Aramex has reported that its nine-month revenue increased 14% y-o-y to AED* 4.46bn, compared to AED 3.91bn in the same period in 2020. The increase was driven by growth across all service lines in both the Courier Business, and Logistics & Freight-Forwarding business as the company benefitted from shifting consumer trends to online shopping and recovery in global business activity post Covid-19, especially in the oil & gas and retail sector.
Operating profits fell 20% y-o-y to AED 247m in the first nine months of 2021, with operating profit margin decreasing slightly by 2% compared to the corresponding period in 2020. Nine-month 2021 net profit decreased by 14% to AED 179m, compared to AED 208m in the same period of 2020. According to Aramex, overall costs across the business rose as the company continued to build scale and increase capacity to handle the growth in shipment volumes. Despite the fall in profit, Aramex maintained a strong balance sheet with a negative debt position of AED 357m.
Group Chief Executive Officer Othman Aljeda commented: “Over the last few months, we have witnessed an almost complete return to pre-Covid operating environment. For our Courier Business, we are seeing a surge in domestic express volumes driven by a significant increase in number of retailers opting to tap online sales channel to satisfy the needs of shoppers that have now increased expectations to buy all products, from necessities to luxuries, online. We are seeing very strong growth for our business in Saudi Arabia, where we have been and will continue to invest in expanding and ramping up our operations. We are also seeing increased competition in the last mile across all our geographies, especially from relatively smaller and new players in the market.”
Courier Business
For the nine-month period, the Courier Business grew 13% y-o-y to AED 3.1bn, driven by increased activity in both the domestic and international courier services. According to Aramex, as the Courier Business continues to scale in response to increasing volumes, during the nine-month period its operating profits fell 31% y-o-y to AED 226m. For the nine-month period, cross border express witnessed a 12% y-o-y increase in revenue to AED 1.98bn, with noticeable increase from Hong Kong, China and other Asian origins and US into the GCC. For the nine-month period, domestic express produced a 14% y-o-y increase in revenue, to AED 1.1bn, due to a boom in e-commerce activity which has built momentum across all regions.
Logistics and Freight Forwarding
For the nine-month period, Logistics and Freight Forwarding revenue was up 16% y-o-y to AED 1.26bn, driven by a rebound in global economic activity notably from the oil & gas and retail & fashion sectors. The business also continued to see good contribution from more defensive sector such as healthcare & pharmaceuticals. For the nine-month period, operating profit grew by 210% to AED 16.8m. This was due to one-off events during the period, namely the positive impact from insurance collected from the Beirut Blast in 2021, and the negative impact from Beirut Port blast and Morocco warehouse fire incident in 2020.
For the period, revenue of the Freight Forwarding service line grew 16% y-o-y to AED 934.9m, whilst revenue for Integrated Logistics and Supply Chain Solutions grew 17% y-o-y to AED 321.8m for the same period.
Commenting on the outlook for the remainder of 2021, Group Chief Executive Officer Othman Aljeda said: “As we approach the busiest period for the Courier Business, we are very well prepared to handle the expected surge in volumes and are especially focusing on enhancing our responsiveness to customer needs and demands.
Source: Aramex
*AED=€0.24/$0.27
