MOL Boosts Outlook for 2011

Japanese carrier MOL expects improved results from container shipping to push the group's ordinary income "much higher" than the $1.2 billion previously forecast for the current fiscal year.

Container shipping profit is "a powerful positive factor" in the improved outlook, MOL President Koichi Muto said in his new year's message to MOL employees. MOL's container shipping operations had $290 million in ordinary income during the first half of the current April-March fiscal year, after a $603 million loss during the full fiscal year that ended last March 31.

MOL and other Japanese and some Chinese carriers posted higher profits in the July-September quarter after losses a year earlier, but many saw rates softening.

Muto said cost-cutting, slow-steaming and improved yield management combined to improve container shipping results and put the MOL group's "Gear Up! MOL" plan ahead of schedule.

"Just as if we were running a 100-meter sprint (or perhaps a 110-meter hurdle would be more like it), we managed to spring from a crouching position into a flying start," Muto's statement said.

"We enjoyed a tail wind in the forms of the freight rate level and the cargo trade returning to levels close to those prior to the Lehman shock in the first half of fiscal 2008," Muto said.

MOL ranked 14th on the JOC Top 40 list with 408,775 TEUs in first half U.S. volume, up 9 percent year-over-year.
(Source:www.joc.com)