PRESS RELEASE: DNB Markets has developed an ‘earning’s crystal ball’ by working with Xeneta, the leading global ocean freight benchmarking and market intelligence platform. The investment bank has tapped into Xeneta’s up to the minute long- and short-term ocean freight rate data to accurately forecast the earnings of Maersk, the world’s largest global shipping line, before they are released to the public.
Xeneta, which crowd-sources shipping data from more than 700 leading international businesses, has built a database of over 55 million contracted rates, covering 160,000 global port-to-port pairings. This, according to Nicolay Dyvik, Head of Shipping Research, DNB Markets, sheds light on the complex container shipping market, allowing his team to glean unique insights and make informed recommendations to customers seeking to buy and sell stock.
DNB Markets, part of DNB, one of the largest financial institutions in the Nordics and a key provider of maritime equity research, utilized Xeneta’s data to build a model that accurately predicted Maersk’s latest earnings. It works by estimating average container rates across relevant global corridors, before weighting those averages to produce an overall average rate. Changes in this figure can then predict Maersk’s actual reported rates, allowing for detailed forecasts of revenue, profit and, ultimately, share price.
The Xeneta based model showed a close correlation with the firm’s actual reported rates within the period, with an R2 (financial performance measurement) of 0.93.
“We are constantly looking for data that can have true market impact,” Dyvik explains, adding: “ Xeneta is the only source that provides this for container freight. It delivers detailed, global coverage of both long and short-term rates, allowing us to provide research that accurately predicts changes in earnings for shipping lines.
“Having looked at all data providers available, we are very happy to have finally found one accurate and broad enough to provide value to our clients.”
Xeneta CEO Patrik Berglund comments: “It is our mission to provide total rate transparency, allowing users to make intelligence-based decisions that give them a competitive edge. We are now an established name within the shipping, carrier and freight forwarder segments, where customers know that we help them get the best value for their assets and services. Therefore it’s pleasing to see how our data is now being used within new sectors, such as financial research, to accurately analyze and predict performance.
“We see this as a clear indication that we are the most up-to-date, comprehensive and trusted provider of ocean freight rate data and intelligence in the market. It is now our aim to build on that position and add an even greater depth of data, from our ever-expanding community of contributors, to unlock further insight and value for anyone looking to understand the complex and fast-moving world of freight rates.”
Xeneta, which was last month named as a Cool Vendor in Supply Chain Execution 2018 by acclaimed technology research firm Gartner, Inc., is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with regional offices in New York and Hamburg. The firm has recently moved into air freight in a bid to help customers generate optimal value from negotiations in a segment that shares ocean freight’s rate volatility.
