Reported financial data for 2024 shows that the major shipping companies’ combined earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) reached $27.3 billion.

In comparison, the same group of companies reported nearly $200 billion in combined EBIT across 2021 and 2022.

However, despite the decline from the peak profit levels seen during the pandemic, 2024’s profit levels remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic years. The recorded EBIT for 2024 surpassed the combined EBIT of 2019, 2020, and 2023.

It’s worth noting that this analysis doesn’t represent the entire market. Major carriers like MSC (privately held), PIL (rarely discloses financials), and CMA CGM (no longer publicly reports EBIT) were excluded from the calculations.

“We can extrapolate the average profitability of the carriers that disclosed their financials to estimate the total market profitability,” commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. “This is only an approximation, but using this method, the industry’s total EBIT for 2024 could reach $60 billion.”

While Maersk’s EBIT per TEU stood at $192 — far below the peaks of 2021-2022 — it still outperformed most pre-pandemic years.

For other carriers — ZIM ($674/TEU), HMM ($622/TEU), Hapag-Lloyd ($215/TEU), and OOCL ($346/TEU) — 2024’s EBIT per TEU marked the highest levels in the past decade, excluding the exceptional years of 2021-2022. For Ocean Network Express (ONE) ($300/TEU), there are no pre-pandemic benchmarks for comparison.