Marine service provider Harbor Star Shipping, Inc. (HSSI) reported a 315% increase in net income in the first half of 2016 due to more ship calls serviced and payment received for a jetty being repaired in Quezon.
HSSI in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange said net income for the period reached P103.309 million, up from P24.886 million in the first half in 2015.
The company also swung to a net income of P69.814 million in the second quarter of 2016 from a loss of 7.070 million in the same period last year.
Revenue from January to June 2016 jumped 47% to P678.239 million from P461.592 million in the same period last year. For the second quarter alone, revenue reached P357.548 million, up 59% from P225.253 million in the same period in 2015.
HSSI said that in the latter part of 2015, it agreed to repair a jetty in Quezon province, and this construction work has boosted revenues by P57.5 million as of June 30, 2016.
Its harbor assistance business made P512.8 million in the first six months of the year, up from P331.2 million in the same period last year, resulting from increased ship calls at major ports nationwide.
Towing services and other marine services also showed positive growth with a year-on-year increase of P20.5 million and P11.3 million, respectively.
However, the 47% drop in revenue from lighterage services to P60.1 million from P114.2 million partially offset the growth.
Earlier, HSSI said it was allocating around P220 million for capital expenditure this year, mainly to acquire additional tugboats, construct a new office building, and build a joint-venture shipyard in Luzon.
The company will be focusing largely on domestic operations, particularly on Subic and Cebu, as well as its marine diving and marine maintenance business.
This year, HSSI signed an agreement with Guam Industrial Services, Inc. to establish a joint venture company that will operate several floating dry-dock facilities in the Philippines. The company is looking at either Subic or Bataan for this project and hopes to start operations by the middle of 2017.
The group manages a fleet of 37 domestically and internationally classed tug boats, five barges, a cargo vessel, an oil-spill response vessel, and an anchor-handling tug supply vessel. It operates in 69 ports within the Philippines, of which 14 are base or hub ports.
