With a fleet of 188 modern container ships, Hapag-Lloyd is one of the world’s leading liner shipping companies. Its Merger with Chile based Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores’s container business in December 2014, has made Hapag-Lloyd the fourth largest carrier globally by capacity.
The merger has brought a great jump in transport volumes and revenue. The company has been able to shake off EUR 173.3 million loss recorded in the first half of 2014, with a record performance in the first half of 2015 with EUR 157.2 million profit. The transport volume shows an increase of whopping 29.4% compared to the transport volume recorded during the first half of 2014. This phenomenal boost is attributed to the merger with CSAV.
The company’s cost and efficiency program OCTAVE, initiated in 2014, has been the impetus for the increased revenue in the first half of 2015 from EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 4.7 billion. In the first half of 2015, Hapag-Lloyd achieved an EBITDA of EUR 493.3 million (1H2014: EUR 67.2 million) and an operating result of EUR 267.7 million (1H2014: EUR -101.5 million).
Hapag-Lloyd has achieved the complete transfer of CSAV’s ship service systems into many of their trades. This achievement was made possible well ahead of their envisaged plan. With post-merger integrations nearly complete, Hapag-Lloyd has laid a target net annual revenue of USD 400 million, to be fully realized by 2017.
This is USD 100 million higher than their initial planned target. They are optimistic about achieving the same with their OCTAVE program, with which annual improvements of approximately USD 200 million is expected to be achieved by 2016. OCTAVE includes improvement initiatives in several areas such as procurement and further fleet modernisation.
Rolf Habben-Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd is quoted to have said, “After a solid start into 2015, we are satisfied with our results in the first half of 2015.” He further added, “Our results prove that the merger with CSAV was the right decision and an important milestone in the development of Hapag-Lloyd, as we already benefit from the integration – and also see the first results of the OCTAVE program. We are well on track to achieve clearly positive full year operating results in 2015. The market environment remains very challenging, but we are well positioned in the market and remain highly resilient due to Hapag-Lloyd’s well-balanced portfolio of trades and services”.
Source: Hapag-Lloyd
