[size=40]EXPOLANKA’S TRIAL BY PANDEMICON A QUEST TO DIGITALIZE GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS FOR FASTER GROWTH, THE GROUP LED BY ITS GLOBAL LOGISTICS BUSINESS EFL REPORTED RECORD PROFITS DURING THE COVID-HIT JUNE QUARTER.
October 02, 2020By Devan Daniel16 min read[/size]
On a quest to digitalize global supply chains for faster growth, the group led by its global logistics business EFL reported record profits during the COVID-19 hit June quarter.
Best known for its global logistics business EFL, listed Expolanka Holdings Plc reported its highest ever quarterly profit at the height of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic during the April-June 2020 quarter.
Expolanka’s after-tax profits were Rs1.7 billion in the quarter, up five-fold from a year earlier. Its global logistics business EFL accounted for 99% of Expolanka’s group revenue of Rs36 billion.
Net profits of EFL grew 430% to Rs1.9 billion (Group profits were lower due to losses sustained by other businesses in the group including a tourism-related unit closing Rs72 million in the red due to COVID-19 travel restrictions).
Logically, EFL, and its holding company Expolanka, should have tanked. EFL has 60 offices employing more than 2,900 people across 23 countries.
“Fundamentally, we’re in the business of moving merchandise from one corner of the world to another,” explains Expolanka Group Chief Executive Hanif Yusoof. With countries closing borders and going into lockdown to contain the pandemic, global merchandise trade volumes fell 22% in the first six months of 2020.
A sharp decline which prompted WTO’s Director-General Roberto Azevêdo to say in a June statement: “The fall in global trade volumes we are now seeing is historically large – in fact, it would be the steepest on record”.
Hanif Yusoof Group Chief Executive, Expolanka Holdings
EFL’s success with PPE related freight has nothing to do with dumb luck, nor is it about exploiting a good thing in a bad situation.
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According to a June 2020 report published by the global BY DEVAN DANIEL LOGISTICS B trade rules setter, the WTO, trade indicators for the period paint a horrific picture.
Global commercial flights plunged by three quarters (74%) in January-April (Chart 1).
Container volumes at ports declined by levels last seen during the 2008-9 global financial crisis (Chart 2).
Indices of new export orders fell to historic lows during the first half of the year. (Chart 3).
The supply chain disruptions, business closures, and job losses world over due to Covid-19 will have a $2-4 trillion economic impact, the Asian Development Bank estimated in April.
EFL which moves merchandise by air, sea, and land should have reported falling volumes painting its books in red: after all, some of Sri Lanka’s larger global firms in clothing manufacturing,
EFL’s biggest customers, imposed sharp wage cuts, salary deferments and layoffs in their thousands to survive the pandemic as global markets went into lockdown.
Instead, EFL bucked the trend and recorded healthy revenue growth its highest quarterly profit in the group’s 40-year existence: this was for the most part due to a surge in global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). Globally, manufacturers pivoted to PPE to survive the demand crunch for other goods.
In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the global Covid-19 response required over 89 million masks each month along with 76 million examination gloves and 1.6 million medical goggles.
The WHO urged governments to increase PPE manufacturing by 40% to meet the growing demand. As manufactures shifted production to exploit the opportunity instead of shuttering, the boom in PPE-related shipments benefitted EFL with revenue growing 64% to Rs35.6 billion.
EFL’s success with PPE related freight has nothing to do with dumb luck, nor is it about exploiting a good thing in a bad situation. The company has been building an asset-light
Expansion model for years and deepening relationships with cargo carrying airlines and shipping lines. EFL does not own planes or ships. “When we invest in a country, we don’t buy warehouses or trucks. We invest in people and technology.
This helped us pivot fast during a crisis. This is why we can grow fast as well,” Yusoof says. Expolanka began as an agriculture commodities export firm in 1978.
“I had to ride an old motorbike and spend hours clearing our goods,” says Yusoof recalling EFL’s well-known humble origins 40 years ago.
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To grow the business, Yusoof wants to Uberize global logistics: the group is investing heavily to transform EFL into a digital technology company.
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Expolanka incorporated a separate freight forwarding business in 1982 to handle shipping for its growing fruits & vegetables and spice export business.
Freight forwarding is a business booking cargo space on ships, airlines, rail, or trucks on behalf of exporters and importers. By consolidating cargo from several clients, freight forwarders can significantly reduce the cost of transportation, benefitting small and medium businesses.
Freight forwarders plan routes, negotiating freight rates, and tracking the movement of goods. They sometimes provide a range of warehousing services like pick-and-pack, storage, and just-in-time loading. Yusoof and the Kassim brothers, Osman, Sattar, Shafik, and Farook, incorporated Expolanka as a holding company in 2003, bringing together the diverse businesses each of them leads.
When Expolanka Holdings went public in 2011, the group had interests in agriculture, apparel, pharmaceuticals, food processing, BPO, recycled paper, tertiary IT education, travel and destination management, airline agencies, freight forwarding, and making pencils from throw-away twigs.
‘Beginning in 2014, Yusoof and the Kassim brothers sold a 67.5% stake in Expolanka Holdings to SG Holdings Global, Japan, a company specializing in warehousing and express delivery. Expolanka’s diversification and global expansion strategy shifted.
Former chairman Osman Kassim cashed in all his shares. His brothers reduced their holdings down to a third and Chief Executive Yusoof halved his shareholding. Since 2013, the company has divested several businesses that gave low to negative returns.
“I had to prune myself to grow faster,” Yusoof told Echelon magazine in a 2016 interview. Since then, Expolanka Group exited several businesses or consolidated them.
In 2013, the group comprised 42 incorporated companies. By end-March 2019, the number of incorporated businesses owned by the group fell to 18.
The group is now organized into three pillars: logistics, its core, with leisure and investments completing the trio. As EFL grew its network of relationships with global shipping lines and airlines, it offered freight forwarding services to other firms, including clothing exporters Brandix and MAS, two of Sri Lanka’s largest companies.
Large global manufacturers and retailers may sometimes own their warehouses and trucking but benefit when someone else manages complex logistics for them.Because goods enter and exit several countries on their journey from manufacturer to buyer, freight forwarders manage the complexity of multiple laws and jurisdictions, taking on the paperwork from Customs clearances, bills of lading, and cargo insurance.
Fashion retailers in the US and the UK were soon asking Expolanka Freight to collect all their clothing orders from different manufacturers around Sri Lanka for timely shipments. As the group’s capabilities improved, buyers asked if EFL could do the same in the region.
EFL’s largest clients are global fashion brands including fast fashion brands Victoria Secret, Gap and Zara, sourcing clothing from Asia and Africa, where labour is cheap, but the infrastructure is weak.
EFL operates in places like Madagascar, Mauritius, and Kenya, delivering speed-to-market solutions to buyers in the US and Europe. Clothing brands need to be nimble to respond to changing fashion trends.
Many of them have invested in data analytics to pre-empt demand and improve processes to make clothes quickly. Delivering clothes from factory floors to retail stores on time is critical, and this is EFL’s specialty. Yusoof saw an opportunity to acquire new customers in India but setting up operations there was not easy.
He had to understand India’s complex trade regime and figure out how to navigate regulations and documentation requirements that differed from state to state. EFL had to find warehouses and trucking companies willing to work with a small Sri Lankan company.
It took four years for Expolanka to break into the Indian market, which already had enough freight forwarding firms from small domestic to large multinational operators owning warehouses, trucks, ships, and aircraft.
“We identified a logistical need that businesses anywhere would appreciate. Speed. So, we developed a solution and got partners on board to deliver it.” The company has a reputation for breaking in and taming difficult markets in South Asia and Africa.
“It is in difficult markets that businesses need efficient services. We went into these markets and got things done,” Yusoof says.
EFL has a knack for thriving in difficult places. Cross border trade is the most difficult in the world within nationalist and protectionist South Asia. “India and Pakistan don’t talk to each other. Bangladesh and India do not talk to each other. But all of them talk to us,” Yusoof says.
After four years of negotiations with Bangladeshi and Indian trade officials, Expolanka became the first freight forwarding company to use a single truck to carry finished goods between the two countries.
The group has invested considerable resources to expand EFL’s presence in the US, Europe, and across Asia with major fashion brands entering high-value retail markets in China, Hong Kong, and India. Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In the year ending March 2020, EFL entered Belgium, Denmark, and Taiwan and will begin operations in Thailand towards the end of 2020.
“Many people asked me why Taiwan because of the tensions with China. But I had a gut feeling about it,” Yusoof explained.
“Trade relations have improved, and China is one of Taiwan’s largest trading partners. Also, Taiwan is home to some of the largest tech brands in the world.” this global ‘pandemiconiomic’ outlook is highly uncertain for the next two years. The WTO has forecast two scenarios for 2020:
“A relatively optimistic scenario in which the volume of world merchandise trade in 2020 would contract by 13%, and a pessimistic scenario in which trade would fall by 32%,” it said in a June report (Chart 4).
“As things currently stand, global trade volumes would only need to grow by 2.5% per quarter for the remainder of the year to meet the optimistic projection.
However, looking ahead to 2021, adverse developments, including a second wave of Covid-19 outbreaks, weaker than expected economic growth, or widespread recourse to trade restrictions, could see trade expansion fall short of earlier projections,” it said.
EFL did experience a slowdown in regular operations because of the pandemic’s impact on global trade.
“Businesses were closing down everywhere and stores where shut and those still open had plenty of inventory so even when lockdowns lifted goods still moved at a slow pace,” Yusoof explains.
EFL’s longstanding customers in the apparel industry started manufacturing PPEs and the company was also able to solidify new relationships with a range of new customers including those who pivoted to PPEs to exploit the overwhelming global demand.
EFL experienced growth in food, pharmaceutical and technology equipment shipments during this period.
“We made several new relationships with commercial airlines to move our freight and chartered over 125 full flights on account of the airport closures worldwide.
We ensured timely delivery without any disruptions to the operations of our customers, Yusoof said. With most sea and airports impacted by lockdowns, airfreight rates had rocketed with available flights booked to capacity and passenger airlines converted to cargo carriers to move PPEs and other essentials.
EFL leveraged existing relationships coupled with dynamic procurement strategies to secure higher yields. EFL optimizes block-space agreements to ensure better yields. This allows the firm to maintain margins by avoiding ad-hoc bookings at substantial costs.
There are two types of block space bookings: soft and hard in soft block-space, freight forwarders have the option of canceling the booking for a minimal penalty. In hard block-space bookings, the full rate applies irrespective of utilization. With the gradual opening of economies from May, EFL has seen the return of regular business from its customers.
However, the PPE-led volume burst will be hard to sustain. “The impressive profitability in the June quarter will likely be a one-off thing,” Yusoof admits. To grow the business, Yusoof wants to Uberize global logistics: the group is investing heavily to transform EFL into a digital technology company in 4PL logistics.
EFL’s asset-light model enabled it to expand as 3PL (third-party logistics). The company is building digital capabilities to become a 4PL (fourth-party logistics) company. 4PL handles the entire supply chain for a retailer while 3PL focuses mainly on the logistics process.
A few years ago, Yusoof set up a research and innovation team based in Colombo to investigate new technology to manage costs and improve logistics services.
That unit has evolved into a separate company called ITX360. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the group hired a Chief Digital Officer and a new Chief Executive to run ITX360.
Yusoof is also keeping a close eye on startups here and overseas with the potential to improve efficiencies in Expolanka’s freight forwarding business. Yusoof wants ITX360 to become a technology service company for the logistics industry while transforming the group’s logistics business.
EFL customers can use smart devices to track their goods from end-to-end much like tracking Pickme or Uber food deliveries. They can control and monitor temperature-sensitive merchandise at every stage of the journey. Cameras give customers a birds-eye view of their precious cargo moved on trucks, aircraft, or ships.
“All our global partners adopted our digital tools thanks to the pandemic, otherwise it would have taken several years to convert the entire value chain from North America to Europe and the far East to a digital platform,” Yusoof said.
Digital technology is driving efficiencies at EFL’s free port fulfillment centre in Colombo. The company established a 100,000sq. ft warehouse and fulfillment centre in Colombo 2015 to exclusively serve the apparel industry with value-added services like pick and pack, ratio packing, finishing, and fixing labels and tags for leading global fashion brands. They also provide final inspection facilities.
At the time, it was the Expolanka group’s largest asset. By 2019, the warehouse sector has expanded to over 500,000sq.ft.
“In warehousing, empty space is the biggest cost. I have a warehouse capacity of over 500,000sq. ft but digital technology is allowing me to operate as if I have twice that capacity and this gives me a considerable advantage,” Yusoof explains.
Real-time gathered data from multiple points like the time it takes to unload, barcode, label, packed, stored, and loaded for shipment give significant benefits to EFL and its customers.
“We know what’s arriving today and how much is moving out, all from the press of a button,” Yusoof explains.
EFL’s large fashion retail customers do not have to own warehouses. EFL can do the finishing like sewing labels, bar-coding, and packed and shipped directly to the store of their choice.”
Customers have a real-time view of the available fabric and threads in different colors and texture, and various labels, buttons and zippers in different shapes and sizes.
Data on raw materials allow EFL to cut wastage like cut fabric so customers can optimize on raw materials storage. With consumers increasingly demanding personalized products, technology gives EFL the ability to help customers fulfill diverse orders on time.
Standalone software can be expensive, and deployment can be complex. ITX360 specializes in deploying different sophisticated software systems into a single platform accessible on a Smartphone. ITX360 has built capabilities in several leading global management systems for warehousing, freight, and supply chains like High Jump and Cargo tool, and enterprise resources planning systems like Oracle.
For instance, the Cargo tool allows customers to optimize routes for a single or multiple pick-ups and drop-offs, set rules and monitor the treatment of sensitive cargo, consolidate multiple orders into a single delivery truck and assign jobs based on vehicle size, cost per mile, and availability, integrating these capabilities with other systems along the logistics supply chain is ITX360’s specialization.”ITX360 will be a key driver of the business going forward,” Yusoof explains. “We want to disrupt global logistics.
We will build technology for logistics like what Tesla is doing for cars”. Having perfected the asset-light model to grow its worldwide reach, Yusoof now wants technology to drive EFL’s global expansion faster.
An asset-light model is where a business owns fewer capital assets compared to the value of operations. This is a popular model, and characteristic, of most startups, enabling them to grow faster than traditional businesses.
In logistics, an asset-light model depends on strategic partnerships with owners of assets such as warehouses, trucks, aircraft, and ships. This helps reduce the large capital expenditure needed to expand. It also removes costs relating to employment, depreciation and maintaining warehouses and vehicle fleets.
EFL has this model, but now IT360 will give it the dynamism of a startup. “In the next five years, we will become a strong digital transformation services provider for supply chains,” Yusoof said. “I can expand the business faster now.
A technology-first strategy will allow me to plug-and-play anywhere in the world. However, my intention is not to plant flags, but go to where there is the most need for supply chain solutions”.
Digital technology can help a business scale faster but heavy tech investments weigh on profitability. But Yusoof has faith in Expolanka’s digital strategy.
Stockbroker research teams besotted by Expolanka’s diversified model ahead of its 2011 IPO forecast average annual returns on equity (ROE) ranging 24-28% in the four years post-listing. After the IPO it soon became clear that Expolanka’s diversified model was unyielding.
The following three years the group let go of several businesses and realized a profit of Rs730 million. Some of these businesses included several companies in retail and wholesale distribution, a BPO (Hello-Corp), destination management, bakery ingredients retail, commodity, spices and tea export, plantations, a paper recycling plant, and a stationery manufacturing unit, and a private IT campus APIIT.
The group lost revenue amounting to more than Rs6 billion in 2015 (10% of group revenue) because these companies were now no longer contributing. But the benefits of letting these business units go were immediate. Growth in its core freight forwarding business offset the losses.
Group revenue fell 1% to Rs53 billion in 2014/15 with the freight business growing 17%. The group’s ROE continues to lag pre-IPO forecasts averaging 8% in four years to March 2020. This was due to several reasons, muted trade growth during the height of the China-US trade tensions, losses from its travel agency Classic Travel, legal costs from a dispute with a competitor in the US, and heavy investments in digital technology.
When Yusoof diluted his shareholding to bring in Japan’s SG Holdings Global six years ago, and when he later divested several subsidiaries of the group, he did so to be able to grow the business faster. And Yusoof is doing just that: Expolanka’s group revenue nearly doubled (+84%) over the last five years to Rs103 billion to end March 2020. Excluding the legal costs, Expolanka’s net profits would have been Rs1.9 billion for the year to end March 2020, a five year high. [/size]
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