There was only one big surprise in Hong Kong yesterday as heavyweight port operators released their annual results, and it had nothing to do with the maritime business.
How about this for a jaw-dropping piece of info: The cumulative losses racked up by Hutchison Whampoa’s 3G telecommunications unit since 2002 are an incredible US$20 billion.
That's 10 zeroes. Several countries in Africa can only dream of seeing an 11-figure number in their GDP reports.
The energy-to-ports group is owned by tycoon Li Ka-Shing, who did not appear too troubled by the news. Being Asia’s richest man probably helps.
But back to the maritime business. Along with Hutchison Port Holdings, China Merchants Holdings (International) and Cosco Pacific also posted lower profits and handled fewer volumes last year.
China Merchants’ container volume fell 13 percent, Cosco Pacific was down 5 percent and Hutch handled 3 percent fewer boxes.
“This year will be better for ports and shipping lines,” Li told reporters at Hutch’s results briefing.
It certainly can’t get any worse than last year. In fact, today is the last day of the first quarter and the port figures so far are looking good compared to the same time last year. (It should be stressed that the figures were so bad in 2009 that even a dead loss this quarter would look fantastic.)
Hutch says its port traffic is back to 2008 levels, and over at Cosco Pacific, volumes surged by 23 percent in the first two months of this year.
So the outlook for 2010 is indeed rosy. The restocking that sent a stream of orders down the pipeline appears to be ongoing with the port operators even predicting that it will continue for most of the year.
That may be a stretch, but as publicly listed companies, the big terminals have a responsibility to shareholders to pump up the stock price.
So let them talk it up. After all, Hong Kong's number one tycoon still has to settle the greatest mobile phone bill in history.