Orient Overseas (International) Line (OOIL) has released its financial and operational results for 2021, citing a considerable increase in revenues.
The group’s revenue for the calendar year reached $16.832 billion, more than double its income of $8.191 billion in 2020. This marks the company’s highest annual revenue yet.
Operating profit (EBIT) came in at $7.398 billion, while EBITDA amounted to $7.967 billion.
Operating cash flow was also reported to be $8.899 billion.
In terms of operations results, OOCL’s Container Transport and Logistics business reported an EBIT of $7.387 billion, representing a margin of 44 per cent.
Liner liftings also grew to 7.587 million TEU, up from 7.462 million TEU in 2020.
“Our results for 2021, which include the highest ever revenue, liftings and profit figures for our core container shipping and logistics business, surpassed even the outstanding outcome for 2020,” said OOIL in a statement.
“The financial results were achieved in a context that is entirely without precedent. The second year of a pandemic that affected every country and every industry, 2021 produced enormous challenges.
“Since the middle of 2020, our industry, indeed the entire supply chain, has been battling the same confluence of factors. After global economies began to reopen after lockdowns driven by the pandemic, levels of demand consistently outperformed expectations, especially, but not only, on routes from Asia to North America.
“Our relationships with our customers are key to our success. We have consistently worked to assist our customers through these challenging times, honouring our contractual commitments, seeking new ways to co-operate with them on an end-to-end basis, helping them navigate the challenges of schedule changes and congestion, and adding extra capacity where possible.
“We look forward to continuing to deepen and extend our relationships with our customers in this way.”
2022 forecast
As the company looks forward through the rest of 2022, it believes demand will remain resilient and congestion and disruption will continue to put pressure on the global supply chain.
“It seems unlikely that this situation will change materially during the first half of 2022, but we will continue to pay close attention to key leading indicators and to the forecasts and expectations of our customers,” OOCL continued.
“Beyond the first half of 2022, forecasting becomes even more difficult, and it remains true that the full implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on world trade have yet to be seen, particularly in terms of supply chain evolution.
“We will remain attentive to market trends and will seek to be at the forefront of positive developments, including enhancing relationships with our customers, offering more end-to-end solutions, and leading the process of digitalisation in our industry.”
Some of OOCL’s operational highlights from the last year include the company launching its first multimodal container service from China to the US East Coast, to help meet customer demand.
The “innovative” product is a combination of the “Chang An” China-Europe block train service from Xian to Kaliningrad, Russia, with onward feeder to Bremerhaven, and then with OOCL ocean services from Bremerhaven to various ports on the US East Coast.
Back in November, the group also introduced its China Straits Service 3 (CSS3), strengthening its China to South-East Asia service network.
The launch of this new service aimed to supplement CSS1 and CSS2 which were launched in 2020.
