Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運), the nation’s second-largest container shipper in terms of fleet size, yesterday said it had sold a 12.5 percent stake in Kao Ming Container Terminal Corp (KMCT, 高明貨櫃碼頭) to NYK Group of Japan.
The disposal plan is expected to generate a total of US$26.94 million gains for Yang Ming this quarter, which will help narrow the firm’s net losses.
The company on Friday released 85 million shares in KMCT — its container terminal operator subsidiary in Kaohsiung Harbor — to Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha Ltd (NYK Line) and its subsidiary Nippon Container Terminals Co Ltd at a price of US$0.66 per share.
“Their [NYK Group’s] investment in KMCT will provide a good opportunity for the exchange of experience with Yang Ming and will contribute much to international carriers’ use of Kaohsiung Harbor and the future development of KMCT,” Yang Ming said in a press release.
KMCT, which started operations in January 2011, is a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project by Yang Ming and Taiwan International Ports Co Ltd (台灣港務).
The container terminal handled 1.08 million twenty-foot equivalent units respectively in 2011 and last year.
To raise the container terminal’s competitiveness, Yang Ming has been searching for international strategic partners interested in investing in KMCT since last year and sold a 10 percent stake in KMCT to Ports America International Holdings Cooperative, an affiliate of the US terminal operator Ports America Group, in July last year.
The company then sold a 30 percent stake in KMCT at the end of last year to a Hong Kong-based joint venture formed by 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).
In addition to the share disposal, Yang Ming could see some opportunities to return to the black this year, after freight rates in the third quarter exhibited a rebound.
The company reported a net loss of NT$2.64 billion (US$89.47 million), or NT$0.81 per share, in the second quarter, with cumulative losses reaching NT$5.32 billion, or NT$1.62 per share, in the first half of the year, company data showed.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS