Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings Corp. said it registered a P218.07 million loss for the first quarter of the year, down 36.8 percent from last year’s P345.08 million.
Revenues reached P1.15 billion, down 28.57 percent from P1.61 billion last year.
“The group’s shipping segment reported a 32 percent decline in revenues from P1.507 billion to P1.028 billion driven by the continued weakness of the passage business but was mitigated by the positive performance of its freight business. Passage revenues were down 83 percent to P71 million on continued restrictions on the movement of non-essential travel in order to contain the COVID-19 pandemic within the country,” the company said.
“On the other hand, with continued demand for inter-island movement of goods, freight revenues were up 20 percent year-on-year from P517 million to P618 million and are just 10 percent shy of the internal target,” it added.
Tankering revenues hit P242 million, down 40 percent from P401 million last year.
“The logistics business reported a 19 percent increase in revenues from P106 million to P126 million on the back of the continued reliance of the economy on logistics providers for the efficient and unhampered movement of goods within the country,” it said.
The company said that the decline in topline however “would have been less and is only pronounced due to high base effects caused by the impact of quarantine measures,” since the strict quarantine measures last year was imposed only in the last two weeks of the first quarter while for this year, quarantine measures were in place the entire time.
“It has been a long climb out from last year and while we are not yet out of the woods, the first quarter results show significant improvements that can extend this year as the economy further opens up realizing the recovery that we see will happen in the second half of this year,” said Chryss Alfonsus V. Damuy, Chelsea president. — Ruelle Albert D. Castro
