COSCO Pacific profits down 37%

COSCO Pacific profits down 37%    Chinese terminal operator COSCO Pacific said Tuesday that net profit for 2008 was $279.8 million, a 37 percent drop from 2007, with a large portion of the fall in profits attributable to the company’s container manufacturing division.
   The company’s core terminal operating division saw profit of $128 million almost exactly even with profits in 2007.
   COSCO Pacific, the world's fifth-largest container terminal operator, said revenue increased 13 percent to $337 million in its annual report released on Tuesday. Container throughput at its global terminals rose 17.7 percent to 45.9 million TEUs. Most of the company’s 20 terminals are in China, though it has foreign terminal investments in Singapore and Egypt. In 2008, it also signed a concession for a terminal in the Greek port of Piraeus.
   The group’s results were helped immensely by its container-leasing division, which had profit of $141 million, a 19.5 percent increase from 2007. The company’s fleet comprises 1.6 million TEUs. However, the company’s container manufacturing division saw a 42.5 percent decrease in profit, to $39.3 million.
   Healthy throughput at its terminals for the first three quarters of 2008 also drove revenue until the global economic slowdown took hold, hitting throughput in Chinese ports particularly hard.
   “During 2006 and 2007, the group had been able to reap the benefits of its strategic efforts to expand the container terminal network in China and other parts of the world through investments in either subsidiaries with controlling stakes or joint ventures,” the company said in a statement. “It enabled the group to carry out a defensive strategy in terminal investment. The ever developing terminal    business in Mainland China and overseas provided the Group with a steady stream of profits.”