Santos Brasil’s quarterly earnings have shrunk by half, primarily because its container and general cargo terminals moved much lower volumes compared to a year ago.
The Sao Paulo-based owner of terminals reported BRL 45.9m ($9.3m) in net income for the first quarter, down 49% from the BRL 90.4m in net profit earned during the same period last year.
Santos Brasil’s bottom line fell so sharply from a year earlier mainly due to container volumes at the company’s three terminals in Brazil, falling 14% from a year ago to 262m teu in the first quarter.
First-quarter revenue for its containers and general cargo division fell 9.3% year over year to BRL 294m, while total revenue slipped 3% to BRL 427m.
Santos Brasil said lower container volume was caused by a slowdown in imports of consumer and capital goods, a drop in commodity exports and lower cabotage throughput.
The slump was also as a result of late seasonality caused by the pandemic, especially during last year’s fourth quarter and this year’s first quarter.
First-quarter container volume dropped 14.5% compared to a year earlier to just over 230,000 teu at the company’s Tecon Santos terminal, 9.5% to 10,700 teu at the Tecom Imbituba terminal and 14.1% to just over 12,000 teu at Tecon Vila do Conde terminal.
Alhough its bottom-line results fell from a years ago, Santos Brasil still held optimism for the rest of the year.
“An increase in the company’s financial results and margins is expected, driven not only by better volumes, but also by an improvement in the average ticket, including in quay services,” the company said.
