News / Rates slump sees OOCL Q3 revenue crash, despite boost in transpac liftings

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OOCL saw third-quarter revenue crash 26% year on year, thanks to plummeting earnings on transpacific and Asia-Europe routes.

The Hong Kong-headquartered carrier dropped its latest quarterly operational update late yesterday evening, showing group revenue for the three months to end-September at $2.26bn, 25.9% down on the $3bn it posted this time last year.

And this dragged down the carrier’s nine-month revenues, which are now 8.1% behind last year.

Q3 income on the transpacific declined 33.2% year on year, to $838m, on the back of a volume fall on its transpacific services of 4.2%, to reach 526,000 teu; while its Asia-Europe revenues were down 36.3%, to $480m, with carryings stable at 346,000 teu. The volume trends on both trades, according to recent Container Trades Statistics, suggest OOCL has lost several percentage points of market share.

On a nine-month basis, OOCL’s transpacific revenues were down 14.6%, to $2.47bn, despite the fact that carryings were up 3.8%, to 1.5m teu.

On Asia-Europe, its carryings were flat, at 1.05m teu, while revenues were down 20.3%, year on year, to $1.43bn.

However, it did win substantial market share on the transatlantic, where third-quarter volumes jumped 22.8%, to reach 137,000 teu, lifting its nine-month performance to 420,500 teu, some 16.9% over the same period in 2024.

According to the latest CTS figures – which don’t include September – the transatlantic market had an average growth of 1.4% across the first eight months.

This led to a 25% increase in revenue for OOCL, to $180m, and nine-month revenue of $545, up 20.3% on the first nine months of 2024.

Each of the two Mediterranean services it cooperates on – the EMA and WMA strings – has had an extra vessel deployed in recent months, which could explain some of this above-market growth, while the ATG service, operated with its Ocean Alliance partners and ONE, doubled its monthly capacity in Q3 over Q2, according to the Xeneta-owned eeSea liner database.

Its intra-Asia/Australasia volumes grew in line with the market over the first nine months, carrying 2.9m teu.

However, weaker growth of just 1.7% in the past three months will give it cause for concern in this, its largest single trade, especially as it was accompanied by a 12.3% decline in intra-Asia revenue, which fell to $766m, and which also indicates rates are coming under pressure.