EBITDA forecast for the year 2019 EUR 49 to 57 million
VILHELM THORSTEINSSON, CEO
“The company's performance was below expectations in 2018. Revenue increased somewhat in our liner and forwarding services but decreasing contribution margins, higher costs and depreciation affected the group‘s results between years. We experienced a slight increase in revenue in the fourth quarter, when compared with the fourth quarter in the previous year, but the overall results for the fourth quarter show losses which can partly be attributed to irregular items.
The reduction in operating results between years can be attributed to specific factors. Liner services to and from Iceland and the Faroe Islands and associated operations in those countries have been successful but revenue from our reefer logistics services and operations in Norway was below expectations and forwarding services in Europe also experienced a downturn this year. We subsequently made changes to our operations in Norway by decommissioning two of our vessels, the latter in January this year. Achieving the necessary increase in volume on the third vessel in the North American line took more time than we expected and directly affected our annual revenue. However, we have seen an increase in volume in our Trans-Atlantic services in the last few months. Various uncertainty factors in the Icelandic economy, such as ongoing labour collective agreement negotiations, affected the fourth quarter. Import growth has slowed and certain commodities have decreased.
Considerable changes were made to the company's structure at the beginning of the year 2019 with the aim of improving operations and increasing long-term profits. We review the company‘s sailing system on a regular basis to identify market developments, customer needs and to improve efficiency. We place an emphasis on integrating processes between units in all of the company's operations and increase autmation in order to achieve more efficiency.
Eimskip is entering a period of transition. Two new vessels that are currently being built in China, at size of 2.150 TEUS each, will join our fleet in the latter part of 2019 and are a part of our potential future collaboration with Royal Arctic Line. We have experienced extensive external growth in the last few years and it is now a common objective for the strong team of Eimskip´s employees to further build on that foundation with a clear vision and sharpening the focus to exceed expectations in operations and to deliver maximum results.”
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