CWT lost S$6.3m in Tianjin blast, posts 16% decline in Q3 profit

CWT's net profit fell 16 per cent in the third quarter amid lower naphtha sales and losses incurred from the Tianjin blast.

Net profit for the three months ended September was S$27.2 million, or 4.54 Singapore cents per share, as revenue halved to S$1.9 billion. For the first nine months of 2015, net profit decreased by 15 per cent to S$82.7 million as revenue fell 51 per cent to S$5.8 billion, said CWT, a logistics and derivatives trading company.

The revenue decline was mostly attributed to lower trading volumes of naphtha and a general drop in commodity prices, CWT said.

Although the company managed to cut its cost of sales in half during the third quarter to pull gross profit up by 5 per cent to S$93.7 million, the company also suffered a net loss of S$6.3 million from the August explosion in Tianjin. CWT said it lost a property and the machinery inside from the blast.

That blast led other operating expenses to widen to S$16.4 million from a year-ago S$2.2 million during the quarter, but CWT also provided for estimated insurance claims that raised other income to S$9.2 million from S$821,000 the year before.

Shares of CWT slipped 1.8 per cent, or 3.5 Singapore cents, to close at S$1.955 on Thursday before the results were announced.