International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), a global ports operator led by billionaire Enrique Razon Jr., is eyeing port deals in North Africa as it continues to bet on fast-growing emerging markets in the continent, a company official said last week.
Fernando Gaspar, ICTSI senior vice president and chief administration officer, said that the group was focused on opportunities in Africa, even as it prequalified for port deals in Greece and Israel.
“Africa is coming up right now. We want to do in Africa over the next few years what we have done in Latin America over the last seven years,” Gaspar said on the sidelines of the Asean Business Awards.
“The place where we are making a very big push is Africa,” he added.
ICTSI, which operates the Manila International Container Terminal—the country’s main gateway for shipping cargo—entered Africa in 2005 via the Madagascar International Container Terminal. It is currently investing in the Republic of Congo and Nigeria, previous filings showed.
Gaspar noted that many nations in the continent offered various growth opportunities, even in more developed countries like South Africa.
“Right now South Africa has not gone into privatization. But we would be interested if they were,” he said.
Apart from this, Gasper said they were keen on opportunities in Eastern Europe and remaining deals in the Eastern Mediterranean while declining to elaborate further.
Diversifying abroad has been a key part of ICTSI’s strategy, helping it sustain earnings moving forward. It said in a filing last month that net income during the first half of 2014 hit $101.7 million, up 23 percent. It said revenues were up 23 percent to $510.3 million.
ICTSI handled consolidated volume of 3.57 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) for the first six months of 2014, 18 percent more than the same period last year.
This was mainly due to the growth in international and domestic trade in most of the company’s terminals and the volume generated by Contecon Manzanillo S.A. (CMSA) and Operadora Portuaria Centroamericana, S.A. de C.V (OPC), the company’s new container terminals in Manzanillo, Mexico and Puerto Cortes, Honduras, respectively.
The company’s seven key terminal operations in Manila, Brazil, Poland, Madagascar, China, Ecuador and Pakistan accounted for 70 percent of the group’s consolidated volume in the first half of 2014.
For the quarter ending June 30, 2014, total consolidated throughput was 18 percent higher at 1.81 million, it said.
Capital expenditures for the first half of 2014 amounted to $104.5 million, approximately 34 percent of the $310-million capital expenditure budget for the full year 2014, ICTSI noted.