New Century Logistics is a Hong Kong air-freight forwarder that listed on Nasdaq late in calendar 2024 and spent its first public year converting a thin booking spread into a large operating loss. The debate is not whether cargo still moves through the Kwun Tong booking desk. The debate is whether a cost-plus forwarding book can earn a real spread after public-company overhead, and whether the till lasts long enough for that spread to reappear. The latest full year left gross profit of only about $163 thousand. That contribution sat on roughly $44 million of revenue. The top line still looks like a logistics company. The contribution looks like a pass-through desk.
The first-half rebound does not repair that spread. Bookings for the six months through March rose to just over $28 million from about $21 million a year earlier. Gross profit was essentially unchanged and still below $1 million. Overhead did fall once the listing-year cost pulse faded, so the operating loss narrowed. Cash did not recover with it. Unrestricted cash ended March at $62 thousand. That cash sat against a bank overdraft above $1 million and drawn loans near $2 million. A forwarder that collects on receivables and pays carriers on trade terms is supposed to run a working-capital engine. This one is running the engine in reverse.
Partnership headlines from the prior spring, including a Silk Way Airlines memorandum, a last-mile drone memorandum, and a proposed majority stake in Asiatic Logistics, have not shown up as disclosed revenue. The tape prices the equity at about $17. That is roughly $55 million of equity value. Book value sits near $5 million. The public float is thin enough that a few hundred shares move the print. The next annual print has to show a spread that covers cash overhead without another trip to the equity window. Does a Hong Kong booking desk with an empty till deserve a double-digit price-to-book multiple, or is the tape still trading the listing story rather than the contribution?