China's largest shipping company's liner and port subsidiary COSCO Shipping Holdings Co Ltd (Cosco Shipping Holdings) on Friday confirmed that due to freight rates and the deteriorating demand environment, first-quarter net profit plunged 74 percent to 1 billion dollars.

According to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's first-quarter earnings report, the company's operating income in the first quarter of last year was 15.3 billion US dollars, down 55% from a year earlier to 6.9 billion US dollars.

On April 11, COSCO Shipping issued a first-quarter profit warning in a regulatory document, and stated that the decline in net profit was "mainly due to the company's container transportation business revenue decline".

the company's statement on Friday underscored the drop in demand, saying its container shipping division, which includes COSCO Shipping and Hong Kong-listed OOCL, saw its total throughput drop 11.5 percent to 5.5 million TEU in the first quarter, with revenue down 0.5 percent year-on-year to $0.328 billion; and gross profit up 11.2 percent year-on-year to $89.9 million. That compares with 6.2 million TEUs in the first quarter of 2022.

As of March 31, 2023, COSCO's port total throughput was basically flat, reaching 30,305,420 TEUs; equity throughput decreased by 2.5 percent year-on-year to 9,609,708 TEUs; group holding terminal company's total throughput decreased by 11.1 percent year-on-year to 6,654,729 TEUs.

Among them, the total throughput of terminals in China increased by 0.6 year-on-year to 22,650,786 TEUs (same period in 2022: 22,520,167 TEUs), accounting for 74.7 of the Group's total throughput. China Terminal's equity throughput decreased by 1.6 YoY to 6,629,855 TEUs (same period in 2022: 6,740,196 TEUs), accounting for 69.0 of the Group's equity throughput.

The biggest fall was on the trans-Pacific route, where COSCO's volume fell 19 percent to 984,530 TEUs. Cargo traffic on the Asia-Europe and Mediterranean routes fell 13.5 percent to nearly 1.1 million TEUs.

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