SHIPPING: Shipping group Irish Continental has sounded an upbeat note about prospects for the current year, after the foot-and-mouth outbreak last year hit profits hard in the 12 months to the end of October.
The group's results were ahead of market forecasts and the share rose five cents to €7.40 (£5.83) after opening weaker.
Irish Continental fell as low as €4.87 last year as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak and September 11th, but has recovered strongly in recent months.
While pre-tax profits for the year fell from €19 million to €14.6 million and turnover was down marginally to €311 million, earnings before interest, tax and depreciation of €48.3 million were ahead of market forecasts of €46.5 million.
Earnings per share came in at 55.4 cents, well ahead of market forecasts of 47 cents.
Chief executive Mr Eamon Rothwell was upbeat on the trading prospects and the company could get an additional boost this year if it is able to find a charter customer for the Isle of Innishfree ferry.
Talks are in progress with two potential parties. Irish Continental already receives substantial charter income from the Pride of Bilbao superferry and the St Patrick.
The Ireland-France route is a comparatively minor part of its business, but the group has approached the Government to see if assistance can be made available to increase the group's capacity on its French routes.
Mr Rothwell said this approach had been made in response to the downturn in the tourism market and so that Government assistance could be structured as part of a public service obligation (PSO) similar to that employed in other European peripheral regions such as the Scottish islands.
He emphasised that any such PSO operation, which would be done on a tender basis, would need an annual subsidy of about €5 million.
In the ferries division, profits fell from €27 million to €22.3 million - hit mainly by the impact of foot-and-mouth.
Freight and chartering revenues, however, showed no adverse impact. Passenger numbers fell 4 per cent to 1.73 million with unchanged numbers on the Dublin routes countering a 16 per cent fall in passenger numbers on the Rosslare routes.
Passenger numbers on the French routes were unchanged on 210,000.
The downturn in the tourism market has led the group to write off the €3.2 million goodwill against its acquisition of Tara Travel, while the wannabeinireland.com travel website has been closed down.
Ro-ro freight traffic on the Irish Sea routes grew 11 per cent to 182,000 trucks while there was a sharp improvement in the lo-lo container operations although container volumes fell 7 per cent. Operating profits in this division were €2.8 million compared to a €600,000 loss in 2000.
