The major ocean carriers reported combined Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of US$17.06 billion in the third quarter of the year, a 600% increase over the same period in 2023.

Sea-Intelligence said that the year-on-year (Y/Y) discount ZIM, which reported a one-time non-cash impairment loss of US$2.06 billion in Q3 2023. It noted that including this figure, would over-inflate Y/Y growth for 2024-Q3.

This is on the back of a US$6.12 billion EBIT in the second quarter of this year.

The Danish shipping consultancy firm said of these 9 reporting carriers, 8 have reported EBIT of over US$1 billion, of which 3 have reported EBIT of over US$2 billion.

Sea-Intelligence pointed out that COSCO had the highest Q3 2024 EBIT of US$4.71 billion.

"Even with the highest EBIT, COSCO did not have the highest EBIT/TEU, as they also grew their global volumes by 10.8%," the report said.

It noted that COSCO's EBIT/TEU of US$716/TEU was surpassed by ZIM's EBIT/TEU of US$1,273/TEU.

COSCO was followed by ONE (US$567/TEU) and Maersk (US$446/TEU).

"Given these results, it seems as though the market is in a conflicted state," Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence said.

He added that while this is clearly not pandemic-level profitability, it is also higher than any "normal" Q3.

"It seems as if the current supply chain disruptions have jolted the market enough to drive up freight rates, increase volumes (only partially on Asia-Europe), and substantially increase carrier profitability to a level not seen across the pre-pandemic decade, but not enough to increase these figures to the highs seen during 2021-2022," Murphy added.