China Shipping Development Co Ltd, the country's biggest coastal energy shipper, said on Tuesday its un-audited net profit rose 17.8 percent year on year in the third quarter of 2005.
But the quarterly net profit fell about 29 percent from the second quarter, Macquarie said in a research note. "China Shipping's third-quarter results came in as weak as expected owing to lower freight rates and higher bunker costs," it said.
China Shipping said its net profit surged to 548.6 million yuan (US $67.8 million) for the three months ended in September, compared with 465.9 billion yuan in the year-earlier period.
Profit for the first nine months of 2005 rose about 59 percent to 2.16 billion yuan from 1.36 billion yuan in the same period a year earlier, based on Chinese accounting standards.
The firm said in August that substantial profit growth would continue in the third quarter as demand rose for oil and coal shipping in fuel-hungry China.
Macquarie said the liner's gross margin was 35.1 percent, 1.5 percentage point below its expectation. But it believed the margin would rebound in the fourth quarter due to rising freight rates and declining bunker costs.