This represents an improvement of USD 20 million from USD 33 million for the same period of 2004. - We’ve entered 2005 at a far higher tempo than we had last year,” says President and Group Chief Executive Officer Ingar Skaug, who delivered WW’s best-ever first-quarter figures on Wednesday.

The first three months of 2005 yielded a pre-tax profit of USD 72 million, which represents an improvement of USD 43 million from USD 29 million for the same period of last year.

Pre-tax profit was strongly influenced by the transition to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). These call for market pricing of such factors as bunkers and other financial instruments.

That produced about USD 35 million in unrealised gains for the first quarter as against USD 5 million in the same period of last year.

Progress was nevertheless strong. Adjusted for unrealised gains, pre-tax profit was up by USD 13 compared to first quarter 2004. 

Operating income came to USD 475 million compared with USD 422 million for the first quarter of 2004.

Shipment of cars, high and heavy cargoes and non-containerised cargoes made the biggest contribution to the solid results. - The maritime transport sector is under strong pressure, with fantastic cargo availability. The big challenge is to find suitable tonnage to meet increased demand,  says Mr Skaug.

Work on consolidating the new Wilhelmsen Maritime Services (WMS) subsidiary is going well. As previously warned, however, the reorganisation involves some one-off costs for the group. Underlying operations were better than in the same period of 2004.

WW expects the result of 2005 to be an improvement on the figure for last year, providing no changes occur in the value of financial instruments.