89% probability Maersk's FY2026 underlying EBITDA reaches at least USD 10.0bn. Guidance was raised to USD 10.5-12.5bn from USD 8-10bn after a Q2 with revenue up 20% and EBITDA up 30%. This carries the lowest confidence in the tranche, and freight-rate volatility is why.
Maersk reported Q2 2026 consolidated revenue of USD 15.8bn, up 20% from USD 13.1bn, with EBITDA of USD 3.0bn (up 30%) and EBIT of USD 1.6bn, more than double the USD 845m of the prior-year period. Free cash flow was USD 549m against negative USD 373m a year earlier. Full-year 2026 underlying EBITDA guidance was raised to USD 10.5-12.5bn from USD 8.0-10.0bn, and underlying EBIT to USD 4.5-6.5bn from USD 2.0-4.0bn, on an assumption that the container market grows about 4% this year against an earlier assumption of 2%. Source: Maersk Q2 2026 results, 13 August 2026.
We lock a binary: Maersk's reported underlying EBITDA for full-year 2026 is USD 10.0bn or higher. Confidence 89%.
Guidance was raised in August to USD 10.5-12.5bn. Our threshold sits USD 500m below the floor of that range, and exactly at the top of the range the company held before the raise.
Every other lock in this tranche sits at 0.91 to 0.94. This one is 0.89, and that gap is doing real work rather than performing caution. Maersk's earnings are levered to spot container freight rates, which are the most violent input in this series — they respond within weeks to vessel supply, canal routing, tariff-driven front-loading and inventory cycles, and they have historically moved by multiples, not percentages, inside a single quarter.
The guidance raise itself illustrates the point. Management moved the underlying EBITDA range from USD 8-10bn to USD 10.5-12.5bn and the EBIT range from USD 2-4bn to USD 4.5-6.5bn in one step, more than doubling the EBIT midpoint. A company whose own outlook can shift that far in a few months is a company whose full-year result is genuinely uncertain four months out, and pricing that at 0.93 because the guidance floor is above our threshold would be borrowing management's confidence rather than forming our own.
What supports the lock is that most of the year is already behind it. Q2 alone delivered USD 3.0bn of EBITDA, the first half is largely banked, and the raise was made in August with two-thirds of the year visible. Rates would need to fall hard and fast in the final months to break USD 10.0bn, not merely soften.
The scoring line names UNDERLYING EBITDA specifically, because that is the metric Maersk guides on and it differs from reported EBITDA.
RAOSCAFF locks P-237 on 2026-08-29, before the FY2026 results. Scored against underlying EBITDA as reported by A.P. Moller-Maersk for the twelve months to 31 December 2026.
USD 10.0bn is the top of the range Maersk held before August's raise. The 89% is lower than everything else in this tranche because freight rates, not guidance, decide it.