CEO comment
Ferenc Lajkó, CEO of WABERER’S INTERNATIONAL Nyrt. commented: “The first three months of 2018 showed a robust revenue performance from the Group. However, partly because of our conscious repricing strategy, and partly because of what is typically the low season at the beginning of the year, we registered a temporary pressure on volumes in the International Transportation Segment.
Our ongoing initiatives will help alleviate these pressures. Amongst other projects, we are working to increase kilometre performance by enhancing the capacity and efficiency of our sales force to increase general coverage of the FTL demand and to strengthen our activities in targeted problematic lanes that had a negative effect on mileage in the first quarter. Therefore, although the repricing of our services had an effect on our first quarter profitability, it is expected to have positive margin effect for the rest of the year.
In the Regional Contract Logistics segment, high rates of growth were maintained and margins increased in the first quarter as we could achieve higher prices in this segment as well.
Let me note that we have several longer term projects underway that will strengthen our prospects for further growth and greater efficiency. These include a continuation of our endeavour to consolidate the market and to leverage further the data collected through our systems that lead to achieving additional savings in key cost items such as fuel consumption.
Reflecting on the more challenging conditions experienced in our low season which affected the profitability of the first quarter of 2018, our outlook for the full year has softened modestly, but based on current trading and on the anticipated impact of our enhancement initiatives, we remain confident considerable growth is achievable.”
