Date: February 7, 2018
Cargo Handlers Limited (CHL), for the three months ended December 31, 2018 reported revenue of $104.87 million, 21.14% higher than the $86.57 million booked in 2017. Other income grew by 58.51%, moving from $544,786 in 2017 to $861,972. The company highlighted the increase was, “driven mainly by increased cement thru-put across the port in addition to increased baggage and container handling income generated from the home-porting cruise vessels.”
Administrative expenses increased 81.45% to close at $9.80 million (2017: $5.40 million), while other operating expenses increased by 80.26%, amounting to $64.44 million for the period relative to $35.75 million in 2017. Total expense for the quarter amounted to $74.23 million compared to $41.15 million for the corresponding period in 2017. Management noted, “this movement is related to a $23.6M exchange loss on US dollar investments.”
As such, operating profit fell by 38.67% from $45.97 million in 2017 to $28.19 million. Finance costs rose 58.11% to close the period at $531,302 (2017: $336,038), while interest income declined by 28.25% to $337,241 on from $469,993 in 2017.
Profit before taxation declined by 39.27% to close the period at $28 million (2017: $46.10 million). Taxes of $3.54 million (2017: $5.76 million) were accrued during the period, thus net profit amounted to $24.46 million (2017: $40.34 million).
Consequently, earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter amounted to $0.06 compared with $0.10 for the corresponding period of last year. The trailing EPS amounted to $0.36. The numbers of shares used in the calculations are 416,250,000 units. The stock price closed the trading period on February 6, 2019 at a price of $15.04.
CHL stated, “the volume of containerized cargo passing over the port annually over the last two years has remained fairly consistent at just over 22,000 TEU’s. This consistency is undeniably buoyed by the hospitality trade and now takes into account the provisioning of the Cruise Lines that regularly use Montego Bay as their preferred home-port. The Port of Montego Bay has once again won the coveted World Travel Awards for the Caribbean’s Leading Home Port in 2018.”
Balance Sheet at a glance:-
Assets totaled $533.11 million relative to $443.72 million as at December 31, 2017. The increase in total assets was largely due to an increase in ‘Cash’ by $48.70 million to total $321.14 million (2017: $272.45 million).
Equity attributable to stockholders of parent amounted to $447.96 million (2017: $390.40 million) with book value per share amounting to $1.08 (2017: $0.94).
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