Major shipping lines that have published their financial figures have recorded a combined 2024 Fiscal Year (FY) Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT) of $27.3 billion, according to Sea-Intelligence.
This compares to nearly $200 billion for 2021 and 2022 across the same set of lines.
However, the 2024 profitability is "still significantly higher than the pre-Covid years." In fact, the 2024 EBIT is higher than the combined EBIT of 2019, 2020, and 2023.
Given that not all major lines have reported (notably MSC, PIL, and CMA CGM), an estimate of total market profitability, based on operated capacity, suggests an industry-wide EBIT of $60 billion in 2024.
Analysis of EBIT per Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) shows Maersk at $192, ZIM at $674, HMM at $622, Hapag-Lloyd at $215, OOCL at $346, and ONE at $300.
Maersk's figure is significantly lower than in 2021-2022, but remains above pre-pandemic levels. For ZIM, HMM, Hapag-Lloyd, and OOCL, 2024 EBIT/TEU is the highest in the last decade outside of 2021-2022.
