With shipping line results continuing their upward trajectory, Hapag-Lloyd has had a bumper first half, with profits climbing to US$3.3 billion.
The line’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) amounted to US$4.2 billion, while Ebit rose to US$3.5 billion.
“In a market with very strong demand for container transports, we have benefited from significantly improved freight rates and look back on a very good first half year. Among other things, we were able to reduce our net debt by US$1.5 billion, although we paid out a significantly higher dividend compared to the prior year,” said CEO Rolf Habben Jansen.
Revenues increased by approximately 51% to US$10.6 billion, mainly due to a 46% higher average freight rate of 1 612 US$/TEU (H1:2020: 1 104 US$/TEU).
This was driven by high demand combined with scarce transport capacity and severe infrastructural bottlenecks.
The average bunker consumption price, which amounted US$421 per tonne (H1 2020: US$448 per tonne), also had a positive impact on earnings.
With demand still high in the current congested market environment, the result is a shortage of available weekly transportation capacity. “For this reason, Hapag-Lloyd expects earnings to remain strong in the second half of the financial year. Ebitda for the full year is expected to be in the range of US$9.2 to 11.2 billion and Ebit in the range of US$7.5 to 9.5 billion.
“We are naturally pleased by this extraordinary financial result. But the bottlenecks in the supply chains continue to cause enormous strains and inefficiencies for all market participants, and we have to do our utmost to resolve them jointly as soon as possible. Looking at the market environment today, we however do not believe that the situation will return to normal any time soon – despite all the efforts made and the additional container box capacity that is being injected. We currently expect the market situation only to ease in the first quarter of 2022 at the earliest.”
