HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - An oversupply of ships on the world's oceans, weakening global trade and the ongoing violence by the Houthi militia against merchant ships in the Red Sea: Hamburg-based container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd sees itself in difficult waters after its gold-edged balance sheets during the corona pandemic. According to an initial forecast, it could even post losses this year. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) will range from minus 1 to plus 1 billion euros in the current year, it said on Thursday.

"In the middle is roughly a black zero and I hope that we don't end up in the red," said CEO Rolf Habben Jansen. "But there are just a lot of uncertainties".

The news was met with price losses on the stock exchange. The Hapag-Lloyd share lost more than three percent to 130 euros by the afternoon. Since the turn of the year, the share has thus lost around four percent.

During the pandemic, all freight shipping companies had benefited from disruptions in supply chains with a lack of capacity and high demand for transportation by sea. Prices, or freight rates in industry jargon, skyrocketed. All in all, this brought Hapag-Lloyd an unprecedented profit of around EUR 17 billion in 2022 - and a dividend of EUR 63 per share for shareholders.

However, after an expected slump in profits, the bottom line for 2023 was still EUR 2.95 billion. This made it the third-best year in the history of the world's fifth-largest container shipping company, which currently has a fleet of 266 ships. Hapag-Lloyd now intends to pay a dividend of 9.25 euros per share.

The Group's net profit was even higher than the earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 2.5 billion euros, "as we generated a positive financial result thanks to our high liquidity," said CFO Mark Frese.

According to current forecasts, these profits are unlikely to be achieved again in 2024. Habben Jansen spoke of a challenging time. Only after 2025 and 2026 "will we hopefully return to a normal situation", said the CEO, who has been in office since 2014. His contract was extended early by the Supervisory Board until the end of March 2029.

The Hapag-Lloyd Group's revenue shrank to just under EUR 17.8 billion in 2023, which was only just under half of the revenue in the record year 2022. With a roughly stable transport volume of 11.9 million standard containers (TEU), the main reason for this was an average freight rate of around EUR 1,500 per TEU, which was almost halved compared to 2022.

The decline in freight rates had accelerated towards the end of the year - management speaks of an "unsustainably low" level. Ultimately, Hapag-Lloyd even posted an operating loss (EBIT) in the final quarter of 2023 for the first time since 2016.

However, with the start of the Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea at the beginning of 2024, freight rates have increased noticeably again, partly because the rerouting of their ships around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa decided by the shipping companies takes longer, the shipping companies allow their ships to sail faster and transports are therefore more costly. It is unclear how long this situation will last and what effects it will have on business figures.

"The lives of our staff are far more important than a longer sailing time of seven days," said Habben Jansen. "So we are waiting until this normalizes." As the attacks only began in mid-December, the financial impact will only become apparent with the figures for the first quarter, which are to be presented in mid-May./kf/DP/stw