Many happy returns

摘要

A clutch of recent financial reports casts some light onto shipping finance, at a time when market behaviour and fleet replacement programmes seem to tell a very different story, as Julian Macqueen reports After a poor first half to 2011, Belgian gas carrier owner Exmar turned things around and finished the year in the black, according to its preliminary results. Even so, the bottom line showed a decline in operating profit of 57 per cent over 2010, to $37.3m. In common with many operators, the fall in profits coincided with an increase in turnover, in Exmar's case by 9.6 per cent to $453.7m. The reason for this divergence? Rising bunker fuel costs.