The Port of Tauranga Ltd's underlying Net Profit After Tax for the year ended 30 June was $57.9 million, up from last year's $49.4 million, says chairman of directors John Parker at the company's annual meeting this week.

Port of Tauranga.

'More properly, I should talk about the Port of Tauranga Group, as our associates and subsidiaries now provide such an important portion of our results, contributing 21.4% of the Group's profits in 2011,” says John.

Solid performances reported by associate companies C3 Limited and Northport Limited, as well as Tapper Transport which PTL acquired last year.

Group net profit has grown by 17.2 per cent, driven by strong growth across most cargoes, combined with a continued focus on containing costs.

Both C3 and Northport benefited from a growth in forestry exports, says John.

Log export volumes through Northport increased by 120 per cent over the last three years, while forestry volumes handled by C3 increased 29 per cent this past year.

'C3 is now taking its expertise and experience into new markets. It already operates in 13 New Zealand ports and is now expanding into Australia.”

'Our long term strategy of investing in comparable businesses, diversifying cargoes and vertically integrating the supply chain continues to deliver benefits for Port of Tauranga, the Bay of Plenty region and New Zealand as a whole,” says John.

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization was up 16.6 per cent to $109 million, demonstrating the strong cash flows of the Group.

Underlying Net Profit After Tax excludes one off adjustments as a result of the Government's change to remove depreciation on most buildings. Despite the suggestion of some commentators, most companies are reporting underlying profits not to hide anything - it s just that to not make the adjustment gives extremely confusing messages to investors. Note that Port of Tauranga's underlying net profit is lower than the usual Net Profit After Tax.

'Pleasingly, our net debt has decreased $12.4 million to $186.1 million, after paying $40 million in dividends and $21.9 million in capital expenditure,” says John. 'Our debt to debt plus equity ratio is at 29.3 per cent, which we feel is prudent in the continuing uncertain economic environment and given our forward capital programme.

'We were pleased to be able to declare a final dividend of 21 cents per share, on top of the interim dividend, which brought the year's total to 31 cents per share, an increase of 6.9 per cent on last year.”

The Port of Tauranga has been well served in uncertain economic times by continuing to pursue a diversification strategy, says John.

From being formerly a bulk and largely log dependent port, containers now represent 40.5 per cent of the total cargo tonnage handled by the port.