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ublicly listed shipping and logistics company Samudera Indonesia (SI) expects to just maintain revenue this year, and take US$451 million, as the global shipping industry sees a bleak outlook.

The company’s 2016 target is similar to last year’s realized revenue, which itself was an 11.5 percent decrease from $510 million 2014.

 As part of efforts to maintain profitability, SI will do some corporate restructuring to ensure better efficiency in each line of its businesses. The global shipping industry is taking a hit from the worldwide economic slowdown, including for one of the world’s biggest shippers China, where a glut of ship capacity is coupled with weak trading activity.

After restructuring, SI will have five lines of businesses: shipping, terminals, agency, property and logistics.

“We want to streamline our company so that we can move and grow faster,” said president director Masli Mulia during the company’s public expose on Thursday.

 Inside its shipping business, for instance, it will focus on three main businesses: container shipping, bulk container shipping and offshore and ship management, SI director Bani M. Mulia said.

 “Although they are all shipping businesses, each of them has its own unique characteristics and different business processes,” he explained, adding that grouping was important because each business required people with different sets of skills and competencies.

 To develop its terminal business, SI created a sub-holding called PT Samudera Terminal Indonesia (STI) in the first quarter of this year that will be specifically in charge of terminal and port services.

STI will supervise five subsidiaries in total: Tangguh Samudera Jaya, Pelabuhan Samudera Palaran, Samudera Terminal Indonesia, Prima Nur Panurjwan and Samudera Golden Mitra.

 This year SI will mainly focus on developing its terminal business and plan to prepare for an initial public offering (IPO) in the next five years, Bani said.

 In addition, the firm will create a sub-holding for its logistics business, named Samudera Sarana Logistik, which will oversee two subsidiaries: PT Masaji Kargosentra Tama (MKT), which concentrates on warehousing and distribution, and PT Masaji Tatanan Container (MTCon), which focuses on managing container depots.

Meanwhile, the company invested in two vessels in the first quarter of 2016 as part of efforts to rejuvenate its existing fleet.

The first new vessel, called Sinar Banda, has a deadweight tonnage (DWT) of 15,210 metric tons and a capacity of 1,060 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). It will serve regional routes.

Sinar Papua, the other new vessel, has a DWT of approximately of 7,624 metric tons and a capacity of 562 TEUs and will operate domestically.

In 2016, SI has allocated $152 million to capital expenditure (capex). From January to March, $7.1 million from that was been used to buy the Sinar Banda vessel and $3.5 million to buy the Sinar Papua, reported Ridwan Hamid, independent director of SI.

The remaining capex will be used to buy another new vessel and to fund the development of the company’s sub-holdings, he added.

As of end of first quarter, the firm’s sales had dropped 9 percent to $103.6 million, from $113.7 million in first quarter 2015, which was mainly attributed to the depreciation of the rupiah and the decline in freight costs, Masli said.

In line with sales, net profit plunged 15 percent to $4.5 million in the first quarter, from $5.2 million in the same period last year.

SI was established in the early 1950s by the Soedarpo family. Currently, 57.98 percent of its shares are owned by Samudera Indonesia Tangguh, 14.21 percent by Ngrumat Bondo Utomo, 27.38 percent by the public and 0.44 percent by the management.

Publicly traded shares in the company, coded SMDR on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), stood at
Rp 4,580 apiece on Friday. The stocks have lost almost half their value within the past year. (win)