Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) saw its revenue jump 14.4% in the second quarter, helped by a big climb in revenues from the transpacific.
OOCL’s Hong Kong-listed parent, Orient Overseas (International) Ltd (OOIL) said in an operational update that the operator earned $2.26bn in revenue in the quarter, up from $1.9bn a year earlier.
The increase was largely due to soaring rates on the transpacific, where revenues shot up by 42.1% to $922.1m, from $649m a year earlier.
That was despite transpacific volumes rising only 8% to 523,814 teu.
OOIL said the total amount of cargo lifted by OOCL was relatively stable at 1.88m teu.
Volumes on the Asia-Europe trade slumped a chunky 17.2% to 350,000 teu.
That did not prevent an increase in revenues on the trade, which rose 16.4% to $519.5m in the period.
Total liftings increased by 0.9% and the loadable capacity decreased by 3.4%. The overall load factor was 3.6% higher than the same period in 2023.
The overall average revenue per teu increased by 13.4% compared with the second quarter of last year.
Transatlantic revenues slumped by 34% to $154m, but as the trade is the smallest of OOCL’s four major trade lanes, it did not significantly impact the result.
Biggest trade
Revenues for the intra-Asia/Australasia trade rose 3% to $668m in the second quarter.
That remains the biggest trade by volume with 881,935 teu, up 7% on the same period in the previous year
While OOCL has profited from the booming transpacific trade in the second quarter, the future looks less certain.
As TradeWinds reported on Friday, container spot rates measured by the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index have started falling for the first time in 13 weeks.
The rally was brought to a halt by a weekly drop of 5.6% in the trade from Asia to the US West Coast, where rates were down $458 to $7,645 per 40-foot equivalent unit (feu) in the week to 12 July.
Rates from Asia to the US East Coast also dipped $64, but remain elevated at $9,881 per feu.
