Within two years, the shipping company’s profit distributions add up to more than 17 billion euros.
(Photo: dpa)
Munich The Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd pays out more than eleven billion euros to the shareholders after a fabulous record year. Hapag-Lloyd is benefiting from the boom in container shipping. The board of directors therefore wants to almost double the dividend to 63 (2021: 35) euros per share, as the group announced on Wednesday.
Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) jumped again last year – on the occasion of the 175th anniversary – to 17.5 (9.4) billion euros. The Hamburg billionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne alone, one of the richest Germans, collects 3.3 billion euros in dividends from Hapag-Lloyd. The same amount goes to the South American major shareholder CSAV.
The dividend announcement drove the Hapag-Lloyd share by almost 15 percent to EUR 251.60. Within two years, the shipping company’s profit distributions add up to more than 17 billion euros. Freight rates for transporting goods on the high seas had gone through the roof during the corona crisis. Suppliers and customers fought for the scarce shipping capacities in order to patch up the brittle supply chains.
Hapag-Lloyd boss Rolf Habben Jansen now expects business to calm down. “The party is over. Now we’re back to normal shipping business,” he said recently. “Now we have to fight for every box again to get our ships full.” However, in view of high fuel costs and inflation, he does not expect prices to fall below pre-pandemic levels.
More: Hapag-Lloyd achieves record profit – shipping company on par with VW