In a remarkable performance, leading carriers have achieved a combined (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes)EBIT of $17.06 billion for Q3 2024.
This represents a staggering 600% year-on-year surge, highlighting strong market recovery and operational efficiency in the aviation and logistics industries.
According to logupdateafrica.com: “The YoY increase is discounting ZIM that reported a one-time non-cash impairment loss of $2.06 billion in Q32023; including this figure would over-inflate Y/Y growth for Q32024. This is on the back of a $6.12 billion EBIT in Q22024,” says the latest update from Sea-Intelligence.
Of the nine reporting carriers, eight have reported an EBIT of over $1 billion, of which three have reported EBIT of over $2 billion, the update added. “COSCO had the highest Q32024 EBIT of $4.71 billion. Even with the highest EBIT, COSCO did not have the highest EBIT/TEU as they also grew their global volumes by 10.8 percent (Fig 1). Their EBIT/TEU of $716/TEU was surpassed by ZIM’s EBIT/TEU of $1,273/TEU.
COSCO was followed by ONE ($567/TEU) and Maersk ($446/TEU).” Given these results, it seems as though the market is in a conflicted state, the update added. “While this is clearly not pandemic level profitability, it is also higher than any normal Q3.
It seems as if the current supply chain disruptions have jolted the market enough to drive up freight rates, increase volumes (only partially on Asia-Europe), and substantially increase carrier profitability to a level not seen across the pre-pandemic decade but not enough to increase these figures to the highs seen during 2021-2022.”
French carrier CMA CGM reported a net income of $2.7 billion for the third quarter of 2024 compared to $388 million in the same period last year, driven mainly by the shipping business. Group revenue stood at $15.8 billion in the third quarter of 2024, up 38.5 percent and EBITDA more than doubled to $4.9 billion.
2024 outlook raised ZIM joined other carriers in increasing its 2024 earnings outlook on higher rates, improved volumes and specific focus on spot volumes on the Transpacific trade. ZIM is now expecting an adjusted EBIT of $2.15-$2.45 billion for 2024. Maersk had earlier raised its earnings outlook, and is expecting an underlying EBIT of $5.2-5.7 billion for the full year 2024 on the back of strong Q3 results combined with strong container market demand and the continuation of the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden situation. German carrier Hapag-Lloyd has raised its earnings forecast for the current financial year, and expects EBIT to be in the range of $2.4-2.8 billion.
