Cosco Shipping Holdings is the latest container ship owner to forecast a massive leap in full-year profit on the back of the red-hot liner markets.
The Hong Kong-listed company said it expects to post a full-year profit of CNY 89.3bn ($14.1bn) for 2021 versus the CNY 9.9bn achieved 12 months ago, according to a regulatory filing.
The strong result came despite the shipowner carrying only 2.15% extra containers last year which has been estimated at 26.9m-teu.
However, the average value of the China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI) was 2,615.54 points, representing an increase of 165.69% as compared to that for the same period of last year.
“In 2021, under the influence of multiple factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing demand and restricted supply, the global supply chain was confronting the challenges and impacts from congestion of ports, shortage of containers and delay of inland transportation, which resulted in a tensive supply-demand relationship,” Cosco Shipping Holdings said.
Looking ahead, the company said that so far in 2022, the major ports in Europe and the US have continued to be congested and the freight rates of trunk routes have remained stable.
TradeWinds has previously reported that the company is among the major liner operators set to reward its employees with bumper payouts.
Caixin Global has reported that employees at the state-owned shipowner have received a payout worth up to 30 times their monthly salaries.
Cosco paid out the cash to workers including sales and marketing staff, Caixin said, citing employees at the company.
Cosco Shipping Holdings is the world’s fourth largest container ship operator behind Maersk, MSC and CMA CGM, according to data from Clarksons.
The company currently deploys around 429 ships of 2.87m-teu of which 245 vessels of 2.1m-teu are owned, according to the shipbroker.
The company also has a further 32 ships of 585,272-teu on order which is about 28% of its existing fleet by teu capacity.
