Bunker Holding closed its 2025/26 financial year with a significant rebound in earnings, though the results also highlight how calm markets can weigh heavily on trading-driven businesses.
The marine fuels group posted pre-tax earnings of $73 million for the year, a 59% increase compared to the prior period, according to Ship & Bunker. Despite the improvement, those earnings remain 36.1% below the company’s five-year average — a gap that offers important context for how the year unfolded.
Stability as a Headwind
Nina Østergaard, the newly appointed chairman of Bunker Holding’s board and owner of parent company USTC, pointed directly to market conditions as a key constraint on performance.
“An unusually stable oil price was one of the defining conditions of the year,” she said in a LinkedIn post cited by Ship & Bunker. “In a business shaped by trading patterns, timing, and market movement, that means fewer opportunities to work with. It also puts more pressure on commercial execution.”
Ship & Bunker’s G20-VLSFO Index — tracking prices across 20 major bunkering locations — recorded an average daily price change of just 0.53% over the ten months to the end of February 2026. According to Ship & Bunker, that represented the lowest daily volatility since VLSFO began trading in 2019.
The Iran War Effect
The final stretch of the financial year told a very different story. Ship & Bunker reports that the conflict involving Iran in March and April drove a sharp spike in price volatility and margins, which will have contributed meaningfully to the final earnings figure. Including those two months, the G20-VLSFO Index saw average daily changes of 0.96% across the full financial year — the highest for a 12-month period ending in April since 2022/23, according to the same data.
The timing meant that while a difficult ten months weighed on results, the late-year surge helped lift the overall outcome.
What Comes Next
With the Iran conflict appearing to be winding down, Ship & Bunker notes that the bunker industry faces a familiar question: will the low-volatility, margin-compressed environment that defined most of 2025/26 return?
Discussions at IE Week in London earlier this year — before the conflict began — were already centered on subdued volatility and intensifying competition from smaller traders, with participants noting the pressure this placed on margins across the market.
Does This Matter to You?
The dynamics described in Bunker Holding’s results are directly relevant to anyone operating in or around the physical bunker market. When price volatility is suppressed, trading margins compress across the board, affecting physical suppliers, traders, and anyone pricing or hedging fuel exposure. The Iran-driven surge demonstrated how quickly conditions can reverse — and how dependent profitability can be on external events rather than commercial execution alone. As market conditions normalize, the structural questions around competition and margin sustainability are likely to resurface.
Gulf Bunkering does not provide operational or security guidance. This article is for informational purposes only. Operators should consult flag state authorities, P&I clubs, and relevant advisories for decisions relating to transit planning.
Sources: Ship & Bunker
