(Yicai Global) Sept. 30 -- Shares of COSCO Shipping Holdings snapped a three-day decline after the Chinese shipping line said late yesterday that freight rates on its trunk routes are stable and its east-west export trunk routes remain fully loaded.

COSCO Shipping [SHA: 601919] rose 4.5 percent today to end at CNY17.28 (USD2.67), after earlier jumping as much as 5.3 percent. The stock had slid more than 20 percent over the previous three trading days on reports of falling international freight prices.

Shipping costs from Nigbo and Shanghai to the west coast of the United States had fallen sharply, according to the head of a freight company in the former city, China Economic Weekly reported on Sept. 28. “The decline of three days equaled the growth of three months,” he noted.

Since the start of this year, international freight costs have risen sharply because of the pandemic. That also had the effect of driving up COSCO Shipping’s stock price by almost 250 percent to CNY34.83 in July from CNY10 in March.

COSCO’s half-year earnings results showed that the Shanghai-based company reported a net profit of CNY37.1 billion (USD5.7 billion) in the first half of this year, a 3,162 percent gain on a year earlier.

But the continued rise in sea freight costs has raised concerns among both regulators and market participants. Sun Wenjian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport, said at a press conference on Sept. 26 that the shortage of empty containers has been largely alleviated with the release of newly-built container capacity and accelerated empty container turnover in China.

CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest shipping company and a major North American carrier, also announced earlier this month that all of its subsidiaries would stop raising spot shipping prices until February 2022.

As a result the market is skeptical that COSCO can continue to grow. On the investor interaction platform yesterday, some investors asked the firm about predictions on its operating performance for this and next year. They also wondered if the rapid fall in prices to the US West Coast means that the turning point on sea freight charges was approaching.

COSCO replied that it will continue to pay attention to future trends in the international market, while seizing the opportunity to establish more stable cooperative relations with clients and constantly improve its ability to defend against external risks.

Editor: Peter Thomas