Tuesday, deep-sea container ship operator Seaspan Corp. (SSW), reported a swing to profit in its first-quarter, helped by a 16.4% increase in revenues. Normalized earnings per share, however, decreased from last year but came in ahead of Street estimates.
The Hong Kong, China-based company reported net income for the first quarter of $24.22 million or $0.31 per share, compared to a net loss of $37.66 million or $0.65 per share in the year-ago quarter.
Net income included a non-cash unrealized gain of $21.4 million and a loss of $53.8 million from interest rate swaps for the current and comparable quarters respectively. Reported earnings per share include a change in fair value gain of $0.05 per share and loss of $0.93 per share from interest rate swaps for the current and comparable quarters respectively.
Normalized net income for the quarter rose to $18.6 million from $17.5 million year-over-year. On per share basis, normalized net income declined to $0.25 from $0.30 in the first quarter of 2008.
On average, nine analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.24 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.
Revenues for the quarter increased 16.4% to $63.13 million from $54.22 million in the prior-year quarter, due to the delivery of six additional vessels between May and November 2008. Eight analysts had a revenue consensus of $63.37 million for the first quarter.
Seaspan also announced that its board of directors has decided to temporarily reduce its quarterly dividend from $0.475 to $0.10, and declared a first quarter dividend of $0.10 per share to be paid on May 12, 2009 to all shareholders of record as of May 1, 2009.
Ship operating expense increased by 40.4%, or $5.1 million, to $17.7 million for the quarter ended March 31, from $12.6 million for the comparable quarter last year, due to the adjustment of technical services fees for the period commencing January 1.
Total operating expenses rose to $35.54 million from $28.16 million in the same quarter last year.
SSW is currently trading at $6.83, down $3.97 or 36.76% on a volume of 9.12 million shares.
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