Good morning, everybody, and thank you all for listening in to our earnings call for the third quarter of 2021. My name is Søren Skou. I'm the CEO of A.P. Moller - Maersk, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Patrick Jany, and Vincent Clerc, the CEO of Ocean & Logistics. Vincent will provide some details and insights into the acquisition within Logistics & Services that we have also announced today. Now, the third quarter of 2021 was again a quarter where we saw significant impact to our business and performance by the continuation of the exceptional market situation in Ocean and across the supply chain.
High demand by consumers, particularly in the U.S., combined with lack of labor in ports and warehouses, and particularly lack of truckers in many markets, have led to congestion and bottlenecks across the world, and ship capacity is today tied up waiting outside ports at a time when demand is very strong. This has led to record high freight rates, but also increased cost and complexity for us. Our customers' supply chains have been heavily disrupted in many cases, and in response, we have taken several initiatives to alleviate these disruptions and the impact they have on our customers' business. This includes expanding our capacity in Ocean to an all-time high level. Frankly, anything that can sail is out sailing today. We have increased also the average speed of our vessels.
In terminals, we have expanded gate capacity significantly, in some cases doubled it. We have established express truck lanes, and the utilization of our terminals is at a record level of 78% for this quarter. In Logistics & Services, as an example, we have opened 61 new warehouses during 2021 so far to expand our geographical footprint and to be able to service our customers even better. Many of you who are listening in today are, I'm sure, focused on the market situation and when things will revert to normal. It is also important for us to take note of the significant progress on the strategic transformation that we have achieved, and especially in Logistics & Services, even if the transformational progress is being overshadowed by the very high freight rates in the ocean.
I will shortly come back to the strategic progress made in the quarter. Now, the financial numbers that you see on this slide they speak for themselves, so I will not elaborate much, except to say that we are delivering the 13th quarter in a row with year-on-year earnings progress, and the quarter is the best ever quarter in the history of the company. With a net result of $5 and a half billion in Q3, we are actually delivering a quarter which is better than the best year ever for the company. What is also very important for me to underline, we are delivering record results in Ocean and in Logistics and in Terminals, so across the business. We will guide for the full year 2022 when we come to February, as we always do.
However, we are today reiterating the 2021 guidance we gave in September, meaning that we expect a Q4 more or less in line with Q3. We also say today that we now expect a Q1 more or less in line with Q4, as demand remains strong as far out as we can see in our booking data. Now turning to slide five. We continue to deliver strongly on the transformation of A.P. Moller - Maersk, and we are well on track in terms of executing on the roadmap for 2021 to 2025 that we introduced back in May at the Capital Markets Day. In fact, I would say that the pandemic is helping us accelerate the integrator strategy.
The importance of integrated logistics, the importance of having asset control, of having committed capacity, of being able to affect and control outcomes, of being digitally connected, all of this is front and center with our customers today as they are struggling to manage their global supply chains. That is frankly why we continue to rapidly grow revenue in logistics and services. Organically, 33% year to date, which is significantly above the market growth. The majority of the growth is related to strong commercial synergies with our top 200 Ocean customers, accounting for 64% of the organic growth in the first nine months. As we are getting bigger in logistics, we are also getting better at managing the business, and the profitability has improved significantly. We now have very healthy margins in logistics.
There are really three things that I'm particularly proud of in this quarter as the CEO of A.P. Moller - Maersk. The first is the development in Ocean contracts or in our contract portfolio in Ocean. A key pillar in building a more stable, higher quality Ocean business is to develop stronger long-term customer relationships. We want to develop more long-term partnerships where we provide value for our customers by offering differentiated value propositions, catering to the specific needs of each customer, and tying the whole thing together with integrated end-to-end logistics solutions.
We also want to reduce our exposure to the transactional and commoditized short-term port-to-port market, where we are price taker and where we are subject to wide swings in spot rates. We have continued, as you can see, to grow our contract portfolio, our long-term contract portfolio during the pandemic. From 2019 and until 2022, we expect that we will have grown the long-term contracted volumes in absolute terms by more than 40%. In the long haul trades, we expect that around 7 million FFE, or more than 65% of the total long-haul volumes, will be served through long-term contracts in 2022. In addition, we also have 1 million FFE under long-term contracts in the regional trade, so in total of 8 billion FFE.
While we have grown the volumes under contract substantially over the last two years, we have also increased the freight rates on the long-term contracts with around $1,000 in 2021 or about 50%. For 2022, we currently expect to see further freight rate increases in long-term contracts as part of the yearly contract renegotiations. For the whole portfolio at a more moderate level than seen in 2021, as many contracts have been renegotiated early already and are reflected in the Q3 numbers. The increasing rates on long-term contracts obviously will help mitigate some of the financial impact of any weakness in the short-term freight rates when such weakness will occur at a point in the future.
The second thing that I'm particularly proud of it is the growth in logistics. It ties together with the first, of course, as growing the long-term contract portfolio is a facilitator for the organic growth in logistics services as part of the end-to-end service offering. Since Q4 2019, we have grown logistics revenue quarter-on-quarter at a CAGR of 8%, while at the same time we have increased EBITDA from $31 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $267 million this quarter. That is a quarter-on-quarter CAGR of 36%. Most of the growth is organic, but we have also made a number of successful acquisitions based on the thinking that we are buying quality companies with strong capabilities.
Companies that are profitable and well managed with good technology and good facilities, and most importantly, with products we can sell directly to our Maersk customers. This allows us to pay for these acquisitions by supercharging the growth of the acquired companies. We have quite a track record now of doing that. In logistics, if we look at the third quarter and pro rate that, we now have an annualized run rate of revenue above $10 billion, an EBITDA above $1 billion, and an EBIT around $800 million. That is, of course, before the acquisition that we announced earlier today. Our Logistics & Services business has and will become an important contributor to the financials of this company.
Most importantly, I want to underline that the growth that we are seeing in logistics today is driven by commercial synergies and large ocean customer wins. In other words, it's volume-driven growth. It's not price-driven growth, and it's not inflated by high ocean freight rates. Finally, the third thing I'm particularly proud of this quarter is the development in terminals. In 2017, we set out to restore profitability and returns in our terminals business, and we can now conclude we have succeeded. Last 12 months, return on invested capital in terminals hit 10% in this quarter, driven by hardcore focus on cost and efficiency over the last four years. We are well-placed to continue to deliver strong earnings in terminals in the coming years.
Now, on slide seven, we have shown an illustration of the historical cash returns to shareholders since 2017, where we started this transformation journey. The strong financial performance enables us to invest in CapEx to support strong organic growth of the business, as well as to acquire companies to support the transformation, particularly in Logistics & Services. At the same time, we return substantial cash to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. This year, so far this year, we have distributed DKK 15.7 billion, or around $2.5 billion, in dividends and share buybacks to shareholders, with the final tranche of our latest share buyback program concluded during this quarter.
During early November, the first tranche of the $5 billion share buyback program that was announced in May 2021 for 2022 and 2023 will commence. In addition, we are announcing today that the board of directors have approved an extra share buyback program of DKK 32 billion, or around $5 billion, to be executed in 2024 and 2025, bringing the total committed share buyback program to DKK 64 billion or $10 billion, which is equal to close to 20% of the current market cap.
In addition to the extraordinary cash distribution from share buybacks, the ordinary dividend will be paid out to shareholders based on the dividend policy of 30%-50% of underlying net profit. On the right-hand side of this graph, we have tried to illustrate the dividend level based on consensus estimates for net profit and at a payout ratio of 30%. Our aim is to create a stable dividend every year, but of course, the exceptional high earnings expected in 2021 will positively influence the level of dividend that we pay out in 2022. Interestingly, the illustrative distribution to shareholders that we show here based on 30% dividend for 2022-2025 is equal to 40% of the market cap of the company.
The numbers are based on, as I said, the net profit consensus for 2021-2024, totaling 243 billion DKK or about two-thirds of the market cap of the company. Now, to summarize, my initial comments here, we are very satisfied with the strategic progress in the quarter. We expect to continue to accelerate the development of the company, and a key driver for that is in Logistics and Services will come from acquisitions. This morning, we have announced an acquisition and asset purchase within the air freight space, and that will enable us to further expand the end-to-end service offering to our customers. To give more insight and details, I now hand over to Vincent. Vincent, please.
Thank you, Søren. As communicated at the Capital Markets Day this year, inorganic investments within logistics and services have a high priority in our capital allocation to further expand and improve the capabilities and services to our customers. You have all seen this slide before when we announced two e-commerce acquisition last quarter. It is taken from our Capital Markets Day deck, so I won't spend much time on this, but instead move on to the next slide and talk about the acquisition we announced today. As part of expanding our capabilities today, we announced the acquisition of Senator and the purchase of two 777 new-build aircraft, which adds to our air business and existing fleet.
I would like to talk a bit about why air freight and the two acquisitions are important and critical to accelerating the growth in Logistics & Services and our ability to provide an end-to-end offering for our customers. Firstly, our vision to become the global integrator of container logistics is predicated upon the ability to provide a one-stop shop for our customers. Air freight is considered a key service offering to achieve that vision as part of a multimodal service offering. We currently operate a fleet of 15 aircraft through Star Air, and with the acquisition of Senator and the purchase of two new builds, we expand the air freight network and build on the Star Air's fleet by developing the capabilities, reach, and platform for our air offering and expanding our controlled air capacity status.
This improves our ability to respond to our customers' demand for higher reliability, speed, and accountability. This is therefore an important milestone in terms of accelerating the integrated strategy and filling a capability gap within our logistics and service product portfolio while doubling our overall tonnage. On the next slide, we have shortly summarized the background of Senator. Senator is a company that was founded in 1984 and is a leading well-renowned air and sea-based freight forwarding company. At present, the company has more than 20 owner-controlled flights per week and a sizable network out of Europe and into the U.S. and Asia. Further, they have a very experienced frontline organization and operations expertise which enables sizable commercial and operational synergies of approximately $141 million on a cumulative EBITDA basis by 2025, excluding transaction and integration costs.
Based on 2021 forecast, the revenue is estimated to be around $973 million with an EBITDA of around $88 million, reflecting a margin of approximately 9%. The acquisition will contribute to close a significant gap in our logistics and service offering and add strong capabilities and geographical reach, which further enables our integrated vision and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. With that, I hand over the word to Patrick.
Thank you, Vincent, and good morning to all from my side as well. Turning to the financial highlights of the quarter, starting with slide 12, we have as usual illustrated the development in the net result. As you can see, profitability in Q3 significantly improved as net result reached $5.5 billion, which is another record quarter in terms of financial results. The improvement came mainly from Ocean, with EBITDA more than doubling, but also with positive contributions from Logistics and Services and Terminals and Towage. Overall, our EBITDA increased by $4.6 billion, reaching $6.9 billion, and the EBITDA margin reached 41.8% compared to 23.2% last year.
Consequently, EBIT increased by nearly a factor of five to $5.9 billion, compared to $1.3 billion in Q3 2020, leading to an EBIT margin of 35.3% compared to 13% last year. The other positions had a fairly small impact on profitability, with the main impact coming from the increase in depreciation, which was mostly due to the IFRS 16 effect of vessel charters, partly offset by the change in depreciation policy earlier this year. As a consequence of the increase in operational profitability, the net result in the quarter reached $5.5 billion, nearly double of the net result for the whole year 2020 in one single quarter. Clearly a reflection of the continuation of the exceptional circumstances.
Now turning to slide 13, our cash flow from operations remained exceptionally strong, up by a factor of three compared to last year to reach $6.6 billion on the back of an increase in EBITDA. Cash conversion was still high at 95% on par with last year. Free cash flow in the quarter was $5.3 billion after considering capitalized lease installments, gross CapEx, net financial expenses, and received dividends. The capitalized lease installments and CapEx were still relatively low this quarter and will increase in the coming quarters due to the higher charter installments and more investments. For leases, this is already partially reflected in the $1 billion increase in capital leases in the balance sheet. For CapEx, the spend will increase in Q4 and into next year as investments ramp up in line with our existing guidance.
From the free cash flow, we acquired Visible, bought back shares and repaid debt. Our net interest bearing debt is now only $3.1 billion, down $6.1 billion since the end of last year. Excluding these liabilities, which amount to $10.1 billion, we actually have a net cash position of $7 billion. Now let us turn to the development in each of our segments, starting with Ocean on slide 14. This quarter, our Ocean business was still impacted by the continuation of the exceptional market conditions, leading to network disruptions, congestions, adding up as well additional costs caused by shortages across the supply chain. This, in combination with a surge in demand, also drove up freight rates. Additional capacity was deployed versus last quarter to service our customers and support demand.
Revenue in Ocean grew 84% on the back of those steep increases in freight rates, with volumes remaining flat. EBITDA more than tripled from $1.8 billion - $6.3 billion, with a margin of 47.7%, offsetting a cost increase of 28%, driven by handling and network cost increases and higher price of bunker fuel. EBIT increased by $4.4 billion - $5.3 billion, reflecting an EBIT margin of 40.8%. On slide 15, we can see that the EBITDA increase in Q3 was again, and like in the previous quarter, mainly driven by the extraordinary environment of capacity constraints and mainly in landside transportation, which impacted rates significantly and contributed to a $5.5 billion increase in EBITDA alone.
The increase in bunker prices had a negative impact on EBITDA of $600 million as average bunker price per ton increased from $290 per ton to $504, equivalent to a 74% increase. This, of course, gets compensated on our revenue, although with a time lag through the BAF clauses. Container handling costs and network costs, including an increase in bunker consumption of 7% impacted by higher deployed capacity and increase in average speed, went up by more than $500 million in Q3 due to the disruption across the supply chains. SG&A, net foreign exchange, and others had a positive impact of $142 million, mainly impacted by an increase in other revenue and demurrage revenue.
Turning to slide 16, our average freight rate increased by 87% in the quarter, driven by the previously mentioned higher demand across all regions in combination with bottlenecks and congestions, also driving up both long and short-term freight rates. The increase was driven by all trades, with the North-South taking the lead on the year-on-year development, by an increase of 86%. Comparing to last quarter, rates increased by 17%. As mentioned previously, total volumes for the quarter remained flat at -0.6%, mainly driven by lower East-West volumes and offset by the intra-regional volume increase of 2.9%. Comparing to last quarter, volumes were actually down 2% and versus the third quarter of 2019, that is pre-COVID, volumes were down by 4%.
We want to stress that the decrease in volumes is not a lack of demand, but rather the current market situation with congestions and bottlenecks across the supply chain. If we then turn to slide 17 and look at the right-hand side of the slide, it becomes clear that we continue to focus on building long-term relationships with our customers. For the quarter, the volumes on long-term contracts on long-haul trades increased by 25%, resulting in an estimated split of 63% or close to 6.5 million FFE on the long-haul volumes being on long-term contracts for the full year of 2021.
As Søren mentioned in his introduction, part of the increase in freight rates seen this quarter are due to the effect from early renegotiations of long-term contracts for 2022. Adding to this, an increased share of those long-term contracts is actually now on multi-year contracts, currently around 1.4 million FFE compared to 1 million in the previous quarter. This helps ensure predictability and stability, both in earnings and in the service to our customers. Our operating costs increased for the quarter, mainly driven by congestions, particularly in the terminals. The increase was also heavily impacted by higher bunker price and increased vessel speed in an attempt to mitigate impacts to reliability from the congestions.
Total bunker cost increased by 87%, driven therefore by a 74% increase in bunker price on the one hand, but also a 7% increase in bunker consumption from increased deployed capacity and higher average speed of vessels. This drove an increase in unit cost at fixed bunker of 14%. The sequential increase of this unit cost was only 4.8%. It is important to note that these increases are, of course, also impacted by the fact that volumes were down both versus last quarter and year on year. When we talk about our cost for the quarter, it is important to keep in mind that some of those costs will come down once the market normalizes. We expect that as consumer demand and freight rates come down, container handling costs will follow, including lower terminal costs and fuel consumption will diminish.
Some network costs are, however, expected to remain at a higher level in the coming years, driven by higher chartering costs and cost inflation. Let us now turn our attention to Logistics & Services, where we once again in Q3 have performed strongly, and the positive momentum seen in the previous quarters continued with a revenue growth of 38%, the majority of which was organic revenue growth at 33%. This is well above our target of 10% communicated at the Capital Markets Day earlier this year. All three product families contributed positively to the growth. Gross profit increased significantly by 37% to $641 million, reflecting a gross profit margin of 24.7%, and EBITDA nearly doubled to $267 million, reflecting a margin of 10.3%.
As a result, the EBIT margin for the quarter was 7.5%, which is above the target set at the Capital Markets Day of 6%. The organic growth rates are once again a validation of a strategy of growing with our ocean customers and building capabilities to service more of their needs in terms of logistics and end-to-end solutions. This is reflected in 64% of organic revenue growth in the first nine months, coming from our top 200 ocean customers, in line with our strategic objectives. Slide 20 shows the continued progress in terms of growth and earnings quality of the logistics business.
We spoke already about revenue growth and gross profit, so let us turn our attention to the EBIT conversion, which continues to improve, hitting 30% for the quarter and thus lifting the long term, the last twelve months basis to 26%, confirming the leverage effect to our profitability from the increase in activity. The acquisition of Visible, that was closed early August, contributed with an inorganic growth in revenue of 5% to the overall revenue growth, while EBITDA was negatively impacted by transaction and integration costs of $10 million. Diving deeper into the three product families on Slide 21, we see that all three main segments contributed to the growth in EBITDA, which nearly doubled to $209 million, reflecting an 8% margin.
In Managed by Maersk, which includes integrated management solutions, revenues reported a growth of 48% to $433 million, driven by an increase in volumes in lead logistics of 18%. This increase firstly reflects a low base in Q3 2020 impacted by COVID, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, reflects strong demand for retail spending, particularly in the U.S., as well as new business wins. We see this as a positive development and a proof point for our integrated strategy. For Fulfilled by Maersk, revenue grew by 40% to $606 million, driven by new activities in contract logistics as well as higher volumes and a very strong footprint in warehousing and distribution in North America. Revenue growth was also impacted by the acquisition of Visible, as was EBITDA, which we already covered.
Finally, revenue in Transported by Maersk was up 34% to almost $1.6 billion, driven by an increase in landside transportation volumes from a higher penetration ratio into existing ocean business. Further revenue growth was driven by increased air freight forwarding volumes. On page 22, we turn to Terminals and Towage, where the strong momentum continued with an EBITDA increase of 32%, which was mainly driven by Gateway terminals. EBITDA in Gateway terminals increased to $379 million, and the EBITDA margin consequently increased to 35.9%. When talking about the performance in our terminals, it is important to note that the congestion was a significant issue still in this quarter, as you all know. However, we have taken several steps to mitigate the impact on our customers and alleviate the situation. This includes expanding gate capacity significantly.
For instance, in North America, we doubled the number of gate work shifts. In many terminals, we have introduced express truck lanes to try and move boxes out of the congestion terminals even quicker. Consequently, the utilization of our gateway terminals is back at record levels of 78%. For our gateways, EBITDA margin increased to 36.9%, while ROIC was 10%, which is 4.8 percentage points higher than Q3 2020, and above our Capital Markets Day target. Revenue in Switzerland was positively impacted by strong grain exports and increased RoRo activities in Australia and reefer activities in Morocco, partly offset by slower markets in Europe. Terminal towage revenue increased due to new charters in Angola, the U.K. and Belgium. Revenue increased therefore by $18 million - $185 million, while EBITDA was on par at $54 million.
Turning to slide 23, we have bridged the EBITDA increase in gateway terminals from $274 million last year to $379 million in Q3 this year, showing the effects of volumes, revenue and costs. Volumes increased well above market at 9.6% on the like-for-like basis, mainly driven by strong volume growth in North America, Latin America and Asia, driving $47 million of the EBITDA impact. Revenue per move increased 13% to $340 per move, driven mainly by higher storage income, which was exacerbated by the congestion situation in North America, while costs per move increased 3.9% to $238 per move, mainly as a result of higher volume in high cost locations and higher variable concession fees.
In terminals, we continue to focus on the profitable gateways in our portfolio, which has led to an agreement to sell our 30% shareholding in Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven in Germany to Hapag-Lloyd, subject to approval by the antitrust authorities. Finally turning to manufacturing and others, we concluded the strategic review of MCI as communicated on our Capital Markets Day, with a sale to China International Marine Containers, with closing subject to regulatory approvals. The revenue in MCI decreased this quarter to $134 million, mainly as a result of periodizations of volumes. For Maersk Supply Services, revenue grew by $18 million - $83 million as increased activity reflected the improved market conditions in Q3 2020, which was impacted by COVID.
EBITDA decreased to $7 million, mainly driven by postponement of repair and maintenance and lower cost in Q3 2020, which was therefore a low base. With that, I will pass the word to Søren for the full year guidance.
Thank you, Patrick. As I already said, we are reiterating the guidance that we provided, I think about six weeks ago of an EBITDA in the range of $22 billion-$23 billion, EBIT in the range of $18 billion-$19 billion, and a free cash flow of more than $14.5 billion. As it looks now, we do not expect to be able to grow with the market. We are upgrading the guidance on market growth to 7%-9% for 2021. Of course, our volumes are subject to high uncertainty because it really depends on how many ships we can get out of the congestion to carry more business.
I also want to underline that we are repeating our CapEx guidance despite, if you will, the somewhat low level of CapEx that we've had in the past quarter. This should not be an indication that we do not expect to suspend the full CapEx guidance. It's clear that the current trading conditions are, if you will, subject to more than normal uncertainty due to all of the issues that we have discussed. We expect, as I already said, also current conditions to continue into Q4 and into Q1. With that, let us start with some questions.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing 02 to cancel. There will be a brief pause until questions are being registered. Our first question comes from Michael Rasmussen with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much, and well done to all of you, Søren and team. Three questions from my side. First of all, on the 17% sequential rate growth in the third quarter, you do mention that new long-term contract negotiations are part of that. I do understand that some of that is earlier renegotiations versus normal. Can you please tell us how large a share of, I guess it's Asia/Europe contracts, that we do see in the numbers already now? That's my first question. My second question is on your comments on the further moderate rate increases in 2022.
If you could please elaborate a little bit more on that other than the rollover which you mentioned, and also if you could please add a few comments on your spot rate assumptions. My final question is on basically there's been recently a bit of talk in the press, and I even think that you sent out an announcement on freight forwarders, i.e. that you obviously prioritize your own clients versus freight forwarders. Can you discuss a little bit how you think about running the logistics business at the arm's length terms, please? That was three questions. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Let me start on the freight forward. Let's be clear. Freight forwarders make up a very substantial part of our book of business, and we expect to continue to have a very substantial share of our business with freight forwarders. We have developed two quite successful products that we're selling to freight forwarders. One is the Maersk Spot product, which is of course a two-way commitment product that's entirely digital and very popular particularly with small and medium-sized freight forwards.
We have a block space product which is popular with, especially with larger freight forwards that buy a fixed, if you will, a fixed amount of capacity and pay for it used and/or unused, so to speak. In terms of the rates, it's very clear that we've had a quite unusual year in the sense that many customers have been willing and wanting to commit, if you will, capacity for longer periods. As Patrick said, we now have 1.4 million FFE of multi-year contracts.
We've certainly also seen many customers wanting to, if you will, negotiate early for 2022, and typically in connection with having higher demand than they actually had contracted for in 2021. That's why, if you will, we've already seen a significant part of the resetting of our contract rate portfolio also for 2022 in this quarter. I think this is probably. We still of course have new contracts that reset at the calendar year, and there are still that are going to be negotiated between now and Christmas.
When we get to February next year, we will be able to give, if you will, a much better guidance for how that will end. Of course, we do expect that contracts that are being negotiated between now and Christmas will be closed at significantly higher volume, and that will move the average up moderately for 2022.
Søren, maybe comment on spot rates.
I mean, we are reiterating our guidance. I guess by that you can imply that we're not seeing much change in the short term.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for answering my questions. Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from Robert Joynson with Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for presentation today. Three questions from me, please. First of all, on cash returns, the net debt is now down to $3 billion. You did more than $5 billion free cash flow in Q3. Even after including the leases, it appears likely the balance sheet will be net cash by year-end. You've previously said that maintaining BBB+ equates to net debt to EBITDA of around 1.5 x. And as far as I can see, that won't be possible based on an ordinary dividend of kind of 30%-50% payout. In that context, could you maybe talk us through the latest thinking on special dividends? And then the same question on contract rates, just a little bit of a follow-up.
Søren, you just mentioned that some contracts will be renegotiated a little bit early than normal before Christmas. Could you maybe just kind of give an indication of what share of the long-term contracts will be renegotiated during the traditional period of January through to April or May of next year? Then the final question just on the EBITDA guidance. It implies somewhere between $6 billion-$7 billion for Q4. So the midpoint essentially implies Q4 is less profitable than Q3. Now, given that the average revenue per container, I imagine should be up in Q4 versus Q3, could you just maybe talk through your expectations on unit costs? Are you expecting quite a significant rise in the final quarter? Thank you.
Hi, Robert. Thanks for your questions. Maybe starting with your last question first on the EBITDA guidance. We actually, as you know, confirm our guidance for the full year, which effectively implies, as you rightly say, an EBITDA for the last quarter between $6 billion and $7 billion. I think the full range applies. As I think that's where we see the business going. Indeed, as you rightly mentioned, obviously, that we see the demand continuing to be strong. We see obviously the constraints as well remaining strong in terms of actual volume shipped.
There is an element here that we cannot ship everything that we have on the book, and that we are, and our vessels are in a big traffic jam, as you know, and that increases costs on the other hand as well. It is, as you rightly say, a combination of good market conditions, good and solid freight rate environment, but clearly volumes being constrained. An increase in cost position, which will continue actually to develop in the next quarters as the full impact of the bunker price is not yet in our P&L. You see inflation positions taking up in some handling costs and terminal costs as well.
The EBITDA being the net of it all, we see a rather stabilization at this very high level for the coming quarters, which is why we guide on a Q4 de facto very close to a Q3 and a Q1 next year, very close to a Q4 as well. Now, going to your first question on the cash return. Clearly, yes, we do have a comfortable cash position now of $7 billion in net debt, including the liabilities of minus three. I think we'll see where we end up by year end.
I think the these liabilities are obviously coming up as well as we have the dual effect, as you know, of higher charter rates which we have contracted, but also longer period of rates and therefore a whole proportion of time charter which actually comes into the balance sheet, which is also one driver of this $1 billion increase you have seen now actually for two quarters in a row. You can expect this to continue as we still receive this capacity on our balance sheet. Now coming to your question, I think from the financial point of view, we should not focus now on the end of the year and what is the cash balance and are we now solid BBB, super solid BBB.
I think we have to position the company in the long term. We are building here a company which is and will have a strong balance sheet over the years and be returning cash strongly over the years, which is also our guidance for the share buyback in 2024 and 2025. It's a strong signal on a qualitative improvement in terms of earnings and returns to shareholders over the years. That's when we look at a capital structure. We have to look at a post-normalized capital structure in 2023, 2024, and that is where we will then touch a solid BBB. We might be on the very solid side up to then, but that's not a reason now for an extraordinary additional dividend.
I think we have a 20% return in ROIC, as you can see in Logistics & Services. A good reason for us to invest further in that growth and to actually get the contributor, the integrator into a reality in next years by investing into that business. Provide, therefore, a solid balance sheet when you look two, three, four years ahead. That's the policy now to understand it really. Then on the contract rates.
I think all we can say or add in terms of color is there's a high interest for negotiating contracts. When we get to February, we have the annual result announcement, and we'll be able to provide guidance for 2022. We expect that we will be substantially done with contract negotiations, frankly, well ahead of the normal first of May, if you will, deadline we have in the Pacific. Of course, lots of things going on, not just up to the calendar year, but also up to first of April. Early, we're gonna be done early this year.
Does that include the Pacific, Søren?
Yes.
Interesting. Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Sathish Sivakumar with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I got two questions. Well, firstly, on the contract volumes, how does that mix actually compare, especially on the long-term contracts between your top 200 customers and versus the overall portfolio? Is it like similar 67 split, or you see more room to gain market share within the top 200 customers? Just on the contract rates, again, can you confirm if all these rates are negotiated still on ex-bunker basis? Yeah. Thank you.
Thanks, Sathish. I mean, all of our contracts have bunker adjustment clauses. We're not taking any bunker risk in long-term contracts. In terms of the contract portfolio, I think around or slightly above 50% of the volume comes from top 200 customers.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Sam Bland with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks. I have, I think two questions, please. The first one is on the sort of charter rates and the lease liabilities. Just give an idea of kinda how far through the rechartering of the chartered fleet you are. And basically, I suppose, you know, I think we've seen this about a $600 million increase in lease liability in the last quarter, kind of where that can get to as all of the ships are moved on to three- or four-year charters. And if there's anything you can say on sort of what the P&L cost uplift associated with that will be. And I think my second question would be whether it's I mean, I suppose it'd be interesting on logistics, obviously seeing very strong organic revenue growth and strong margins.
Can you talk about how much of that you think is also linked to sort of congestion and sort of unusual freight market development, and so you could part of the logistics profitability also reverse? As some of these bottlenecks come out. Thank you.
Going to your first question on the increase impact of the charter on our P&L and balance sheet. I think you have seen this increase. It's actually probably $1 billion actually in Q3. It's been offset by different positions, particularly in terminals, to the $600 million you mentioned. That will still increase for a couple of quarters, as you've seen that we have increased the size of the fleet as well. We're now at 4.2, and we are guiding for 4.1-4.3, so we will. This is a very recent addition, so you'll see now the balance sheet probably getting adapted pretty soon, in probably Q4.
The actual P&L impact is then to unfold more into next year as it's a capacity which has been taken in more in the second half of this year. You see this increase as well, already, in the cash flow bridge, where we increase, I would say, from a level of previously of around $400 million a quarter to now $600 million a quarter. You see this impact coming through, progressively. The same order of magnitude is to be expected as we look forward for the first half of 2022. Overall, absolutely manageable, but it's just a reflection of the current market and of the extended lease duration, which you also mentioned.
I think in logistics, the profitability is really driven by gains and, you know, business wins and volumes increase. Clearly I would say the whole supply chain is a buoyant market right now. That is true. However, as you see, we are also expanding our business in the majority with our top 200 customers, ocean customers, which ensures it's end-to-end logistics, so there's no reason to believe that those volumes will reverse once the situation stabilizes. It is really getting and delivering what our customers want, which is an end-to-end logistical approach. This is where the demand lies, and it will continue to be.
Perhaps if I could just add to what Patrick just said. I mean, at the Capital Markets Day, we did set out a target that we wanna have an EBIT margin of more than 6%. We certainly believe we can achieve that. Obviously we would also like to continue to grow very fast. Right now it's clear that the extra volume that we are getting is helping us drive margins up across the board.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Our next question comes from Dan Togo with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. I'd just like to go back to the questions or to the subject of the contracts, 'cause you are contracting more and more, now 64%. Where can we see this and what is, so to say, satisfactory? What is feasible? I guess you will need, still need to have some spot volumes available for clients. That's the first question. Maybe also some comments on the average length of the contracts. How is that now compared to, let's say, a year ago? Maybe also some comments on the move or the expansion, you could rather say, in logistics on air taking on Senator. Is this a first step?
How big a network do you need in air logistics to fulfill your strategy and continue to be, you know, relevant for your top 200 clients? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. I think in the air, we are acquiring this company as a growth platform. It effectively doubles our volume in air freight in one go. With that, we believe we will have a competitive offering in some of the main corridors. We don't have any, if you will, targets or ambitions beyond that at this point. Obviously we hope that we can make this business grow very fast, just as we have done with Performance Team and KGH and some of the other acquisitions. That's how we think about it for now.
In terms of average contract length, I think the way you can look at it for 2022 is that we are gonna have about 8 million FFE of long-term contracts, seven from the long haul trades and one from the short haul trades. Out of those 8, 1.4 million are multi-year contracts. We expect the 1.4 probably will grow a little bit. You can, I guess, calculate the average from that. In terms of long-term target, obviously, you are right that we cannot go to 100% because then we would not have the kind of utilization that we would want in the network. We need the spot market also to help us, you know, drive a high utilization of the network.
We don't have a specific target set at this point, but we do think it can go higher than where we are today.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lars Heindorff with Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on congestion. If you can help us out a little bit, I understand that it ties up quite a bit of your capacity. But how much of the capacity is actually tied up owing to congestion and the volume impact that we have seen here with volumes being down year-over-year? How much of that is actually caused, or is it solely caused by congestion, or is there any impact, in your view, from the rising energy prices and hence also the impact on production in China? That's the first one.
Yeah. Hi, Lars. So overall in the world, around 300 container ships are sitting outside ports. Almost 80 of them outside the L.A. and Long Beach, but also outside Felixstowe, outside Ningbo, and many other places we have congestion. I don't have an exact number, but we think somewhere around 10% of our network capacity is basically tied up out in congestion right now. That's really why we're having a real hard time delivering on the volumes and certainly growing as much as we would like to do.
We don't have good evidence on whether the rising energy prices are impacting our volumes, but our assumption would be that that's probably not a factor of any significance at this point in time. I mean, we know, of course, we still own Maersk Container Industry, even if we have sold it. There we are impacted by these rolling power cuts, which is basically that instead of working Monday to Friday, it means you are allowed to work Wednesday through Sunday. You still get five days of production. It's just another five days than the five days you would usually want to work.
We don't think that's a big factor at this point in our volumes.
Regarding the capacity development, you talked a little bit about also in respect to your net debt and the leasing liabilities that you have on the balance sheet. Can you say anything about the length or the average length of the TC that you have and maybe how much that is up? I understand that we've heard about some of the competitors buying vessels instead of actually chartering them because it's cheaper.
Yeah, I think it's, you know, there's always a mix between very short term charters and then charters we activate on the balance sheet, which are typically for a few years, right? So what we have seen is this mix change a little bit because the very short term doesn't really exist in the market anymore, so you have to go above one year. That is probably the most disbalancing shift or change compared to previous situation, apart from the cost of all the charters being obviously higher. So the average length has probably not changed too much, maybe two-three years, but you have more of it in that range 'cause you have the disappearance of the very short chartering.
The cost is a factor, clearly, but it's also a matter of preserving flexibility. You see, currently the demand pattern is very strong, but it supports all this capacity. You also have a high capacity being tied up, so you need those vessels just to ensure minimum of actual deliveries. Once situation normalizes, you probably will not need all those vessels to carry the same volume. It's important there to keep this flexibility to revise downward your capacity at one point in time. We still prefer to have flexibility rather than just looking at the financial cost of it.
Okay. The last one is on demurrage, or rather, maybe I should express this as dwell cost for containers. The line other revenue is actually up very significantly in the third quarter compared to previous quarter in Ocean. I just wanted to get a feeling for the dwell cost and what customers, maybe in some cases, even Ocean, have to pay for the containers and the demurrage and detention that you get in Ocean from your customers. I mean, how much, how is that split and how much is actually impacting Ocean and how much is impacting terminals?
Look, I think clearly, as the containers cannot be moved out of the port quickly, given the lack of landside transportation, and particularly in the U.S., the missing trucks and truckers, there are obviously charges, because the whole purpose of the model is to move the containers as fast as possible out of the terminal. That is really the purpose here. It's not to penalize for not being able to. It's just because the flow implies that you need to get those containers out very quickly. If you don't, then you actually block the others, which is what's happening now. That is why those charges are taken to our customers.
I think it is one factor of the increase in the other revenue line for Ocean. You can see now that it's actually not that much higher than in Q2. It is more than last year, clearly, but it's maybe, you know, $100 million in that range for Ocean. Nothing significant in terms of actual profitability in Ocean. While in terms of terminals, we have disclosed here that the, I would say most of the increase of the revenue per move, which we have disclosed, was 13%-14% is coming from those charges around the world. That's more or less a quantification.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our last question of the day comes from Cristian Nedelcu with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. Could I please ask, and apologies, I'm coming back to the contract questions before. You're talking about roughly $3,000 per container contract rate on average this year. Different third-party providers are suggesting the last few weeks we are seeing contract rates at around $4,000 or more. Based on what you disclosed in the past, I think you still have at least around 5 million containers that you need to renegotiate going forward. At least this is what you've done until May this year. Could you elaborate a little bit why you only flag a moderate increase?
Secondly, on the 1.4 million multi-year contracts, can you tell us a little bit more if the rate in 2023 is fixed on this contract? Can you provide a bit more color on the enforceability of these contracts? My last one, if I may, please, regarding logistics and capital allocation, could you give us a rough idea what percentage of your 2023/2024 group capital employed is likely to be linked to the logistics division, or some sort of range or any color in that regard would be helpful. Thank you.
Let me start with the multi-year contracts, the 1.4 million FFE. We actually have quite a number of them that are fixed rates, but the majority are I mean fixed rates for multiple years, but the majority are fixed rate for the first year and then with a floor and a ceiling and an adjustment mechanism that is either yearly or half-yearly. It's a relatively steady, if you will, contract and revenue stream. You worked out the $3,000, which is the average for the long-term contracts this year for the 8 billion FFE in total.
That is, of course, a combination of front haul and back haul, and it's the total global network. It's not just Pacific or Europe and so on. Therefore, it's always super difficult to compare to a number from the market because, you know, what is it actually we are talking about? This is the facts. This is our average rate this year. We have, as we already have said, you know, been negotiating more contracts early than we would normally have done, and that's why we do not have quite the same number of volumes to still renegotiate.
When they were saying some of the increases that we are seeing, and they have already been baked into the 2021 numbers, and then of course, they will not be increasing in 2022. I don't think I can give more color than that on the contracts. Then, Patrick, will you cover the logistics questions?
Yeah, sure. Indeed, as we grow, and we mentioned in Logistics & Services, we are obviously a higher proportion now to invest in this high return business. We intend to do so, as we have communicated in the Capital Markets Day, by at least having a 10% growth, which we are overshooting right now quite significantly. We built 61 warehouses now in the first nine months, and we will continue to expand those activities in the years to come. I think we guided in our Capital Markets Day for roughly $1 billion CapEx in logistics, and that's certainly a figure you can take as a reference as well, for that was for the two years, 2021, 2022, and that's.
Wouldn't see right now a reason to believe that it will be reduced in a 2023, 2024 landscape. We will continue to invest in logistics as we expand our footprint, as you have seen as well, for instance, in air with additional aircraft that we have ordered as well. Now, the purpose of that is obviously to increase logistics, which is an asset-light business. Organically, we are now at above 20% ROIC, and that's certainly a very attractive level to continue to invest in it.
If you compare to invested capital, which is now around $2.7 billion for Logistics & Services, if you count, let's say $1 billion every two years coming on it and a bit of working capital as well, you still are at very low numbers when you compare to the $29 billion we have in Ocean right now. It will be a further increase in that invested capital in the order of magnitude I indicated, but still guaranteeing a very high ROIC and therefore a shift on our ROIC quality as well, becoming a bit less asset heavy in future in terms of looking at returns. Thank you.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Okay. If there are no more questions, then we will go to the final remarks. Let me just say that we've had, as you all know, another record quarter, and it's across the business, it's across Ocean, Logistics, and Terminals, of course driven by exceptional market conditions, but also driven by successful execution on the strategic transformation in Maersk. We are doing whatever we can to help or alleviate disruptions for our customers. It is adding to our cost as we expand capacity, but we strongly believe that that's what we need to do. We will continue to build a better Ocean business, a higher quality Ocean business by expanding our portfolio of long-term contract volumes.
Logistics & Services organically continue to outperform the growth in the market by a lot, and now we're adding, if you will, to our capabilities with the acquisition of Senator. We have reiterated our guidance and also today announced further share buyback. Let me end by announcing that we will host a virtual ESG day on the 10th of March 2022, where we will give you a lot more insights into our future ESG strategy. Thank you very much for listening, and we will talk to you again, if not before, then at the next quarter. Thank you.