CEVA stays in the red but air volumes grow ahead of market

Logistics company CEVA has reported ahead of market growth in air volumes in the first half of the year while revenues decreased and it remained in the red.
The world’s twelfth largest airfreight forwarder saw revenues decline by 7.8% year on year to $3.2bn, while adjusted earnings before interest tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) was down 5.6% on last year at $118m. It narrowed its net loss to $69m from $128m last year.
With currency effects stripped out of the result, revenue would have been down 4.1% and adjusted ebitda up by 1.6%.
The forwarder said its air and ocean volumes increased ahead of the market, although it does not reveal exact figures in its results, with air up 6.6% and ocean growing 2.2%.
The increase is above the overall market, which is estimated by Panalpina to have decreased by 3% during the first half of the year, and is also ahead of the 1.3% increase recorded by Kuehne+Nagel and the 0.8% growth recorded by DB Schenker, but it lags behind the 8% jump registered by Panalpina.
Chief executive Xavier Urbain said: “Our half-year performance demonstrated stable net revenue in the first half driven by above-market growth in air and ocean freight and resumed growth in Contract Logistics.
“This is good progress, however we won’t stop here. As the logical next step in CEVA’s evolution, a global operational excellence program was started in April to take the organization to the next level by simplifying and applying consistent standards and best practices across the organization with the goal of better serving our customers.”
Its forwarding arm –freight management – saw revenues decrease 11.7% year on year to $1.4bn while ebitda was $30m, up from $25m last year.
“This above-market performance can be attributed to our continued focus on trade lane optimisation coupled with ongoing investments in field sales,” the logistics company said.
“This approach has also led to significant growth with a diverse mix of small to medium-sized and multinational companies in non-cyclical sectors.
“At the same time, we maintain our strong focus on best practice implementation, procurement excellence and standardisation, structural optimisation as well as active, day-to-day cost management.”