ICTSI reports 27% income growth

MANILA, Philippines - Earnings of port giant International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) jumped 27 percent in the first nine months of the year on the back of strong revenues arising from its continued expansion overseas.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), ICTSI said its net income amounted to $135.65 million from January to September this year or $28.81 million higher compared to $106.84 million in the same period last year.

The port operator attributed the higher net income attributable to equity holders for the first nine months to strong revenue growth and margin improvement in certain key terminals and the contribution from the new terminal in Karachi, Pakistan.

Revenues from port operations rose 19 percent to $624.7 million in the first nine months of the year from $524.7 million in the same period last year as consolidated volume handled increased 13 percent to 4.628 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) from 4.083 million TEUs.

The listed firm attributed the increase in volume to the continuous growth in international and domestic trade in most of the company’s terminals and the volume generated by Pakistan International Container Terminal in Karachi and PT Olah Jasa Andal in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“The increase in revenues was mainly due to the volume growth, higher storage revenues and ancillary services, tariff rate increases in certain key terminals, and the revenue contribution from the new terminals in Jakarta, Indonesia and Karachi, Pakistan,” ICTSI said.

Excluding the revenues from the newly acquired terminals and the effect of the cessation of the operations in Syria last January, ICTSI said organic revenue growth was at one percent.

ICTSI’s seven key terminal operations in Manila, Brazil, Poland, Madagascar, China, Ecuador and Pakistan accounted for 79 percent of the group’s consolidated volume in the first nine months.

For the third quarter alone, ICTSI’s gross revenues from port operations rose 17 percent to $211 million from the $179.7 million as total consolidated throughput grew 16 percent to 1.6 million TEUs from 1.386 million TEUs.

This translated to a 35 percent rise in net income in the third quarter of the year to $48.28 million from $35.75 million in the same period last year.

ICTSI said consolidated financing charges and other expenses jumped 57 percent to $33.9 million from $21.6 million due mainly to higher outstanding interest-bearing debt after it issued $400 million of 10-year bonds in January to fund its capital expenditure program and refinance medium-term loans.

Data showed that capital expenditures amounted to $357.9 million or 65 percent of the $550 million capital expenditure budget for this year.  â€œThe established budget is mainly allocated for the completion of the company’s terminal development projects in Mexico and Argentina, and the ramp-up of construction activities in Colombia and Davao, southern Philippines,” it added.