Maersk announced its economic results of Q2 reporting increased profit due to continued recovery in the container market and focus on restoration of profitability despite the expected negative financial impact of up to USD300m in Q3 from the cyber-attack in June. Søren Skou, CEO of A.P. Moller – Maersk commented on the Q2 earning, warned that the group expects disruptions for the forthcoming results due to ‘NotPetya’ ransomware cyber attack which led to predominant loss of business in July 2017.
Particularly, Maersk said that in Q2, the revenue of A. P. Moller – Maersk grew by 8.4% to USD 9.6bn year on year, mainly due to higher freight rates in Maersk Line. The underlying profit in Q2 improved from USD 134m to USD 389m with Maersk Line contributing with an underlying profit of USD 327m. As a result of post-tax impairments of USD 732m related to Maersk Tankers and APM Terminals, the reported result was a loss of USD 264m.
“Maersk Line is again profitable delivering in line with guidance, with revenue growing by USD 1bn year-on-year in the second quarter. The profit was USD 490m higher than the same quarter last year, based on higher rates,” said Søren Skou, CEO of A.P. Moller – Maersk.
In the end of June, A.P. Moller – Maersk was hit by the malware “Not Petya” where system shutdowns resulted in significant business impact especially within the container business. Søren Skou elaborates:
“In the last week of the quarter we were hit by a cyber-attack, which mainly impacted Maersk Line, APM Terminals and Damco. Business volumes were negatively affected for a couple of weeks in July and as a consequence, our Q3 results will be impacted. We expect the cyber-attack will impact results negatively by USD 200-300m.”
“Focus for the oil and gas related businesses in Energy remain on optimising performance and exploring new business models to strengthen resilience under the current market conditions,” Søren Skou emphasized.
A.P. Moller – Maersk’s guidance for 2017 is subject to considerable uncertainty, not least due to developments in the global economy, the container freight rates and the oil price, the group said. A.P. Moller – Maersk’s expected underlying result depends on a number of factors. Based on the expected earnings level and all other things being equal, the sensitivities for the rest of 2017 for four key value drivers are listed in the table below:
