The Hamburg container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd has again raised its forecast for 2022 in view of bubbling profits in the first half of the year. The board now expects earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of between 16.3 billion and 18.2 billion euros, as the company announced on Thursday. This far exceeds the profit from the exceptional year 2021. It was almost 9.4 billion euros, a good seven times more than 2020. At the end of April, Hapag-Lloyd had raised its forecast for 2022 to a range between 11.7 billion and 13.6 called billion euros.
The background to the unprecedented profits in container shipping is the upheaval in the logistics chains since the beginning of the pandemic. Disrupted supply chains and scarce capacities mean that the prices for transport by sea – in industry jargon freight rates – rise enormously. Hapag-Lloyd is currently citing an increase of around 80 percent for the average freight rate in the first half of the year compared to the first half of 2021.
Based on preliminary figures, Hapag-Lloyd posted group-wide EBIT of around 9.1 billion euros in the period from January to June, more than three times as much as a year earlier. In the second quarter alone, EBIT jumped to 4.8 (previous year: 1.6) billion euros.
The shipping company points out that the forecast “in view of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing disruptions in global supply chains and the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic” is subject to high uncertainties. Hapag-Lloyd intends to publish the full business figures for the first half of the year on August 11.
The company was already able to repay many long-term loans with the hefty profit of the previous year and also make the shareholders happy. A dividend of EUR 35 per share was paid out, after only EUR 3.50 in 2020. The state of Hamburg, which holds 13.9 percent of the company’s shares, is also one of the beneficiaries – acquired more than ten years ago as part of a rescue consortium when a sale of the shipping company abroad was being discussed. Only 3.6 percent of the shares are still in free float. The largest shareholders, each with 30 percent, are the Chilean shipping company CSAV and Kühne Holding AG. The state of Hamburg was pleased to receive a good 860 million euros inflow of funds into the budget.
The Hapag-LLoyd share also increased sharply in stock exchange trading on Thursday, around noon the paper was trading at EUR 319.60 after an increase of more than 26 percent. In the past few months, the paper had been traded steadily rising despite high entry prices.
