DP World’s gross throughput fell 5.7% in the first half of 2026 while its revenue rose 13.1%, and neither figure describes Jebel Ali. The port that anchors Dubai’s warehouse market appears in the group’s own results table only by subtraction, in a row that reports everything except it. The scenario that follows is common enough to be worth setting out in full, because it begins with a published number and ends with a leasing decision the number was never built to support.
How the read usually goes
A warehouse decision in Dubai needs a demand signal, and container throughput is the signal most easily reached for. It arrives on a fixed calendar, it is expressed in one unit, and it carries the authority of an operator rather than a forecaster. The chain of reasoning is short: volumes through the port rise, cargo needs storing, sheds near the port fill, rents hold. Reversed, the same chain is used to argue the opposite.
The half-year release of 13 August 2026 makes that chain unusable in either direction without one further step. DP World reported revenue of $12,715 million, up 13.1% year on year, adjusted EBITDA of $2,863 million, down 5.6%, and gross throughput of 42,826 thousand TEU against 45,438 a year earlier. A reader stopping at any of the three takes away a global portfolio result and applies it to a single asset.
Where the port throughput read breaks
The break is in the row directly beneath. The same table reports gross throughput excluding Jebel Ali Port at 39,681 thousand TEU against 37,664 for the first half of 2025, a rise of 5.4% as reported. The group states that growth in logistics, marine services and the international ports portfolio helped offset lower activity at Jebel Ali, and that the port remains fully operational with no physical damage.
Two labels are therefore doing very different work in one table. “Gross throughput” is a network aggregate spanning terminals on several continents. “Gross throughput excluding Jebel Ali Port” is that aggregate with the Dubai asset removed, which makes the Dubai asset the only part of the table never printed on a line of its own. Anyone who wants it has to take the difference.
What the two rows produce when subtracted
Subtracting one published row from the other, in the same unit and for the same period, recovers the residual the release does not print. The calculation uses only the as-reported columns, because the like-for-like column adjusts for currency, acquisitions and disposals and cannot be differenced.
| Line | First half 2025, thousand TEU | First half 2026, thousand TEU | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross throughput, as published | 45,438 | 42,826 | -5.7% |
| Excluding Jebel Ali, as published | 37,664 | 39,681 | +5.4% |
| Residual, own calculation | 7,774 | 3,145 | -59.5% |
The residual closes without remainder: the rest of the portfolio added 2,017 thousand TEU while the residual fell by 4,629, and the two sum to the 2,612 thousand TEU decline in the group line. The residual accounted for 17.1% of group gross throughput in the first half of 2025 and 7.3% in the first half of 2026.
Three labels, one port
The annual reporting uses a different measure again. The full-year release of 12 March 2026 put group gross throughput at 93.4 million TEU for 2025, up 5.8%, on revenue of $24.4 billion, and described Jebel Ali not by throughput at all but as around 9% year-on-year growth in origin and destination volumes — a percentage with no level attached, on a measure the release nowhere equates with throughput.
The same release gives Jebel Ali two further figures that are neither of the first two: breakbulk volumes of 5.67 million tonnes, up 6%, and a record 1.5 million vehicles handled across the Dubai terminals, up 18%. Those describe cargo that occupies space rather than passing across a quay, which makes them closer to a warehouse question than any TEU line — and they are published once a year, in prose, without a comparable series behind them.
How the break is avoided
The correction is procedural and costs one line of arithmetic. Where a release reports a figure “excluding” a named asset, that asset is recoverable by subtraction and should be recovered before the headline is used locally. Where the two lines move in opposite directions, as here, the group figure is not a weaker version of the local one but a different measurement. Where the same asset is described by throughput in one release and by origin and destination growth in another, the two cannot be strung into a series.
The second half of the discipline is to stop there. No published series converts container volumes into occupied warehouse metres, and none is improvised here: the relationship depends on dwell time, cargo mix and the share that never leaves the quay, none of which appears in either release. DP World’s investor announcements page carries the regulatory and throughput filings, and no rent or vacancy figure for Dubai sits among them.
Conclusions
DP World’s first-half results for 2026, published on 13 August 2026, show revenue of $12,715 million against $11,244 million, adjusted EBITDA of $2,863 million against $3,033 million, and gross throughput of 42,826 thousand TEU against 45,438, down 5.7% as reported, with the row excluding Jebel Ali Port rising from 37,664 to 39,681. Differencing the two as-published rows leaves 7,774 thousand TEU against 3,145, a fall of 59.5% and a drop in share of group throughput from 17.1% to 7.3%, with the group attributing lower activity at Jebel Ali to temporarily reduced vessel traffic while stating the port is fully operational and undamaged. Against that sits the full-year picture for 2025: 93.4 million TEU group-wide, Jebel Ali described only as about 9% growth in origin and destination volumes, breakbulk at 5.67 million tonnes and 1.5 million vehicles through the Dubai terminals. For anyone underwriting warehouse space, the operative conclusions are three: recover the excluded line before using a group headline locally; keep as-reported and like-for-like columns apart, and keep throughput, origin-and-destination growth and breakbulk tonnage apart as well, since the operator uses all three for the same port; and accept that none of them converts into occupied square metres, because the conversion is not published and neither are the rents and vacancy it would have to be tested against.
This material is informational in nature and does not constitute legal, tax or financial advice.