COSCO Shipping Holdings' Quarterly Net Profit Jumps 80.73% Year-on-Year

COSCO Shipping Holdings, the container shipping arm of COSCO Shipping, released its third-quarter 2026 results on October 29. The Chinese company reported a net profit attributable to shareholders of 17,230 million yuan, an increase of 80.73% year-on-year, according to Ship News. The Journal of Commerce reported the same figure in dollars, noting an 85% jump in quarterly net profit to 2,600 million dollars, driven by rising freight rates.

According to the figures released, operating revenue for the quarter reached 75,692 million yuan, 29.39% higher than a year earlier, while gross profit climbed 74.75% to 22,526 million yuan and earnings per share rose 82.26% to 1.13 yuan. In the first nine months of the year, the company posted revenue of 187,614 million yuan (+11.94%), net profit of 306,049 million yuan (+13.22%) and operating cash flow of 479,090 million yuan (+19.83%). The company attributed the jump to improved operational efficiency in the container business, amid a context in which the CCFI index averaged a 19.46% year-on-year increase. Volume carried in the first nine months reached 21.491 million TEU (+6.47%), with notable growth on the transpacific trade (4.0151 million TEU, +10.83%) and the Asia-Europe trade (3.3474 million TEU, +13.19%). At the end of September, the company's own fleet totaled 610 vessels with a capacity of nearly 3.66 million TEU.

COSCO Shipping Ports, the group's terminal division, handled 42.27 million TEU in the third quarter, up 8.4% year-on-year, according to Baird Maritime. Quarterly revenue rose 13% to 484.3 million dollars and gross profit grew 19.3% to 128.1 million dollars, but profit attributable to shareholders edged up just 0.1%, to 82.6 million dollars. In the first nine months, attributable profit totaled 316.3 million dollars (+19.7%) on revenue of 1,390 million dollars (+12.6%), with cumulative throughput of 122.42 million TEU (+8.1%). Overseas terminals grew 19.4% to 11.32 million TEU, while Chinese terminals rose 4.9% to 30.94 million TEU, accounting for 73.2% of the total. The Piraeus terminal in Greece handled 1.09 million TEU (+11.4%) on higher Mediterranean demand, and the Chancay terminal in Peru, operational since June 2025, handled 139,669 TEU (+24.9%).

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, the Journal of Commerce noted that Cosco Shipping will expand its intermodal capabilities in growing markets such as Latin America and strengthen regional services by leveraging the e-commerce boom as a way to boost profits and revenue. According to Ship News, the company is also advancing new routes such as ESA3 between the Far East and East South America and CCT4 between China, Cambodia and Thailand, in addition to a rail-river-sea service via the Pinglu Canal. The company reported that its container business achieved an EBIT margin of 20.10% over the nine months and that, as of the end of September, it had 82 new-energy vessels, with a capacity of nearly 1.5 million TEU, nine of which run on dual methanol fuel.