FreighWaves Ocean Archives - Maritime Shipping News

Maersk hikes 2023 guidance but warns of ‘years’ of challenges

4 August 2023

Maersk, the world’s second-largest container shipping company, raised its full-year earnings outlook Friday while simultaneously lowering its forecast for the second half.

The hike in full-year guidance was due to better-than-expected performance in the past — the second quarter — not greater optimism toward the future. Second-quarter upside was driven by lower-than-expected costs (in part due to slow steaming), not freight rates, which were in line with company expectations.

Conference call...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/maersk-hikes-2023-guidance-but-warns-of-years-of-challenges

How COVID transformed trans-Pacific container shipping

21 April 2022

COVID-driven cargo demand has dramatically altered the trans-Pacific shipping landscape. New data from Alphaliner highlights just how much the Asia-U.S. trade lane has changed over the past two years.

There’s now far more container shipping capacity in the trade than pre-pandemic. Capacity keeps rising, with more new shipping services focusing on the Asia-East Coast lane than Asia-West Coast.

Carrier competition is up, with more players overall and a lower share controlled by the three giant...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-the-pandemic-transformed-trans-pacific-container-shipping

Tanker, bulker, LNG rates drop. Container rates hold near top

19 January 2022

It’s a tale of two shipping markets. Spot rates remain near historic highs for container shipping; the boom shows no sign of ending. But over in commodity shipping — dry bulk, crude and product tankers, liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers — spot rates have now sunk below five-year averages.

Crude tankers

“A bleak outcome,” said brokerage BRS of the recent rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs; tankers that carry 2 million barrels). “A terrible start of the year,” it said of rates for...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tanker-bulker-lng-rates-drop-container-rates-hold-near-top

Shipping’s Wall Street saga: Rags to riches to rags to occasional riches

29 January 2021

Container line ZIM just pulled off something extraordinary in ocean shipping: It priced a U.S. initial public offering (IPO).

That doesn’t sound like much of an achievement. The U.S. IPO market is booming; proceeds surged 69% in 2020, according to Renaissance Capital. Yet prior to ZIM (NYSE: ZIM), there hadn’t been a U.S. shipping IPO since Barack Obama was in the Oval Office, when Peter Georgiopoulos-led Gener8 Maritime, a company that no longer exists, went public.

ZIM got its IPO done Thursday...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/shippings-wall-street-saga-rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-occasional-riches