Global Ports Holding painted a positive picture from the cruise market and shrugged off any concerns around Brexit as it reports a loss for 2017.
The London-listed company pointed to difficulties at high-earning Turkish ports and costs associated with its stock listing for the bottom-line loss.
Chief executive Emre Sayın says the whole of the cruise sector has a very positive outlook.
“All of the players in the industry feel the same way,” he said. “When you look at the orderbook; 97 ships, 50% more capacity coming into play in the next five or six years.
“This is tremendous and it’s going to definitely be the fastest growing segment in the travel industry.
“These ships need ports and you can’t develop ports as quickly as you can order and build a ship.”
Global Ports Holding, the world’s largest cruise port operator, booked a loss of $14.1m in 2017, against profit of $4.4m in 2016.
Sayın explained a difficult year in the eastern Mediterranean dented performance but passenger numbers, revenue and operating numbers at ports outside of Turkey all improved.
Underlying profit of $28.5m for the year was down from $34.3m in 2016.
Sayın said: “2017 was a year that showed the resilience of our business and the strength of our cruise business.
“Even though the Turkish ports were hit the rest were able to compensate for it, especially in the second half the overall cruise business started growing again.”
Global Ports Holding, which is exploring new projects in the Americas and Asia, saw London’s sophisticated investor base as a pull to the city’s stock exchange.
“Our operations are in many different places from Singapore to Lisbon and now we are looking into even further regions of the world,” Sayın explained.
“In that sense I do not think that Brexit will influence us that much.
"I also think there might also be some positives, such as the government being more receptive new global investors operating out of London. I’m not concerned about Brexit.”
