Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), the nation’s second-biggest container shipping line, said it expects second-quarter profit to be higher than in the previous three months as economic recovery drives up demand for exports.
Yang Ming chairman Frank Lu (盧峰海) said earnings per share will probably surpass NT$1 in the year ending in December, from a loss of NT$6.18 per share in the previous 12 months. The average of 15 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg is for earnings per share of NT$0.05.
Yang Ming and competitors such as Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) have improved earnings as a global economic recovery spurred demand for cargo shipments.
“Our ships are almost fully loaded now,” Lu told reporters yesterday.
Net income was NT$22 million (US$679,500), or earnings per share of NT$0.01, for the three months ended March 31 at Yang Ming, compared with a loss of NT$3.09 billion, or a loss of NT$1.21 a share, a year earlier, according to an April 29 stock exchange filing. The company reported a loss of NT$15.8 billion for last year.
Evergreen Group (長榮集團) chairman Chang Yung-fa (張榮發) said in an interview with the Chinese-language United Daily News published yesterday that Evergreen Marine would order 100 new ships to modernize its fleet amid the global economic recovery.
“It will take at least 10 years to have the 100 boats built, but the first will be delivered in 2013,” Chang said.
Chang said Evergreen Marine, Asia’s second largest container line, hopes to order 32 container ships this year with a capacity of 8,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) each.
The company is thinking of purchasing 10 of the vessels from South Korea and another 12 from CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船), Chang said, but their prices have yet to be finalized.
The remaining ships may be ordered from either Korean or Japanese shipyards.
The report said that at Chang’s insistence, the new ships would be environmentally friendly and not cost more than US$10,000 per TEU.
The plan, regarded as the world’s largest order for new boats, has drawn the attention of all major shipbuilders, test centers and equipment suppliers around the world, the report said.
In the interview, Chang predicted that Evergreen Marine and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) would both be profitable this year.
Thank to its cross-strait, European and US flight services, EVA Airways generated profits of NT$1.2 billion in the first quarter, Chang said, and he was optimistic about the company’s prospects for the rest of the year.
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