Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd Q2 2026 Results Show How Carriers Are Paying for the Hormuz Crisis

The two Gemini Cooperation partners reported second-quarter results a day apart, and both raised their full-year guidance. That's where the similarity ends. Maersk had a very good quarter. Hapag-Lloyd had a decent one after a bad first quarter, and paid a much bigger share of its revenue for the Middle East war.

Maersk: rates up 22 percent

Maersk's Q2 revenue rose 20 percent to $15.8 billion. EBITDA was $3.0 billion and EBIT almost doubled to $1.6 billion, from $845 million a year earlier. The ocean business carried most of it. Ocean EBIT was $935 million against $229 million in Q2 2025. Loaded volumes grew 4.1 percent, mostly Asian exports, and the average loaded freight rate rose 22 percent. Ships ran 96 percent full.

Maersk lifted its 2026 guidance for the second time in six weeks. On June 29 it had guided EBITDA of $8 to $10 billion and EBIT of $2 to $4 billion. Now it's $10.5 to $12.5 billion EBITDA and $4.5 to $6.5 billion EBIT, on an assumption of about 4 percent global container market growth.

CEO Vincent Clerc described "significantly more unbalanced trade flows" and "increased congestion and disruption across multiple geographies." He said Maersk is capturing opportunities in difficult markets, and pointed to the need for more investment in port and inland infrastructure.

Hapag-Lloyd: $600 million in war costs

Hapag-Lloyd swung back to profit after a first-quarter loss. Q2 group EBITDA was €712 million ($829 million), EBIT €150 million and net profit €71 million. The liner business moved 3.5 million TEU against 3.4 million a year earlier, and the average freight rate rose 9 percent to $1,475 per TEU.

The headline cost is the Middle East. Hapag-Lloyd puts the conflict's cost headwinds at about $600 million, spread across bunker fuel, war-risk insurance, container storage, rerouting and inland transport for Gulf cargo that can't reach its normal ports.

It raised full-year guidance to €2.3 to €3.2 billion EBITDA and €0.1 to €1.0 billion EBIT. The bottom of that EBIT range is close to break-even, which says a lot about how thin the margin for error is. CEO Rolf Habben Jansen credited "significantly higher spot rates and robust demand," and said the Gemini network is leading the industry on schedule reliability.

Fuel is the big variable

The Hormuz closure hit fuel first. Very low sulfur fuel oil was up about 68 percent between mid-February and early summer, and high sulfur fuel oil up 66 percent. Maersk has talked about roughly $500 million a month in extra fuel costs. Hapag-Lloyd put its hit at €50 to €60 million a week.

Carriers have passed a lot of this on. Emergency bunker surcharges and higher spot rates cover much of it, which is why Maersk's rate gain is so large. But the pass-through isn't instant or complete. Contract customers pay on formulas that lag. Gulf cargo carries costs that are hard to recover at all.

Why the gap between them

Part of the difference is scale. Maersk's quarterly revenue is nearly three times Hapag-Lloyd's and has a large logistics and terminals business to spread costs across. Part is geography. Hapag-Lloyd has a big Middle East book, a legacy of its 2017 merger with Gulf-based UASC, and that's the business the war hit hardest. The rate gap, 9 percent against 22, shows how differently the same market can land on two carriers in the same alliance.

Both carriers face the same next problem. There's a record container ship orderbook, and more of it arrives every quarter. For now, congestion, the Cape diversions and Panama restrictions absorb the new ships. When those ease, the capacity comes back into the market all at once. Both companies raised guidance this week. Neither is pretending 2027 looks like 2026.