News / Global revenues soar, but loss of steam for OOCL's Asia-Europe trade

ID 112434524 © Péter Gudella | Dreamstime.com

Hong Kong-headquartered container shipping line OOCL today issued its fourth-quarter 2024 operational update, giving the industry the first glimpse of how carriers fared over the last three months.

Total liftings in the fourth quarter amounted to 1,985,990 teu, a 6.1% year-on-year gain on the 1,872,439 teu carried in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Full-year liftings for 2024 came in at 7,595,476 teu, a 3.5% rise over 2023 and indicating that OOCL might have lost some market share over last year as industry-wide volume growth is expected to register in the 5%-6% range.

Its capacity in the final quarter grew 4.2% and it said its load factor for the period was 1.5% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2023.

However, the were some considerable variations across OOCL’s four trades – transpacific, Asia-Europe, intra-Asia/Australasia and transatlantic – which showed that it was mostly on the Asia-Europe trades where it lost business to competitors.

Fourth-quarter carryings on Asia-Europe declined 6.5% year on year, to 363,125 teu, while its full-year carryings on the trade were down 10.9% to 1.42m teu, compared with full-year 2023.

Meanwhile, its transpacific carryings grew 14.5% in the fourth quarter and 9.9% over the full year, which were largely in line with the market; while intra-Asia remained its largest trade, growing 6.3% in the fourth quarter and 7.3% in the full year, to reach 3.6m teu, more than its transpacific and Asia-Europe volumes combined.

And its fortunes on the transatlantic were turbulent, possibly reflecting front-loading in the final three months – fourth-quarter volumes were up 11.3% while full-year volumes dipped 0.6% over 2023.

Nonetheless, earnings unsurprisingly shot up. OOCL published unaudited fourth-quarter revenues of just over $2.5bn, a year-on-year growth of 55% over Q4 23, while full-year revenue growth was a slightly more modest 31% gain, of $9.8bn – indicating that 2024 is likely to be another bumper year for deepsea carriers.

Despite the double-digit volume decline on Asia-Europe, the carrier, which remains 90% owned by Cosco, saw full-year revenues up 44%, to $2.3bn, while transpacific revenues grew 53.5%, to $3.9bn, and intra-Asia annual revenues were up 17%, to $3bn.

Transatlantic revenues bucked the trend – while they soared 23% in the fourth quarter, compared with Q4 23, for the full-year they were down 26.7%, to $616m.