Container shipping lines report record profits in the third quarter of 2021

Container freight rates increase to a record in a long time

All global ocean carriers saw strong revenue growth driven by record high freight rates, with year-on-year revenue growth from 83.9% for Maersk to 274.1% for Wan Hai, according to data from Sea-Intelligence.

In terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), shipping lines posted a whopping $37.24 billion in operating profit in the third quarter of 2021 alone, according to Sea-Intelligence.

Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy said: “Combine this with the 2021 first half operating profit of 42.10 billion, and the carriers have made nearly US$80 billion in operating profit so far this year.”

This does not include MSC, the world's second largest shipping line today, whose business type is a private company that is not required to disclose its accounts.

"To put this into perspective, the combined 2010-2020 operating profit across all quarters was US$37.86 billion," added Murphy.

To sum up, the shipping industry's operating profit for the first three quarters of 2021 has doubled compared to the entire 10-year period from 2010-2020, showing an unprecedented level of profitability.

Container shipping lines recorded record profits in the third quarter of 2021 (Source: Sea-Intelligence.com, Sunday Spotlight, No. 542)

Current supply/demand and freight market developments are evident in the figure above, with each carrier's Q3 2021 EBIT/TEU numbers being a stark departure from the "historical" figures.

The smallest EBIT/TEU recorded by Maersk was 818 USD/TEU, while the rest of the carriers recorded EBIT/TEU over 1,000 USD/TEU, ZIM recorded EBIT/TEU at 2,100 USD/TEU, according to Sea- Intelligence .

This further clarifies that the sharp increase in freight rates has resulted in extremely high EBIT performance for all shipping lines.

Read more:

• Profit forecast of container shipping lines is up to 150 billion USD in 2021 and possibly more next year
• No correlation found between schedule reliability and freight rates - Sea-Intelligence
• Container freight rates increased by 346% within a year
• Container freight rates under long-term contracts increased to a record 28.1% in July
• Records tumble for box spot rates across the world

Source: Phaata.com (According to ContainerNews)

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