World Fuel Services 2002 Annual Report Download - page 5

Aviation Division:
Volume in the aviation segment
increased 98% year over year. Our cur-
rent run rate is approximately one
billion gallons per annum and growing.
The quality of our receivables has never
been better and the business is spread
over some 1,500 customers in every seg-
ment of the market and in every geo-
graphic region of the world. We have
realized this growth through expansion
in our core business, the development
of new service offerings and the
consummation of strategic alliances.
In our traditional cargo and charter
markets, especially in Europe and the Far
East, we have achieved steady growth as
new customers enter the market and
existing airlines discover the value of our
service. We will be working to continue
this trend in the coming year.
On the strategic front, we are partic-
ularly proud of the success of our joint
venture with Boeing’s Jeppesen divi-
sion. This alliance of our expertise in
fuel services with their flight planning
business has added over 100 new cus-
tomers to our corporate fueling portfo-
lio, including large fractional fleets and
management companies whose clients
require fuel on short notice all over the
world. We believe this joint venture
will yield additional business synergies
as we develop our joint Jeppesen-WFS
business further. For instance, the busi-
ness network of Baseops, our corporate
trip planning and services division in
Houston is quite complimentary to that
of Jeppesen and potentially there are
useful opportunities to leverage our
combined service strengths in the area
of flight planning, services and fuel.
PAFCO, our 50/50 joint venture
with Signature Flight Support contin-
ues to grow in volume and profitability
year over year and we have begun to
realize some of the strategic benefits of
collaborating with Signature through
their network of FBO’s and strong posi-
tion in the ground handling business.
We have also been able to use our
strong international presence to assist
Signature’s domestic customers travel-
ing overseas. Our plans for the coming
year are to further refine our supply
offerings through Signature’s domestic
network and further expand our efforts
with them in the international market.
One of our most important mile-
stones this year was the launching our
fuel management program for JetBlue
Airways. As the aviation industry
struggles to restructure itself, JetBlue
has created a successful business model
for the future of the industry. We are
proud to be their outsource partner in
the area of fuel procurement and pleased
that we have established “proof of con-
cept” in what promises to be a substan-
tial market. And while the sales cycle is
longer in this part of our business, the
victories yield significant volume, a key
driver in optimizing our overall fuel
costs across the portfolio. Our success
with JetBlue has generated considerable
interest in our fuel services offerings and
we expect continued growth in this area
as airlines increasingly look to shed non-
core functions in a difficult operating
environment in order to better focus on
their key role of providing efficient,
market effective airline service.
Marine Division:
In our marine division, we have
delivered good results in spite of a very
difficult shipping market. More impor-
tantly, we see signs of recovery in global
shipping markets as cargo rates and vol-
umes improve. Assuming continued
shipping industry recovery, we antici-
pate improved performance in this
segment over the next year.
We had a number of important
strategic developments in the marine
segment. Of particular note is the suc-
cess we have enjoyed in our outsource
model. Over the past 6 months, our
business with the world’s largest
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