Damco first half pre-tax profit rises 42pc to US$51 million, sales up 12pc

DAMCO, Maersk's standalone forwarding unit, posted a pre-tax profit increase of 42 per cent year on year to US$51 million, drawn on revenues of US$1.54 billion, an increase of 12 per cent with gross profit rising five per cent to US$379 million.

Damco said first half 2012 EBIT was positively affected by the sale of warehousing facilities in China, but negatively impacted by the restructuring of its European activities into both mature and developing markets. The company also invested more than planned to properly implement newly won business.

The logistics firm's ocean freight volumes increased nine per cent compared with the first half of 2011 to 389,500 TEU. First half air freight tonnage grew 135 per cent to 85,700 tonnes, which includes the effects of the acquisition of the Chinese air freight forwarder NTS. Without this additional volume, the underlying organic growth was 42 per cent. Damco's supply chain management volumes increased three per cent during the first half to 22.5 million cubic metres, driven by recently secured accounts that started to ship with Damco in the second quarter.

"I am very pleased to see the continued above market, organic growth in our air- and ocean freight business and we have also developed well on our supply chain management volumes," said Damco CEO Rolf Habben-Jansen.

Looking forward, the company said it is making "good progress moving into the second half of 2012 despite tough conditions in the global freight markets".

"Our results continue on the right path. Year on year our new business wins are up by over 20 per cent. 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," said Mr Habben-Jansen.

"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."