Agility's Revenue Falls, Profit Rises

Agility, a Kuwait-based provider of logistics services, announced that net profit before non-recurring items rose to $135 million during the first quarter of 2009, or 16.4 percent more than a year ago. Although revenue dropped 8.1 percent to $1.395 billion during the quarter, first quarter net revenue margin increased to 37.9 percent from 34.1 percent.

 

Agility's Global Integrated Logistics (GIL) group suffered a 13.8 percent decline in revenue, but its net revenue margin increased to 31 percent as a result of success at lowering procurement costs from suppliers. The Agility Defense and Government Services (DGS) group was relatively unaffected by the financial crisis, recording increased revenue of 3.4 percent.

 

Tarek Sultan, chairman and managing director of Agility, said: "The growth in our operating profits (before non-recurring items) is a testament to our transformation, which has enabled us to expand our net revenue margin; and our ability to control operating expenses. Our strategy of diversified but complementary businesses has also been able to generate healthy results for our shareholders during this global recession as we have increased our cash from operations by 25 percent over the previous period."

 

Sultan said, "We are closely monitoring our cash; selectively investing our capital; and rationalizing costs to ensure we emerge from this crisis as a stronger player globally. Going forward, we are proceeding with extreme caution, and will continue to center our efforts on aggressively managing cost and cash while driving performance. We also continue to scope out game changing opportunities for mergers and acquisitions."