largest global freight companies<\/a>.<\/p>\nAfter an initial plunge when tariffs were announced April 2, the shares are now up about 50% since early April and the Copenhagen-based company seems to be showing little sign that the restrictions are hurting its business. On Aug. 7, it\u00a0raised\u00a0its 2025 financial forecast, citing resilient global transport demand outside the U.S.\n \t\t<\/p>\n
A Maersk spokesperson declined to comment on the share price and the short position in the stock.<\/p>\n
(Bloomberg)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe short interest is basically speculation that tariffs will cause the global economy to slow down a gear, but we just haven\u2019t seen that happening yet as the wheels are still turning,\u201d Lars Hytting, an investment strategist at asset manager ArthaScope, which holds Maersk shares, said by phone. \u201cAnd Maersk just shows it\u2019s best-in-class in a situation like this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trade war is still in its infancy, so there\u2019s plenty of time for the short bets to come good. Trump only finalized trade deals with many US partners in recent weeks and some talks are still ongoing. Maersk has warned that tariffs will be negative for its business if consumer confidence declines and consumption slumps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A majority of analysts covering the stock are downbeat on the longer-term prospects for the company, with the average 12-month price target indicating a decline of some 15%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc has repeatedly pointed out that one of the reasons tariffs won\u2019t stop global trade is that many products are impossible or very difficult to substitute with local alternatives. As an example, almost all of the world\u2019s sneakers are made in just three countries \u2014 China, Vietnam and Indonesia \u2014 and it would be costly and take years to set up production in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThings have become more volatile and complex, but this is giving us some enormous opportunities,\u201d Clerc said during an Aug. 7 presentation in Copenhagen. \u201cIt gives us a positive potential for our logistic business, because the more complicated things are and the more supply chains need to change, the more valuable we become to our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maersk\u2019s ability to thrive during the biggest attack on free trade in decades is just the latest example of a seemingly negative global event that has ended up benefiting the shipping industry.<\/p>\n
When transit through the Red Sea was disrupted in late 2023, forcing container lines to sail south of Africa, freight rates jumped because the extra journey effectively reduced the global shipping fleet by 7-8%. A similar imbalance to supply and demand was triggered in 2021 when a\u00a0massive container ship\u00a0blocked the Suez Canal, helping the industry.<\/p>\n
(Bloomberg)<\/p>\n
And during the COVID-19 pandemic, shipping shares initially fell, before investors understood that lockdowns were a boon for container lines, which benefited from increased demand for consumer goods.<\/p>\n
According to data from the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, Marshall Wace LLP was the only hedge fund with a Maersk short position exceeding the reporting threshold of 0.5% of the total share capital, at\u00a00.59%<\/a>, when the company raised its outlook last week. A spokesperson for Marshall Wace declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\nMads Zink, Danske Bank\u2019s head of equities in Denmark, said that the Maersk stock is being shorted because of its current high valuation and because some are using it as a bet that tariffs will harm global trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may be that their thesis was correct, but the share price hasn\u2019t developed the way they might have hoped for over the summer,\u201d Zink said by phone. \u201cSo far, those who have shorted the stock haven\u2019t been proven right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Aug. 7, Maesk raised\u00a0its 2025 financial forecast, citing resilient global transport demand outside the U.S. (Eric Thayer\/Bloomberg)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[224],"tags":[5990,184,245,4626,12230,1536,4570],"class_list":["post-21120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-maersk","tag-containerships","tag-donald-trump","tag-maersk","tag-maritime","tag-ports","tag-tariffs","tag-trade-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}