GL Announces Good 1H Results

Germanischer Lloyd (GL) recently presented the key figures for the first half-year of 2001. Rainer Schöndube, Executive Board Member in charge of financial affairs, said: "The positive developments in turnover and performance for the first half of 2001 lead us to expect a Group result for the entire year that is about as good as last year's." The turnover of the GL Group grew in the first half of 2001 by 11.4 percent to 81.0 million EUR (previous year: 72.8 million EUR). This growth must mainly be ascribed to the increased revenue in newbuilding classification as well as a volume-related growth in the attendance to the GL fleet in service. With consideration of the increasing operating costs, a result before tax of 5.1 million EUR was achieved. In relation to the beginning of the year, the orders on hand for seagoing newbuilding tonnage to be classified increased by 33.5 percent according to tonnage and 31 percent by number of ships. For the fleet in service, the tonnage increased by 5 percent to 34.8 million GT since the beginning of the year. As Consul Schöndube noted: "On the basis of our current order position (518 seagoing ships with 8.5 million GT) and the growing fleet (5,026 seagoing ships with 34.8 million GT), we expect for the entire Group - despite the weakening of the container markets - a gross operating performance for the year 2001 that lies in the region of that of the previous year and a result which should almost reach the good figure attained in 2000. Without reservation, we can say that the Executive Board is facing the rest of the year with optimism and confidence."