Soren Skou continues to keep a tight grip on AP Moller-Maersk’s cheque book with the chief executive ruling out allocating capital to order large container vessels or takeover boxship rivals during 2019.
Skou has been restricting new investments as the group transforms into a container and logistics specialist while retaining its investment grade rating.
Maersk has earmarked around $400m to fund new ships in 2019 and this week disclosed $80m had been committed to installing scrubbers on selected vessels.
“We are not planning to order any large ships before at the earliest 2020,” Skou said during the company’s third quarter earnings presentation, when questioned about capex plans.
Maersk has one more containership newbuilding scheduled for delivery in 2018 and five more due to arrive in 2019.
It has $31m to pay on this year’s delivery and $415m to hand over to yards in 2019, according to its third quarter report.
Its owned fleet stands at 353 ships in the water, with just the six newbuildings in its orderbook.
Maersk is just digesting the $4bn purchase of Hamburg Sud, which given cost savings and operating results means the company is quite happy with the transaction, Skou said.
“We are not planning to do any acquisitions in the Ocean space in 2019,” the executive said in response to questions from analysts.
“We have now a market share that is, certainly on the long-haul trades, north of 20% and that gives us the scale that we need to have a competitive cost structure and the other advantages.
"There is not a strong need for us to do anything on M&A in the Ocean space.”
Maersk Line was a long-standing critic of scrubbers but softened its stance earlier this year.
Its third quarter report said $80m has been allocated to fit the equipment on some selected ships, but it is not revealed which vessels would be involved or how many would carry the kit.
“The vast, vast majority of the fuel that we burn and the industry will burn will be 0.5%,” Skou said. “Yes, we are looking at some scrubbers. We are not going to give a detailed number of how many scrubbers it is. But the vast majority of the consumption will become 0.5%.”
Maersk on Wednesday reported better than forecast results for the third quarter and narrowed its full year core operating profit guidance from $3.5bn to $4.2bn to between $3.6bn and $4bn.
Underlying profit of $251m was ahead of the $240m forecast by consensus, according to DNB Markets.
"After a string of disappointing quarters, Maersk appears to be back on track in Q3, with results broadly as the market expected," said Berenberg analysts led by Joel Spungin.
Skou pointed to three highlights for the quarter: solid revenue growth, earnings momentum and strong cash flow generation.
He also claimed progress on the switch from being a shipping and energy conglomerate to a container and logistics firm, with plans to spin-off Maersk Drilling with a separate IPO revealed this summer.
Skou says Maersk Drilling is in position to standalone from 1 January 2019.
However, the future ownership of Maersk Supply Service, on which the group made a $400m fair value adjustment in the quarter, is unlikely to be resolved by the end of this year, the chief executive said.
