Evergreen Hands Out Huge Bonuses for Record-Setting Year

Evergreen Marine Corp (EMC), the Taiwanese ocean carrier, is reportedly handing out generous annual bonuses after a great year for the company’s finances. Some employees are reportedly receiving a princely sum equal to 40 months’ salary.

Buoyed by a surge in container freight rates, shipping companies witnessed a tremendous revenue growth. Container-shipping profits amounted to an extraordinary $48.1 billion in Q3 alone.

As for Evergreen, it reported an after-tax profit of $5.7 billion and earnings per share of $1.09 for the first three quarters of the year.

According to Central News Agency, a Chinese media outlet, the big bonuses were issued on Thursday morning. Some took home as much as $72,400 - equivalent to 40 months’ salary. However, EMC later clarified that the bonuses were based on performance, hence different for each employee.

This is a major gain from last year, when top employees were getting bonuses equal to 10 months’ salary.

“Due to the soaring shipping rates, the usually slow fourth quarter has been brisk, with some earnings even better that the third quarter,” said Eric Hsieh, president of Evergreen Marine.

Earlier this year, Eric defended Evergreen’s decision to invest heavily in new builds, specifically a 2019 order for a dozen 24,000-teu containerships. He told shareholders the delivery of the ships, between 2021 and 2023, is well-timed to benefit with the current surge in freight rates. This bet seems to be paying off already.

In this year alone, Evergreen took a delivery of 33 newbuilds totaling more than 260,000 TEU, growing its capacity by 18 percent. Meanwhile, Evergreen is the fourth-largest operator of ultra-large containerships of over 18,000 TEU, behind MSC, Maersk and COSCO.