network there, concentrating depots and hubs; and, partly through €220m in annualised cost-savings, targets a 8 per cent operating margin by 2015 (against 2012"s 6 per cent). Delivery, moreover, is exactly what is needed. Which made Monday's news of a 2 per cent fall, year-on-year, in third quarter sales and a dip in operating margins (excluding one-off items) from 3.7 per cent a year ago to 3.2 per cent disappointing. In fairness, there are signs of work behind the scenes: sale of the Chinese domestic business should close this quarter, and the lossmaking Brazilian business is on the market. Adjusted operating expenses are also down 1.4 per cent so far this year, and €30m of the Deliver programme savings should be clawed out in 2013. But the European market is competitive and customers cost-conscious. Italy has been a particular trouble-spot recently; exclude results there, and the loss of a UK fashion contact, and TNT says sales in its main European business were flat. Still, a one-fifth drop in this core unit's operating margins, to just 4.5 per cent, looked weak, even if TNT thinks pricing trends are now improving. In truth, TNT was left in the lurch by UPS's January departure. It is picking up the pieces, and its shares have rallied 40 per cent since then. That tops the performance of UPS shares and matches Deutsche Post's. But TNT now trades on 20 times consensus 2014 earnings. Bar another bid/suitor, the rating assumes a lot of delivery between now and 2015.