HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - The normalization of supply chains and declining demand for transports by sea are expected to reduce the profit of container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd in the second quarter as well. Exactly how the April to June period went for the Hamburg-based company will be announced Thursday (7:30 a.m.). In the previous week, the major competitor Maersk had already presented: At the Danes, the profit in the second quarter with a decline of 83 percent had collapsed even more sharply than in the first quarter with a decline of 66 percent.

The huge dislocations in global supply chains had made container shipping companies the winners of the Corona pandemic. Scarce capacity caused prices for sea transports to keep rising after many crisis years of price wars, overcapacity and red figures. Hapag-Lloyd thus crossed the finish line in 2022 with a net profit of 17 billion euros as one of the most profitable companies among those listed on the stock exchange.

The congestion issue on the delivery routes at sea has largely been resolved. According to ongoing calculations by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), only less than eight percent of the world's cargo volumes are now sitting on waiting ships away from ports, about the same as in the period before Corona erupted in 2020.

Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen had already held out the prospect at the time of the annual balance sheet that profits in 2023 would be considerably lower than in 2022. The bottom line in the period from January to March this year was a consolidated profit of only 1.89 billion euros, less than half the 4.17 billion euros from the first quarter of the record year 2022, but still significantly more than in the corresponding period of 2021. Sales shrank by around 30 percent to 5.62 billion euros.

Hapag-Lloyd, with a fleet of 250 containerships and a transport capacity of 1.8 million 20-foot standard containers (TEU), is considered the fifth-largest shipping company in the world, behind Cosco, CMA CGM, Maersk and the primus MSC./kf/DP/zb