Evergreen Marine Corp. has acquired the entire stake in a Panama terminal in a bid to strengthen its presence in the Americas and raise its competitive edge.
 

Speaking with reporters at a news conference held on Friday at the Taiwan Stock Exchange, where shares of the shipping company are traded, Evergreen Marine President Hsieh Huey-chuan said his company spent US$268 million to take a 100 percent stake in Colon Container Terminal S.A. (CCT), by acquiring the stake from its affiliates.
 

Hsieh said CCT serves as one of the most important transportation hubs for Evergreen Marine and its subsidiary Evergreen Marine (Asia) Pte. Ltd. in terms of the routes between Asia and Americas, and the acquisition is expected to improve Evergreen Group’s services and transshipments.
 

On its website, CCT said the terminal operator became operational on Oct. 30, 1997, opening a world of opportunities for Panama as a hub for regional distribution and transshipment.
 

Colon container terminal was previously the site of a former U.S. naval base, but the company transformed the site into a modern container handling facility with two berths. It subsequently developed two additional berths, expanding the terminal’s total area to 74.3 hectares.
 

CCT is now in the process of taking the next step to meet the needs of the market through the development of a 30-hectare logistics park on its concession lands by establishing the Colon Logistics Park, which is integrated with the operations of the terminal, the company said.
 

Meanwhile, Evergreen Marine has also purchased about 79 million shares of subsidiary Evergreen Steel Corp. from the open market in after-hours trading on Friday by spending NT$3.82 billion (US$119 million) to boost its stake in the company to about 19 percent, Hsieh said.
 

He said the move was made as Evergreen Marine took into account the steel subsidiary’s stable bottom line.
 

He added that with growing awareness of environmental protection, Evergreen Steel will expand its investments in green energy development to boost its profitability.
 

Evergreen Marine also announced its third quarter results, reporting NT$100.70 billion in net profit during the three-month period, up 26 percent from a year earlier, with earnings per share at NT$37.25, despite the impact resulting from inflation and port congestion.
 

In the first nine months of this year, its net profit stood at NT$304.35 billion, up 92 percent from a year earlier, with EPS at NT$68.88 and its gross margin — the difference between revenue and the cost of goods sold — at 68.36 percent, Evergreen Marine said.
 

Due to a recent capital reduction to lower the number of outstanding shares circulated in the market, Evergreen Marine’s book value per share rose sharply to NT$254.87 in the third quarter from NT$85.3 in the second quarter, the shipping company said.
 

The company has cut its paid-in capital by 60 percent from the current NT$52.91 billion to about NT$21.16 billion, marking the first capital reduction in the company’s history.
 

Despite the large capital cut, Evergreen Marine has increased each share’s value by a corresponding amount to keep the company’s overall market capitalization the same.

Source: CNA

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