Wisdom Marine Group (慧洋海運集團), one of the nation’s major bulk shippers, yesterday said its pre-tax profits last month rose by nearly 60 percent from July, on strong non-operating income from derivatives and gradual pick-up of industry sentiment in the second half of the year.
Pre-tax profit reached NT$73.27 million (US$2.45 million), or NT$0.18 per share, last month, up from NT$46.41 million, or NT$0.12 per share, in July, the company said.
The rising profit came as the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), a measure of shipping costs for commodities, showed a more than 20 percent increase from a month ago and stood at 1,279 points on Thursday.
“Following the rising transportation demand on bulk grains in North America from this month ... the BDI may continue its surging trend [over the near future],” SinoPac Securities Investment Service (永豐投顧) said in its latest industry report.
On an annual basis, Wisdom Marine saw pre-tax profits drop by 41.53 percent last month, the company’s financial statement showed.
For the first eight months, pre-tax profit totaled NT$989.03 million, or NT$2.38 per share, but this figure was still a decrease of 31.94 percent from a year earlier, data showed.
Wisdom Marine currently has a fleet of 91 ships and plans to add three new ships by the end of this year.
The industry’s conditions are likely to show some improvement next year, according to SinoPac Securities, as more players plan to retire and replace their old ships.
Separately, Dimerco Express Group (中菲行國際物流), which offers freight-forwarding and logistics services globally, reported that its consolidated sales declined 1.7 percent month-on-month and 6.57 percent year-on-year to NT$1.35 billion last month, the company said in a statement.
The mild economic recovery in Europe and the US led to increased sales in the two regions last month, Dimerco said.
In the first eight months, cumulative sales totaled NT$9.06 billion, down 9.09 percent from a year earlier, it said.
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