Maersk shipping group continues to buy after strong profits

COPENHAGEN, Aug 6 (Reuters) – Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) on Friday announced the acquisition of two e-commerce companies as the world’s largest container shipping company steps up its bet on inland services.

Maersk manages one in five containers shipped globally, but is looking to transform into an integrated logistics company to gain more work from existing customers such as Puma (PUMG.DE) and Walmart (WMT.N).

It bought Visible Supply Chain Management and B2C Europe, both of which specialize in e-commerce, for a combined enterprise value of $ 924 million, Maersk said.

It also confirmed a 60% increase in second quarter revenue and a tripling of its quarterly basic profit announced in a preliminary business report earlier this week, when it raised its profit outlook for 2021. Read more

The pandemic has caused shortages of container ships and congestion at ports, which has driven freight rates to record highs.

“The results benefited both from the exceptional circumstances in the ocean, where congestion and bottlenecks continued to drive rates up, and solid progress in executing our strategic transformation,” said the CEO Soren Skou.

“The outlook for the third quarter is good and we expect Ocean’s current momentum to continue into the fourth quarter,” he said.

Reporting by Stine Jacobsen; edited by David Goodman and Jason Neely

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