British Virgin Islands-based UTi Worldwide (NASDAQ: UTIW) was down in Friday trading after reporting fiscal Q2 2014 earnings, at one point falling nearly 10% before bouncing back.
Considered a small rival to global shipping giants such as UPS and FedEx, UTi performs air and ocean freight forwarding services and assists with shipping logistics, customs brokerage, distribution, truckload brokerage, and other supply chain management services for its customers.
The company today reported losing $0.04 per share on $1.13 billion in revenues in Q2, reversing last year's Q2 net profit of $0.18, and notching a 4.5% decline in revenues. These results also fell far short of analyst expectations for $1.15 billion in revenues, and a $0.14 profit.
UTi explained that severance costs for laid-off workers subtracted $0.02 from its results, and an increase in its "valuation allowance on deferred tax assets" accounted for another $0.07 of the loss. But for these one-time items, UTi says it would have actually earned a pro forma profit of $0.05 per share. Even that result would have fallen short of Wall Street's expectations.
UTi CEO Eric W. Kirchner lamented that UTi's "results in the fiscal 2014 second quarter continue to reflect a lackluster global economy, challenging trading conditions and costs associated with our comprehensive business process transformation."
