Iron discipline on operational costs, cancellations of services (blank sailing) and stopovers, sometimes significant reductions in workforce: after years 2021 and 2022 with staggering profits, the docking of container ship companies is brutal. They are now using all means to weather the coming storm, victims of a collapse in freight rates and the prices charged to their customers in industry and mass distribution.
A week apart, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd and the French CMA CGM published quarterly results down very sharply compared to the third quarter of 2022. The same is undoubtedly true for the Italian- Swiss MSC, number 1 in the sector, which does not publish its accounts.
The world’s third largest shipowner, CMA CGM announced, on Friday, November 10, a turnover down 42.6% to $11.4 billion (€10.7 billion) and a net profit of $388 million. , while it had reached 7 billion dollars a year earlier. “The normalization of the sector continues, with market conditions that we knew before the pandemic [de Covid-19] », commented its CEO, Rodolphe Saadé. The sluggish economy should, according to him, continue to “weigh on our industry in the coming period”even if the volumes transported remain “solid”.
“Moderate demand”
For its part, the Danish giant Maersk posted a result of 521 million dollars between July and September, seventeen times less than a year earlier, and a turnover down 47% (to 12.1 billion). . In the process, it announced the elimination of 3,500 jobs by 2024, bringing the total to 10,000 over one year and reducing its workforce to 100,000 positions. “Our sector is facing subdued demand, prices returning to their usual levels and inflationary pressure on our cost base”, commented its CEO, Vincent Clerc. As for the German Hapag-Lloyd, number 5 in the world, it earned 264 million dollars in the third quarter, bringing its profit to 3.2 billion over the first nine months of the year, far from the 13.8 billion of 2022 .
The figures had soared to the sky in 2021-2022, and carriers had made some 300 billion in profits over this period – unheard of in their history. For almost a year, they have been diving into the abyss. Spot freight rates no longer cover the cost of transporting “boxes”, admits Hapag-Lloyd boss Rolf Habben Jansen. Shippers, like Ikea, WalMart, Carrefour or Apple, are now in a strong position to negotiate and obtain better contractual rates from shipowners, which was the rule until 2019, before the health crisis.
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