ICTSI completes sale of Cebu unit

MANILA, Philippines—Ports operator International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) has completed the sale of its controlling stake in Cebu International Container Terminal Inc. for P1.65 billion, a stock exchange filing showed Tuesday.

ICTSI, led by billionaire Enrique Razon Jr., said its 51-percent stake in Cebu International Container was bought by Cebu Asian Rim Property and Development Corp. and Hong Kong Land (Philippines) BV.

The deal involved 127.5 million of ICTSI’s shares at P12.93 a share. ICTSI said in November last year that the buyers would acquire 100 percent of Cebu International Container Terminal after the stock deal has been completed, the filing showed.

Cebu International Container is the registered owner of a parcel of land of about 200,000 square meters.

ICTSI reported this month that net income in the nine months through September rose 22 percent to $128.8 million as revenues and margins improved.

It said revenues during the period hit $624.7 million, up 19 percent, while volumes grew 13 percent to 4.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, as international and domestic trade increased.

For the third quarter alone, net income rose 29 percent to $45.9 million while revenues from port operations was up 17 percent to $211 million.

ICTSI attributed most of the gains in volume to operations at Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT) and PT Olah Jasa Andal (PT OJA), its new container terminal in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Excluding the volume from the two new terminals and the effect of the cessation of the operations in Syria effective January, organic volume growth increased by just 1 percent, the company said.

ICTSI’s seven key terminal operations in Manila, Brazil, Poland, Madagascar, China, Ecuador and Pakistan accounted for 79 percent of the group’s consolidated volume in the first nine months of 2013.