Michael Kastl, Managing Director Treasury, Finance & Investor Relations, speaks with the Chief Executive Officer of Hapag-Lloyd AG about business developments in 2023
Michael Kastl: Rolf, how do you view the 2023 financial year?
Rolf Habben Jansen: All in all, the financial year was in line with our expectations. We started the year off with a lot of tailwind because long-term contracts allowed us to still benefit from the extraordinary market climate of recent years. However, given the lifting of COVID restrictions worldwide and a cooling of the economy, it was already foreseeable that the supply-chain situation would ease and that things would start to normalise. The growing number of ship deliveries in the market put additional pressure on the freight rates, with the result that they were unsatisfactory in many trades in the second half of the year. This prompted us to take countermeasures on the cost side at an early stage. The freight rates then recovered in some trades towards the end of the year, partly due to capacity bottlenecks triggered by the tense situation in the Red Sea.
How did this influence the company’s financial performance, and will there be a dividend once again this year?
Thanks especially to a still very good first half of the year, we achieved a Group net result of EUR 3 billion in 2023. As expected, this is significantly below the level of the exceptionally strong 2022 financial year – but it’s still the third-best result in the history of our company. Our shareholders should also benefit from this. For this reason, our Executive Board and our Supervisory Board will jointly propose to the Annual General Meeting to pay out a dividend of EUR 9.25 per share – which corresponds to a total of 1.6 billion, or the third-highest amount that we have ever paid out.
How has Hapag-Lloyd made progress in strategic terms?
We once again made good progress in the reporting year, which enabled us to successfully bring our Strategy 2023 to a close. For example, we were able to significantly boost customer satisfaction again through quality improvements, and we made good progress on our digitalisation efforts, such as with our Track & Trace devices, with which we will equip our entire container fleet and offer new services. At the same time, we expanded our terminal portfolio and bundled these activities in a second business segment, called Terminal & Infrastructure, which will enable us to further strengthen our core container-transport business in key markets in the medium to long term. We now have equity stakes in 20 terminals on five continents, and we have continued to make gains in our strategic growth markets of India and Africa. On top of that, we have reduced our carbon footprint and thereby gained a lot of momentum in terms of our sustainability efforts, such as by putting new state-of-the-art large container ships into service, pressing ahead with our Fleet Optimisation Programme and bunkering biofuels.
How is Hapag-Lloyd responding to the tense geopolitical situation and the challenging market environment in the current financial year?
We will stay vigilant and agile, as geopolitical developments, such as the current situation in the Red Sea, are once again causing more and more problems in global supply chains and forcing us to make flexible adjustments to our service network. At the same time, we expect the market environment to continue to be difficult given the large number of ship deliveries this year. Given these facts, we need to further reduce our per-unit costs in order to remain profitable and competitive going forward, such as through savings on the procurement side and adjustments to our service network. In addition, we have finalised our Strategy 2030 and will now gradually roll it out with our teams – internally and externally. While doing so, we will considerably intensify our focus on quality and sustainability. Our Gemini Cooperation recently agreed with Maersk will also help us in this respect, as we will be creating a flexible ocean network with industry-leading reliability. In parallel, we would like to continue to grow in our new Terminal & Infrastructure business segment as well as significantly expand our share and portfolio of hinterland transports. What’s more, we need to reinforce our top 5 position on the global market and realise improvements in terms of cost efficiency and productivity.
Does this also mean that more investments
will be made?
Yes, that will be a crucial part of our Strategy 2030. We are naturally talking in particular about investments in terminals and infrastructure, in our ship and container fleets, and in the corresponding decarbonisation measures, which will help us to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. However, we are also making targeted investments in new IT technologies, more efficient data processing and artificial intelligence, as well as in the skills of our employees, such as with our Hapag-Lloyd Academy, with which we are creating a new learning ecosystem and giving our employees access to a wide range of in-person and digital resources. These will help them to continuously develop, to keep an eye on major trends, and to create added value for both our customers and Hapag-Lloyd.
And that brings us full circle to the issue of quality …
Absolutely. We aim to become the undisputed number one for quality for our customers. That will only work if we continually enhance our skills and foster an appealing working environment, which also will also keep us internationally competitive when it comes to attracting the best talent. Every day, our teams around the world do their utmost to keep our customers’ supply chains running as smoothly as possible – and we are very confident that we will be able to tackle all future challenges with this top-notch team. In doing so, we will keep the interests of our shareholders and customers – as well as of our employees – firmly in mind. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of them for their intense cooperation as well as for their faith in our work and the strategic course we have set.
