A Maersk container ship loaded with cargo containers sails out of port waters near the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals on March 19, 2026 in Hong Kong, China.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Danish shipping giant Maersk on Thursday hiked its 2026 earnings guidance for the second time this year, as global trade movements remain stymied by the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
Shares of the company surged 7% shortly after the opening bell.
Maersk, widely regarded as a barometer of global trade, reported preliminary underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $3 billion for April to June. That’s well above the $2.04 billion expected by analysts in an LSEG-compiled consensus.
“This is a really, really strong result in a very disrupted world,” Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday, citing both war in the Middle East and U.S. tariffs.
“What is the key feature for me, what is going on in shipping markets, is the incredible resilience of demand and the incredible resilience of the economy which has led volumes to continue completely unabated,” he said.
The company is seeing supply bottlenecks by land rather than by water around the world, causing congestion and pushing freight rates higher, Clerc said.
Shares of Hapag-Lloyd were 0.7% higher after the German freight company’s own results, which showed higher volumes and spot rates.
Performance was “materially better” than the first quarter despite an additional $600 million in costs related to the Middle East conflict, primarily in fuel and energy, CEO Rolf Habben Jansen told CNBC.
“The market has been remarkably strong… as a consequence of that, you see the balance of supply and demand is much more reasonable than people anticipated,” he said.
