it is a painful lesson for us, but we must bite the bullet and sell Royal Mail

Questor Income Portfolio: the company admits that it could make a loss next year and everything now depends on the success of its belated – and risky – restructuring

Questor’s decision in December 2016 to tip Royal Mail has not proved to be our finest hour.

To start with all went well: the shares rose from the 455p we paid to a peak of 631p in May last year. Since then, however, a series of pessimistic announcements from the company has sent the share price tumbling to 217.7p, a loss of 52pc.

The latest came eight days ago with the publication of the company’s interim results. Most striking was the warning from its chief executive, Rico Back, that the UK business could make a loss in 
2020-21…