Shares in Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) jumped as much as 8.6 percent on Thursday after the shipping and oil group reported second-quarter profits ahead of forecasts and launched a $1 billion share buy-back programme.
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Maersk Line adjusted its mission statement from “grow with the market” to “growing at least with the market to defend its market-leading position” after posting a $499m net profit for the second quarter while quarter-on-quarter volumes grew above par at 3.7% to reach 5m teu. “It is a signal to the industry that we aim to keep our position as industry leader”, Andersen told reporters on a conference call on Thursday.
Results were posted in U.S. dollars. Effective 14th September, MSC’s “Condor” service, which is jointly operated with Maersk Line between Asia and Europe will cease operation.
“At the end of the day some players have a lower unit costs than others”, analyst Stig Frederiksen from Nordea Markets said, referring to Maersk.
Maersk Line’s competitors include family-owned Mediterranean Shipping Company from Switzerland, French family-controlled CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd from Germany, Evergreen from Taiwan, Cosco Shipping and CSCL, both from China. Roughly 90% of the world’s goods are carried by sea with over 70% in containers.
Maersk Line, responsible for transporting around 15 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, said costs dropped by 13 percent per transported container last quarter. Earlier this year the company sold a stake in Danske Bank to sharpen its focus on ships and ports.
Revenue fell to $10.5 billion, down from $12 billion in the same period past year.
In a quarter impacted by lower average container rates and a lower oil price, the Maersk Group achieved a satisfactory result with an underlying profit of US$1.1bn and maintain the expectation of an underlying result of around US$4 billion for the year.
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Blaming global economic uncertainty and consistently low oil prices Maersk cut its global trade growth forecast and abandoned many medium-term profit forecasts.
