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Hong Kong-headquartered intra-Asia carrier SITC has seen its share price hit record highs in recent days after its board last week voted to approve a special dividend, returning some HK$2.7bn (US$344m) to shareholders.
“The board is pleased to announce that it has resolved the declaration and payment of the special dividend of HK$1 (equivalent to US$0.13) per ordinary share of the company to be payable to the shareholders whose names appear on the company’s register of members at the close of business on 11 December 2026,” it said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE) filing on Friday.
According to the CapitalIQ platform, 49.1% of SITC’s stock is freely floated on the HKSE, with the remaining 51.9% held by a British Virgin Islands company, and together amount to 2.71bn shares out.
Its share price closed on Monday at HK$47.9, just shy of the record HK$52 seen on 13 October, shortly after the special dividend was first proposed.
SITC 10-year share price (Source: HKSE)
It is further sign that investors in shipping stocks are having bumper year, in what Loadstar Premium’s DeskOne has labelled the “Shipping $ Series”, a moniker prompted by a similar “extraordinary special dividend” issued earlier this month by non-operating shipowner Danaos.
The Greek shipowner, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has also seen its stock price break all records in recent weeks, and notified the market it was issuing a $5 special dividend to shareholders in mid-October.
Danaos five-year share price (Source: NYSE)
Meanwhile, approval of SITC’s special dividend followed the release of its unaudited operational performance for the first nine months of the year, which showed the intra-Asia carrier remarkably insulated from most of the geopolitical events battering large parts of the shipping industry.
It reported carrying 2.91m teu during the period, a 5.9% increase on the 2.75m teu it carried in the first nine months of 2025.
Meanwhile, according to Container Trades Statistics (CTS) data from the first eight months of 2026, intra-Asia volume growth stood at 8.6%.
Source: CTS
Although this could be interpreted as SITC losing market share, given the continued strength of the intra-Asia trades it is unclear whether SITC could have taken advantage of that market growth, considering the rather limited capacity of its vessels.
As Alphaliner explained in a September analysis, while SITC is the sixth-largest intra-Asia carrier in terms of fleet capacity, the five larger carriers are all mainline operators that deploy considerably larger ships in the trade than the specialised regional carriers. Alphaliner data shows the average size of a deepsea carrier’s intra-Asia vessel at 2,699 teu, “more than double the 1,338 teu average for regional carriers”.
SITC’s average ship size is 1,444 teu.
Alphaliner added: “SITC, the leading regional carrier in intra-Asia, makes the point vividly: it runs 109 ships, but its considerably smaller average vessel size leaves its total capacity at 157,000 teu, well behind Maersk and Cosco, putting SITC in sixth spot.
“This is in line with SITC’s focus on direct services to smaller and niche ports in Asia, rather than competing on scale. SITC is the only carrier on the list besides Maersk (108 ships) and Cosco (122 ships) that operates a fleet of more than 100 vessels in the region,” Alphaliner wrote.
However, its nine-month earnings appeared to be above market average, with its average freight rate (excluding slot exchange fee income) sitting at $825.90 per teu, “representing an increase of approximately 9.4% from $754.90 per teu for the corresponding period in 2025”.
CTS’s intra-Asia price index for the first eight months shows overall growth of 5.3%, with declines in the first three months completely reversed in the following half year.
Source: CTS
SITC group revenue for the first nine months was up 14.2%, to $2,808.1m, it said in the HKSE filing.