The world’s largest maritime shipping container company, Maersk, is predicting its earnings to drop to about $1.4bn in the first quarter due to weaker volumes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Maersk had previously shown that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would be about $5.5bn, before restructuring and integration costs were considered. “The global coronavirus pandemic severely impacts the global transport market and supply chains,” Maersk said in a statement. “This is leading to material uncertainties and lack of visibility related to the global demand for container transport.”
It said that while its global operations are running “as normal,” it will suspend the 2020 guidance on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA,[1] “pending more clarity on the market development and financial implications.” It added that the full-year guidance for volume growth in its “Ocean” segment was expected to be consistent with, or slightly lower, than the market growth, but that measures would be taken to reduce capital expenditure in 2020.[2] The Maersk Chief Executive Søren Skou said that a successful implementation of the sulfur cap strategy, and its success in passing on fuel costs to its customers, would help its results. “We expect to deliver a first quarter of 2020 that is better than the first quarter of 2019, despite declining volumes across our businesses driven by the coronavirus pandemic,” said Mr. Skou. “Because of the current situation with high uncertainties related to global container demand due to the coronavirus pandemic and the measures being taken by governments to contain the outbreak, we have chosen to suspend our 2020 full-year guidance on earnings but will, as soon as we have more clarity, return with an outlook for 2020.” Maersk will publish its first quarter results on 13 May 2020.
As Maersk as a gauge, many shipping lines are experiencing these same negative effects from our current international transportation sector. Many shipping company employees, and their supply chain employees are working at home for the shelter-in-place that has gripped the EU and parts of the US. This opens cyber vulnerabilities that all tier level hackers can, and will, expliot. Our RedXray is a tool designed to find and mitigate these vulnerabilities.
Red Sky Alliance is in New Boston, NH USA and is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence Service organization and can help organizations anywhere in the world. We off various levels of RedXray services, For questions, comments or assistance, please contact the office directly at 888-RED-XRAY or (888)-733-9729, or email sales@wapacklabs.com
Website: https://www.wapacklabs.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wapacklabs/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wapacklabs?lang=en
[1] EBITDA is a measure of a company's operating performance.
[2] https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL1131598/Maersk-suspends-guidance-on-coronavirus-fears
Comments