Solid result from Hapag-Lloyd

The Q3 results from Hapag-Lloyd shows a company which has managed to improve their performance much more than their competitors. A 9 Million USD profit and 73M USD EBIT provides them with a positive bottomline in an environment where competitors are swimming in red ink. Given the comparison to Maersk Line who had an operating loss of 116M USD and an EBIT loss of 153M USD, it also shows that size is not all that matters in this industry.

A closer inspection shows that productivity improvements lie at the heart of this result. Clearly many factors are at play, but just consider the following 3 developments:

Transported volumes are up by 4.6%, hence only a marginal global marketshare gain. But capacity has been increased by only a marginal 0.7% - hence vessel utilization has increased 3.9%.

The fleet of containers has decreased by 5.4%, meaning that Hapag Lloyd has increased the usage of their equipment by 10%.

The productivity - measured as number of TEUs handled per land-based employee - has increased by 5.7%.

The key for Hapag-Lloyd now becomes to be able to transfer this degree of efficiency to the UASC operations as the two companies merge.