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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Thursday, 28.03.2024, 18:41

Operail's earnings drop by 67% in H1

BC, Tallinn, 14.09.2020.Print version
The Estonian state-owned transport and logistics company Operail saw its net profit earned in the first six months of 2020 drop 67% year on year to 1.8 million euros, reports LETA/BNS.

Operail's operating income in the first six months of this year totaled 31.8 million euros, which is 16% less than in the same period of the previous year, while EBITDA came to 6.4 million euros.

The company's net profit in the first six months was 1.8 million euros, compared with 5.5 million euros in the first six months of 2019.


However, Operail's wagon rental business displayed a significant increase -- in the first half of the year, the income from wagon rental activities reached 7.4 million euros, 22% more than during the same period in 2019. Operail with its two subsidiaries in Estonia and Finland have rented out more than 2,400 wagons. In total, the group's wagon fleet is made up of more than 3,700 wagons.


Raul Toomsalu, the CEO of Operail, said that the results were predictable, as the company's largest line of business -- freight transport -- was in decline already at the end of the previous year.


"In the first half of this year, we also had the coronavirus emergency situation to deal with, which, despite a lot of questions and hesitation, did not directly affect our freight volumes -- we were prepared for worse," Toomsalu said.


"We had signed our agreements and confirmed our prices with the customers before the pandemic began, which meant that we continued to serve our customers and the results stayed within the expected limits," he added.


In the first half of 2020, Operail's freight volume was 5.5 million tons, which is 21% less than during  the same period of the previous year. In terms of product groups, compared to the previous year, the carriage of fertilizers increased and the carriage of mineral fuels decreased. The carriage of oil shale on public railways ceased already at the end of 2019.


Operail is an Estonian state-owned railway company whose main lines of business are freight transport, repair and construction of locomotives and wagons, and rolling stock rental. The company employs almost 600 people.


In addition to the parent company AS Operail, the Operail Group also includes the wagon rental companies AS Operail Leasing and Operail Leasing Finland Oy and the Finnish railway transport company Operail Finland Oy.






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