Hapag-Lloyd brought in a result of 17.5 billion euros last year.

The shipping company announced this on Tuesday morning on the basis of preliminary figures.

The company is thus rising into a sphere that has so far only been achieved in very exceptional cases.

Volkswagen, for example, achieved a similarly high result last year through the IPO of its subsidiary Porsche, and at Mercedes special proceeds from the spin-off of the truck division brought similar effects.

Susanne Preuss

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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In the case of Hapag-Lloyd, it is the extraordinarily high freight rates that all shipping companies were able to achieve during the corona pandemic.

With supply chains disrupted by lockdowns and staff shortages around the world, companies were willing to pay for a container many times what it was before the pandemic.

In this way, returns on sales are calculated that are unimaginable in the rest of the economy: with sales of 34.5 billion euros, it is 51 percent.

Last year, the shipping line already achieved a return on sales of 42 percent.

The preliminary figures do not yet show the final net profit, but rather the earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).

But Hapag-Lloyd does not expect a significant tax burden despite the high result - because a special regulation has been agreed at European level for container shipping, which leads to extremely low tax payments in good times.

Last year, Hapag-Lloyd only had to pay 61 million euros in taxes on a profit of just over 9 billion euros at the time.

Nevertheless, the extreme figures will not be repeatable, neither for Hapag-Lloyd nor for other shipping companies - because freight rates have already fallen significantly.

The traffic jams in front of and in the ports caused by the corona pandemic have eased significantly since the summer, while at the same time weakening world trade is leading to reduced demand.

The transport volume with which Hapag-Lloyd achieved its extraordinary result was even slightly below the previous year in 2022.

Goods with a volume of 11.8 million TEU were transported, which corresponds to a standard container. In the previous year there were 11.9 million containers.