Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hapag-Lloyd Analysts and Investors Full Year Results 2025 conference call. Today, Hapag-Lloyd is represented by Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO, and Mark Frese, CFO. I am Valentina, the call's operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Rolf Habben Jansen. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and welcome also from our side as usual, and we appreciate you taking the time to listen to us. I think from our end, I'll give, as usual, a quick introduction, talk about some highlights. Mark will take us through the numbers, and then I'll try to say something about market and outlook, and after that, happy to take your questions. Maybe if we start with a couple of highlights when we look at 2025. I would say that a number of things to be mentioned. I think on the financial side, I would say the results were solid, yeah, with as a real highlight that we have grown quite fast, significantly ahead of market, and we were able to keep rates at a reasonable level. Also, if you compare that to some others.
We certainly had a lot of transition costs when moving into Gemini, but in the second half of the year, we also started to see costs coming out. On the fleet side, we've continued to invest in modernizing our fleet. I think that's just normal. Looking at 2024, we ordered a fairly large number of ships. We ordered some more ships this year. That is a process that will continue to move ahead. On Gemini, I think we're very pleased with where we are on Gemini after 12 months. I think if we go back a year and a half, a lot of people were sitting on the fence and were in doubt on whether we were going to be able to deliver that 90% schedule reliability.
I think we've, together with Maersk, done a really good job in doing that pretty much from day one, and we're also confident that going forward, we will be able to hold that up and that will start yielding dividends. On the terminals, good throughput growth. We've also been able to grow the portfolio with the terminal in Le Havre, and then we also signed an agreement in Brazil towards the end of the year. Good progress there, even if that unit is still fairly new. Of course, we signed the merger agreement with ZIM, where we hope to conclude that transaction towards the end of this year.
If we look maybe first at the terminal side of things, I think when you look at the terminal portfolio on page three, we've grown in Le Havre, as I mentioned. Operations started in March, being used by Gemini. Certainly improves our position in and out of France. Good volume growth. We expect to see some more of that in the course of 2026. Damietta, we've been constructing that port for quite some time, and it has now gone live in February. Really good start. Good productivity pretty much from day one. But of course, volume will continue to grow.
Then we have Veracruz, where we signed the agreement in December, yeah, and we will finish, hopefully, construction somewhere in the course of 2028, and that will then become another important hub in our network. In this case, of course, mainly focused on the east coast of South America. All in all, I would say on good track. When you look at it on the right-hand side where we are these days, I think it's impressive what the team has done, especially keeping in mind that we established it only a few years ago. When we look at volume on page four, we've seen really good volume growth globally, 8% versus market of approximately 5%.
Very strong growth on the Transpacific, although admittedly, we had also lost a fair bit of market share there in the years running up to 2023. In 2024, we saw good growth and another chunk of good growth in 2025. On the Far East, a bit ahead of market. Middle East and Africa also clearly ahead of market. Of course, if you would fast-forward and would add in the potential acquisition of ZIM, that would certainly strengthen our position in the market and would reinforce our position as number five, as that would mean that we grow to roughly 18 million TEUs. A few words on Gemini.
When we look at the schedule reliability, I think we're really proud, as I mentioned in the introduction, about what we actually have achieved, yeah. And that is certainly a testimony to all the teams that have worked so hard on that. I know that when we look at the month of February, that we are a little bit down on the back of very bad weather in Europe, but we will get back to this 90% within one or two months. I think the model that we have designed actually turns out to be quite robust, and I also believe it can still be improved quite a lot.
We did a little survey in terms of, you know, how do customers look at this, and there I think you see that also when you look at NPS scores, that the feedback from the customers is also very clear that when we look at Gemini, that clearly outperforms the other alliances. Of course, that should help us to continue to grow, hopefully a little bit ahead of market, but it should also allow us to attract the best possible cargo mix.
I believe that in some cases we also see that customers recognize that not only because we are more reliable, but also because the standard deviation of when we deliver so much more that they actually can start to reduce their inventories, which of course is a clear financial benefit, and that makes it possible to start thinking about how do we share some of that. On the modernization of our ships, we continue to work on that. We today have an order book of in total about 350,000 TEUs with 32 vessels. In addition to that, we also have a number of strategic charters. I think our order book today has a decent size. We of course have the [12-17 Ks].
We have the [12- 9Ks] in there that we ordered in 2024. In 2025, we ordered some dual fuel LNG, 4.5Ks, and we took long-term charters for some of the smaller ships. In the end, I think that underlines that we remain committed to not only modernizing our fleet, but we also do continue to focus on bringing emissions down. We see that our AER is meantime down about 20% versus 2022, which I think is a really good achievement. We have about 50% ships with alternative propulsion by the year 2030. We have secured some green fuels based on long-term uptake agreements.
Also good to note that despite all the skepticism that we sometimes see in the market, that last year we sold over 380,000 TEUs via Ship Green, which was 90% more than what we saw in 2024. I think that's the third year in a row that we more or less doubled that. We hope to be able to grow that even more in 2026. We think that the growth will definitely slow down. 380,000 TEUs is not small. At least gets, you know, close to about 3% of the total volume that we move. A bit on cost savings, on page seven. I think we see that those cost savings are starting to come.
We do expect to get to full run rate by the end of 2026. If you look at where they are, a couple of categories mentioned here. Of course, the network has a lot to do with Gemini, but also has to do with reduction of third-party feeders and some changes that we make to the network in Gemini, but also outside of Gemini. Bunker efficiency because of the reliability, but also because of the money that we have invested in fleet upgrades. Then we have a whole bunch of other categories as well that we are working on. I think we've seen some real good traction on cost savings in the second half of 2025. We do expect more than $1 billion to materialize in 2026.
It is also fair to say, though, that the first quarter has been a little bit tough, and we'll come to that later on when we talk about outlook because of extreme bad weather in Europe, especially in the beginning of the year. Of course, we now also have to face the renewed crisis in the Middle East that causes significant additional cost for us, especially short-term, where of course, we then need to see how to recover that over the upcoming couple of months. In parallel, we stay focused on Ventus, and we still think that over time, that will bring us a very material contribution to the success of Hapag-Lloyd. A few words on ZIM. You will have seen that we signed the merger agreement.
Now we have initiated the process to try and get all the needed approvals. Of course, given the situation that we have today in the Middle East, you know, that process may take a little bit longer, because things simply move a little bit slower these days. Reinforcing our deal rationale, securing our position, access to a very efficient and modern fleet, great people, good customer base, and a strategy that's very similar to ours. Of course, in the end, also because we believe that we will be able to realize up to $ 500 million synergies per year. Timeline. We signed in February. We have the extraordinary meeting of ZIM, the shareholder scheduled for the end of April.
We have initiated the process by now to get the approval from relevant authorities, starting with Israel, but also starting in other jurisdictions. Hopefully, we will be able to get all those clearances before the end of the year, which will then allow us to close hopefully towards the end of this year or later in the beginning of next year. Much maybe as highlights from my end as an introduction. With that, I would hand it over to Mark, who will take us through the numbers. Mark, over to you.
Yes. Thank you, Rolf. Also a good morning from my side to our fiscal year 2025 result presentation. Let's begin with the overview of our key performance indicators. For sure, 2025 was marked by a very challenging market environment. Yet we can say we continue to demonstrate resilience and operational strength across the group as we delivered strong volume growth in both of our business segments. Although the market backdrop remained demanding, we achieved an overall very satisfactory financial result underlying our ability to operate reliably and efficiently even in these volatile circumstances and conditions. Free cash flow remains clearly positive and our balance sheet continues to be a strong one. With ample liquidity, solid operational cash generation, and a well-balanced funding structure, we are well-positioned to navigate the current uncertain environment and invest in our strategic priorities going forward.
With that, let me walk you through the individual components in a little bit more detail. Revenues increased by 2% in 2025, mainly driven by higher transported volumes. As expected, earnings were lower year-on-year, and that is primarily due to softer freight rates and continued external cost pressure. For this year, group EBITDA came in at $3.6 billion, EBIT at $1.1 billion, and group profit at $1 billion. Overall, the result landed at the upper end of our earnings guidance, and it was slightly supported by positive operational cost one-time non-cash effect in the fourth quarter of around $150 million, which were mainly related to an improvement in our system-supported process for revenue recognition, resulting in a release of provisions.
When we jump to our liner shipping segment, we saw therein and achieved strong volume growth. At the same time, revenues were impacted by softer freight rates, driven by rising trade imbalances and growing global tonnage supply. Operationally, new U.S. tariff policies, continued security tensions in the Red Sea, as we all know, and increasing port congestion all added pressure on costs. Despite this challenging backdrop, we delivered a solid liner EBIT of $1 billion. Jumping over to rates and volumes. In 2025, we transported 13.5 million TEUs, and that represents a volume growth of 8%, which is well above the market. This strong development reflects the successful implementation of Gemini Cooperation and the supporting expansion of our fleet capacity.
A significant reduction in network delays was one of the key success factors that enabled this remarkable volume performance, as you might imagine. The growth is particularly noteworthy given the tariff-driven demand volatility we have had to manage in this year. While market volumes on the Transpacific declined due to the sharp increase in U.S. import tariffs, we were still able to grow our volumes by double digits and gained overall market share. We also delivered above-market growth on other Gemini trades, such as Far and Middle East. On the Atlantic, volumes increased only modestly due to the softer demand between Europe and North America, and we all know why. While operational disruption in several ports limited growth on the Latin America-Europe trades.
After that prolonged decline, the average rate increased by 5% quarter-over-quarter in Q3, supported by front-loading effects especially, but eased again in Q4 to $1,310 per TEU. That is the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, average rate stood at $1,376 per TEU, and that's representing an 8% decrease compared to the year before. Jumping over to our unit cost. They increased by 4% in 2025 to $1,328 per TEU, respectively. Several factors caused this. For sure, higher trade imbalances, fluctuating U.S. tariff rates, and rising regulatory compliance requirements of which structurally increased our cost base. A weaker U.S. dollar, further for sure amplified these effects just named.
Operational efficiency also remained under pressure due to Red Sea rerouting and the persistent port congestion across key hubs. As I've already mentioned with our comprehensive cost savings program Ventus, we began effectively counterbalancing these elevated cost pressures in the second half of 2025 and more to come. Following the successful phase-in of Gemini, the structural benefits of the new network have started to materialize, supporting efficiency and service reliability as key quality factors. Jumping over to the T&I, so to our terminal infrastructure segment, that business delivered strong throughput growth. They benefited from the synergies between both business segments, and they also benefited for sure from the acquisition and ramp up of new terminals. Revenues in the terminal segment increased by 18% to $514 million in 2025.
European and Mediterranean hubs, in particular, saw strong uplifts from stable Gemini connectivity as mentioned already before. Growth was further supported by our acquisition of the Le Havre terminal in France last March, and the ramp up of our terminal in Tuticorin in India. At the same time, the cost base was impacted by operational challenges, particularly U.S. tariff related demand volatility in our Latin America terminals, as well as the unfavorable mix effects, one-off items and ramp up costs associated with the new business segment. As a result, EBITDA remained broadly stable at $152 million, while EBIT slightly declined to $66 million in 2025. Jumping over to the cash flow. Operating cash flow for 2025 for the group amounted to $2.9 billion.
We invested around $1.8 billion, especially new vessels and containers, and also in the modernization of our existing fleet under our fleet upgrade program. These investments are, as you know, key for us to further improve our cost efficiency on the one side and reducing our CO2 emissions across the whole fleet. The net cash outflow from investment totaled to $1.4 billion, and that was supported by $390 million from proceeds from interest, dividends, and divestments we did. All in all, we generated another robust free cash flow of $1.45 billion.
The financing cash outflows amounted to $3.1 billion, a result, for sure, of the dividend payment of $1.65 billion, but also from debt and lease redemptions and interest payments. Our year-end cash balance remained at a very healthy level of $4.1 billion. Looking at our balance sheets, and here you can see that we continue to operate from a very strong financial position, which is really characterized by the liquidity we are having and our low leverage, including our highly liquid fixed income investments and our undrawn revolving credit facilities. Our total liquidity reserve amounts to $7 billion. This, for sure, provides us with substantial flexibility, both to fund strategic investments such as the planned ZIM acquisitions, and to navigate periods of heightened market volatility.
Jumping over to the next slide, let me, before I conclude, take a moment to reflect on our recently celebrated tenth anniversary as a publicly listed company. With our clear focus on quality, we are not only delivering an outstanding service offering to our customers, but have also generated tremendous long-term returns for our shareholders. Since IPO in 2015, Hapag-Lloyd has distributed more than EUR 21 billion in dividends, and that's while consistently creating value and maintaining a strong balance sheet with a prudent financial policy. To continue that and to continue sharing the success with our shareholders, the executive board and supervisory board will propose a dividend of EUR 3 per share at the AGM in May.
This represents a payout ratio of 57% of our group's annual net profit and a total payout of $0.5 billion, and that is fully in line with our dividend policy. Having said that, I hand it back to Rolf for a market update and our financial outlook. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Yeah, maybe say a few words around the market, but in the end, it's always about supply and demand. When we look at global container volumes, I think that the growth of our market has actually been surprisingly robust, at least to many, for the last two years. I think if we look at 2024 and 2025, we saw growth of 6% and 5%. What's even more important is that when we look a little bit deeper into that growth, we see that the growth on the dominant legs, which actually determine how much capacity growth is needed, was even higher. When we look at the growth on the dominant legs, it was actually 10% and 8% in 2024 and 2025.
Which probably also explains why, you know, the perceived overcapacity in the market is probably a lot less than many people feared one or two years ago. When we look ahead into 2026, we expect to see slower growth. Of course, there's a big unknown at this point in time about what the impact will be of the conflict in the Middle East. In all fairness, also for us, that is still very difficult to assess at this point in time. As we look ahead into 2027, hopefully we'll see a slightly more stable market. For this year, demand growth and capacity growth probably roughly in line. Spot rates were remarkably low in the beginning of this year.
I think we saw a decline running up to Chinese New Year, which was much, I think rates were much weaker than one would expect based on the balance between supply and demand. But of course, at the moment, we also have the conflict in the Middle East that is definitely disrupting some of the key corridors, but is also causing sharply increased costs, yeah, and certainly some uncertainty on the rate side as well. Maybe if we flip to the Middle East, what have we done? We have suspended all transits through the Strait of Hormuz, also through the Red Sea, where we were actually getting closer to returning to the Red Sea. We stopped all the bookings from and to the Upper Gulf region simply because we cannot move the boxes. We are adjusting our network.
We continue to offer the connection from Asia to the Middle East, even if in some cases it now goes with a different routing. Costs are increasing sharply. I mean, if we look at the impact that this has on us, then we talk easily about $40 million or $50 million per week that we are facing at this point in time, mainly related to bunker, but also insurance costs are up significantly and so are costs related to storage and in some cases also inland transportation. We have introduced a number of contingency and emergency charges to try and recover that. As you know, these things if they come will always come with a certain delay.
Right now, our priority is to try and mitigate those costs, but of course first and foremost to try and take care of our people both on land and on the ships in the Middle East. That's going to remain our focus for a while. When we look ahead into 2026, we expect a challenging start of the year, yeah, because we have had very significant disruptions in January in Europe, North and South Europe, mainly because of extreme bad weather, which disrupted our network for a fair bit during three to four weeks. Now of course we have the situation in the Middle East. In that context, our outlook remains as we have put it together over the last number of weeks.
That's what you can see here, a group EBITDA of between $1.1 billion and $3.1 billion and an EBIT of -$1.5 to +$1.5. Very important to say here that for us, the implications of the conflict in the Middle East are at this point in time very, very difficult to assess. What we know is that the cost, the extra cost is definitely there. What that will do over time to market rates and when we will be able to recover those costs, most likely that will happen with a delay. That means that we expect to see a soft first quarter. We also see that the underlying demand actually remains robust.
That's also why we stick to the outlook as we have presented it here, that in fairness has not changed materially over the last four, five, six weeks, as it is simply too early to assess what the impact could be net-net of the conflict in the Middle East. Our cost-saving program will continue to lower that cost base, but admittedly, we won't see that in Q1 because we've had a lot of extra costs, but we stay on that trajectory, and in the course of 2026, we will see that coming back. What are our priorities for this year, but also beyond that?
At the moment, clearly the safety of our colleagues, both on land and on the vessels in the Middle East, is a key priority, and we have the crisis team in place to manage that as good as we can on a day-to-day basis. We'll continue to focus on delivering outstanding operational and service quality, as we grow not only our digital offerings, but also as we continuously focus on delivering that 90% schedule reliability. We'll continue to strengthen our organization by developing our people, investing in training and education, and making sure that they get stronger every year. Cost management was already mentioned. Of course a big focus for us is also the timely closing of the transaction with ZIM, where we still need to get all the approvals that we are all aware of.
With that, I think I'll wrap it up from our end, and we'll be happy to take any questions that you may have.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Parash Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. First, if you can talk about how has been the upcoming contracts looks like? In uncertain time, do clients want to enter into contract or they would focus on more a short-term contract? If you can share about expectation both on Asia, Europe as well as in Transpacific.
Secondly, with the Middle East crisis, it's highly uncertain when and how it will end. Where do you sit if this crisis lasts beyond several weeks, do you see a demand destruction as a real possibility? And until now, have you seen any demand destruction as a result of this? Thank you.
Thank you. I think to maybe try to take them one by one. In terms of contracts, I think we've seen a fairly normal contract season. Most of the contracts were also closed before the conflict in the Middle East really escalated. Both on Asia, Europe, and TP, we see similar levels of contracting. The volume that we've contracted is similar to what we saw last year. I think net-net, we see that rates are probably a little bit down, yeah. We have to see a little bit how that works with bunker, but net-net, I think they're slightly down. In terms of the Middle East, whether that can result in demand destruction, of course, it could, yeah.
I think if the conflict lasts long, that will not be good for global trade growth, even if I think that will only be something which is temporary. When we look today at what we see, then, of course, we are missing the bookings to and from the Upper Gulf. When we look at the rest of our business, then bookings remain strong and healthy. I think our run rate over the last couple of weeks has been somewhat lower than planned because we missed those volumes from the Upper Gulf, but the rest is pretty much on plan or even slightly ahead of that.
Just to clarify in terms of the contract rates, does that include the fuel or you have a mechanism to impose the fuel surcharge given the sharp rally we have seen on your contracts?
I mean, that of course normally all those long-term contracts have a fuel clause, yeah. In our case, that is also the case. Pretty much all the contracts have that. Of course, with the formula that we have, then the increase in fuel is going to be reflected in those prices, but with a delay.
Okay. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Alexia Dogani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just to clarify, on Asia Europe contract rates, you said a little bit down year-over-year. Is that low single digits, mid single digits? That would be quite helpful. To clarify. Secondly, you mentioned very helpfully that you're incurring $40 million-$50 million additional weekly cost. I mean, if I annualize it, I get to something like $2.3 billion, which reflects predominantly the bunker price increase we've seen to date. Obviously, you've given a guidance range. What have you assumed within that guidance range, given what you know today? Have you assumed that full cost hits you and you recover X%? Can you just help us understand what you have reflected in your guidance?
Can you give us some indication of what your customers are basically saying about these emergency surcharges you are currently imposing? I think there is some discussion in the industry that perhaps there could be some double-dipping because bunker adjustment factors will eventually catch up. I think you mentioned there is a lag. Putting an emergency charge today is likely trying to double charge. Can you just give us an understanding of what these customer discussions are focusing on? Yes. That's it for now. Thank you.
Let me try and give you an answer to this. I think your first question was on rates in on Asia Europe. On a like-for-like basis, we talk about a single-digit percentage that they are down. Your second question was around, you know, extra costs and how much of that will you be able to recover, and how is that reflected in your outlook. In fairness, that is not fully reflected in our outlook, because we, you know, we did most of the work on our outlook, several weeks ago before the conflict broke out. Right now, we see no reason to adjust that outlook, but the net effect of what that will mean in terms of cost and revenue is very difficult to determine.
To your last point on fuel surcharges, our ambition is clearly not to collect that twice. What we do have is that because of the very steep increase in price that we have, we believe that it is fair that we can pass some of that on to the customers now, and in return, we would then pass on less later. I mean, if you go to the petrol station today, you pay more than you did four weeks ago, and that's not a delay of two or three months because we say that the guy in the petrol station just needs to absorb that, and then we will pay more in Q3. Normally, those type of adjustment formulas that we have, you know, with a couple of months delay work fine.
In a period where you see that costs go up with 60%, 70%, 80%, that doesn't work because for us, it is not possible to then just, you know, pre-fund $50 million a week in extra cost. That's why we have that discussion with our customers, with the clear intention to recover the extra cost, but not with the intention to collect that twice. That's also why when we talk to customers we ask them for the additional charge, but we also commit to then not take that into account when we have to recalculate the regular formula in a couple of months from today.
Thank you, Rolf. That's very helpful. Can I just ask a follow-up? When you look back previous situations where you've seen a supply shock to the oil price, how successful have you been historically to recover the increased fuel costs? I mean, is it usually that you can recover 100%, 70%, 60%? What is kind of the variable that defines how successful you are to recover this increase?
I mean, normally, for all this is all about contracted cargo, which is, you know, say 50% or so of the overall volume. Normally, we have been very successful, and I think that's also fair, yeah. Normally, we have, through our formulas, been able to recover that extra cost. Now we have an extraordinary situation because the increase is so steep, and that's why we believe it's fair that we pull some of that forward. Traditionally, because of the way that the formulas also work, I think this is an agreement that is fair for the lines, but also for the customers.
Thank you. If okay, just one final one. In terms of the fuel inventory, do you hold any actual bunker fuel inventory, which means there could be a delayed effect on the price applied? If there are shipping lines globally that don't hold an inventory, is there like a cash flow issue potentially because of these mismatched, fuel price versus, rate recovery?
I mean, we don't hold inventory beyond what we have on the ships. Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from [Samuel Goldstone] from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. On the topic of the last couple of questions, and around fuel shortages, especially at ports in Asia over the next few weeks and months, are you making any contingency plans for fuel shortages? Or do you believe that this is not a problem that is likely to materialize? Thank you.
I mean, I think the short answer is that we are definitely looking into that, because we also see that there is potentially a risk of shortage. Asia is not one of our biggest bunkering locations, but it is certainly something to keep an eye on.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from Andy Chu from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Could I just ask questions around Q1, just in light of, I know it's a timing issue, but the sort of run rate of $40 million-$50 million of costs that just might be a timing issue. Let's say there's a month's worth of that. That could be triple-digit millions of cost headwinds plus weather disruption in Europe and North America. It feels to me that Q1 could be a sort of very heavily loss-making quarter, albeit with timing effects. Could you just give us a steer as to what the weather effect is gonna be and what we should be thinking of in terms of the print for Q1? Are you looking at sort of triple-digit million dollars of EBIT losses? Is that too negative or about right? Thank you.
I mean, it's still a little bit early to comment on what exactly the first quarter will look like. The first quarter, I mean, we certainly have an extraordinary amount of headwinds because of the very bad weather that we had in January and parts of February, and of course, the extra costs and disruption that we are facing now. You know, I think the scenario that you are outlining is certainly not impossible.
Could I just ask about demand, which is obviously difficult to predict. Obviously, you've got a tough comp as you outlined, two surprisingly good years probably of growth, and you printed 8% growth last year. The comp's quite challenging. Against, I think there was a slide from an industry source saying market growth of 3% for this year, where do you think you will land versus that 3%? Do you think you can grow in line with that, or do you think you'll be now on the wrong side of industry, sort of 3%, if that indeed is the right number?
I think we will still be on the right side of industry, to be honest. You know, Q1, I don't know because, you know, we are a little bit over-represented in Europe, which was particularly hard hit in January and parts of February. When I look ahead into the full year of 2026, then I would still expect us to be on the right side of the industry growth.
Thank you. My last question is around the Middle East. I think you've got some ships that are kind of stranded. Could you just outline what capacity is kind of stranded at the moment in the Arabian Sea? In terms of ports, which of the Middle East ports are kind of shut? How much disruption is that causing you?
I think in total, we at the moment have six ships stuck in the Persian Gulf with a total capacity of about 25,000 TEUs. In terms of the ports that we cannot call, those are basically all the ports that are inside of the Gulf. We are still able to use, for example, Salalah and others, and of course also on the other end, Jeddah.
Right. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. First question is on the outlook. So you are today providing an outlook with a $ 2 billion range. If I look at the outlook for 2025 at the start of the year was $ 1.5 billion, so clearly slightly wider than in the past. Now the key question I guess is what are your assumption around the Red Sea. Is it fair to assume that the upper end of the range basically implies not Red Sea reopening for 2026. Would be my first question. Second question is again to go back to the surcharges, ex the fuel surcharges. So you have mentioned $40 million-$ 50 million times 52 weeks and divided by, let's say, volumes.
I do get something like the amount of surcharges that you've been asking. Am I right to assume that you basically have got a bit of a headwind in Q1 just because of the lag, but then when we think about Q2, Q3, Q4, your surcharges fully cover the $ 40 million-$50 million? Is that the way you have been calculating the surcharges, please? Yeah, probably the third question is on the cost savings. In the slides, you are talking now about $1 billion cost savings, 2026. I think with that, with the Q3 presentation, you were talking about a similar number, but yeah, just to confirm that your view on cost savings this year has not really changed since the Q3 result presentation. Thank you.
Yeah. Let me try and take them maybe one by one. Start with the savings. Yes, you're right. I think our perspective on that has not changed. We've seen good traction towards the end of 2025, so that gives us confidence that one billion is indeed achievable. In terms of fuel surcharge, you are right, yeah, that there is a time lag. How much that exactly is always a little bit difficult to determine also because you just have some load periods that you need to take into account in some trades. So, for sure, we have a mismatch between cost and revenue in March. I think we'll still have some of that in April as well. We do expect to recover that additional cost when we look at the full year.
In terms of the outlook, I think in terms of the Red Sea, I think right now it would not have been right to assume that the Red Sea opens up soon. The scenario where that remains largely closed for 2026, I think is right now the most realistic.
Okay. If I can ask you also follow up on the upper end of the guidance. I mean, what can you tell us about the assumptions you have made on the upper end of the guidance? I assume Red Sea no reopening, as you just said, but anything on volumes and rates for the upper end of the guidance? Thank you.
As I said in the beginning, I mean, you know, I think it's almost impossible to give good guidance at this point in time. We try to take a good go at it, yeah. We think that if you want to get to the upper end of the guidance, then we need to see reasonably strong volume, yeah, where we are able to grow ahead of market. We'll also certainly need to see a normal peak season, yeah, where we see a fairly good recovery of full trades. Then it also assumes, of course, the recovery of the additional fuel cost.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Ulrik Bak from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Just on Gemini and schedule reliability, can you perhaps share the level of schedule reliability in the feeder network compared to the main trade lanes, which I believe is what Sea-Intelligence is tracking, which is the one you showed on the slide? Then also secondly, can you discuss the robustness of this Gemini hub- and- spoke network in a situation with disruptions that we see at the moment compared to your previous network setup? Thank you.
I mean, first of all, I think the schedule reliability as it's being measured includes the mainliners, but also the shuttles. So there's actually not a material difference in the schedule reliability across the network. The second point on how robust it is, I think, you know, this hub and spoke network is definitely more robust than the network that we used to have in the past. If I look at the extraordinary disruption that we have seen in Europe in January, that in our case then led to a drop of schedule reliability of 80% more or less. In April we will be back to 90%. So that has not taken all that long to recover that.
If I compare that to the network that we had in the past, we would have dropped much, much more than 10 percentage points, and it would also have taken us a lot longer to recover. In a way, if you look today at the number of holes that you see in the schedules of some of the other alliances, I think that also tells you a bit of a story, whereas we have barely had to blank anything. To answer your question, the shuttles and the mainliners have a very comparable schedule reliability, and the network that we have today is significantly more robust than what we had in the past.
Thank you. Very clear.
We now have a follow-up question from Alexia Dogani, JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking the follow-up. Just two questions on the Middle East situation. Clearly, you helpfully said you have six ships currently stranded. What's the plan to let these ships exit? Because clearly we've heard from the UN that there's a bit of a humanitarian issue for the seafarers. Are you working actively to try to secure safe passage to basically evacuate those ships from the region? That's my first question. The second question, obviously the region represents something like 3% of global container volumes. How much is the region's demand impaired at the moment? So I understand critical cargo is getting in, but if you said, you know, it's kind of 75% intact, is it 50% intact? That would be just quite helpful to understand what is actually happening to demand near term.
Finally, just so there is no misunderstanding, what is your contract exposure? Is it 50% still? Is it fair to assume that if you are successful in passing on the fuel surcharges, really we will see it in the spot rates, and then the contract share will be adjusted through the BAF? Thank you.
Maybe to take the last one first. I think our contract ratio is indeed still around 50%, and I don't expect that to really change. As far as the ships are concerned that are stuck in the Persian Gulf, we do everything possible to try and get them out, and we will explore every possibility that there is. So far, we have not been able to find one. In terms of volume, I mean, the volume that currently moves into the Upper Gulf via sea is very, very low. Yes, there is some cargo that's being moved on a land bridge, but I don't know the exact numbers. One should assume that the volume that moves there in and out is reduced very significantly. Yeah.
Thank you.
I don't know the exact numbers, but.
That's helpful. I understood the point. I guess kind of on the contract, though, exposure, one question is, obviously the spot rates last week were flat week on week. What does that kind of say in terms of the industry's ability to pass these fuel surcharges currently? I mean, you can argue bunker didn't move that much week on week, but can you help us read the movement in the rates last week, please?
I mean, these things move every week. In the couple of weeks before that, they moved up quite a lot. No, I cannot. If I would be able to read what the spot rates are going to do, you know, then I would probably be in a different business. Yeah. None of us really knows where those things are going. I think it's quite clear that capacity is reasonably tight at this point in time. It's also clear that costs go up, so normally one would expect those costs to trend upwards. Should also not forget, though, that this is more or less the, you know, the slowest season of the year, yeah. There is always a lot of volatility in short-term rates post-Chinese New Year until May, June.
That's the period where it's difficult to assess. Overall, I would still say that especially out of Asia, demand is still pretty strong. Costs are up, so it would be quite logical that those short-term rates also trend upwards. On a week-by-week basis, that's very difficult to judge.
Okay, thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rolf Habben Jansen for any closing remarks.
Okay. Well, nothing to add from my side. Thank you very much for all of your questions, and thanks for making the time to listen to us today. I hope that was informative, and I hope to see or speak to you again very soon. Thanks very much.
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