Overall View

The economic environment remained challenging for HHLA throughout 2015. In addition to further delays in the dredging of the river Elbe and weaker global economic growth, operations at HHLA suffered in particular from the slowdown of the Chinese economy as well as the severe recession and impact of trade sanctions in Russia. These circumstances led to a strong decrease in container throughput at HHLA’s terminals in Hamburg. However, slight growth was achieved in container transport despite the overall market decline.

These opposing trends in HHLA’s two largest segments are also reflected in revenue and the operating result on Group level. There was a moderate decrease in revenue as a whole with a significant decline in EBIT.

In view of the weaker economic outlook, continuing falling volumes in the Container segment and anticipated earnings trend, HHLA updated its earnings guidance for the Group over the course of the year. Actual performance now slightly exceeds the last guidance update. HHLA continued to scale its capital expenditure programme to actual needs. Delays to individual projects resulted in postponements until 2015.

HHLA’s financial position remained stable as of the balance sheet date of 31 December 2015. Changes in capital structure due to negative exchange rate effects from the devaluation of the Ukrainian currency were opposed by positive factors including valuation adjustments to pension provisions triggered by interest rate differentials. The equity ratio rose by 2.7 percentage points to 33.2 % (previous year: 30.6 %), while the dynamic gearing ratio increased from 2.7 to 2.8. Due to the company’s liquidity base as of the balance sheet date, it still has no significant refinancing requirements.