Chinese container giant Cosco Shipping Holdings logged a big slump in profits for its container shipping activities in the first quarter.
Net profit from container shipping was CNY 6.27bn ($866m) in the first three months of the year.
That is down 17% from CNY 7.5bn in the same period a year earlier.
Revenues from liner shipping were steady at CNY 46.5bn.
The business was helped by a sharp rise in volumes on most trades.
Volumes rose to 6m teu in the first three months of the year, up about 10% compared with the same period last year.
The exception was in the Asia-Europe trade, where volumes were down 9.1%
The company’s terminal business, Cosco Shipping Ports, performed reasonably well.
The terminal division saw its throughput rise 9.76% to 33.2m teu.
That helped limit the fall in group profits for the combined container and terminal business.
Group net profit was down 5.23% to CNY 6.75bn and group revenues edged down just under 2% to CNY 48.2bn.
The company operates 510 container vessels comprising 3.1m teu.
The Shanghai and Hong Kong-listed company logged a profit of CNY 28.3bn in 2023.
That followed a record profit of CNY 131m in 2022.
Cosco Shipping Holdings is majority owned by state-owned China Cosco Shipping.
The company operates dual container brands, the wholly owned Cosco Shipping Lines and Orient Overseas Container Line, which it controls through holding subsidiary Orient Overseas International.
Both Cosco and OOCL are members of the Ocean Alliance group together with CMA CGM and Evergreen.
In March, the company warned it was worried about a surge in the delivery of container ship newbuildings, which it expects to hit a record high of 3m teu this year.
