SIMIC

The Japanese ocean carrier recorded a net profit of $944 million for its third quarter, October-December, and expects to see profits of $2.5 billion for the full year.

That would represent an astonishing 172 per cent upgrade on its November guidance, thanks to huge hikes in freight rates hitting the carrier's bottom line.

Moreover, it would appear that ONE is being conservative with its $900 million net profit Q4 forecast for January to March, given the impact of even higher rates well into this quarter.

Q3 revenue surged by 29 per cent, compared with Q3 19, at $3.76 billion.

ONE does not release data on its total liftings, but on the main Asia-US and Asia-Europe headhaul routes it did reveal it carried 730,000 TEU and 402,000 TEU respectively during the period, achieving over 100 per cent utilisation on both trades, due to its deployment of extra loaders.

Based on its own freight index, set at 100 in 2018, ONE's average rate per TEU in the quarter stood at 125 percentage points for Asia-Europe westbound, and 140 Asia-US eastbound, compared with just 98 and 104 for the same quarter of 2019.

The carrier also said that it had benefited from a reduction in bunker price from $417 to $314 per tonne.

"The resurgence of Covid-19 has led to labour shortages and operational restrictions in many locations, which has resulted in port congestion and longer port stays, due to lower productivity and heavy rail and truck traffic," said ONE.

It had chartered additional ships and deployed extra sailings in order to recover schedule integrity and to "rescue rolled cargo".

Currently ONE is the sixth-ranked container line by capacity, with a fleet of 224 ships and an operating capacity of 1.6 million TEU, reports UK's The Loadstar.