Danish company Maersk ups full-year outlook

Danish oil and shipping group A.P. Moeller-Maersk raised its expected result for the full year 2014, backed by solid half-year result, the company announced Tuesday.
Maersk now expects its net profit for 2014 to be at around 4.5 billion U.S. dollars, against a previous forecast of around 4 billion dollars.
Net profit for the first half-year 2014 stood at 3.51 billion dollars, up from 1.65 billion dollars for the same period last year, it said in the interim financial report.
The group made net profit of 2.3 billion dollars for the second quarter 2014, up from 856 million dollars during the same period of last year.
Maersk said the result for Q2 was positively impacted by the 2.8 billion dollars gain from the sale of the majority share of Dansk Supermarked Group.
Revenue for H1 2014 rose to 23.68 billion dollars, up 1.5 percent from 23.32 billion dollars for the same period last year.
The group’s container activities made a profit of 547 million dollars for the first six months in 2014, up 25 percent from 439 million dollars in the first half of 2013, thanks to lower unit costs supported by higher bunker efficiency and a volume increase of 6.6 percent
The group’s terminals and drilling businesses also reported profit of 223 million dollars and 117 millions dollars, respectively, in the first six months.
However, Maersk Oil, the group’s oil and gas business, reported a loss of 1.4 billion dollars during the same period due to impairments of 1.7 billion dollars on Brazilian oil assets.
Maersk said the Group’s outlook for 2014 is subject to considerable uncertainties, due to developments in the global economy, the container rates and the oil price.