- Shares of shipping companies have been on a tear in 2021 as supply-chain bottlenecks persist.
- The owner of the Ever Given ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal has gained 273% in 2021.
- In the US, Eagle Bulk Shipping and Diana Shipping are both up over 170% year-to-date.
Shares of shipping companies have been on a tear in 2021 as supply-chain bottlenecks and pent-up demand drive up the costs of transport.
Evergreen Marine Corp - the owner of the Ever Given ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal - has gained 273% in 2021. Another Taiwanese shipping carrier, Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation is up 441% year-to-date. Cosco Shipping Holdings has jumped 110% YTD in Shanghai.
In the US, Eagle Bulk Shipping and Diana Shipping are both up over 170% in 2021. Container liner and leasing companies ZIM and Danaos, are up 282% and 243% YTD, respectively.
The gains come as shipping rates soar. According to Bloomberg, in 2016 it cost just $10 to ship a metric ton of goods from Shanghai to Rotterdam. Now, that same transport costs about $10,000.
The Freightos Baltic Index, which consists of indexes that reflect ocean container transport spot freight rates across 12 global tradelanes, rose to an all-time high last week, per Freightwaves.
"While not every area of shipping is doing well (really the only exceptions are tankers and offshore), the publicly held shipping universe is doing really well. Specifically, 88 of the 98 names we track are trading up on the year and the average price improvement is 72.6% compared to 10.9% for the S&P," said a team of Stifel analysts led by Ben Nolan in a recent note.