Joseph Bonney, Senior Editor | Aug 15, 2012 10:21AM EDT
Damco’s earnings before interest and taxes jumped 42 percent to $51 million as air freight revenue more than doubled and net revenue increased 12 percent to $1.543 billion.
The forwarding and supply chain management unit of A.P. Moller said it expects profit for the full year to rise despite difficult market conditions.
Damco’s air freight tonnage rose 135 percent in the first half of the year. Ocean freight volumes increased 9 percent year-over-year. Supply chain management revenue increased 3 percent, driven by new accounts.
Air freight revenue was boosted by the acquisition of Chinese air freight forwarder NTS, but Damco said underlying organic growth was still 42 percent.
Damco´s EBIT in the first half of 2012 was boosted by the sale of warehousing facilities in China but was hurt by restructuring of Damco’s European activities into mature and developing markets and by larger-than-planned investments to secure new business.
“Our results continue on the right path. Year-on-year our new business wins are up by over 20 percent. We continue to win more and more regular customers in our target industry verticals — despite the challenging market conditions in a number of key markets,” CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said.
“We expect that for the full year 2012 we will deliver above market growth in all of our main products — and our EBIT in 2012 will again be better than in 2011,” he said.
Contact Joseph Bonney at jbonney@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter @josephbonney.
