ICG shares rise as ferry firm navigates major delays

By Eamon Quinn

Shares in ferry firm ICG gained slightly as it sought to get a grip on delays and disruption to summer schedules after “unprecedented” emergency work on Ulysses and the delayed delivery of its new WB Yeats boat.

The company was due to take delivery of the WB Yeats from a German shipyard for its Ireland-France route earlier this summer.

Although the boat was launched on time, delivery was severely delayed until late this year.

The Irish ferry company was then hit by a second blow when the Ulysses between Dublin and Holyhead was put out of action by propellor trouble, the first major outage of service since the boat was introduced on the Irish Sea many years ago.

In the face of the troubles, chairman John McGuckian characterised ICG’s earnings for the first six months as a “resilient performance”. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation of €26.1m at the end of June were down 11.8% from a year earlier on revenues which edged lower to €157.2m.

Earnings were depressed following lower charter earnings linked to the sale of the Jonathan Swift boat, while fuel costs climbed over 14% to €22.4m at the half-year stage.

On Ulysses, ICG said:

“This level of cancellation was unprecedented given that vessel’s 99% schedule integrity since entering service in 2011 to 2017.”

In contrast, the container business based around the Eucon firm and terminals at Dublin and Belfast posted significant gains in earnings and revenues.

The company repeated it had struck an agreement in the early part of the year with the same German yard, FSG to build its second unnamed ferry for delivery in 2020.

At the end of June, ICG said it had over €531m in lending facilities, of which about €300m was already committed for investments.