SITC improves profit on lower bunker costsSITC improves profit on lower bunker costs

Net profit attributable to parents of the company for the year ended 31 December 2015 was recorded at $143.25m, up 18.7% from $120.68m in 2014.

The higher profit came despite the annual revenue falling by 7.2% year-on-year to $1.28bn due mainly to decrease in container shipping freight rate and freight forwarding rate in both the sea freight and landbased logistics businesses.

Hong Kong-listed SITC benefitted from lower bunker cost of $145m reported last year, compared to $234.8m incurred for 2014, helping to bring down its cost of sales.

SITC noted that shipping logistics companies generally operated under challenging conditions last year due to slower growth of global container logistics as well as intensified market competition and decreasing shipping prices resulted from overcapacity and cost reduction.

“Despite so, the intra-Asia container shipping market (which is the focus of the group’s sea freight logistics business) still maintained a remarkable growth benefitting from higher economic and trade growth in the PRC and Southeast Asian countries,” SITC said.

“While the global shipping industry is expected to face various difficulties and challenges in 2016, the group’s management remains confident about the business environment in intra-Asia container shipping and logistics market in the year of 2016,” it said.