KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 23): Tasco Bhd's second quarter net profit jumped 160.34% to RM10.7 million from RM4.11 million a year earlier as the logistics company experienced a surge in business volume when its customers restarted operations following the transition from Malaysia’s movement control order (MCO) to the less-restrictive conditional MCO (CMCO) and recovery MCO (RMCO) to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, Tasco said its second quarter ended Sept 30, 2020 (2QFY21) saw the achievement of historic high revenue. 

"Coupled with our strong actions to control and reduce costs, this quarter has seen our group reporting significantly better results at both top and bottom lines vis-a-vis last year's corresponding quarter as well as the immediate preceding quarter,” Tasco said in a Bursa Malaysia filing today.

Tasco said 2QFY21 revenue rose to RM229.46 million from RM190.66 million a year earlier as revenues from its international business solutions (IBS) and domestic business solutions (DBS) segments increased.

According to Tasco, the IBS segment comprises the company's air freight forwarding and ocean freight forwarding divisions while the DBS segment undertakes the group's contract logistics, cold supply chain and trucking operations.

For the cumulative first six months of FY21, Tasco said group net profit surged to RM13.34 million from RM5.39 million a year earlier while revenue increased to RM408.02 million from RM371.07 million.

"Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the resilience of our business model is proven once again as our group has continued to perform well under the current conditions. Hence, we are still cautiously confident of our financial performance for the remaining second half of the financial year. 

"Nevertheless, in view of the extreme uncertainties posed by the pandemic, and as the spike in cases causes the country to go into selective lockdowns, it is challenging to provide a definitive forecast of how things will play out. Downside risks for the group will continue to be the uncertainty due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the challenge to keep our operational costs under control," said Tasco, which declared today a dividend of two sen a share for 2QFY21.

In a separate Bursa filing today, Tasco said the dividend's ex and payment dates fall on Nov 10 and Nov 30, 2020 respectively.

At 5pm today, Tasco's share price closed up 23 sen or 11.11% at RM2.30, valuing the company at about RM460 million. The stock saw some 15.43 million shares traded.