Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), the nation’s second-largest container shipper in terms of fleet size, expects revenue to grow about 10 percent next year on the back of rising demand driven by a mild global economic recovery, a company official said yesterday.
The container shipper also looks to be returning to the black this year, after it sold a 30 percent stake in Kao Ming Container Terminal Corp (高明貨櫃碼頭) — its container terminal operator subsidiary in Kaohsiung Harbor — to three Chinese shipping companies for US$135 million on Wednesday.
“The growing momentum in the global economy next year will be stronger than this year, further raising transport volume for container shippers,” Yang Ming chairman Frank Lu (盧峰海) told a media briefing after a ceremony celebrating the company’s 40th anniversary in Kaohsiung.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
The shipper will increasingly focus on launching more Asian routes next year to shift more capacity to countries with greater economic growth and higher demand, Lu added.
However, Yang Ming maintains a “cautiously optimistic” view on the company’s sales performance and profitability next year amid concern about the issue of oversupply, as the number of vessels planned to be delivered next year remains high.
The latest research by Alphaliner shows that container vessel orders placed by non-operating ship owners have been showing a downturn, accounting for 37.1 percent of all orders, signifying a trend of slowing oversupply in the near future.
However, a figure between 20 percent and 30 percent would be a healthier level for the container shipping sector, Lu said.
Therefore, Lu said the sector’s profitability next year still depends on major shippers’ control on capacity to maintain freight rates.
Meanwhile, Lu said he expects global crude oil prices to show a declining trend next year, as the US and Russia both plan to increase supply, with liquefied natural gas to be further developed in the near future.
This will be the other key factor affecting Yang Ming’s profitability next year, as fuel usually accounts for 25 percent to 28 percent of the company’s overall costs, he added.
Meanwhile, Lu said he expected Kaohsiung’s Kao Ming Container Terminal to see throughput volumes expand next year, after teaming up with the three Chinese companies — COSCO Pacific Ltd (中遠太平洋), China Shipping Terminal Development Co (中海碼頭發展) and China Merchants Holdings (International) Co (招商局國際).
A China Ocean Shipping Co’s (COSCO, 中遠集團) official, who participated in yesterday’s ceremony, said the company would bring in up to 2 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs) of containers to Taiwan next year through cooperation with Kao Ming.
Yang Ming posted net losses of NT$2.49 billion (US$85.5 million), or NT$0.88 per share, in the first three quarters of the year, compared with a net loss of NT$5.3 billion (NT$1.88 per share) a year ago, while consolidated revenue totaled NT$96.47 billion in the first nine months, up 9.63 percent from a year earlier, company data showed.
The company’s shares rose 1.53 percent to close at NT$13.25 in Taipei trading yesterday.
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
RSS