Danish shipping giant and energy group A.P. Moller-Maersk has seen a drop in profits due to low oil and freight rates; but the good news is that its not as sharp a drop as analysts feared.
The company said Wednesday 4 May that underlying profit plunged to $224 million from $1.5 billion a year earlier. Revenue fell almost 20 percent to $8.5 billion.
Still, the results beat market expectations, and the company's share price rose more than 5 percent to 9,195 kroner in afternoon trading.
The group's main shipping operations, Maersk Line, showed a profit of $37 million, down from $714 million a year earlier mainly because of a 26 percent drop in freight rates caused by lower bunker prices and poor market conditions.
CEO Nils Smedegaard Andersen conceded that market conditions remained "challenging," but maintained that the Copenhagen-based group was continuing to "adjust our cost base to the new conditions and maintain a good operational performance across our businesses."
At the end of the quarter, Maersk Line had a fleet of 287 vessels and 318 chartered ships — a 2 percent increase in capacity from a year earlier. But it said that idle capacity more than doubled.
