Evergreen, the world's third largest container shipper, is likely to face increased pressure on profits in coming months as global supply of new ships outpaces demand, threatening to end a three-year boom fuelled by China trade.
"The market was booming in the second half of last year, which created a very high base. But this year, we've seen freight rates returning to more normal and healthy levels," Nieh Kuo-wei, Evergreen's spokesman, said by phone.
"Our third-quarter net profits have improved from the first and second quarters," Nieh said. "We are cautiously optimistic about freight rates in the fourth quarter."
Evergreen, which owns Taiwan's second-largest airline EVA Airways Corp, earned T$3.504 billion ($104 million) in July-September versus T$4.34 billion a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on the company's nine-month results.
Evergreen earned T$3.19 billion in the second quarter and T$2.97 billion in the first quarter.
Container freight rates between Asia and Europe have fallen 15 percent since last month, while the cost of shipping a twenty-foot-equivalent cargo from China to the US West Coast is 20 percent lower than a year ago. Evergreen earns 60 percent of revenue from shipping goods between Asia and the United States, with the rest split evenly between intra-Asia and Asia-Europe routes.