Global trade stays 'resilient' amid tariff fears as shipping giant Maersk ups guidance

Tariff concerns haven’t wavered global trade quite yet, and shipping company Maersk is responding with a higher fiscal outlook for the year. 

The Danish logistics firm, which operates in more than 130 countries, reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday that surpassed analysts' expectations and included an adjustment to its full-year guidance. 

“Even with market volatility and historical uncertainty in global trade, demand remained resilient, and we’ve continued to respond with speed and flexibility,” Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc said in a release. 

The company estimates that in the last quarter, global container demand actually increased between 3% and 5% year-on-year, which it said challenges “the concerns of an immediate collapse in global trade after the U.S. tariff announcements in April.”

It added that the decline in North American imports was offset by “strong” import growth in Europe, Latin America, West-Central Asia, and Africa. 

“A lot of it is driven by a manufacturing boom in China and strong export growth pretty much everywhere in the world except for the U.S. during this quarter, where the tariff-on, tariff-off has had some dampening effect,” Clerc said to CNBC. 

Maersk’s global air freight trade grew in the last quarter as well, noting exports from “Far East Asia” as the main driver. 

The "resilient market demand outside of North America” led the company to raise its yearly outlook. 

Maersk raised its EBITDA guidance for the year to $8 to $9.5 billion, adjusted from $6 to $9 billion. It adjusted its EBIT guidance to $2 to $3.5 billion from a previous outlook of $0 to $3 billion. 

The company changed its projected free cash flow from a loss of $3 billion or higher to a loss of $1 billion for 2025. Its CAPEX remained unchanged. 

Maersk also revised its expectation for global container demand growth from -1% to 4% to a new range of 2% to 4%, noting that demand for the rest of the year remains “uncertain,” saying it can be impacted by a “rapidly evolving tariff landscape and high policy uncertainty in the U.S.”  

It noted that this updated guidance is subject to “considerable macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties.” The company also expects the “disruption in the Red Sea” to last for the rest of 2025. 

“Overall, I think outside of the United States, we see a continued very strong demand and that is fueling the earnings and the upgrade that we were able to do today,” Clerc said to CNBC. 

Its stock jumped about 7% after the bell.