Good morning everyone. Thank you all for listening in to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2021. My name is Søren Skou, I'm the CEO of A.P. Moller-Maersk. I'm joined here today by Patrick Jany, our CFO. Let me start by saying that this is a quarter that I'm quite proud to present. We deliver multiple records. It's the best quarter ever in Ocean. It's the best quarter ever in Logistics. It's the best quarter ever in Terminals. It's also the best quarter ever in terms of net profit also for A.P. Moller-Maersk, by some margin. Excluding the quarter where we sold Maersk Oil, the previous record was from Q2 of 2010. That result of $1.9 billion included important contributions from Maersk Oil, Maersk Drilling, Maersk Tankers, Danske Bank, Dansk Supermarked, companies that we do not own any longer.
Revenue grew 30% to $12.4 billion, driven by higher demand in Ocean, higher demand in Logistics as well as in Terminals, of course by significantly higher freight rates. Revenue was up 36% in Ocean, 42% in Logistics, and 24% in Gateway Terminals. As a consequence, EBITDA more than doubled to $4 billion, and EBIT was up more than five times to $3.1 billion, mainly driven by Ocean, also supported by the good progress we have in Logistics & Services, as well as at Gateway Terminals. Our net result in Q1 came in at $2.7 billion, just a little short of the $2.9 billion we made for all of 2020. Free cash flow was strong, increased to $2.4 billion, driven by increases in the cash flow from operations, also continued low CapEx.
As you all know, we upgraded our earnings forecast last week, as we do now believe that the strong demand we experience will persist, and the current supply chain issues that are driving up freight rates will continue well into the fourth quarter of the year. As we are also disclosing today, the upgrade is strongly supported by us having signed long-term contracts that will impact positively, compared to last year, by more than $3 billion in 2021. We now expect a full year EBITDA between $13 billion and $15 billion, and EBIT between $9 billion and $11 billion, and free cash flow of minimum $7 billion. Following our strong balance sheet, current and future cash flows, the board has decided to accelerate the remaining share buyback relating to the sale of Maersk Oil so that it will be completed by September this year instead of March of 2022.
We are also announcing that we will initiate a new share buyback in direct continuation of the current one, starting in October, of approximately $5 billion, to run over the next two years. The new share buyback represents more than 10% of our market cap, and combined with our dividend policy, you should see this as a strong commitment to distributing excess cash to shareholders. Turning to slide five. We will go through this transformation dashboard for Q1 with our four new transformation metrics that we use to track the transformation, and now, for the first time, disclose externally. I'm very pleased, first of all, with our organic revenue growth in Logistics and Terminals of 26% to $2.8 billion.
For Logistics, this is mainly attributed to strong volume growth in a number of our products, in our supply chain volumes, contract logistics in our warehouse and distribution business in North America, as well as land site transportation. All grew volumes a lot, driven by higher penetration ratio to our existing ocean customer. EBITA, so earnings after depreciation, but before interest, tax, and amortization, in Logistics and Services was up five times compared to last year, driven mainly by volume-induced revenue growth as well as margin expansion. To put this a little bit into perspective, we used to have a relatively small logistics business in Denmark, Damco, with quite weak margins. We now have built a Maersk Logistics business with a revenue run rate above $8 billion and an EBITDA margin of 10% and an EBIT margin well north of 6%.
In other words, we are well on our way to building a profitable growth engine in Logistics and Services, and the strong organic growth in Logistics is driven by cross-selling to our Ocean. As an indicator of our ability to cross-sell, we are measuring the commercial synergies between Ocean and Logistics on the Logistics revenue growth from our top 200 Ocean customers. In Q1, that revenue increased by 68% to almost $900 million, where 49 percentage points is from organic growth and the rest is from the acquisitions that we did last year. High organic growth in Logistics is, in our view, a solid proof point for our integrated strategy. Growing with our largest and most demanding Ocean customers is an even more important proof point.
Compared to Q1 last year and full year 2020, we have increased the revenue share in L&S from our top 200 Ocean customers from around 37% to now 44%, confirming that we can leverage commercial synergies and relationships with these customers for accelerated growth in Logistics. In our Terminals business, revenue mainly increased due to higher volumes and storage income. We have now successfully turned around our Terminals business and become a much better operator. We are leveraging the synergies with Ocean and are once again, therefore, delivering solid returns above 9% return on invested capital when we look at the first quarter on an annualized basis. Moving to slide six. It is evident that we have continued the positive trajectory on earnings that we have been on for a while, also when it comes to debt reduction.
It's also clear that the trend has been accelerating in recent quarters. Of course, impacted by the extraordinary market conditions that has been driving up freight rates to record levels. While the current very strong results are partly driven by market tailwinds in Ocean, the first quarter is our 11th quarter in a row with progress year-on-year, and we are now midway into our 12th quarter that will also show a year-over-year improvement. We are building on a strong track record, and we didn't just get lucky. Over the last three years, we have dealt with plenty of headwinds in terms of slow global trade growth, geopolitical uncertainty, trade tensions between U.S. and China, IMO 2020 implementation, and last year, a pandemic that caused volumes to drop sharply, particularly in the second quarter.
Despite all of these headwinds, we have made continuous progress, and we are a better, more profitable, and more resilient business today across Ocean, Logistics, and Terminals. The work that we have done in Ocean by establishing the 2M Alliance, the acquisition of Hamburg Süd, the cost focus, the capital discipline, the digitization, and the development of unique products is starting to pay dividends. I'm pleased that we have both been able to transform the company while at the same time increase earnings and reduce debt over the last three years. I look forward to the Capital Markets Day next week, where we will talk through the next phase of the development of the company. With this, I will hand over to Patrick, who will take you through the financials and the segments.
Good morning to all. Turning to slide eight, we can see that profitability significantly improved as a net result reached $2.7 billion, which is, as mentioned earlier, the highest quarterly profit generated from operations ever. The improvement coming mainly from Ocean, with EBITDA almost tripling, but also with positive contribution from Logistics & Services, and Terminals and towage. Overall, our EBITDA increased by 166%, reaching $4 billion, and the EBITDA margin reached 32.5%, compared with 15.9% last year. Consequently, EBIT increased more than five times to $3.1 billion compared to $532 the year before, leading to an EBIT margin of 24.9% compared to 5.8% last year. The other positions had a fairly small impact on profitability.
The lower depreciation amortization impairments was mainly driven by lower depreciations as a result of reassessing the useful lifetime of container assets from 12 - 15 years, and tax increased to $150 million from $128 million a year ago, primarily due to improved financial performance. When reflecting on the quarter, it is clear that the performance has been impacted by the pandemic and the subsequent demand surge, leading to bottlenecks and capacity issues, thus continuing to distort the market conditions. We now expect that this situation could very well last into the fourth quarter of 2021. Trying to put a figure on how this has impacted us, it is our best estimate that the net effect on volumes, costs, and rates has increased operation profitability by around $2 billion this quarter alone.
Now turning to slide nine, our cash flow from operations remained extremely strong, almost tripling from last year to $3.4 billion on the back of an increase in EBITDA of $2.5 billion and despite of a deterioration of net working capital with $450 million. Cash conversions was actually still high at 85% compared to 80% last year. Free cash flow in the quarter was $2.4 billion after considering capitalized installments, gross CapEx, net financial expenses, and dividends received, and was used to repay debt and for the share buybacks. You may notice that the capitalized lease installments seem relatively high this quarter. That is mainly driven by lease buyouts of $265 million Ocean, which was economically more advantageous. CapEx, on the other hand, remained low in Q1.
To that effect, you will have noted that we have increased our CapEx guidance for the years 2021 and 2022, as we are increasing our CapEx in logistics to sustain growth in the coming years, and we are also purchasing significantly more containers to alleviate the current bottlenecks, improve reliability, and match the growth of our customers. From the free cash flow, we paid our dividends and repaid debt, and our net interest in bearing debt is now only $7.7 billion. Considering that lease liabilities amount to $8.4 billion, we actually do have a net cash position of $696 million. Given the continued strengthening of the balance sheet, current and future cash flow generation, the board of directors has decided to accelerate the current share buyback, now to be completed by the end of September, and then launch an additional $5 billion share buyback to be executed over two years.
Let's now turn on to Ocean, where the business development was positive and revenue in Ocean grew 31% on the back of strong freight revenues, with volumes increasing 5.7% as demand increased in all regions and freight rates increased 35%. This led to a close of a tripling of the EBITDA from $1.2 billion - $3.4 billion, and an EBITDA margin of 36.3%. EBIT correspondingly increased by $2.4 billion - $2.7 billion, with an EBIT margin of 28.5%. On slide 11, we can see that the EBITDA increase in Q1 was mainly driven by the extraordinary environment of capacity constraints and bottleneck in equipments, both containers and vessels, and ports, which impacted rates significantly and contributed to a $2.2 billion increase in EBITDA alone.
Lower bunker costs and increased volumes also contributed positively in the quarter, but were partly offset by the higher cost of operations incurred as we tried to manage the disruptions to maintain the flow of goods and help our customers. The container handling costs therefore increased by $140 million, and the network cost and bunker consumption increased by $92 million. Please note that while bunker was still lower on a year-over-year view, it is significantly up since Q4, which implies a higher cost basis going forward. As G&A cost increased slightly by $24 million and was mainly impacted, the other bucket as well was revenue recognition. Driven by the increased rates throughout the quarter, the recognized freight rate was $160 million lower than the loaded freight rates, which means that we will have a positive spillover into Q2.
This quarter, the effect on non-cash unrealized losses on hedges was small, but compared to an exceptional gain in Q1 last year related to the introduction of IMO 2020, the impact is negative $155 million. Turning to slide 12, our average freight rates increased by 35% in the quarter, driven by demand surges, especially in China-U.S. and China-Europe trades, combining with bottlenecks across the supply chain. Total volumes for the quarter increased by 5.7%, driven by head haul increasing 8.3% as demand was strong, mainly out of Asia, while back haul volumes was largely flat. Unit cost declined given our higher volumes and lower container costs, and was positively impacted by the new depreciation rule on containers, which was only partly offset by the higher handling costs driven by the bottlenecks in the supply chains, as well as negative foreign exchange impact.
We are quite satisfied that we managed to keep costs under control despite of the supply chain challenges we are facing. In Q4, we continued to focus on facilitating our long-term customer supply chain to meet their requirements, which added to increasing volumes for our long-term contracts. We have now chosen to show you this level now in Q1 on slide 13, as we now have a fundamental different approach to the way we approach our service delivery to customers, and we are signing up significantly more on long-term contracts instead of being short-term focused. By now, we have closed around 80% of our long-term contracts for the year, and the remaining will be signed in the coming weeks. We have increased our contracting volumes by around 20%.
We will have roughly 6 million FFEs on long-term contracts, and the additional effect on our financials for the full year of 2021 is around $550 per FFE on our contracted volumes. This is a part of the reason for our earnings upgrade and our visibility for the second half. The guidance upgrade was also dependent on the current market condition, which we now look to remain well into Q4, whereas in February, we estimated it to normalize after Q1. On top of the higher contracted volumes, we have also signed up more than 1 million FFEs on a multi-year contracts, ensuring predictability and stability of our earnings, and the service to our customers as well. On slide 14, we turn our attention to Logistics & Services, which kept a very positive momentum in revenue and reported a 42% increase to $2 billion.
The growth was both inorganic and organic and came from lead logistics, mainly from supply chain management, contract logistics, both organic and inorganic, through the acquisition of Performance Team, and finally, through a significant increase in air freight and landside transportation, mainly due to the higher penetration ratio into existing ocean customers. Gross profit increased 67%, with gross profit margin improving to 25%, and EBITDA more than tripled to $205 million. The increase in profitability was led by higher margins and volumes in landside transportation and increased profitability in contract logistics. The high growth rates validate our strategy of growing with our ocean customers and building up capabilities to cover more of our customers' logistics needs. The next slide shows you the development of gross profit and EBIT conversion in our Logistics & Services segment, which has now shown a clear improvement in the last years.
We have a strong trend in the underlying EBIT and EBIT conversions, which we are very satisfied with. Our EBIT conversion improved in the quarter to 27%, continuing the nice constant progression of our EBIT conversion, progressively reaching good industry levels. The acquisitions continued to contribute positively to revenue and earnings. As you see, our organic growth is also significant, with 30% growth year-over-year as we are driving commercial synergies with Ocean and by our focus on improving margins further. Consequently, EBITDA margin progressed from 2.1% - 7.5%. From Q1, we have a new reporting structure in Logistics & Services, where we have split products and services into Managed by Maersk, Fulfilled by Maersk, and Transported by Maersk to reflect our progress in the integrated strategy.
Overall, EBIT increased fivefold, as mentioned for the transformation slide, and therefore the EBITDA margin increased from 2.1% - 7.3%, driven by increases in all three product categories. Managed by Maersk includes integrated management solution that enable customers to control or outsource part of their entire supply chain. By combining transport and fulfillment solution with digital platforms, we give end-to-end visibility, actionability, and control. Revenue increase in Managed by Maersk was driven by an increase in lead logistics, where supply chain management volumes increased 42% due to strong performance in Asia Pacific and a tripling of custom services, both from the acquisition of KGH and from higher declarations due to Brexit. Fulfilled by Maersk includes integrated fulfillment solutions to improve customer consolidation and storage down to order level.
Whether e-commerce or cold storage, our solutions connect seamlessly to our transportation network, optimizing inventory flow and precision to deliver individual orders precisely and on time. Revenue in Fulfilled by Maersk doubled compared to last year and was driven by contract logistics and a growing footprint from the acquisition of Performance Team. The growth in contract logistics is actually 38% organic and 62% inorganic. Transported by Maersk is the integrated transportation solutions that facilitate supply chain control across our assets. Our solutions are modular, providing customer end-to-end services with higher reliability, speed, and accountability. Revenue in Transported by Maersk was driven by a 39% increase in air freight volumes from the strong Asia Pacific market and by landside transportation intermodal, where volumes increased 20%, including rail transportation, mainly from higher penetration into existing Ocean customers.
On page 17, we turn to Terminals and Towage, where revenue increased by 20% and EBITDA by 38%, driven by gateways terminals. Growth in Terminals was 24%, EBITDA increased to $323 million, and the EBITDA margin increased by 6.6%- 35.3% as a result of higher volumes and higher storage income. Svitzer, our towage business, is still negatively impacted by COVID-19, particularly by lower tanker and cruise activities. Despite the lower activity levels, Svitzer's revenue remained flat, and earnings declined slightly. Turning on to the next slide, we have visualized the effects from volumes, revenue, and cost on EBITDA of gateways terminals. Volumes increased like-for-like by 5.6%, mainly driven by strong volume growth of 16% in North America and a 5% like-for-like growth in both Asia and Latin America.
As in our Ocean business, we also saw bottlenecks in our Terminals business, especially in the U.S., which has led to a significant increase in storage income. This led to an increase in revenue per move of 11% to DKK 298. At the same time, the cost level is also high in North America, and hence, the higher volumes in this region have led to a 1.5 increase in cost per move. Overall, the improved margins have led to our gateway Terminals reaching a ROIC of 7.4%, which we are happy about after a number of years where they did not earn their cost of capital. Automating our Terminals is an integrated part of our strategy of being a world-class Terminals operator, and we are happy to see that we are strongly progressing with our automation of our Terminal in Los Angeles.
Turning to manufacturing and others, we reported a decrease in EBITDA, mainly due to Maersk Supply Service suffering from the tough environment in the oil industry. While Maersk Container Industry had another strong quarter with a strong revenue backlog and their order book close to full until Q3 this year. With that, I'll pass the word to Søren for the full year guidance.
Thank you, Patrick. We have already covered the full year guidance, I just want to leave with you that it's supported by higher growth, a contract portfolio, and of course, a continued very strong demand. That means that the bottlenecks in many places will remain in place for quite a while. Let me say on the CapEx guidance that we now expect to be around $7 billion, whereas previously was $4.5 billion-$5.5 billion. This increase is mainly driven by the need for more container boxes, as Patrick has already alluded to, due to strong demand. There's also some money to facilitate organic growth in our logistics business. This upgrade in the guidance is therefore not related to buying a lot of new ships, I want to make sure that that is clear for everybody. With that, we are ready for questions.
Our first question is from Sam Bland from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thanks for taking the question. I've got two, please. I guess the first one would be in terms of capital allocation, and maybe might talk about this more next week, but we've seen some bolt-on M&A across the group, but just wondering about the group's appetite to do something maybe a bit more material, particularly within the logistics M&A space. I guess both appetite and sort of ability to execute and integrate. I guess the next question sort of related to that is, we can all see the order book growing. Looks to be maybe a more difficult supply and demand picture for 2023. Is that just a problem and it's difficult to do much about it, or are there things that you can do to try and insulate the group from maybe that more difficult supply and demand backdrop in the medium term? Thank you.
Yes. Good morning, Sam. If I start on the latter question on the order book, I think what really matters for us is how much capacity we deploy compared to the demand that we have. This is how we managed so well through 2020, adjusting capacity to demand. It's not really that important how many ships that exist in the world. It's more how much are deployed that matter. Last year in the second quarter, our demand dropped 15%. We took actually 20% out in terms of capacity and kept our pricing flat, and then we reintroduced the capacity when the customers need it. That's the kind of operating modus we will continue on in the coming years.
Obviously, the fact that we are signing more longer-term contracts and that we are building, if you will, a more differentiated product portfolio that is more end-to-end also is helping us build more stability into the business. In terms of acquisitions, we will discuss that at length next week, so I'd rather not go too much into that. We have a strong balance sheet, and it's possible both to share excess cash with the shareholders, but also to do a bit of M&A. But most of our focus in logistics will be on organic growth and acquiring these, if you will, capabilities as we can acquire special products or special geographies with smaller bolt-on acquisitions.
All right. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Michael Rasmussen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you very much for taking my question. Three questions from my side, please. First of all, on the Logistics & Services revenue within the top 200 ocean customers, can you talk a little bit about what do you actually target here? Also, if you could comment on maybe some combined margin levels for these top 200 customers buying the one-stop shop solution at you guys. My second question is on contract rates. If you could talk a little bit about differences in a one-year contract versus a multi-year contract. What are we looking at here? Also, how large a share of the 1 million FFEs of the multi-year contracts are also buying into your logistics solution? My final question is just a few comments on the volumes in your supply chain business.
Ocean volumes were down by a little bit more than 5% sequentially, but it seems like both the supply chain management volumes, the intermodal volumes, and also the sea freight volumes were down somewhat more on a sequential basis. Maybe can you discuss, is Damco a part of that? If you could just kind of indicate whether you're actually losing other clients if you look outside of the top 200 ocean clients, which obviously are growing right now. Thank you very much.
Okay. I will start, then I'll hand over to Patrick. We are signing an increasing amount of long-term contracts that extends out over a year. As you also know, we are signing contracts broadly following the calendar year for Asia- Euro trades and broadly following end of April to May when it comes to Pacific. The numbers we disclose here today are really impact on a calendar basis. The contract rates for the longer terms comes in two types. There are some that have fixed rates and there are some that have index-linked rates. I'm not going to go into how much of what and so on, because those are, we believe, commercial sensitive things to disclose. Now, Patrick, on the L&S.
Yeah. Starting with your first question. Now it's on again, right? Okay, yeah.
Now I hear.
Sorry for some problems here with the mics. Starting with your question on the L&S revenue, I think it's important to see that obviously we'll have plenty of time next week to talk you through our strategy and how we see the future development of L&S and also to better relate to what are we actually offering in that space, and therefore, what is our perceived value add for our customers. We'll come back to that next week. When you look at the margin levels, I think it's to the underlying question in your ask. It's important to see that we are selling our logistics services as fully-fledged services to our customer. There is no underlying rebate or link between an ocean service and a L&S or logistics service we would give to our customer.
We are actually providing fully-fledged end-to-end solution, and not really buying our way into L&S growth. Right. On your third question on the volume sequential, volume evolution comparison between Ocean, which was slightly down 5% and in L&S. I think you have to see that there's a seasonality factor there as well in the logistics revenue. Actually quarter-on-quarter, you don't see the underlying growth which actually happens in this business. You will see as the year progress and as we compare quarter-on-quarter regularly throughout the quarters.
Great. Thank you so much. Søren, if I could just follow up, just to understand this correct, the multi-year rates are at somewhat of a discount versus if you enter a one-year rate or is it kind of significant discount versus a one-year rate, or what are we looking at here?
No, I did not say that at all. I said we have some contracts that have fixed rates for several years, and we have some contracts where the first year is at a fixed rate, and then the second year or third year is index linked.
Okay, great. Yeah, the discount was my assumption on the following years, but okay. Thank you so much.
Our next question is from Neil Glynn from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning. If I could ask two, please. The first one with respect to Ocean. I think it was very helpful that you quantified the extraordinary market effect of $2 billion for the first quarter in Ocean. If you back that out, I guess it suggests $1.444 billion EBITDA for the first quarter. If I look at the seasonality since the reporting structure changed a few years ago, that would actually suggest EBITDA of $7 billion annualized using that type of first quarter. I appreciate there's a danger getting too precise here, I just wanted to understand, is that consistent with your thinking or are you signaling something else with respect to that calculation? A second question with respect to CapEx and flexibility and free cash flow resilience. You've obviously upped CapEx for this year and next year.
I'd love to understand, can you break down that $7 billion into the fixed and potentially flexible aspects to give us some kind of understanding of what flex there potentially is, should 2022 ultimately prove disappointing relative to whatever anybody's baseline expectation might be at this point?
Starting with your first question on Ocean. Clearly it's, as you rightly mentioned, it's an approximate impact, right? It is actually quite hard to tell to split the cold and the hot water once you sign a contract. Which was the effect of the current bottlenecks and what is the underlying strong demand for our services as well. Nevertheless, that's our best estimate, and we'll continue to report it because I think it's helpful for you to see the impact. I wouldn't, however, take the extrapolation on the full year. You have seasonality, which was quite different in this year, and you also have, I would say just the underlying price evolution long-term switch to more long-term versus short-term, which is also changing the profile of our profitability looking forward.
I would be cautious on extrapolating on a one-on-one basis. When you look at the CapEx, again, we'll come back a bit more in detail, I think, next week to provide a more granular view on our CapEx. It is important to see it, as you have seen, that we have started the year on a very disciplined basis. Our Q1 CapEx is very low, and we'll go on spending where we think it makes sense. To your point or your question that if 2022 changes brutally and we don't need those containers, then we wouldn't buy them either. Right now we see a shortage. We see our customers needing to be relieved from those bottlenecks.
The container turns are very low and therefore we need to have more containers to reestablish the reliability which we promise to our customers and why they choose us in the first place. It is a commercial necessity right now, and it's really pulling forward the containers we would have probably bought anyway in 2022 and 2023. If we can restore turns and reliability levels without using all of this need of container, we'll obviously invest less. The other part is more structural. We will continue to grow in L&S and in Logistics & Services, and we'll continue to expand there.
Great. Thank you, Patrick. Could I just check on container investment, what is the lead time? How many months in advance of delivery do you actually pull the trigger, sign on the dotted line?
Yeah, I think typically it goes quite fast. Within a quarter you can get, I would say, the containers. Sometimes it gets a bit tighter and therefore maybe a little bit longer, but within a quarter, typically, we get it delivered.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question is from Sathish Sivakumar from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks, Søren and Patrick. A couple of questions. Firstly, on the current booking window, especially on the Q2, if you could just comment around what are you seeing at the booking levels are and how does it vary by trade lane. Secondly, more around on the multi-year contracts. I've just got a couple of questions related to that. Is there any minimum volume commitment from your customers on these multi-year contracts? Again, on this 1 million FFE, what is the contribution or volume exposure to top customers?
In Q2, the quarter we are in right now, we have strong bookings and strong demand. It certainly is supporting our guidance for the year. In terms of the contract volumes, what we are signing up is committed volumes. Our experience is that we have a very high percentage of fulfillment of those contracts at the end of the day. The 1 million FFE that we are reporting is committed volume that we fully expect to see next year.
Is it signed by, in terms of customer mix, is it like, say, top five customers account for about 80% of that 1 million FFE or how does it work?
Yeah. Our contract portfolio is made up mainly of our largest 500 customers.
Okay. I would say here, it's quite diverse customer mix. That's the way you should think of it. It's not relied upon one or two.
No, no, it's quite diverse. Yes.
Okay. That 1 million FFE is like an annualized run rate, right?
Yeah, next year.
Okay, thank you. Thanks very much.
Our next question is from Frans Hoyer from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Again, a question on the non-ocean progress you are clearly making here. It is still early days, and I was wondering if you might comment on the feedback you're getting from your key accounts that you are beginning to help with non-ocean services so far.
Well, they're voting with their wallet. Growth of 68% in one quarter, I think, is a pretty good sign that actually our customers are quite keen to acquire or to buy integrated logistic services from us, Frans.
Yeah. No, I agree. Again, on the other hand, it is probably a very small fraction of their needs that they are allocating to you at this stage. Even if 68% is impressive, I just want to get a feel for the momentum.
Yes, we will certainly cover that next week. What it implies is that the potential is huge here for us. Huge. This is something that we can grow into in the next many years.
Got it. A question on port congestion and how you see that unfolding. I believe it is a factor that is tying up capacity in the market, even if it's only a few % of global capacity, it's still fleet capacity I'm talking about. It's still tying up some percentage points of the fleet. How do you see that dissolving over the next months and quarters?
It will take a little while. I think what is going on right now globally, but particularly driven by the U.S. market, is very strong demand from basic demand. Because the U.S. economy is doing so well, and the Chinese, and for that matter, also the European economy is expected to grow quite nicely this year, there's a very strong basic demand. On top of that, we have an inventory replenishment cycle going on. If you look to the U.S. and you look at inventory to sales ratios, then they have never been as low as they are. Our customers are basically trying to do two things at the same time. Cater to strong basic demand because of all the stimulus packages and the savings, by the way, that has been going on over the last year and is now being consumed.
At the same time trying to replenish too low inventories. That's really what is driving this very strong demand to the point where the ports are really not able to meet all the demand for discharge of ships, and then we get the bottlenecks.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from David Kerstens from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions, please. First of all, on your full year 2021 EBITDA guidance, can you give an indication what kind of freight rate assumption is baked into that guidance? I think based on my calculations, you're assuming a significant step down in the second half of the year versus the realized freight rate in the first quarter, while your spot rates are currently still going up and you now also have the higher transpacific contracts coming in. What's driving that expectation? Secondly, on the net financial position, how do you calculate how much room you have in the balance sheet available for share buybacks, so the $5 billion? I think previously we were targeting to remain at least investment grade. You have, in the meantime, had a rating upgrade from the rating agencies.
What is the best way to calculate how much room there is in the balance sheet for M&A and for share buybacks? Finally, on return on invested capital, I appreciate you now disclose the invested capital and EBIT levels by division, so we can nicely calculate the value creation in the different divisions. Do you still see a sustainable return of at least 8.5% over the cycle after close to 10% last year and probably at least double that this year? Is 8.5% a normal return for the business? Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks, David. I'll take your questions in the order. I think on the guidance, first of all, I think the guidance reflects our best view on how the business will develop and that's how we see it. We'll not guide on the parameters of the guidance. As we have said in the call, I think you have different parameters here. We see a strong Q2, which we have just alluded to. We have a higher share of long-term rate contracts as well, which gives us confidence that the additional earnings will come through, and therefore make us less dependent on the short-term rate fluctuations. That's the way you have to read this guidance. On the financial headroom, clearly we have improved the financial headroom, as you rightly mentioned. The rating agencies have upgraded us.
We're now BBB. Obviously from the ratios we are more than that, better than that. That gives a bit of headroom. This is why the board of directors has also seen that we can actually do all the different elements at the same time, which means return cash to shareholders to show our commitment. Also invest in organic growth, which is an important and main contributor of our growth and value generation. Continue to do acquisitions and pay the normal dividend, which, by the way, will also be increased as net result is increased. From that point of view, I think we are in a fortunate position where we can, over the years, do all those things at the same time.
The sum of all those aspects is considered in determining that we have enough headroom to show a strong commitment to return shareholder value by the share buyback we decided on. On the ROIC, yes, indeed, we give you now the granularity so you see a bit how the value generation comes from. The guidance itself is, I think since 2016, at 7.5%, not 8.5%. I'm sure we'll come back to those elements next week in our capital markets day.
Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Carolina Dores from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, good morning, everyone. Two questions from me. On the second quarter, I do appreciate that it's a strong quarter for rates. Can you comment on how the blockage of the Suez Canal will impact costs? Should we expect something in line to the first quarter? Second, when we think about specialties that are attractive for M&A, can you give us an idea of what type of business or regions you're looking at?
I assume you were referring to the blockage of the Suez Canal.
Yes. Sorry. Yes.
To hear you exactly there. Obviously, what the blockage of the Suez Canal meant was that our journey towards more reliable network was halted in its tracks for a while. We had a total of 50 ships sitting around the Suez Canal waiting for it to open up. That creates quite a mess in the network, it will take a few months to restore the reliability of the network of that consequence. Unfortunately, it is what it is, when the ships are sitting for a week in the Red Sea, obviously, they're missing somewhere else. We will try to restore reliability as fast as we possibly can. We are deploying every ship that we have, we also have chartered more ships in order to get back to reliability earlier. On your second question, which was now what?
M&A targets.
M&A targets. Exactly. That, I think for good reasons, we cannot really disclose with any degree of detail, but we do plan to spend quite a lot of time next week at our Capital Markets Day to explain how we see our business in logistics growing. Acquisitions will be part of that journey, even if we will focus on organic growth.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is from Parash Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. I have two questions, if I may. First, on the long-term contracts that you talked about. I just wanted to understand, when we talk about of the total 11 odd million long-haul trade, and when we look at your overall volume, it's around 13 odd million, assuming 5%-7% of volume growth this year. Is it fair to say that which means 85%, roughly, of your overall volume are categorized as long haul? Does it mean that even in the backhaul, you enter into the long-term contracts? Just in case, if you can share, when we talk about $550 per FFE increase, can you give any color on what sort of magnitude are we talking when with respect to transpacific versus, let's say, Asia or Europe? My second question is around congestion.
We understand that time to time, there was shortage of equipment imbalance, congestion at port, congestion on the land side. Where are we? Where do you think is the strongest bottleneck? Is it the congestion at the port? Any color on that, and how do you think it will evolve given your view that this may last for most of this year? Thank you so much.
I think you have it right on the long-term contracts, about 85% of our volumes being long haul. In the intraregional trades, in Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe, Inter-Americas, we don't really do many contracts. This is more of a transactional type of market. We do sign long-term contracts, both head haul and back haul, even if head haul is the majority.
Yeah.
I don't want to disclose any further details on the rates. We're disclosing the 550 for the total portfolio because the differences are significant, head haul versus back haul, and also at which time in the season contracts were signed. I don't think that that could be represented in a fair way. The congestion is really driven by port congestion and lack of capacity. Both elements play a role, so meaning that our customers, some are finding it hard to actually book a slot on a ship. At the same time, you have the added effects of, in some markets, still not too many containers. You have the port congestion, which ties up vessel capacity. It's a multitude of factors that we believe, as said in our guidance, will last for quite a while.
Perfect. Thank you so much, and have a good day.
Our next question is from Robert Johnson from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. A couple of questions from me, please. The first one's just really a follow-up question on disruption. I appreciate there's been a few already. If we just look at this directionally, we're seeing some data points that suggest that schedule reliability improved in March versus February. We're seeing delays off Los Angeles easing, and we're also seeing some data that container availability is improving. Directionally, at least, does it feel that we may be past the worst in terms of general congestion and disruption, or is it too early to say? Then the second question on the spot versus contract mix. You provided some helpful data showing that the share of long-term contracts has increased, and of course, you've now introduced some multi-year contracts as well.
In that context, given that spot rates are currently so high, is it fair to conclude that the focus is on maximizing profitability over the midterm rather than the short term? Maybe just on that theme, could you maybe just provide some more general color on how you think about the near-term benefits provided by the currently high spot rates versus the longer-term benefits of improved customer loyalty and retention? Thank you.
I would expect, Rob, that when you get the schedule reliability numbers for April, you will see the effect of Ever Given and then the slight improvements that you have been seeing, that will be gone. We're going to be digging ourselves out of that hole for a little while, to be quite honest, literally speaking. In terms of short-term versus medium-term profitability, for us, we are obviously about building an integrated container logistics business, selling end-to-end logistics services to our customers. That strategy we have also executed on during this time. Our focus has not been to maximize short-term income, which we would have done if we had just gone for the spot market.
We see this as an opportunity to build a portfolio, a longer-term business, create longer-term partnership and relationships with our customers. We are encouraged by how our customers are responding to these conversations about longer-term partnerships. We are disclosing, as I already mentioned, one metric for how we are able to cross-sell logistic services to our contract customers, which is showing clearly that the development is positive for us.
Can I maybe just ask one follow-up question just on reporting? For each of the divisions, you stopped reporting anything below the EBITDA line a few years ago, when you said at that point you wanted the divisions to focus on cash flow generation and therefore stopped reporting EBIT. Now you've reintroduced reporting at the EBIT level. Could you maybe just talk us through the rationale for that? Is it a case of job done with respect to improved focus on cash flow generation, or are there other factors at play?
Yeah, no, absolutely. Let me comment on that. A few years ago, the focus was more on EBITDA and getting the cash up. I think that worked pretty well. As you can see, the balance sheet is now in a good condition. Moving forward, I think it's about looking at profitability, recurrence of earnings, particularly when we go into Logistics. You'll find that obviously most of the companies in that area measure their profitability in terms of EBIT and/or EBITDA before amortization. We are moving into that area, which is why we focus on EBIT looking forward. The same, I think, on the disclosure of EBIT and invested capital allows you to trace a bit the higher ROIC activities where we are moving into, like Logistics & Services and the good performance as well on Terminals.
All clear. Thank you.
Our next question is from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes. Just on long-term rates. At current levels then, how do they compare with spot rates, and how confident are you that customers will honor the contract prices if spot rates were to decline? Secondly, your new guidance assumes the tight market conditions continue till the fourth quarter. Could those really extend into next year as well, and how are you thinking about that? Thank you.
Yeah. Coming to your question on the difference between spot and long term and the behavioral danger, I think we're very confident that our customers will fulfill the contracts that they have been signing. As we have mentioned just now, we are really building a different business and relying on end-to-end and reliability of service with our customers.