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Hapag-Lloyd AG is a shipping and container logistics conglomerate headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. Hapag-Lloyd was established in September 1970, following the merger between Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg-American Line. In 2021, its net income was up to $10.75 billion.

Hapag-Lloyd AG doesn’t quite look like the firm it did in the 1970s, having undergone a string of mergers. In 1998, Hapag-Lloyd AG was then bought by TUI AG, eventually becoming a subsidiary of the popular German travel and tourism brand. However, TUI opted to sell a majority shareholding of Hapag-Lloyd to private investors in 2009 after the global financial crash.

Hapag-Lloyd AG has since concluded two further mergers with container giant CSAV in 2014 and latterly the United Arab Shipping Company in 2017.

The price of Hapag-Lloyd stock has been on an upward long-term trajectory in the last decade. It was priced as low as €15 in February 2016 but, during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Hapag-Lloyd share price spiked considerably to highs of €186.60 in May 2020. Analysts were bemused by the rise, given that it coincided with an unprecedented downturn in global commerce, caused by worldwide lockdown restrictions.

Even the company’s CEO, Rolf Habben Jansen, was at a loss to explain why Hapag-Lloyd stock was in such high demand. However, the price contracted just as quickly to €52 by July 2020.

The Hapag-Lloyd share price was stronger still in 2021, buoyed by hugely impressive revenues. In the first nine months alone, they were up a staggering 70% to €15 billion. It reached an all-time high of €439 per share in May 2022. The company’s medium-term goal is to achieve a global market share of 10%.

Hapag-Lloyd AG has a string of powerful competitors within the shipping, sea freight and integrated logistics sectors. Belgian firm Katoen Natie is one such logistics firm, specialising in marine, maritime and shipping solutions out of its Antwerp headquarters.

French firm CMA CGM specialises solely in shipping, with fleets, cargo and containers setting sail worldwide from its base in Marseille in the south of France. Danish company Maersk is one of the few public companies in the maritime logistics industry established back in 1904. Maersk has a global workforce of 95,000 staff, with an estimated company valuation of $37.9 billion.

MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) is another of Europe’s leading logistics and freight forwarding companies, although it is very much a private firm, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.