Company trading update highlights promising first quarter
Despite its susceptibility to regional Covid slowdowns and trade tensions, Australia-Asia logistics provider Wiseway appears to have largely avoided those hurdles to report strong revenue growth for the recent quarter.
For the three months ended September 30, listed Wiseway presents an unaudited revenue of $31 million, up 53 per cent or $10.7 million on the prior corresponding period (pcp).
It has continued to operate its import and export services between Australia and Asia during the COovid-19 pandemic, leveraging its relationships with distribution partners to enable delivery of customers’ cargo in and out of Asia via a combination of alternative routes.
CEO Roger Tong notes trade activity and transaction volumes from China, particularly via major e-commerce platforms, remain high, continuing recovery trends from the previous quarter.
How Wiseway was buoyed by its annual results despite Covid, here
“Our core business – air freight inbound and outbound – generated revenue of $22.2 million in Q1 FY21, an increase of 24 per cent on Q1 FY20,” Tong says.
“We have significantly diversified our revenue stream, increasing the revenue component from new businesses to 29 per cent, compared to 5 per cent at the time of the IPO.
“Pleasingly – complementing the core business growth, was a continued step-up in performance across all our new business divisions thanks to a number of new major customer wins, including large Australian exporters of salmon and exporting into a wide range of countries other than China, for example in South-East Asia, as well as Japan.
“The standout was the stellar performance in our perishables business, of exporting fresh produce, live seafood, chilled seafood, chilled fresh milk and chilled meat; with a revenue of $4.2 million during Q1 FY21, a seven-fold rise compared to Q1 FY20.
“This level represents nearly half of the revenue generated in perishables for the full year in FY20.”
The market for imported fresh produce in China is seeing unprecedented growth in demand, for which Wiseway is positioned to deliver on, Tong says, and the benefit has flowed on to its trucking arm.
“We have implemented operational ‘COVID-19 safe’ procedures, and have been able to continue operations and service customers across Australia, including those in Victoria throughout the period of the state’s border closure,” he says.
“As a result our interstate road transportation service, Airtruck, saw revenue growth of 76 per cent to $0.9 million on the previous corresponding quarter.
“Notably, our importing services for general cargo and e-commerce, now fully set up, are gaining momentum, with revenue of $1.8 million in Q1 FY21, up 182 per cent on Q1 FY20.”