Sea Containers, the Bermuda-registered marine and passenger transport and leisure industry company, completed a miserable year by reporting a fourth quarter loss of $15.8 million.

The company reported the loss for the three months to December 31 on revenue of $319 million compared with the results for the fourth quarter 1999 which showed a profit of $8 million on revenue of $331 million. Net income for the year was also down, $44.9 million on revenue of $1.4 billion compared with $48.3 million on revenue of $1.3 billion in 1999.

Chairman James Sherwood said 2000 had been a difficult and unusual year for the company and he attributed this to several factors.

Fuel had cost $19.6 million more than the previous year and this was not recoverable from passengers as tariffs were committed before the year began.

Lessee demand for container rentals was substantially below expectation in the peak second half year period as the US recession began impacting.

He also said that although the leisure business had turned in an excellent performance for the year, it had experienced a minority interest deduction in earnings of $6.2 million resulting from the initial public offering of the sale of 37 percent of Orient Express Hotels.

Silja, the company's 50 percent owned cruise ferry company, incurred substantial losses on a route where duty-free sales have been stopped, and start up losses on a new fast ferry route.

There was a $6.8 million increase in net finance costs due to a rise in interest rates on the company's floating rate debt.

And all these were added to in October with the high speed derailment of a GNER, the company's UK rail subsidiary, train in the UK. But the company feels it will not suffer financial loss from this incident as costs should be covered by insurance proceeds and credits from the rail line operator.

Mr. Sherwood also announced that Sea Containers plans to sell a further 5 million shares in Orient Express Hotels in a secondary offering in the coming months. It will also sell off the port of Heysham and the ferry terminals and harbour authority of the port of Newhaven.

Silja has $28.1 million mortgage debt outstanding with regard to two cruise vessels it sold to Commodore, which since declared bankruptcy at the end of 2000. Although Silja will probably receive less than this amount from the sale of these vessels, it had already written down their value in its books as a reserve.

Mr. Sherwood said 2001 results should be positively influenced by lower fuel prices, restoration of the UK rail network to normal, good results from leisure, elimination of three unprofitable ferry routes, redeployment of fast ferry tonnage to achieve maximum revenue, reduction of the costs of the marine container leasing business and gains on sale of ports.

Shares of Sea Containers closed on Tuesday at $19.90 on the New York Stock Exchange. This is above a 52 week low of $18.50 and below the high of $29.69.

BUSINESS BUC