"The company has not observed the inflection point of ocean freight." Chen Shuai, deputy general manager of COSCO Shipping, said at the first extraordinary general meeting of shareholders in 2021.
According to COSCO SHIPPING's prediction, the demand for booking space in the market is still strong at present, the problem of port congestion is difficult to break in the short term, and the high freight rate operation will continue.
Taking advantage of this "outflow", shipping service providers, container manufacturers, and even ports and terminals around the world have achieved revenue targets that were not achieved in the previous few years.
More importantly, no one knows when the freight rate will fall. This also means that the days of making money are not over yet.
These companies have turned over!
Maersk's third-quarter revenue increased by 68% to $16.6 billion
Today, A.P. Mueller-Maersk released the third quarter of 2021 financial report.
In the third quarter, the company achieved record revenue, revenue increased 68% to 16.6 billion U.S. dollars, and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) increased nearly five times to 5.9 billion U.S. dollars.
Maersk said that due to potential changes in the current demand pattern, the supply chain will still have an impact on the market trend, and performance expectations may still fluctuate above normal levels.
However, the current situation is expected to continue until at least the first quarter of 2022.
ONE: Revenue 6.76 billion US dollars, an increase of 891% year-on-year
Also on October 29, ONE announced the first half of fiscal year 2021 (April to September 2021) performance report:
During the period, ONE achieved operating income of USD 13.333 billion, a year-on-year increase of 125%;
Net profit after tax was US$6.76 billion, a year-on-year increase of 891%;
In the context of the excellent performance, Jeremy Nixon, CEO of ONE, is very optimistic about the future trend of the shipping market.
He said at the Global Maritime Forum held recently that it is expected that the shipping market will continue to be hot in 2022.
The inflection point of freight rate has not come yet?
In addition to port congestion, the increase in freight rates is also due to the disorderly frying of containers by scalper freight forwarders and higher market prices. In addition, there was a decline in freight rates on the Western US Route before the National Day. According to the judgment of industry insiders, the inflection point of freight rates is approaching.
However, this view has not yet been verified by the market.
Chen Shuai of COSCO SHIPPING Holdings analyzed at the extraordinary shareholders meeting that the drop in freight rates was mainly due to panic.
The "shadow" freight rate of the mutual transactions between freight forwarders was rapidly reduced in the short term, causing the bubble that had previously been severely deviated from the actual freight rate to burst.
On the other hand, most of the players who have implemented high freight rates are new players. When their ships waited for more than a month at the American terminal, the confidence of the cargo owners fell to the bottom, which also caused the freight rates of these players to start to fall.
However, this part of the freight volume accounts for an extremely low proportion of the global shipping volume. Zhao Shuai believes that the decline caused by these factors will not have a major impact on the overall freight rate.
So, what kind of trend will ocean shipping prices develop in the future?
According to a recent research report by China Securities, it is expected that the supply will remain tight in the short term, and the freight rate will remain high;
In the next two years, the freight rate will slowly and gradually decline, but it will still be significantly higher than the level before the epidemic.
International analysis agencies have similar judgments.
According to data released by shipping information agency Drewry, the global container market is expected to have 220 million TEUs of freight in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 5.9%.
Although the growth rate has slowed down compared with this year, it still increased by 12.9% compared to 2019 before the epidemic.
At the same time, the delivery of new capacity in the future is limited.
Alphaliner's statistics believe that the capacity delivered in 2022 may even be reduced by 5.7% compared with this year.
As a result, the tight capacity will continue, and high freight rates will hardly have the opportunity to decline.
On the other hand, many shipowners are currently strengthening long-term agreements with major cargo owners to form strategic cooperative alliances. Although the long-term agreement freight rate is lower than the spot freight rate, it is also more stable, and the shipowner can take advantage of this to occupy the market. Share.
In this regard, Chen Shuai also pointed out that cargo owners urgently need to establish a solid cooperative relationship with liner companies through contracts, and the Ministry of Communications also encourages the signing of long-term contracts.
It is expected that in 2022, the volume of long-term cooperation cargo will increase significantly, the freight rate will rise sharply, and the number of longer-term contracts will continue to increase.
