A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S is on track to post a full-year profit that will match its combined results for the past nine years and make business history in its home country of Denmark.
A combination of several extreme factors – including bottlenecks caused by pandemic consumption – is boosting earnings at the world’s largest shipping line. The company last week raised its financial forecast for the third time in five months.
Maersk’s 2021 result will be a record in Danish corporate history, according to a note published Tuesday by Sydbank A/S analyst Mikkel Emil Jensen. It will be about three times higher than Maersk’s previous record in 2014 and more than double the 2020 result of Novo Nordisk A/S, Denmark’s most valuable company.
Net income will reach about $16.2 billion in 2021. That’s up from the median estimate of about $3 billion at the start of the year.
But for Maersk, the 2021 profit comes from temporary phenomena and therefore it is “unlikely” that the container line, or any other Danish company, will break the next record “for many, many years,” Jensen said.
