DHL Global Forwarding Surpasses Expectations with Record Airfreight Revenues

B767-300F (Photo: DHL)

DHL Global Forwarding, the world's second-largest airfreight forwarder, reported a record increase of 18.7% in airfreight revenues in 2022, reaching €10.4bn, even though volumes decreased by 9.3% to 1.9m tonnes. Despite this, the air business's performance weakened progressively throughout the year. In the fourth quarter of 2022, air revenues decreased by 22.8% to €2.2bn YoY, while gross profits only increased by 10.8% to €421m, and volumes dropped by 20% to 449,000 tonnes.

Deutsche Post DHL, the company's parent, reported that the global forwarding market was unstable throughout the year. According to their annual report, the market volume slowed down progressively due to macro environment factors such as the war in Ukraine, pandemic-related lockdowns in Asia, and high inflation. In addition, the recovering capacity of air and ocean freight markets caused a quick decline in prices in the second half of the year.

DHL Global Forwarding also said that a shift back to ocean freight, which was plagued by disruption in 2021, impacted the volumes primarily on the trade lanes between China and the US as well as between China and Europe. Nevertheless, higher freight rates boosted the revenues, although they weakened throughout the year. In the fourth quarter of 2022, air freight revenue decreased by 22.8%, while gross profit increased by 10.8%.

The overall Global Forwarding division's performance reflected the airfreight business with record revenues but a downward trend throughout the year. Despite this, revenues increased by 32.3% YoY to €30.2bn, and earnings before interest and tax (ebit) rose by 77.4% to €2.3bn.

The DP DHL business, overall, experienced a significant increase of 15.5% YoY in revenues to €94.4bn, and ebit rose by 5.7% to €8.4bn. Net profit also increased by 5.4% to €5.7bn. According to DP DHL, the revenue jump resulted entirely from the international business of the DHL divisions, even though global trade and e-commerce normalized in 2022 as expected with slowing momentum in the final quarter. The company also benefited from the increasing demand for resilient supply chains in contract logistics, especially from high freight rates in the forwarding business in the first half of the year.

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