Year on year, Marco Polo Marine's ship chartering business enjoyed growth in revenue of 147.2% to S$39.3 million for the first 9 months of FY2013. It grew 234.6% to S$17.4 million in Q3 of FY2013 alone.
Ship building and repairs, unfortunately, weakened 52.3% and this reflects the issue of serious over capacities dogging shipyards everywhere.
The question to ask is whether ship chartering is able to pick up the slack and I think it is reasonable to expect that it would. This could be a good thing too as Marco Polo Marine's ship chartering business is a higher margin business compared to ship building and repair.
For the same 9 months in FY2012, ship chartering accounted for 22.7% of total revenue. Now, it accounts for 60.4%. If the malaise in ship building and repair should continue and it seems like it would, ship chartering would probably account ......