Wallenius Wilhelmsen, a well-known shipping company specialized in the transport of new cars, closed the third quarter with revenues of 1.33 billion dollars, a 2% decrease compared to the same period last year. Of this, 1.01 billion was generated by shipping activities and 272 million by logistics activities.
EBITDA amounted to 488 million dollars, a 3% increase year-on-year.
“Activity levels and financial performance remained solid in the third quarter and we continued to acquire new business across all sectors, positioning us well for future earnings,” said the CEO of WALLENIUS Wilhelmsen, Lasse Kristoffersen, who nevertheless expressed some concerns for the future, especially regarding the actual suspension, announced last November 1st but never formalized, of US taxes on Ro/RO and car carriers owned or built in China.
Since October 14, a harbor tax of 46 dollars per net ton has been applied to all foreign-built ro-ro ships calling at US ports. However, on November 1, the White House announced a one-year suspension of Section 301 effective from November 10.
“We have not received any confirmation that the USTR taxes for vehicle carriers have been suspended,” Kristoffersen preemptively states. “We have made several phone calls to try and find out, but for now we assume the harbor taxes are set to remain,” he added.
The leadership of the Danish shipping company predicts that the persistence of these naval taxes will expose the liner to an outlay of 100 million dollars just for the fourth quarter and a monstrous figure of /400 million for 2026.
To mitigate the financial impact, Wallenius Wilhelmsen plans to optimize fleet utilization. Since the USTR harbor tariff applies a maximum of five times per ship per calendar year, the company will assign some ships exclusively to US routes to maximize port calls while simultaneously reducing the number of ships entering US ports.
