Container shipping has become so profitable in 2024 that Maersk is raising its full-year earnings guidance for the third time, increasing its expected income by $2 billion.

The ocean carrier now expects underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to be between $9 billion to $11 billion, up from a previous forecast of $7 billion to $9 billion.

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That range was originally $1 billion to $6 billion when it was first announced in February, before it was narrowed down to a $4 billion to $6 billion range.

Maersk is also expecting double the free cash flow it initially anticipated at least $2 billion, up from the previous $1 billion estimate.

Given the multiple guidance raises from both Maersk and future alliance partner Hapag-Lloyd, the second quarter is expected to bring in another windfall on par with the industry’s $5.4 billion net profit in the prior quarter.

The Danish company didn’t just raise its own profit outlook. The container shipping giant said global container market volume growth for 2024 has been revised up to 4 percent to 6 percent, in a positive sign for global trade for the remainder of the year. The previous growth projection was toward the upper end of 2.5 percent to 4.5 percent.

Maersk said the changes were “due to the continued supply chain disruption caused by the situation in the Red Sea, which is now expected to continue at least until the end of 2024, coupled with robust container market demand.”

Like many of its container shipping contemporaries, Maersk has largely avoided sailing the Red Sea due to the ongoing Houthi attacks on commercial vessels near the area. Instead, these ships have been diverted around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, tacking on 10-to-14 days of extra sailing time for cargo leaving Asia to both Europe and the U.S. East Coast.

The Red Sea diversions have resulted in a cutting of capacity out on the ocean—particularly on the Asia-to-Europe trade lane—with Maersk saying second-quarter capacity on that route was reduced by 20 percent. The capacity issue has been exacerbated by port bottlenecks, where congestion had major hubs like Shanghai, Ningbo and Singapore have thrown ships off schedule and manufactured a shortage of empty containers.

Schedule reliability has clearly been impacted by the port congestion. In June, global schedule reliability dropped by 1.2 percentage points month over month to 54.4 percent, according to data from Sea-Intelligence. This has kept in line with the trends seen so far in 2024, where global schedule reliability has largely been within 50 percent and 55 percent. On a year-over-year level, schedule reliability was 9.8 percentage points lower.