LONDON — Shares of Danish shipping giant Maersk slumped more than 17% in morning trade Thursday after it flagged “high uncertainty” in its 2024 earnings outlook amid Red Sea disruptions and an oversupply of shipping vessels.

The company also said that it would be suspending share buybacks on the back of the uncertainty.

Maersk said it expected underlying EBITDA (or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of between $1 billion and $6 billion this year, compared to the $9.6 billion recorded in 2023.

Shares were trading 16.3% lower at 12:45 p.m. London time.

“The impact of this situation is causing new uncertainty for how this is going to play out from an earnings perspective throughout the year,” CEO Vincent Clerc told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

“We have very little visibility as to whether this is a situation that will resolve in a matter of weeks or months, or whether this is something that is going to be with us for the full year,” he added.

In a statement, the company added that its board had decided to “immediately suspend the share buy-back programme, with a re-initiation to be reviewed once market conditions in Ocean [division] have settled.”

It comes as the company reported fourth-quarter profit below expectations Thursday, with EBITDA for the three-month period dropping to $839 million versus the $1.13 billion anticipated by analysts.

Global supply chains have faced serious disruption since late 2023 after major shipping companies began diverting journeys away from the Red Sea following a string of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Iran-aligned group has targetted commercial vessels with drones and missiles in what they say is an act of solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing Gaza-Israel war.

The diversions around one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes have pushed up delivery times and costs, with the OECD warning Monday that it could increase inflation.

The Paris-based group said that the recent 100% rise in seaborne freight rates, if persistent, could see import price inflation across its 38 member countries rise by nearly 5 percentage points.

The rerouting has boosted freight rates for shipping companies, but Clerc said it was unlikely that those increases would feed through to profits.

“I don’t think from an earnings perspective, for the industry or for Maersk, when you look at it in its entirety that this is going to be something where we generate significant profit out of the situation,” he said.

“It is something where today the amount of cost we’re absorbing in order to keep the global supply chain going is still unknown.”

LONDON — European stocks started the final session of 2023 higher, marking a positive end to a solid year.

The regional Stoxx 600 index was up 0.26% in mid-morning trade, with all sectors in the green. Thin trade is expected, while London markets close early.

Spanish pharmaceutical group Grifols was the biggest stock mover, climbing 8.9% after announcing it will sell a 20% stake in Shanghai RAAS, a blood products firm, to China’s Haier for approximately $1.8 billion.

The blue-chip benchmark Stoxx is set to have gained more than 12% in 2023, according to LSEG data, just about reversing its 2022 loss.

Germany’s DAX has risen nearly 20% despite the country’s gloomy economic picture, while France’s CAC 40 and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 have gained 16.3% and 3.64%, respectively.

In the U.S., the S&P 500 index is chasing a new record high to cap off the rally of the last two months.

Latest data releases, including Thursday’s on jobless claims, continue to suggest U.S. economic growth is slowing without grinding to a halt. Market bets currently place a 72.8% probability on the Federal Reserve beginning rate cuts as soon as March 2024, CME’s FedWatch shows.

In the final readings of the year, U.S. annual headline inflation had slowed to 3.1% in November from 6.4% in January.

That compared with a drop to 2.4% from 8.5% in the euro zone, and to 3.9% from 10.1% in the U.K. — both of which have also fueled expectations of rate cuts next year amid sharp economic slowdowns in both economies.

“The apparent loss of U.S. economic momentum in late 2023 suits the view that the full impact of aggressive US Federal Reserve rate hikes may still be in the pipeline,” economists at Berenberg said in a note Friday.

“Nevertheless, the Fed remains on track to pull off the usually elusive feat of a soft landing in 2024. The easing of underlying inflation has encouraged bond and equity markets to play the Fed pivot theme,” they added, though they do not expect the first cut until May 2024.

Data on Spanish inflation will be released on Friday.

U.K. house prices recorded a 1.8% fall in the year to December, according to lender Nationwide, a bigger drop than recent polls suggested but significantly lower than calls made for a fall of up to 10% earlier in 2023.

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LONDON — Stocks are heading for a bumper week, but there are many reasons to be wary, one strategist warned on Friday.

“In short, we don’t believe this rally,” Salman Ahmed, global head of macro and strategic asset allocation at Fidelity International, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

“We had tough later part of summer, there was focus on tightening of financial conditions, what was coming from the key central banks.”

“Nothing has changed in a fundamental manner. So we still think that we are going to see more problems ahead as this higher for longer rates profile beds in and starts to impinge on the real economy,” Ahmed said.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index is on course for its best weekly performance since late March, according to LSEG data. That comes off the back of a dire October, which was its worst month of the year, and losses in August and September.

Stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average notched its best day since June on Thursday.

Along with equities, U.S. and European government bonds have also rallied this week as investors interpreted the Federal Reserve’s rate hold and surrounding commentary as a sign that rates have peaked and cuts are within view. That was despite Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s insistence that further hikes were not off the table — in line with central bank heads in the U.K. and European Union.

“If you look at Chair Powell’s speech, it had a hawkish bias to it,” Ahmed said.

Markets are focusing on the sharp increase in long rates, which is helping the Fed tighten financial conditions — but a hot jobs print on Friday and another sticky print on inflation could well force it to implement another hike, Ahmed added.