ABOITIZ Transport System (ATS) is bullish on all its business ventures given the recovering global economy.
“Business is good right now,” ATS chairman Jon Ramon Aboitiz said at the sidelines of the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting last week. “Cargo has grown about 10% in the first quarter and we expect such growth to continue for the whole year.”
The positive business outlook will rub off not only on the company’s shipping and logistics businesses but also on its shipbuilding and ship management ventures, including that with MCC Transport, a joint venture with Maersk Line.
ATS is looking at increasing market share of MCC Transport in domestic shipping to more than 10% this year.
“There is continuing resilience in the Philippine economy based on the figures released by government on the country’s GDP growth and our optimism is based on that,” Aboitiz explained.
Last week, government said GDP grew 7% in the first quarter of the year vis-à-vis the same period last year.
“However, despite the pretty good performance of almost all our business ventures, we will continue to monitor the current situation and be prudent in our other moves considering the volatility of fuel prices,” Aboitiz said.
ATS is in the process of retooling its SuperFerry fleet by introducing SuperFerry 20 and 21 in June, thus increasing overall cargo capacity by 400 twenty-foot equivalent units and passage capacity by about 1,700.
The two new vessels, purchased from Japan for a total of $20 million, are on top of two new dedicated freighters earlier introduced by ATS for its logistics arm 2GO.
This year, capacity of the SuperCat fleet also rose 10% with the recent introduction of a new service from Manila to Orion, Bataan.
Meantime, ATS is preparing for the influx of shipbuilding and shiprepair projects for its shipbuilding arm, Tsuneishi Heavy Industries. The company said it is ready to reopen a temporarily-closed shipbuilding facility if the need arises.
ATS will likewise use its logistics partnership with Kerry Logistics to service the needs of the power, telecommunications and mining industries for the domestic and intra-Asia trades.
Earlier, ATS reported a 10% increase in consolidated revenues for the first three months of the year to P3.1 billion or P286 million higher than the P2.9 billion posted in the same period last year, thanks to strong international ship chartering and supply chain management solutions businesses. Still, the company posted a P141.9 million net loss for the period.
