Danske Bank kommer her med en gennemgang af A.P. Møller Mærsk kvartalsregnskab:
Maersk (MW) has released the full Q2 report after having pre-released high numbers and raised the 2021 guidance earlier this week. Hence there are limited news on the Q2 numbers and 2021 outlook. EBITDA was USD5.1bn in Q2 21 vs. USD1.7bn in Q2 20. Maersk expects EBITDA to be USD18-19.5bn vs. USD8.2bn in 2020 and USD9.1bn in H1 21. Adj. net debt to EBITDA declined to just 0.5x in Q2 21 from 0.8x in Q1 21 and 2.0x in Q2 20. Excluding lease liabilities Maersk has a net cash position of USD3.2bn. Maersk does not issue news about further capital distribution to shareholders and repeats plans to do a USD5.0bn share buy back programme over 24 months once the current USD1.1bn share buy back programme is expected to be finalised in September 2021. Regarding the outlook for the container market beyond the next couple of quarters Maersk states that “uncertainty is unusually high given the dislocation in demand and supply sides of the logistics industry. High household savings in the US and Europe should support consumer demand but the composition of spending is likely to be rebalanced towards services. At the same time inventory replenishment will support goods trade through end-2021 at least and the shift to e-commerce is likely to keep pressure on outbound logistics capacity. There is little visibility into when equipment shortages and capacity constraints will abate which has been the key driver for the increase in freight rates.” Overall a neutral statement in our view as key numbers and guidance review had already been published. Short term momentum is strong (at least to end-2020) which is likely to support the credit case and could result in a rating upgrade to BBB+ from the current BBB level – however this depends on the level of shareholder pay-out and/or M&A activity from Maersk. Note that this morning Maersk has spent USD0.9bn on acquiring two e-commerce logistics companies (Visible SCM and B2C Europe) – this is in-line with the strategy to do more bolt-on M&A in the Logistics segment which we see as positive for the credit case.
