South Korea’s third-biggest shipping company SK Shipping said on 18 May that its net profit in the first quarter in 2015 jumped 876% year on year (y/y) to KRW28.5 billion (USD25.6 million).
Operating profit, which are earnings from the company’s core business, rose 82% y/y to KRW57.5 billion.
SK Shipping, known for shipping oil and liquefied gas, said its portfolio of long-term shipping contracts and effective cost management enabled it to ride out the challenging market.
The company said the first quarter of 2015 marked its best result since 2006.
To ride out the shipping crisis and oversupply of the past few years, SK Shipping, which is also into dry bulk shipping, said it cancelled expensive contracts for chartered-in ships as it steadily continued efforts to control costs.
SK Shipping added that it has continued to expand its portfolio of long-term affreightment contracts and worked to improve its in-house ship management to increase revenue.
SK Shipping said, “Falling oil prices have also helped us to reduce costs as bunkering expenses account for a large proportion of our costs.”
SK Shipping was previously South Korea’s fourth-biggest shipping company, behind Hanjin Shipping, Hyundai Merchant Marine, and Pan Ocean.
However, Pan Ocean’s deterioration into receivership in June 2013 led to the company selling a number of ships, resulting in it falling behind SK Shipping.
This post was sourced from IHS Maritime 360: View the original article here.
