Maersk Raises Outlook on Back of Resilient Demand Outside US
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A. P. Moller-Maersk A/S, a bellwether for world trade, raised its financial outlook for 2025, saying demand outside North America was proving resilient even amid concerns over a trade war.
The global container market will expand 2% to 4% this year, the Copenhagen-based company said Aug. 7. That compares with a previous forecast of a range between a contraction of 1% and an expansion of 4%.
Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg TV, CEO Vincent Clerc described conditions in the U.S. as subdued owing to the uncertainty from trade tariffs. Elsewhere, however, a boom in Chinese manufacturing is fueling very strong levels of demand, he added.
“And that has led to a very favorable pricing environment for us,” Clerc said.
Maersk ranks No. 6 on theTransport Topics Top 50 global freight companies.
Shares gained as much as 6% when trading started in Copenhagen on Aug. 7, making it their biggest jump in nearly three months.
Maersk’s underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization will be in a range of $8 billion to $9.5 billion in 2025, up from a previous range of $6 billion to $9 billion. That compares with an average analyst estimate of $7.94 billion.
The company’s better-than-expected earnings report was “driven by stronger earnings from all segments, with slightly higher freight rates and volumes driving the beat on our Ocean forecast,” Fredrik Dybwad, an analyst at Fearnley Securities, said in a note to clients.
Maersk, which controls about 14% of the world’s container fleet, is expected to suffer from protectionist U.S. policies that are putting global free trade under pressure. Still, the Danish group has also benefited in the short term with volumes rising in some markets this year as companies stock up on imported goods before any tariffs come into force.
Maersk said in the report that a “contraction in North American imports was more than offset by the strong import growth into Europe, Latin America, West-Central Asia and Africa.”
Meanwhile, global economic growth will be “moderate” in the second half of the year due to a drag from U.S. tariffs, the container line said.
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“The unpredictable nature of tariffs has complicated the liner market,” Aanchal Aich, a transport analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a note last week. “This volatility in the trade backdrop comes at a time when supply growth was already projected to outpace demand.”
The Red Sea crisis has mainly boosted container-line profits, because shipowners take the longer diversion route south of Africa, which eases some of the vessel overcapacity in the industry. Clerc told Bloomberg that he expects Maersk will continue to benefit from this crisis for “at least the rest of the year.”
Written by Christian Wienberg and Sanne Wass
