Owens looking good at half time

Profit for the six months ended September was $2.61 million compared with $1.44 million last year, which the company says is in line with expectations. Sales revenue for the half-year was $220.47 million, a 17.4% increase on last year's $187.74 million.

Chairman Norman Geary says the group's aggressive marketing and a strong customer service focus have delivered an improved result, along with niche business acquisitions, improved efficiencies and cost reductions.

"Notwithstanding difficult economic conditions most business units recorded sound revenue gains with the largest contributor being the recently acquired AFL businesses, which had revenue of $24.8 million," he says.

"A highlight of the period has been the appointment of the new CEO, David Ritchie. Mr Ritchie joined the company in October and is utilising his extensive international experience in logistics, sales and marketing and change management to the benefit of the company."

Mr Ritchie describes trading performance for most businesses as satisfactory, although airfreight activities were impacted following the US terrorist attacks, the collapse of Ansett Australia and generally disappointing chilled product exports.

However these were offset by strong performances in NZ by Hirepool, which was the star performer, and the international freight, and transport and containers divisions.

"We were particularly pleased to enter into extensive fuel distribution arrangements with Caltex NZ following that company's acquisition of Challenge Petroleum. Additional sales revenues will result for Owens Tankers," says Mr Ritchie.

In Australia the company's Hyde Park Tank Containers also delivered a strong result and as did the AFL businesses in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Owens says the domestic economies in New Zealand and Australia appear to be holding up reasonably well in view of the global economic slowdown and the company is budgeting for a strong second half to the current financial year.

"Barring a sustained and major economic downturn, the directors expect the company's full-year result to be significantly ahead of the previous financial year," says Mr Geary.

An interim dividend of 2.5 cents per share has been declared.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name:
Your email:	Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.

Anti-spam verification:

Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.