Hapag-Lloyd posts poor results

News 31 Jan 2024 by WCN Editorial

Preliminary and unaudited results issued by Hapag-Lloyd for its 2023 fiscal year, which ended 31 December, reveal a sharp decrease in revenue and profitability. Meanwhile, the volume of containers carried was flat.

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A combination of factors, including a return to normalcy after COVID-19, resulted in Hapag-Lloyd posting poor results in 2023 © Hapag-Lloyd_vessel_rt.jpg

During the year, the carrier had to weather immense challenges, including a return to more normal trading conditions, but with generally lower cargo volumes, following the COVID-19 pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions and high levels of inflation, which negatively impacted investor appetites and consumer purchasing powers.

The year was also characterised by rising levels of overcapacity, further depressing the carrier’s freight rates, which in the final quarter of 2023 dropped to only US$1,190/TEU. Averaged across the whole year, the figure of US$1,500/TEU was 47.6% below 2022’s level of US$2,863/TEU. In turn, revenues of US$19.4B compared with US$36.4B in 2022, a decrease of 46.7%.

At a profit level, the company’s earnings before tax and interest (EBIT) fell by more than 82%, declining from US$15.7B in 2022 to just US$2.7B in 2023.

Hapag-Lloyd carried 11.9M TEU in 2023, up a modest 0.5% on the previous year’s volume. Hapag-Lloyd suggested that liftings would have been slightly higher if the Red Sea crisis had not caused it to reroute ships around the Cape of Good Hope.