Maersk Sees ‘Dark Clouds’ on World Shipping Horizon

While reporting record revenue Wednesday (Nov. 2), global shipping giant Maersk nonetheless warned of “dark clouds” facing its industry.

These clouds come in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s energy crisis, continued high inflation, and the threat of a worldwide recession, Søren Skou, Maersk’s chief executive, said in a news release.

“This weighs on consumer purchasing power, which in turn impacts global transportation and logistics demand,” Skou said.

The Danish company and the world’s largest supplier of shipping containers said it had its 16th quarter in a row of earnings growth, with revenues of $22 billion in its third quarter.

“However, it is clear that freight rates have peaked and started to normalize during the quarter, driven by both decreasing demand and easing of supply chain congestion,” said Skou. “As anticipated all year, earnings in Ocean will come down in the coming periods.”

Earlier this year, Maersk began offering air shipping as customers demanded end-to-end logistics services.

Other recent earnings reports have been more optimistic about the impacts of a recession. The last week has seen both Keurig Dr. Pepper and snack and candy giant Mondelēz International say they don’t expect consumers to forgo their products as they look to cut costs.

“We see consumers saying that chocolate is really something they cannot live without,” said Mondelēz CEO Dirk Van de Put, whose company owns brands such as Oreo and Ritz.

“We believe that the spending decrease that we will see from consumers eventually, as inflation keeps hitting them, is going to probably be more in the big-ticket items,” he added, pointing out that grocery items appeared to be performing pretty well overall.

Get the Report: Consumer Inflation Sentiment

But as PYMNTS has noted, these statements conflict with our research. The August edition of PYMNTS’ Consumer Inflation Sentiment study “Consumer Inflation Sentiment: Inflation Slowly Ebbs, But Consumer Outlook Remains Gloomy,” found that 62% of consumers have been cutting back on nonessential grocery expenses.

Meanwhile, 37% of shoppers told PYMNTS that they have been reducing the quality of the items they are buying at the grocery store.