From Lagos to New Delhi, from Dhaka to Accra, from Lome to Freetown, and from Younde to Luanda, the ubiquitous impacts of King Shipping Trading Maritime Service (King Shipping) dot every aspect of the shipping and commodities trading value chain. Driven by its core values and governance principles of responsibility, integrity, transparency, empathy, and respect (RITER) the company the company deploys proper health, safety, and environment measures to ensure the safety of its employees, respect to its partners and host communities, and taking responsibility for every right that is due to it from, and every duty it owes to, its industry stakeholders.
Kings Maritime and Shipping: unto the world a behemoth is born
When King Chukwuma had the vision of disrupting the maritime and commodities trading industry with its best-in-kind services in 18th August, 2017, he believed that an integrated approach to service delivery was not negotiable.
Hence, he assembled a team of skilled and competent personnel who worked assiduously to configure the company’s operations to deliver bespoke services in the areas of ship management, bunker and fresh water supply services, upstream and downstream rig supply, underwater repair and ancillary services, freight forwarding and clearing, chanderling services, bonded terminal services, amongst other equally critical services.
Similarly, the team also established its processes for commodities trading – agricultural products including rice, beans, groundnuts, palm oil, cassava, yam, maize. Despite its trading being largely outside of any exchange, Kings trading has set up its system to ensure that all its trades are profitable in line with its customers’ and investors’ interests.
For instance, the Kings trading system properly evaluates the pricing of products, in addition to the trading regimes and economic policies of destination countries, with a view to extracting values for all stakeholders.
“We are always proactive to anticipate the needs of our clients even before they realise they have such needs”, Kingsley Chukwuma, Kings Shipping Chief Operations Officer told reporters. “This way, we’re not only able to retain them, but also get them to refer other valued customers to us.
This is one of the factors that has helped us leapfrog other companies in our industry who have operated for decades before we entered the fray, Chukwuma said.
Interestingly Kings Shipping had operated successfully in many countries in Southern Africa and Asia before berthing in Nigeria. “Even though our impact has been felt on in such countries as Tanzania, Swaziland, South Africa, India, and others, many thought that Nigeria is too big an economy for us to even be noticed”, Chukwuma noted. But those who harboured this thought didn’t reckon with the daring and nobly ambitious character of the Kings Shipping Group.
Challenged by the Nigerian operations survival question, Kings established the Nigerian operations in 2019, and just as it has done in other parts of the world, it has started redefining the scope, quality and effectiveness of service delivery in the maritime industry.
Profound impact: boosting governments’ finances; alleviating suppliers challenges
At this point, you may have been wondering how the operational activities of Kings maritime have benefitted the society beyond the gains it has amassed for its investors. Well, I beseech you to ride with me as I take you on an exploratory journey of the company’s multifaceted societal impact.
First, let’s start with employment generation. The Kings Group currently employs over 100 staff across its business units. This means that it has contributes toward job creation in the countries it operates in. So you can say that that Nigeria’s unemployment rate of 33% could have been worse without the impact of Kings.
Second, and as a consequence of paying salaries and wages to its Kings Shipping also contributes to the fiscal health of the sub-national and national governments of host countries. For instance, the company pays employee tax to the Lagos State Inland Revenue, and corporate income tax to the Nigerian Government.
Most notable Kings impactful operations is the uncommon connection it builds with its suppliers through its numerous corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
One of such laudable initiatives is the programme for the education of the children of its suppliers. Through its Kings ‘Go-to-School’ educational programme, the company pays the school fees of the children of its customers.
Notably, this serves the multiple purposes: (1) It takes away the burden of fees payment of the shoulders of the suppliers; (2) it lets the supplier focus on just producing or assembling products for the company since he/she doesn’t have to worry about school fees anymore; (3) it gives the company an opportunity to make impact on the society while pursuing its profit motives.
. . . and the financials are as good as you may want them
An evaluation of the unaudited financial statements of the company reveals that its Nigerian operations have grown from a zero revenue entity at commencement in 2019 to an entity generating almost N3 billion in revenues by 2021.
A further examination of the company’s financials reveals that the gross margin for the lates financial year was 43%. This is more than 10 percentage points above industry margin. The UNCTAD 2021 industry publication, “Review of Maritime Transport”, puts industry gross margin at 33.1%. With efficient cost management, the company achieved a net margin of 30.78%, a feat that even the hedge fund managers will marvel at.
You’ll be amazed to learn that the company is operating at a decent leverage level. Only 35% of the company’s assets is funded by borrowings as at the end of the 2021 financial year, while the debt equity ratio stood at only 43% in the period.
Kings maritime and trading: the value creation points
You may have been asking what the specific activities of Kings Shipping are that have helped it to do so much for the society and investors, but you already know that the company is an integrated maritime and commodities trading enterprise, a few of which is outlined below.
Kings Maritime ship agency and husbandry unit provides local representative services to clients. Through this, Kings is able to organize for vessel arrivals and departures and port stays. Through this also, the company is able to complete the legal documentations regarding intra-port movements in port master and harbor, immigration, customs and port health aspects.
The shipping trading unit is equipped with modern and sophisticated means of communication devices that enable it to deliver quality shipping and shipping agent services to ship owners, charterers and operators in all our ports.
A visit to Kings Trading will reveal the other services that customers are always running to Kings for.
Looking ahead: the big picture
With its presence in many African and Non-African countries, Kings Maritime has demonstrated that it can thrive in different economies irrespective of the economic situation. It continuously analyses the global maritime and trading space to spot opportunities (which are always available) and exploit them in its march to assert industry dominance.
Given the huge size of its vision, the company has currently set its eyes on becoming the first few maritime companies to partner with the capital market for growth prospects.
As the management considers the timing of this landmark event, investors should take a position on the exciting future of King Shipping Maritime Services Ltd.
