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FRANKFURT, May 15 (Reuters) \u2013 German container liner Hapag-Lloyd on Friday stuck with its full-year earnings guidance but warned that supply disruptions and weaker demand due to the coronavirus crisis may lead to a revision of its forecast in the second half of 2020.<\/p>\n
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The number five in worldwide container shipping, Hapag-Lloyd reported lower core profits in the first quarter on higher fuel costs and a devaluation of bunker stocks at the end of the period, when oil prices began to fall in a demand slump.<\/p>\n
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The developments masked a positive impact from higher transport volumes \u2013 which increased by 4.3% to over 3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) \u2013 while freight rates rose by 1.4% to $1,094\/TEU.<\/p>\n
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Chief Executive Rolf Habben Jansen told Reuters the second quarter would see a significant hit, with transport volumes possibly dropping by up to 10%.<\/p>\n
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However, with China, Europe\u2019s key trade partner, beginning to resume economic activity, and with the help of cost and liquidity measures, the company might weather the storm and benefit from a recovery in the second half.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have held on to our guidance but with clear reference to all the uncertainties,\u201d Habben Jansen said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere is still a high likelihood that we could end up within the range,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
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The company\u2019s shares rose 5.8% by 0755 GMT.<\/p>\n
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Hapag-Lloyd expects full year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in a range between 1.7 billion and 2.2 billion euros ($1.84-2.38 billion), and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 0.5 to 1.0 billion.<\/p>\n
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In the first quarter, EBITDA decreased to 469 million euros from 489 million a year earlier while EBIT fell to 160 million euros from 214 million.<\/p>\n
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Net profit was 74% down at 25 million euros.<\/p>\n
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The company has now added several hundred million euros to its 1.1-1.2 billion euros reserve, allowing its operations to continue unhindered for 12 to 18 months, should demand problems outside China linger, Habben Jansen said.<\/p>\n
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If conditions worsened, it would return to the market a \u201csmall double-digit number\u201d of charter vessels when contracts expire this year, he said.<\/p>\n
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World market leader Maersk earlier this week predicted a drop in global container volumes this year but also pinned hopes on a partial recovery in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
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French rival CMA CGM has had to revert to a state loan to bolster its cash position. ($1 = 0.9250 euros) (Reporting by Vera Eckert, editing by Edward Taylor and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)<\/p>\n
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(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FRANKFURT, May 15 (Reuters) \u2013 German container liner Hapag-Lloyd on Friday stuck with its full-year earnings guidance but warned that supply disruptions and weaker demand due to the coronavirus crisis may lead to a revision of its forecast in the second half of 2020. The number five in worldwide container shipping, Hapag-Lloyd reported lower core …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2763,1230,3379,2616],"class_list":["post-9975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-guidance","tag-hapaglloyd","tag-uncertainties","tag-warns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/9976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}