PROVIDER of analysis in the container shipping industry, Sea Intelligence says major shipping lines (that report on - and have so far published - their financial figures), have recorded a combined 2024-FY EBIT of US$27.3 billion, reports Athens, Greece's safety4sea.

In comparison, the combined EBIT for 2021 and 2022 was nearly US$200 billion, across the same set of shipping lines.

"That said, the 2024 level of profitability is still significantly higher than the pre-Covid years. In fact, the EBIT recorded in 2024-FY is higher than the combined EBIT of 2019, 2020, and 2023," Sea-Intelligence said.

"Given that the shipping lines covered do not make up the entirety of the market - notable absentees include MSC (privately held), PIL (rarely publish financial accounts), CMA CGM (no longer publicly publish EBIT) - the total market profitability is estimated by extending the average profitability of the lines who have indeed disclosed their earnings, to the market as a whole, based on operated capacity."

Clearly this is an approximation, but using this approach implies total industry profitability at the EBIT level of US$60 billion in 2024, Sea-Intelligence notes.

Shipping lines that report on both their EBIT and global volumes on an annual basis shows that although Maersk's 192 US$/TEU is significantly lower than in 2021-2022, it is still higher than most of the pre-pandemic years, whereas for ZIM (674 US$/TEU), HMM (622 US$/TEU), Hapag-Lloyd (215 US$/TEU), and OOCL (346 US$/TEU), it is the highest in the last decade outside of 2021-2022. For ONE line (300 US$/TEU).