Major container carriers posted strong financial results for Q1 2025 despite market volatility and geopolitical uncertainty.
According to Sea-Intelligence’s latest report, nearly all carriers reporting financials saw double-digit year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth, with a combined EBIT of $5.89 billion.
Excluding CMA CGM and Ocean Network Express (ONE) (due to the lack of historical reference points), a consistent set of carriers posted a Q1 2025 EBIT of $5.67 billion.
While below pandemic highs, this figure nearly matches Q1 2023 and exceeds all other years from 2012 to 2020 and 2024.
READ: CMA CGM revenue hits $13.3 billion in Q1 2025
Figure 1 shows EBIT per TEU for carriers reporting both EBIT and global volumes.
ONE recorded the lowest at $73/TEU, while others ranged from $146/TEU (Hapag-Lloyd) to $492/TEU (ZIM). Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) also exceeded $400/TEU with $447/TEU.
Global volumes rose notably, with certain carriers seeing exceptional growth on the Transpacific and Asia–Europe trades.
Recently, Sea-Intelligence’s latest Global Liner Performance report (Issue 165) showed global schedule reliability rose 1.7 percentage points in April to 58.7 per cent—the highest level since November 2023. Among the top 13 carriers, Maersk led with 73.4 per cent reliability, followed by Hapag-Lloyd at 72.3 per cent and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) at 60.7 per cent.
