Westports Holdings Q2 profits falter on lower volumes

The Malaysian port terminal operator saw net profit for the second quarter of 2017 fall 6.9 percent compared to the same 2016 period, primarily due to lower container throughput at its terminals.

   Westports Holdings, the largest listed port operator in Malaysia, saw its net profit for the second quarter of 2017 fall 6.9 percent to $34.7 million compared with the same 2016 period, according to a recent stock exchange filing.
   Revenues for the three months ended June 30 stood at $117 million, down 4.1 percent from $121 million a year ago.
   Westports said the company experienced strong growth in intra-Asia volumes during the first half of 2017, but that its total number of transshipment containers fell due to reconstituted service offerings and port of calls created by new global carrier alliances.
   Container operations handled 4.7 million TEUs from January through June, according to the company, with the intra-Asia segment, which constitutes over half of the total throughput, growing of 7 percent compared to the same six-month period last year.
   However, the company also said that due to the ongoing changes in the container shipping industry, including reconstituted service offerings and port of calls as well as mergers and acquisitions, the total transhipment containers fell to 3.3 million TEUs.
   Westports indicated in its filing that the quarterly results may be indicative of the year as a whole.
   “The container shipping industry is going through an unprecedented recalibration and realignment processes with the formation and transition towards new global alliances as well as the recently completed and ongoing mergers and acquisitions activities,” Westports CEO Ruben Emir Gnanalingam said. “Due to all these ongoing changes, we expect our container throughput to be lower for this year when compared to the previous year.”