Ferry shipping companies heavily affected
SHIPPING: The economic decline has affected the Danish ferry shipping companies heavily. Lower activity in business life and shortage in private economy means that passenger numbers are dropping on most services, while the ferries still costs the same to sail for the shipping companies.
"The ferry shipping companies have great regular costs, so when they lack turnover, the bottom line is badly affected", says analyst Johannes Moller from Danish Bank to the daily Borsen.
He estimates that the prospect of making a profitable business is quite far away and tightly bound up with development in the world economy.
"They do what they can to remove capacity, but we have to wait for the world economy to improve before they can earn money again. We expect an extremely difficult first quarter, but also that conditions will begin to improve for the shipping companies later this year", says Johanes Moller to the newspaper.
The shipping companies are also under pressure from effects of the high fuel prices during most of 2008.
Oil price meant that Mols Linien left 2008 with losses of around ? 6.74 million and the more expensive fuel made the shipping companies turn up ticket prices in the middle of 2008. But this practically made the customers flee.
Analyst Johannes Moller believes that high ticket prices only have made the situation worse for Mols Linien.
"Mols Linien has a problem because they have raised prices way too much and scared the customers away", says Johannes Moller.
Danish Bank estimates profits from the Mols service of ? 1.35 million this year, whereas DFDS according to the bank estimates will lose around ? 1.62 million.
At Scandlines, the annual report of 2008 is not presented before another month. Last year's result is therefore still unclear but the shipping company's service have also been affected by dropping passenger numbers.
Source: maritimedanmark.dk
