UTi WORLDWIDE REPORTS 39% PROFIT GROWTH

UTi WORLDWIDE REPORTS 39% PROFIT GROWTH    UTi Worldwide, a California-based global logistics provider that is preparing for an initial public stock offering, reported a 39-percent gain in net income to $7.8 million in the first six months this year.
   Gross revenue rose 23 percent to $402 million. Net revenue, or sales minus the direct cost of transportation, increased 23 percent to $141.1 million.
   UTi, which filed its IPO registration with the Securities Exchange Commission last week, said sales growth has reflected increases in air forwarding, ocean forwarding and customs brokerage. The company has been on an aggressive acquisition campaign for the past two years, buying smaller forwarders and brokers all over the world.
   UTi plans to offer 4.7 million shares to the public at $15 to $17 per share, valuing the IPO at $70.5 million to $80 million. After a reverse stock split on Oct. 18, the public shares represent roughly 25 percent of the company’s outstanding equity.
   UTi is largely the culmination of mergers and acquisitions carried out by the company’s three founders — Roger MacFarlane, Peter Thorrington and Tiger Wessels. Until recently, MacFarlane, Thorrington and Wessels ran the company as co-chief executive officers.
   MacFarlane, based in California, became UTi’s CEO in August. Thorrington, based in London, was named president and chief operating officer. Wessels, based in South Africa, is UTi’s chairman.
   All three worked together in the same company in South Africa during their first jobs in freight forwarding during the 1970s. They started their own forwarding company in South Africa, which later expanded to the United States and was sold to what is now BAX Global. After that, in the early 1990s, MacFarlane and Thorrington bought an air freight forwarding company called Union Air Transport in Germany and merged it with a company owned by Wessels in South Africa and several other ocean and air forwarding interests in Asia, the U.S. and Europe to form what is now UTi.
   Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. will act as the lead managing underwriter of the offering. Other managing underwriters are Lazard and BB&T Capital Markets.