SMRT Quarterly Profits Up 63.5%!! Huat Ah!

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

SINGAPORE: SMRT’s net profit for the third quarter of FY2016 is up 63.5 per cent from a year ago to S$36.9 million, largely on the back of improved profitability of its taxi and rental segments.

In a filing to the Singapore Exchange on Monday (Jan 25), the transport operator also said that Q3 group revenue increased 4.6 per cent to $327.6 million due to broad based revenue growth.

Under its non-fare business, which includes the taxi and rental segments, operating profit for the quarter increased 20.3 per cent to S$33.7 million in the quarter.

As for its fare business – which includes trains, LRTs and buses – SMRT posted Q3 operating profit of S$11.6 million, up five times from a year ago. This was largely due to higher revenue, training grants, reliability incentives and lower diesel costs for the bus operations, as well as higher revenue, funding from the Public Transport Security Committee and lower depreciation from the rail operations.

However, SMRT cautioned that on a year-to-date basis, its rail operations are still loss-making, with a combined a loss of S$1.1 million in FY2016 – as the “increase in operating expenses outpaced revenue growth”.

It also warned that expenses “will continue to increase due to intensive maintenance and renewal programmes of the ageing (rail) network”, and that “fare revenue will be impacted by the 1.9 per cent fare reduction and commencement of Downtown Line 2 from 27 December 2015”.

“We continue our steady performance in our non-rail businesses but the rail business remains challenging due to higher operating costs associated with improving rail reliability,” said SMRT’s president and Group Chief Executive Officer Desmond Kuek, adding that the firm remains focused on multi-year programmes to renew and upgrade the ageing rail network.

He elaborated: “While there is more to be done in reducing major train disruptions, we are encouraged that our consistent efforts in enhancing the reliability of the network have seen results. As a key reliability indicator, service delays longer than 5 minutes for every 100,000 kilometres improved from 1.80 in 2011 to 0.71 in 2015, the best performance achieved on the North-South and East-West lines in the past decade.”

SMRT also said that it is “making progress in its discussions with the authorities on the transition to a new rail financing framework”.

The firm’s shares closed almost 0.4 per cent lower today, at S$1.38 apiece.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/....html?cid=FBsg


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