Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) yesterday said it swung to a first-quarter net profit following five straight quarterly losses on recovering container transport business and continued cost-cutting.
The Keelung-based shipping company said in a stock exchange filing that net income in the first quarter was NT$22.09 million (US$702,400), or NT$0.01 per share. This compares with a net loss of NT$3.09 billion, or a loss per share of NT$1.21, in the same period last year, and a net loss of NT$5.14 billion in the final quarter of last year.
First-quarter revenue rose 22.32 percent to NT$21.84 billion from NT$17.85 billion a year earlier, Yang Ming said. That was 5.3 percent higher than the NT$20.74 billion posted in the previous quarter.
Yang Ming is the nation’s third-largest shipping company by market value after Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) and Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運).
After posting a net loss of NT$15.84 billion, or NT$6.18 loss per share, on revenue of NT$74.5 billion last year, Yang Ming expects that a recovery in freight rates and volume will help pull it back in the black this year.
Goldman Sachs analysts Tom Kim and Ronald Leung predicted that Yang Ming would report NT$392.4 million in net income this year, or NT$0.15 per share, according an investment note dated April 22.
Shares of Yang Ming rose 0.82 percent to NT$12.35 yesterday.
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