A.P. Moller – Maersk, in its Q2 financial report for 2021, reported big increases in revenues and profits, while separately announcing the acquisition of two logistics operations in Europe and the US.
Maersk’s total revenue for the quarter was US$14.2 billion, up 58% from Q2 2020.
The company’s ocean segment was by far the largest in the group, bringing in revenue of US$11 billion – a 68% increase on Q2 2020’s revenue of US$6.6 billion.
Revenues for its logistics and services division were up 38% to US$2.2 billion, terminals and towage revenues were up 31% to US$1.1 billion.
The company’s total profits increased almost five times to US$4.1 billion (EBIT) over the quarter, which was the 12th consecutive quarter of successive year-on-year earnings growth.
A.P. Moller – Maersk CEO Søren Skou said the strong results benefitted from the exceptional circumstances in the ocean segment, where congestion and bottlenecks continued to drive up rates. He said the results also benefitted from solid progress in executing the company’s transformation with a focus on the need for integrated services across the supply chain.
“I am pleased with the strategic progress we have made and the high value generation,” Mr Skou said.
“We continue to build a higher quality ocean business with more long-term contracts, a rapidly growing logistics business, and a value creating terminals business. Our exceptional earnings and high cash flow enable us to further accelerate our transformation, invest in growing our activities, also through acquisitions and at the same time return cash to shareholders.
“To that effect we also announced today the acquisitions of Visible SCM and B2C Europe which complements our existing supply chain offering and addresses our customers need for E-commerce logistics.”
In the ocean segment, Maersk said profitability in Q2 was driven by revenue growth to US$11.1 billion from US$6.6 billion and EBIT increased to US$3.6 billion from US$0.5 billion. The growth came from a 15% rebound in volumes and an increase in average freight rates of 59%, as both long-terms contracts rates with key clients increased and short-term contracts were still impacted by congestions and bottlenecks.
The logistics and services segment delivered 38% revenue growth to US$2.2 billion in Q2 with more than half coming from the top Ocean customers. Demand was strong across all product families and consequently EBIT more than tripled to US$153 million compared to US$42 million in the same quarter last year, leading to an EBIT margin of 7.1%.
Mr Skou said the outlook for Q3 is strong and he expects the current momentum in the ocean segment will continue into Q4, also benefitting the terminals business.
“Logistics and services will continue its strong growth pattern for the rest of the year,” he said.
“As communicated on 2 August, we have upgraded our guidance for 2021 to an underlying EBITDA of US$18 billion-19.5 billion, an EBIT of US$14 billion-15.5 billion and a free cash flow expected to be minimum US$11.5 billion.”
