(Yicai Global) Oct.11 -- Shares of COSCO Shipping Holdings jumped after China’s largest container shipping company said it expects net profit to have soared 44 percent in the first three quarters from a year earlier.

COSCO [SHA: 601919] was trading up 4.6 percent at CNY11.40 (USD1.59) as of today’s lunch break. Its Hong Kong-listed shares [HKG: 1919] rose 2.8 percent to HKD9.20 (USD1.17).

Net profit was likely CNY97.2 billion (USD13.6 billion) in the nine months ended Sept. 30, the Beijing-based company said yesterday.

In the first half, net profit was CNY64.7 billion, up 74 percent from a year earlier, figures from the company’s latest financial report showed. According to calculations, COSCO’s profit in the third quarter was CNY32.5 billion, down over 12 percent from the second quarter.

The supply and demand of international containers were hardly balanced, and the export freight rates of trunk routes remained high in the first three quarters, COSCO added, noting that the average value of the China Containerized Freight Index, a Chinese global export container freight rate index, was 3163.95 points in the period, up nearly 32 percent from a year ago.

The signs of this year’s peak season are not very obvious and are related to the return of some effective capacity to the market in the early stage, Chen Shuai, deputy general manager of COSCO, said at the semiannual performance briefing on Sept. 6. The company believes that the demand is at a relatively low point this year, but it is expected to rise in the future.

According to COSCO’s preliminary survey, the market demand will probably rise in the fourth quarter, helping to further improve the overall relationship between supply and demand.

Editor: Futura Costaglione