Matson Stock (MATX): Segments, Freight Cycles and Valuation

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-11-07

Matson stock (MATX) is the share of Matson, Inc., the Honolulu company that carries containers to Hawaii, Alaska and Guam and runs an expedited service from China to Long Beach. The quote pages give you the price and a P/E. They do not show you which half of the company earns the money, how violently that money swings with freight rates, or what the stock did the last time the cycle turned, so those are what this page measures.

MATX at a glance

Matson put out its third-quarter results on November 4, 2026 and its 10-Q a day later, so the ratios here pair that quarter’s filed numbers with the closing price on November 6. Segment figures and the dividend come from the results release; earnings, equity and the share count from the 10-Q.

MATX closed 2025 at $123.55, so it was up 71.5% in 2026 to November 6. Its 52-week low close was $102.05 on November 20, 2025, and its highest close on record was $238.60 on September 15, 2026.

How it works

Two segments. Ocean Transportation owns the ships and runs the routes. Logistics sells intermodal rail, highway trucking, freight forwarding (mainly to Alaska) and warehousing, largely on equipment run by others. Its revenue is about a fifth of the total, but its profit is far smaller.

Two kinds of route. The Hawaii and Alaska services carry goods between US ports, so under the Jones Act the ships must be US-built, US-flagged and crewed mainly by Americans; Guam needs US-flagged, mainly US-crewed ships. Hawaii and Alaska volumes have moved by single-digit percentages each year since 2019. The China service, which Matson calls the China-Long Beach Express, competes in the open Transpacific market. Matson sells it on speed, and in its third-quarter 2026 release it called “speed and reliability” its “important differentiators” there. That route is where the big swings come from.

Why profit swings more than revenue. A ship costs roughly the same to sail whether the freight rate is high or low. When rates jump, most of the extra revenue drops straight to operating income; when they fall, the fixed costs stay. That is operating leverage, and almost every big move in this stock traces back to it.

Ocean vs logistics since 2019

Figures in millions of dollars, from Matson’s 10-K and results releases. For every year the two segments add up exactly to the consolidated total filed in XBRL, which is how we checked each figure.

FEU means forty-foot equivalent units, the industry’s count of containers.

Logistics earned between $35.5 million and $72.4 million every year. The ocean line is the whole story.

The 2021-2022 boom and what came after

The run-up. In 2020 and 2021, pandemic demand jammed Transpacific shipping and freight rates surged. Matson added extra China sailings: its China volume rose from 64,000 FEU in 2019 to 184,800 in 2021, almost three times as much, and its 2021 results release put the jump in China revenue down to “considerably higher average freight rates and higher volume.” Ocean operating income went from $90.8 million in 2019 to $1,281.2 million in 2022, 14.1 times as much, and the ocean margin went from 5.4% to above 36%.

The share price ran ahead of it. MATX closed 2019 at $40.80 and reached $124.55 on March 29, 2022, up 205.3%. That close came before the full-year 2022 profit peak was even reported.

The bust. Rates fell back through 2022 and 2023. Ocean operating income dropped 77.0% to $294.8 million in 2023, which the company’s release put down to “lower average freight rates and volume in China.” The stock had already fallen 54.4%, to a $56.83 close on April 6, 2023.

What a public freight index showed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a producer price index for deep sea freight transportation, a broad measure of what ocean carriers based in the US charge, not a China spot rate. Its yearly average rose 37.5% from 2019 to 2022 and peaked at 468.2 in September 2022. Matson’s own ocean profit moved far more than that broad index, because the China route sits at the volatile end of the market and operating leverage multiplies every rate change. In September 2026 the index reached 534.8, the highest reading in its history, and its January to September 2026 average was 18.9% above the same months of 2025.

The 2026 rebound. China volume in the first nine months of 2026 was 8.2% higher than a year earlier, which the company put down to significantly higher demand than in 2025, “when the April 2025 tariffs disrupted Transpacific demand.” Ocean operating income for the nine months rose 37.0% to $437.7 million. Our tariffs page covers how import duties feed into prices like these.

A worked example: the P/E trap in a cyclical stock

The P/E ratio divides the price by the last year’s earnings. For a steady business that is a fair first look. For a freight carrier it can point the wrong way.

1. End of 2019. Price $40.80 ÷ 2019 diluted EPS of $1.91 = 21.4 times. It looked expensive. Profit was near the bottom of the cycle.
2. End of 2022. Price $62.51 ÷ 2022 diluted EPS of $27.07 = 2.3 times. It looked absurdly cheap. Profit was at the top, and 2023 EPS fell to $8.32.
3. End of 2023. Price $109.60 ÷ $8.32 = 13.2 times, with the stock up 75.3% in a year in which earnings fell 69.3%.
4. Today. $211.93 ÷ trailing EPS of $17.54 = 12.1 times. Trailing EPS here is $13.01 for January to September 2026, plus $13.81 for 2025, minus $9.28 for January to September 2025.

Year-end P/E on that year’s diluted EPS ran 21.4x (2019), 12.8x (2020), 4.2x (2021), 2.3x (2022), 13.2x (2023), 9.7x (2024) and 8.9x (2025). The lowest readings came at the profit peak.

Book value and yield. Shareholders’ equity was $2,928.3 million on September 30, 2026, across 29,636,274 shares on the 10-Q cover: $98.81 a share, so $211.93 is 2.14 times book. The $0.38 quarterly dividend × 4 = $1.52 a year, a 0.72% yield. Matson also returns cash by buying back stock: it spent $180.1 million on repurchases in the first nine months of 2026. The dividend yield page covers the general arithmetic.

The original data

Earnings days. The company took the Matson name in July 2012. From its first results report under that name, in August 2012, to November 2026, it filed 75 current reports carrying Item 2.02, the SEC item for announcing results. Matson files after the close, 74 of 75 times, so the reaction day is almost always the next session. The list includes the early “preliminary results” 8-Ks Matson has issued in many quarters since 2020; 18 of the 75 filings were followed by another results filing within 45 days.

The median earnings-day move was 4.57%, against 1.16% on the 3,510 other trading days in the same span, nearly four times as large. A move of 5% or more came on 35 of the 75 earnings days (46.7%) but on 3.0% of other days. MATX closed higher on 47 of 75 earnings days, against 50.4% of other days. If results days were ordinary days, a split that lopsided would turn up about 4% of the time, so it is a modest lean, not a rule. The biggest moves were up 33.4% on July 10, 2020, after a preliminary second-quarter update, and down 16.2% on November 8, 2016. Counting only 2021 onward, the median results-day move was 4.28% across 38 filings, and 27 of them were up. All six 2026 results days closed higher, from +1.2% on November 5 to +10.7% on January 15, which is a short streak, not a pattern.

Download the data: segments, volume and the freight index by year, and all 75 earnings days with SEC acceptance times. Reuse is welcome with a credit and a link, on the terms of our site license.

When it fails

Peak earnings make the P/E lie. The worked example above is the main trap: in 2022 the stock looked cheapest just before profit fell by about three quarters.

The price moves before the profit. MATX peaked in March 2022 and bottomed in April 2023, each time well before the reported numbers caught up. Reading this year’s results tells you where the cycle was, not where the stock will go.

One route carries the swing. Hawaii and Alaska volumes have moved by single digits each year since 2019, and Guam is small. The China service decides whether a year is ordinary or extraordinary, and tariffs, trade disputes and new ship capacity can change it quickly, as the April 2025 tariffs did.

Our ratios age. Each ratio rests on one closing price and one 10-Q, and freight conditions can change within a quarter. Every row in the first table carries its date.

Questions people ask

What does Matson do?

It ships containers by sea to Hawaii, Alaska and Guam, runs an expedited China to Long Beach service, and owns a logistics business that arranges trucking, rail and warehousing.

Does Matson stock pay a dividend?

Yes. The board declared $0.38 a share on October 20, 2026, payable December 3 to holders of record on November 5. That is a 0.72% yield at the November 6 close.

Why did Matson stock fall in 2022 and 2023?

Freight rates and China volume came down from the pandemic peak. Ocean operating income fell 77.0% in 2023, and the stock fell 54.4% from its March 2022 high to its April 2023 low.

Is a low P/E good for Matson stock?

Not on its own. In 2021 and 2022 the year-end P/E was 4.2x and 2.3x, at the top of the profit cycle.

When does Matson report earnings?

In late February, early May, around the start of August and around the start of November, after the close. It sometimes issues preliminary results a few weeks earlier.

Related

Start with the P/E ratio for why cyclicals read backwards, then price-to-book for the asset side. The 2025 trade shock is covered in tariffs, and dividend yield has the income arithmetic. For another filing-based stock page built the same way, see bank stocks. Owning shippers and railroads inside an industry fund rather than one by one is the subject of sector funds.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.