Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Hapag-Lloyd Analyst and Investor Q1 2026 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. Hapag-Lloyd today is presented to you by CEO Rolf Habben Jansen and CFO Mark Frese. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer 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, sir.
Thank you very much, thanks, everyone, for making the time to join us here today. We'd like to give you a quick rundown of Q1 and hopefully also a little bit glimpse into the future. Maybe if we start with what I would call the key developments for the first quarter, I think it's fair to say that we definitely had an unsatisfactory start to the year. There are reasons for that, nevertheless, if we look back at Q1, I think we would have hoped for a better quarter. If we look at the reasons behind it, one very big reason is definitely the adverse weather conditions that we've had in North and Southern Europe, in January and February, and a bit similar on the East Coast of the United States.
As we are very heavily exposed to those markets, much stronger than many others, that hit us harder than most. We've seen a recovery in those flows in the course of the first quarter, so I think it's a bit of a one-off, but nevertheless, something we could have done without. We've also had the situation in the Middle East, which caused significant extra costs as from March, which we hope to recover through surcharges, et cetera. We'll see that only a little bit later. Despite that, I'd say Q1 has been again a good quarter for Gemini.
We saw that schedule reliability was down, but given the severity of the disruption that we've seen, I think our recovery has also been quite quick, and you will see again in the second quarter that we get back to where we were most of last year. On the terminal side, we saw good throughput growth. Of course, we signed the merger agreement with ZIM and also worthwhile mentioning that the shareholders voted with overwhelming majority in favor of that just two weeks ago. In terms of our earnings outlook, that remains unchanged. A little bit more about Q1 and the exposure that we've had and which caused our results to dip. I think two main or two, three main things to call out.
One is the weather, yeah, that I already mentioned. The other one is significant exposure to the Atlantic trade, which was very weak in the first quarter in particular. We have, as a consequence of that, have had to take some capacity out because it was simply no longer possible to provide those services at a reasonable cost. Of course, we saw the cost going up then on the back of the conflict in the Middle East. I think the thing which is a little bit special about that is that whilst the conflict itself is geographically quite isolated and as such, does not impact global flows all that much, the effect it has on costs of course, have a global effect because with the surge of energy prices, we have seen significantly higher costs hitting us.
I think if we look at what we have today, then we definitely look at EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million extra costs every week. Of course, we try to pass that on similar to when you go to the petrol station and you also have to pay a higher fuel price. Clearly that puts pressure on our business. As far as the Middle East is concerned, we still have a number of ships stuck there, and we cannot go in and out of the Strait at this moment in time. We do serve the Upper Gulf through a land bridge through Oman and to some extent via Jeddah, but of course, those volumes are limited.
Initially, we paused all those bookings into the Upper Gulf. At the moment, we've opened up again for that, and we do provide services both, as I said, through Oman but also through Jeddah. Having said that, this is a solution that is a lot more costly for customers because of course, especially the land bridge is very expensive and the capacity of it also remains somewhat limited. If we switch over to ZIM, before I hand it over to Mark, I think we were pleased to see that the ZIM shareholders approved the merger agreement with Hapag-Lloyd with a very clear majority. At the moment we are going through the process of filing all the regulatory approvals that we need.
On the one hand, in Israel, of course, related to the golden share, we also have quite a lot of other jurisdictions where we need to file, and those filings are being done as we speak. Based on what we can see right now, we would still anticipate to close that transaction in the fourth quarter of this year.
With that, let me hand it over to Mark, who will take us through the numbers.
Yeah. Thank you, Rolf. Good morning also from my side, and thank you for joining us today. The first quarter, as already said, was particularly challenging, with the weak market fundamentals and significant operational disruptions weighing on our financial performance. These effects were driven by sustained pressure on freight rates, the very severe weather conditions Rolf alluded to already and heightened geopolitical tensions, particularly for sure in the Middle East. Despite this very unsatisfactory start to the year, we once again generated a positive free cash flow of $0.4 billion and maintained a resilient balance sheet. For sure, this provides us with substantial flexibility both to fund strategic investments such as the planned ZIM acquisition Rolf just talked about, and to navigate periods of growing market uncertainty.
With that, let me walk you through the individual components a little bit in more detail. Group revenue declined to $4.9 billion compared to $5.3 billion in the prior year quarter, driven exclusively by weaker performance in the Liner shipping segment, while our growing Terminal and Infrastructure business continues to expand its global footprint and deliver improving results. Delivering improving results. Group EBITDA, at $494 million came in below the very strong prior year figure when we benefited from much higher freight rates in the Liner shipping segment. Given the challenging market environment, it was not possible to differentiate ourselves from broader market dynamics in Q1, and that resulted in an EBIT loss of $157 million .
When we jump to the Liner shipping segment, in Liner shipping revenue declined year-on-year to $4.8 billion. That's reflecting softer freight rates but only slightly lower volumes. As mentioned earlier, both the volume and cost trends were impacted by adverse weather conditions, particularly across Europe, as well as softer North Atlantic demand due to prior year front-loading effects and service disruptions resulting from the Middle East situation. In this challenging environment, Liner EBIT dropped to -$174 million. In Q1 2026, our average rate fell to, or fell by 9.5% to $1,330 per TEU compared to the prior year quarter. The strongest rate erosion was recorded on the Asia to America trade due to the U.S. tariff-induced demand fluctuations that we all have experienced.
Transport volumes in Q1 2026 were only slightly below the very strong prior year quarter, when we achieved volume growth of close to 9% due to the start of Gemini at that time. Volume performance was particularly damped on the Europe to America trade by severe weather conditions as well as generally softer exports out of Europe. This also affected the Asia to Europe trades as market volume on the backhaul trades from Europe to Asia continued to decline, and in addition, this trade includes Middle East relations, which were particularly affected by the de facto closure of Strait of Hormuz and the booking stop, I've talked about, to the Upper Gulf regions that we forced to introduce in early March.
In contrast, we were able to grow further and against the market trend on the North Pacific, not supported by improved network coverage and our stronger schedule reliability. Our unit cost increased by 8% in Q1 2026 due to roundabout $1,420 per TEU, which was mainly the result of operational disruptions affecting our volume and cost performance. Handling and haulage, as well as equipment costs increased, reflecting higher terminal storage costs amid weather-related port congestions in January and February, as well as the Middle East disruptions. Higher energy surcharges imposed by vendors globally led to increased hinterland transportation costs. Lower volumes resulting in weaker fixed cost absorption, particularly affecting vessel and voyage.
A significant increase in bunker cost is expected in Q2, which will be covered by our Emergency Fuel Surcharge and the regular Marine Fuel Recovery mechanism. Our cost-saving initiatives are in full implementation that will help to mitigate cost increases and improve efficiency. The transshipment situation has been optimized, particularly by reducing our exposure to third-party feeder costs. Looking now at the T&I performance, in our Terminal and Infrastructure segment, revenue increased strongly in Q1 to $168 million , while EBITDA improved to $47 million . Supported by higher volumes in Latin America and in India, terminal throughput increased by more than 11% to 3.4 million TEU. Revenue growth was further supported by the full consolidation of J M Baxi following the increase of our stake to 51% now.
In addition, European ports generated higher storage revenue due to longer dwell times. Completing the construction, the Damietta terminal in Egypt commenced operation in February, starting to serve as our new East Med hub. Let me now turn to cash flow. The operating cash flow for Q1 2026 amounted to $500 million, reflecting a strong cash conversion of around 100%. Capital expenditures were modest, including first installments for the vessel orders in the sub 5,000 TEU segment. That was, as you remember, announced in December 2025. Further investments included vessel modernization and terminal investments. The net cash outflow from investments totaled to $95 million, supported by proceeds from interest dividends and divestments. Free cash flow amounted to $405 million.
Financing cash outflows were around about $650 million, primarily driven by debt and lease repayment as well as interest payments. In total, our cash balance declined slightly by roughly $200 million to $3.8 billion. Let me finally turn to our key balance sheet figures. We continue to have a robust balance sheet with ample liquidity, including our highly liquid fixed income investments and undrawn revolving credit facilities. Our total liquidity reserve amounts to $6.9 billion at the end of the quarter.
As already announced with the presentation of our full year results in March or late March, the executive board and supervisory board have proposed to the annual general meeting on 20 May, so coming up next week, to pay out a dividend of EUR 3 per share or EUR 527 million in total for the last financial year. This proposal is in line with our dividend policy and balances the interest of all our stakeholders.
Having said that, I will hand it back to Rolf now for a market update and the outlook. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. I think that brings us to market. As always, starting a little bit with supply and demand projections. As you can see on the chart on the left-hand side, we still expect to see decent growth in 2026. I think when looking at this picture, it's really important to understand that the growth in the last couple of years on the dominant legs has been significantly higher than what we have seen on the non-dominant legs. That means that the additional capacity that is required is actually more than what we just see when you look at overall market growth. When we look at 2024, we saw overall market growth of 6%, yet the dominant legs grew with 10%. In 2025, we saw a growth of 5%, yet the dominant legs grew with 8%.
Also this year we see again that the dominant legs grow faster than non-dominant legs. In the first quarter, I think market was up about 4%. I think that planning with a 3% growth for the full year is certainly not odd. Again, when you want to look at the supply-demand balance, please also look at the distinction between dominant and the non-dominant legs, because I suspect that once we are further into the year, we will actually see that the dominant legs grow faster than the additional supply that comes into the market. Then we have to see what's going to happen next year. The market is holding up reasonably well. I mean, of course, we have a single-digit percentage of the market that is currently down a lot, everything in the Upper Gulf.
We see that the remaining market remains actually fairly strong. If we also look at forward bookings and when we look at futures markets, when we look at talking to customers, then I think there is an expectation that we will have a fairly normal peak season. As such, I think the outlook for this year is actually despite all the uncertainty that there is, not only bleak. We've seen spot rates go up a bit. We see now a bit more momentum going into May. Of course, there, the truth will always be, or the important moment will always be end of June and July when we head into peak season. Right now, I think the signs are that we will have a fairly normal peak season, but of course, that remains to be seen.
In the context of all of this, we have confirmed our outlook, but I think, we do that, of course, always to point out that there is still uncertainty. I would say, though, that the uncertainty this year is definitely higher than we have seen in previous years. As such, that's also a reason why we still have a fairly wide range and why it's actually not that easy to determine where we are going to land. I think when we look in the short end, we definitely see somewhat better volumes, yeah. At the moment, we also see a bit of recovery on the Atlantic trade. It will be decisive what is going to happen during a peak season because that's where we'll still need to have a further uptake on the rates as the additional bunker costs still weigh very heavy.
I think Gemini has demonstrated strong resilience and will continue to build on that. Yeah. We do expect to see elevated transport costs, mainly driven by higher energy costs for the remainder of this year. We'll continue, as Mark said, on focusing on getting our unit costs down. We had a really good trend in Q3 and Q4. Because of the bad weather in particular, that's been thrown a bit off track in Q1. We need to get back on the horse on that. Of course, for us, also important to complete the ZIM transaction, as that will also help us strategically as we look ahead in the upcoming couple of years.
I think that brings us to the end of our introduction, and with that, I'll happily hand it over to the operator to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, 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. The first question comes from Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning. Thank you for taking my questions, a couple of them, if I may. The first one on the bunker side, we've heard from some of your competitors, that not only there's been an increase in the actual bunker price, which of course affect your cost, but also that there's been other costs associated with this, for example, conducting bunker, bunkering places where you normally don't do, and so forth. Just want to sort of try to get a better feeling for the expected growth into the second quarter, you know, how much of that growth in the bunker cost will be just purely price-related, and how much will be kind of other cost if I can put it that way. That's the first one.
The second one is on the reliability. You had a slide in the beginning where you showed the decline. I know you talked about bad weather and so forth. None of your competitors have seen a similar development in the decline in the reliability here during the first quarter. Just try to get a sense. Is this sort of a deliberate choice in the Gemini, or what is the reason for this? Last but not least, which is the difference in the growth volumes between you and your partner in Gemini and Maersk, which reported a very strong volume growth in the quarter. Just trying to get a sort of a sense for why those big differences.
Maybe let's try to start with the last one on the growth. I think we saw that if you go to Q1 last year, we had the opposite [audio distortion] Growth rates over that 24-month period has actually been fairly comparable. I expect those things to get closer together again as we move forward. I think this may have something to do with the way we look at things and the way because we also changed a little bit the way we moved out of the previous alliance last year in first quarter and into this one. That will have probably something to do with it. The second factor is that we are more exposed to some of those Northern European markets where we had disruptions and the same for the Atlantic.
That certainly explains some of it as well, but I expect that to be temporary. In terms of reliability, yes, you are right. We had a dip. I think I saw actually also a dip with others, even if it was, if that dip was maybe a little bit less, but it also was from a much lower level. I think what was unfortunate for us is that we were particularly hit hard by the port closure in Tangier, which is something that we have not seen for the last 30 years, and in the first quarter, we were closed for effectively nine days. That's probably the single biggest effect. I also see now that we are getting back to where we were in terms of schedule reliability, so the recovery has been good.
You will also start seeing that in the statistics when you look at those, even if they are typically a two-month rolling figure. Before we will be back up again to the 90 will probably be May or June. In terms of bunker, the main effect you see is definitely price. We do not see significant availability issues at this point in time. You are right that sometimes there's a little bit less choice in, you know, fuel grades that you can take, so you can't always take the most efficient one. That also has an effect. When you look at the overall increase, of course, the vast majority of that is price.
Vast majority means, I think I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but it's probably over 90% of the effect is price.
The next question comes from Cristian Nedelcu from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have three, if I can. The first one on the Asia-Europe trade lane. The spot rates did not increase much since the start of the Middle East conflict, and this implies that on the spot rates, we're not really passing through the incremental fuel cost. Could you tell us a bit roughly what is your volume split for spot versus contract on this trade lane? And to what extent are you seeing some of the clients, especially the forwarders, trying to de-dilute the contracted volumes or put more pressure on the agreed contracted rates in this environment?
The second one is on ZIM. I think there were some articles in the local press that the Administration of Shipping and Ports may be opposing the deal. In this context, would you consider making any additional concessions to complete the deal or any more color that you could provide there? The last one is a bit of general question, but at an industry level, roughly where do you think is the cash break even for the average ocean carrier? I'm trying to think is this the level of rates that we need to see to trigger more scrapping and more capacity rationalization? Do we need to get to that rate where most players are cash break even to become more rational? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me try and answer them one by one. I mean, if we start with Asia, Europe, I think you are right. Far spot rates have not been up or lost. Would say though that the demand at the moment on Asia, Europe is very strong. I would be very surprised if those spot rates are not going to trend up over the upcoming couple of weeks. As we see significant overbooking and as such, there is certainly not a lot of downward pressure on pricing. If anything, there is upward pressure, which probably a little bit later than we would have liked, but I think you will start see
And the data that they are asking for. If I look a little bit more in detail in what we have been doing, we've been filing, we've been receiving questions, we've been responding to those, and now we are in dialogue, which is a very normal process. I see also sometimes things in the press, but in the end the only thing we can do is work with the regulators and try to convince them of the fact that we believe that this is actually for all parties a very good deal. The last point on the industry, what is the cash break even?
I think that's unfortunately really impossible to say because this depends completely on what kind of fleet you have, what your split is between owned and charters and what your trade exposure is. That's too early to say. It's very clear that when you look today at, you know, the results in the liner business over the last couple of quarters actually, that nobody gets anywhere near to recovering its cost of capital. Longer term, yeah, one should expect, yeah, that there is going to be upward pressure also because with the order books being the size.
As a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one. The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got a question on the Red Sea. As some of your peers are talking about possible return to Red Sea in the short term, despite what's going on in the Middle East. Just wondering, what is your view about return to the Red Sea? Do you think we need to see the Iran situation to be completely, let's say, sorted from a political perspective before thinking about a return to Red Sea? You are also considering a Suez Canal crossing with escort, with some escort capacity and on that, how easy is to get escorting capacity? How organized is that sort of capacity? Is it easy, let's say, to have visibility on it and to book it in advance? Is there a sort of priority mechanism where you can book it? Sorry for being long, a few questions on the Red Sea.
The second question is on the fuel pass-through. Just to be very clear, do you think that you have been able to fully pass through the higher fuel costs so far? Do you have an expectation that you will continue to be able to fully pass it through in the next months, or you have seen some pushbacks on that? If I may just a third one, I've noticed that you have made a change in the disclosure when I look at orders after reaching the port of loading. Why have you done that change in disclosure and what does it mean in terms of accounting? Thank you.
Okay. The last question is probably best if Mark takes it or one of the guys from investor relations. If I take the first two on the Red Sea, I think it's still difficult to judge when that is going to open. I personally see it difficult going through the Red Sea as long as the Iran conflict is still ongoing and, you know, just reading the news flow on that conflict is certainly not concluded just yet. In terms of escort, we were prepared to go through the Red Sea under close protection earlier on in the year, it turned out that at that point in time, also because of everything that happened, there was not sufficient capacity available to allow us to go through in a planned and orderly fashion.
We need to see how that develops as we move forward. Right now, there is certainly not enough capacity to guide all the ships through. That's why for now, we still find it difficult to put a real timestamp to when we are potentially going to go back through the Red Sea. Keep in mind that once we do that, we will also try to do it in an orderly fashion. We will not go back with all the services at once because then the terminals in the Mediterranean and in North Europe in particular, and to a lesser extent in the U.S., will collapse. That we will try to avoid, and as such, it will be a gradual process over multiple months. In terms of the fuel, I think roughly 50% of our business runs under contract.
All of those contracts have fuel clauses. That means that there will be an automatic adjustment, and I expect that for that 50%, we will be able to recover the additional fuel costs in full. How much we will be able to recover in the short-term market remains to be seen. In the end, the short-term market is typically an all-in rate. We are starting to move into peak season and as demand is holding up fairly well, I think our chances to recover the full amount of that cost certainly over the next two quarters are pretty good. What happens after that is difficult to judge.
I think in terms of the revenue recognition, I would probably hand it over, Mark, to you or one of the team from IR.
Thank you, Rolf. Very briefly on the revenue recognition. I think it's pretty clear, after the IFRS 15 standard, it was important that we fully implement that and change our view how we look at that. We are coming from, or we went to a shipment-based revenue recognition, that was necessary. All systems were changed to that one, and we were going from an end of voyage to start of shipment view, and that is the change we have seen and fully executed end of the year. What you are seeing now, end of quarter, has that new structure. Yes, there might be a bit of adoption, we have seen in Q1, but from now on, it will be a stable structure, according to the IFRS 15 revenue recognition standard.
Thank you. Apologies for taking too much time. If I can just follow up on the escort capacity. It is just quite unclear to me how does that work. If everyone, let's say, wants to go back with escort capacity and there's no capacity, who is gonna, in a way, take that capacity? Are you secured that capacity ahead of the others, or is this something yet to be, let's say, negotiated, so it's all up in the air? Thank you.
I think it's fair to say that right now there's not a lot of clarity on how that will exactly work. There's lots of discussions going on, but right now we do not have a lot of visibility on that.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Danielle Ward from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much. I just have one question on the ZIM transaction. You have the $2.5 billion of bridge funding. I was wondering if you have any plans to come to the market to refinance that at any point in the near future or down the line. Thank you.
Mark, probably best if you guys take that.
No. Thank you, Rolf. Nothing planned to come to the market on that one. Not needed.
Thank you.
As a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. The next question comes as a follow-up question from Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi again. Thank you for, again, taking my questions. A more general question about the market. I think it's obvious to everybody there's a lot of capacity coming in next year and also in 2028. Just want to hear your take on, I mean, what will be the offsetting factors to all that supply, which looks like it will be a structural supply for at least for a couple of years. Will it be discipline? Will it be slow steaming? Will it be scrapping, or will it be a combination of those three? Maybe, I don't know which one is most important. That's the first part.
Then the second is on, is on the capacity plans for the rest of the year. As far as I can see, capacity growth in the first quarter, with the nominal capacity that you have at hand, was almost flat, up 1%. What do you expect here in the rest of the year, and in particular, maybe in light of your huge utilization and any sort of considerations about conducting further slow steaming, if the prices will stay up at these levels? Thank you.
Yeah, maybe the second one first. I think you should expect that our capacity remains fairly flat throughout 2026. In your second question, you know, what will drive supply and demand? Yes, you were right. I mean, the order book is quite significant. I think the biggest unknown, which has actually been, which has developed very favorably, at least for the industry over the last couple of years, is the growth on the dominant legs, because that's what drives the capacity need, not the overall market growth. That's where I pointed out earlier that in 2024 and 2025, we saw 10% and 8% on that, which was, even if there was a lot of additional supply coming in, that actually meant that there was not a lot of oversupply created.
I expect that this year, the growth on the dominant legs will be higher than the additional supply that comes into the market. We need to see what does that mean also for next year. I think that's a big mitigating factor. Your other point, I mean scrapping will go up. We can all debate about how quickly that will happen, and how much of that will go up, but scrapping will definitely go up. If oil prices stay the way they are today, then also slow steaming will play a role. I think you have to look at those three factors. The growth on the dominant legs, which people typically don't look at because we only look at overall market growth, and then we see this discrepancy.
The second one is scrapping, where it will always depend on how are things in the market, but scrapping will go up. That's for sure, yeah. Your third point on slow steaming. I mean, if the fuel price remains at the levels where it is today, vessel sail will go still somewhat down.
Just to follow up on the slow steaming. How much slower can you go and what kind of, you know, capacity will that tie up if you slower the speed by, let's say, one or two knots?
I think you are right. I think that's probably the margin that you have. It's, you know, one or two knots, and I think that would, you know, typically if you would have an Asia-Europe loop of, say, 12 ships, then you would typically have to add 1 ship. In some other cases, you will not have to add something because you just further streamline the rotation. That's a little bit way to look at it.
Okay. Well, thank you.
We have one more follow-up question from Cristian Nedelcu from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I have a few, if you allow me. How should we think about the second quarter profitability and the moving parts there? I think usually seasonality-wise, the volumes are higher quarter-on-quarter. Could you comment on other moving parts? Do we have a clear framework that says that Q2 will have positive EBIT? The second one, just coming back on the prior question, the slow steaming. Just could you give us a rough indication, if we do slow down from 16 knots, we go down by one knot, does the reduction of the fuel consumption, is that proportional to that, or is it asymmetric so that the fuel consumption goes down by more or by less?
The last one on CapEx, just if you can talk a bit more about the 2026 and 2027 CapEx plans, maybe also around the flexibility and your ability to adjust that CapEx envelope, what is the range there? You know, in the context that if we get a very difficult market next year, what is the sort of minimum CapEx that you could see? Thank you.
Okay. Well, maybe I mean, as you know, we don't provide outlook in terms of profitability by quarter, yeah. I think when you look at the factors that will influence the second quarter, then you are right, one of them will be volume, yeah. Quarter on quarter, I would expect, to be better, yeah. Of course we see also rates being better, but there we still have to see what does the bunker cost and additional cost that we face in other categories do against that, and how much of that do we actually then fully recover. In terms of slow steaming, if you go from 16 to 15 knots, you know, then you do I mean, fuel consumption curve is a bit like in your car, yeah.
The faster you drive, the more fuel you consume, that's not a linear curve. I would not know exactly what the build delta is between 16 and 15 knots or 15 and 14 knots, it is certainly more than the delta with the speed. I think in terms of CapEx, probably Mark, I think it's probably better for you guys to comment on that, we definitely have a fair bit of flexibility on that front. Having said that, our liquidity is also still pretty strong.
Could go down in a very serious situation. That is what I understood. For sure, if you know what our depreciation is and in times when it's needed, there is for sure potential to reduce even further. If it's really needed. That is not planned. We are not talking about what we are planning for because we are not seeing that situation coming. Overall, you have to think along these lines to keep our ships on the needed level and being able to perform our volume plans. That's what more or less what it is.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Chloe Fu from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one is if you can share some color on the Trans Pacific contract negotiation and also the latest booking trends in Q2. Where are you seeing weaknesses or strengths? My second question is around the ZIM deal. Obviously there has been some voices opposing the deal. How likely do you think the deal will pass regulatory approvals given the political uncertainties? If it doesn't, will you consider other ways to acquire capacity to maintain your position as a top five operator, as we see that you're a bit short of order books if the deal does not go through? Thank you.
Yeah, let me try and take those two questions. One, I think on the TP contract season, if you look at the TP contract rates, if you exclude the fuel component, they were a bit down compared to previous year. If we look at market, ZIM is concerned, I mean, we are still optimistic and expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter. I think when you just look at the data and look at the facts and look at the solution that we put on the table, then that is, in principle, a very good solution for all parties. Of course, especially in times as we have them today, we know that there are also emotional and political elements that can play a role. Those are much more difficult to predict.
Right now, we have no indication, other than what we announced earlier that we expect to close in the fourth quarter.
Thank you.
We do have one more follow-up question from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for this follow-up question. I wanted to ask, to what extent you think that the alliances have, let's say, improved versus few years ago when it comes to managing capacity? Do you think that alliances are now more relevant than before in planning capacity, in planning capacity management, and so on? Thank you.
No, I don't see that. I think what we see when you look at the large East-West rates is that there are a number of alliances that work together, but you see also more independent services. I would say that if you would compare it to a couple of years ago, then a somewhat larger percentage was controlled by the alliances. They've always had the possibility to blank sailings or to adjust services, which is also what they have today. I think the only thing that's really changed is that we see a little bit more independence, or standalone services. I think if anything, that ability is probably a little bit less today than it was a couple of years back.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rolf Habben Jansen for any closing remarks.
Not much to add. Thank you very much for your questions. We really appreciate it, and hopefully that was informative for you as well, and hope to hear and see you again soon. Thank you very much.
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