Major container lines report over US$27 billion in 2024 earnings

The major shipping lines that have reported and published their financial figures for 2024 have recorded combined full-year earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of US$27.3 billion.

In comparison, the same group of shipping lines generated nearly US$200 billion in combined EBIT across 2021 and 2022.

However, despite the decline from peak pandemic-era profits, the 2024 profitability level remains significantly higher than in pre-Covid years. The EBIT recorded in 2024 exceeds the combined EBIT of 2019, 2020, and 2023.

It is important to note that the shipping lines included in this analysis do not represent the entire market. Key players such as MSC (which is privately held), PIL (which rarely publishes financial reports), and CMA CGM (which no longer publicly discloses EBIT) are not accounted for.

“We can estimate the total market profitability by extending the average profitability of the lines who have indeed disclosed their earnings, to the market as a whole, based on operated capacity. This is an approximation, but using this approach implies total industry profitability at the EBIT level of US$60 billion in 2024,” commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

The figure shows the EBIT per TEU for shipping lines that disclose both their EBIT and global volumes on an annual basis. While Maersk’s EBIT per TEU of US$192 is significantly lower than its peak levels in 2021-2022, it remains higher than in most pre-pandemic years.

For the other carriers – ZIM (US$674/TEU), HMM (US$622/TEU), Hapag-Lloyd (US$215/TEU), and OOCL (US$346/TEU) – the 2024 EBIT per TEU is the highest recorded in the past decade, excluding the exceptional years of 2021-2022, while for Ocean Network Express (US$300/TEU), there is no pre-pandemic reference point.

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