12. TAN SRI G GNANALINGAM
Flagship: Westports Holdings Bhd Net worth: RM5.74bil GNANALINGAM, who sat at the tail-end of the top-10 richest people in 2016, has fallen by three notches to No. 12 as of last year.
He also saw his net wealth in 2017 declining the most by nearly 14% year-on-year (y-o-y) compared with his peers in 2016’s top-10 richest league. Approximately RM1bil has been erased from his fortune.
The significant change in net worth is actually understandable, given the fall in Westports’ share price in recent times.
In 2017 alone, the counter depreciated by 12% to RM3.70 per share as at Dec 31, mainly as a result of Westports’ declining container throughput and financial performance.
Based on this, Gnanalingam’s 45.5% stake is valued at RM5.74bil.
From just a “barren, swampy island” in 1994, Gnanalingam led Westports to become one of the main hubs serving container traffic along the Straits of Malacca, which is the key shipping route from the west to the east.
Today, the country’s largest port operator can handle up to 13 mil- lion twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per annum. It is also undergoing continuous expansion to further increase its container handling capacity and cater for its long-term growth.
Competitive rates and rising efficiencies are said to be among factors that have lured traffic to its port.
The company is currently at the tail-end of its CT1 to CT9 container terminal expansion, and has also received approval-in-principle from the government to develop the CT10 to CT19 container terminals.
By 2040, Westports, which was listed on Bursa Malaysia in 2013, aims to more than double its current capacity to 30 million TEUs.
An unprecedented realignment of a new global alliance of shipping lines and mergers and acquisitions in the global shipping industry has pulled down Westports’ container throughput since the second quarter of 2017.
As a result, the company recorded a container throughput of about nine million TEUs in 2017. The result is within Westports’ volume guidance, lower by between 7% and 12% on a y-o-y basis.
To put matters into perspective, Westports’ closest competitor, Northport (M) Bhd, has also experienced lower container volume due to similar reasons.
Currently, Westports serves as one of South-East Asia’s transshipment hubs for Ocean Alliance and also as a port of call for a service under THE Alliance.
Last December, the Ocean Alliance announced the “Day Two Product”, which will see the addition of new services, additional capacity and container ships. The services will start this April and could benefit Westports in the long run.