COSCO Shipping Earnings Improve in 2017

China’s major COSCO Shipping Holdings delivered improved earnings in 2017 on the back of a broad economic recovery globally and increasing demand for container shipping services.

The company informed that profit attributable to its equity holders for the year 2017 was CNY 2.7 billion (USD 423.3 million), as compared to a loss of CNY 9.9 billion in 2016.

Revenues from continuing operations of the group for the twelve-month period ended December 31, 2017 was CNY 90.4 billion (USD 14.4 billion), rising from CNY 69.8 billion reported a year earlier.

In 2017, the landscape of the container shipping industry was reshuffled and the service quality and stability of liner companies were improved significantly.

The company said that, according to statistics from a number of research institution shipping industry, the growth of shipping demand has outpaced the growth of shipping capacity in the global container shipping industry for two successive years, which mitigated the contradiction between supply and demand and drove market freight rates to bottom out.

In 2017, the average value of the China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI) was 820 points, representing an increase of 15.4% as compared to the same period of last year.

During the year, COSCO Shipping actively seized opportunities brought by the market pick-up, focused on growth by promoting efficiency and innovation, and achieved further synergies by continuing to deepen reform with the combined effect from a number of internal and external positive factors.

“Looking forward to 2018, the world economy will maintain a good momentum for recovery and China will continue to deepen its economy transformation and high quality development.”

There is oversupply in some shipping routes and concern over the concentrated new vessel delivery in the first half of the year,
bringing uncertainties to the container shipping market. However, with in-depth consolidation of the container shipping industry, the overall operation in the market will focus more on enhancing quality of customer service and improving service products, rendering competitions in the market more rational, the company concluded.