Textainer profits up

Textainer profits up    Intermodal container lessor Textainer Group Holdings said it had fourth quarter net profit of $28.1 million compared to $12.6 million in the same 2008 period.
   Revenue for the period was $67.2 million compared to $65.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.
   John A. Maccarone, president and chief executive officer of Textainer, said, “2009 was a year of notable success for Textainer, as the company reported its second-best-ever net income attributable to Textainer Group Holdings Ltd. common shareholders.”
   “Management drew upon the company’s significant financial flexibility to invest in accretive transactions that totaled more than $200 million. Specifically, we took advantage of the downturn in container shipping by expanding our owned and managed container fleet by 15 percent on a TEU basis,” he said. “We also increased our strategic presence in the refrigerated container business, purchased containers for trading, entered into purchase-leaseback transactions with shipping lines and retired outstanding debt at favorable prices.”
   Maccarone said the transactions were accretive to earnings in 2009, and” we expect that, with the exception of our repurchase of debt, they will continue to add to earnings in future years. Complementing this notable achievement, we sold a record 100,000 older containers in 2009, representing a 16.3 percent increase from our previous high.”
   Textainer said it is the world’s largest lessor of intermodal containers based on fleet size. It has 1.5 million containers, representing more than 2.2 million TEUs, in its owned and managed fleet.