According to Sea-Intelligence, the shipping companies lost $1.44 billion in combined EBIT in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Sea Intelligence noted EBIT loses for the following carriers: Maersk (-$920 million), Hapag-Lloyd (-$252 million), ONE (-$248 million), Yang Ming (-$109 million), ZIM (-$54 million), and Wan Hai (-$41 million) all reported EBIT losses in 2023-Q4.
Comparing over the same group of shipping lines (excluding ONE owing to a lack of historical reference points, and including Evergreen and HMM, both of which had operational profits in 2023-Q4), this was the greatest total Q4 EBIT loss in 2012-2023, with the previous high of -$455 million recorded in 2015-Q4.
To examine profitability (or lack thereof) per TEU shipped, Figure 1 depicts the EBIT/TEU for 2010-2023 and the unprecedented levels of the 2021-2022 pandemic era, whereas Figure 2 cuts off the y-axis at +/- 300 USD/TEU to show 2023 trends.
READ: Evolution of vessel size on the Asia-Europe route
So far, we have EBIT/TEU data for five shipping lines, with COSCO absent from the list of companies that consistently report on both EBIT and worldwide volume.
Maersk’s EBIT/TEU of -148 USD/TEU is their highest negative EBIT/TEU during the study period.
Hapag-Lloyd’s EBIT/TEU loss of -84 USD/TEU is less than their previous negative EBIT/TEU loss of -239 USD/TEU in the fourth quarter of 2014.
For ONE, the negative 2023-Q4 EBIT/TEU of -80 USD/TEU is the first. HMM, on the other hand, reported a positive EBIT/TEU of 34 USD/TEU in 2023 Q4.
