Stopford - Covid and Climate Change: Two big challenges to the Shipping Industry

Yesterday listening to Martin Stopford's interesting presentation in a Capital Link event and lengthy Q&A session, it seemed to me that the two major drivers of events shaping the shipping industry today are Covid and Climate change.  They have a number of similarities. They have far ranging effects on world trade and ship technology that will affect the future.

Covid crisis and climate change start with natural phenomena that have morphed into highly contentious political issues due human response to them and the ensuing politics involved, particularly in the EU and US. 

Viruses and microorganisms are as old as life on the planet.  New viruses appear all the time.  Coronaviruses are well known and this is a new strain of this existing family.  We have had virus outbreaks from China repeatedly in the past years like SARS and H7N9.  Nobody panicked  and eventually these new strains took their course through natural means with human immunity and some efforts for vaccine,  Vaccines are simply an artificial means reinforcement of human immunity systems that would otherwise develop antibodies in reaction to exposure to the virus.  Ultimately there is no other way to deal with viruses.  The human race would have long ago become extinct from viruses if there were not biological immunity systems.

What is startling in the case of Covid is the political response to it that was first initiated in China by mass lockdowns/ social distancing of the healthy population and economic shutdown of production. Historically quarantines in reaction to infectious diseases were done by isolating sick people from the general population and holding travelers from infected areas for a certain period before entry into national territory.  

The Chinese government shutdown had an immediate effort on the shipping industry with a reduction of port cargo movement of 20% on the average, affecting the container industry negatively, forced to blank sailings and facing box build ups in Europe from the imbalances produced by the factory shutdowns in China.

Then there was an even more damaging and recessionary impact on the shipping industry with Western Governments collectively adopting the Chinese lockdowns and imposing them on their populations, quarantining large segments of their healthy population in fear of exposure to the virus, something never done before in human history.  

This has caused a great deal of instability for global shipping. There are projections of significant reduction in world trade this year,  Ship operations have become challenged due difficulties to carry out surveys and repairs. Normal crew changes have become a major problem to carry out .  Economic impact varies by sector.  

• Container shipping was looking to recover with Chinese reopening of factories and increase in port cargo volumes in March, when it got slammed by the recessionary impact of the lockdowns in Western economies that created even deeper losses of revenues and blank sailing. Major container lines have been plagued by poor earnings margins for years.  Some were just beginning to turn profits in 2019.  Now all these major liner companies are likely this year to go back into operating losses.  Stopford feels they will eventually muddle through this, depending on the speed that Western government reopen after lockdown and the severity of the global recession.  Stopford feels that large containerships were always a problematical response to the structural problems of the industry.  Globalization is over after Covid and trade is likely to evolve more regionally.  The use of these units will be restricted and the transport needs will be more for regional distribution.

•  Conversely the tanker sector has been enjoying a bull market with record rates.  This in related to failure of OPEC to extend production cuts and a new price war, when at the same time Western mass lockdowns have provoked a significant drop in oil demand.  The system is flush with oil from overproduction.  This has resulted in a surge of demand for tankers both for transport and storage, even backing into product carriers from refinery overproduction.  Ironically this situation will eventually result in obligatory and severe cuts in oil production and a dead tanker market with fewer hydrocarbon cargoes ahead.  Stopford pointed to the inherent weakness of the tanker sector in his presentation.  For now the tanker companies are the darlings of investors and flush with cash and profits.

•  Dry bulk is more mixed and nuanced here.  This sector has not been very profitable for at least 10 years, except for short rate spurts in certain segments.  The large bulk carriers depends on the steel industry,  coal and iron ore cargoes.  This segment had an awful first quarter with BDI indexes going into negative territory. Stopford does not see a very bright future here for these units with a maturing Chinese economy and the likelihood of stimulus spending to be more focused on technology rather than further infrastructure projects.  The smaller units will fare somewhat better. Panamax units carry more diverse cargoes like grain that are driven by other factors than the steel industry. The smaller sizes carry a much wider range of cargoes, including minor bulk trades.  More of this is related to foodstuff and general population needs. These segments will muddle through the crisis but present rates are low.

Stopford sees a secular trend towards regional trading zones with production closer to consuming areas.  He outlined three recovery scenarios.  All this is related to Western governments and how they manage the reopening of their economies.

This is entirely a political issue and it will have big effects on the depth of any recession. The drop in world trade will be milder than drop in GPD, but the effect on the shipping industry will be far reaching.

I see this as complicated political issue, not directly related to the virus. Western governments have taken unprecedented actions imposing drastic restrictions on their populations and curtailing basic civil liberties like freedom of assembly and religious worship.  All this together with significant social and economic cost on their populations that has led to the specter of global recession.

Scientific studies are beginning to indicate that there is nothing novel about this virus.  Infection rates on general population are much higher than originally anticipated despite the lockdown measures.  Death rates are much lower than wildly inaccurate early studies from places like Imperial College.  There is no easy way for the political class to reopen quickly.  They are fearful of the future political cost of their actions.  How this unfolds in the US and EU depends on the boldness of the political leadership and their effectiveness to return to normalcy and limit damages by getting their populations back to work and reflating their economies with the stimulus programs.

Despite the three scenarios, Stopford closed with a hopeful note that by fall, most of this Covid crisis will be over.  We shall see!

Climate change and environment regulation has taken the back seat due Covid crisis but this is a similar case of politics overwhelming natural phenomena and creating considerable challenges.  The earth has underdone significant changes in climate for millions of years. Anthropogenic causes by burning hydrocarbon fuels are a very recent phenomenon.  Carbon is essential for life on the planet.  There is a natural recycling of carbon from plant life back to oxygen.  Science is even more divided over these matters than Covid and human immunity systems.  The climate depends on so many other unquantifiable factors such as solar radiation and tilt of the earth.

But the present political consensus like the massive Covid lockdowns is that carbon is bad and greenhouse gasses GHG must be reduced and eliminated.  IMO has adopted GHG targets for 2030/ 2050 for which there is presently no technological means to comply.  The EU dominated by Northern European Green parties wants even more drastic measure such as a carbon tax trading scheme imposed on the shipping industry.  Like the Covid lockdowns, these measures will have negative economic impact on their populations, particularly the poorer classes.  There have been mass protests like the Gillets Jaunes in France in reaction to government taxes on fuel, just as in the US there are increasing protests against the government lockdowns. But generally the political class stands firm on these matters and it is not easy for them to back down in terms of their positions for the political cost.

For the shipping industry, Stopford points out that diesel and fossil fuels are far more efficient technologically than alternative fuels.  There is much higher energy content in the fuel.  It can easily and safely be stored on vessels and it does not take much space.  For these reasons, Stopford feels that diesel propulsion is the only alternative for the next generation of ships with a lifespan of another 20 years. 

The innovations in shipping for less fuel consumption and GHG levels will come from 'smart' ships with messages via CPU modules replacing wires, as Stopford puts it.  I would add this would also dictate more use of digitalization and software maximization programs in the offices linked to the vessels that they manage.  Metis - a Greek software system -based on the internet of things is a good example and a number of leading Greek Shipping companies have adopted it.

Stopford then outlines a growing use of LNG and dual fuel vessels. New technologies like this are more easily implemented in short sea shipping in early stages. Already this is the case for use of LNG in the cruise industry and tanker feeder vessels in Europe, for example.  This will lead to a new generation of vessels that will start to replace the  'smart' diesel/ fuel oil vessels. 

Then rather far out, Stopford sees electric vessels with fuel cells powered by hydrogen, etc. None of this is close to reality today.  The fuel cells cannot produce sufficient power and the new fuels presently can  only be produced from processed that create GHG that must be sequestrated.  Many of alternative fuels are noxious and difficult to store on vessels.

It is very intriguing to note that the same political class that supports decarbonization and vigorous climate change regulation also support with passion the mass lockdowns in reaction to the Covid virus  Many are extolling the positive results from the mass lockdowns on the environment with the drop in air and land transportation and falling demand for hydrocarbon fuel. They are the ones most critical to attempts to reopen economies and get people back to work. They are advocating universal income guarantees and green new deals for stimulus as long term solutions. 

They are not keen to return to the status quo.  They are not particularly troubled by adoption of  restrictions of movement and civil liberties on the general population. They tend to be indifferent to empirical scientific method and how it may evolve over the particular ideology that they promote to support their policies and actions.  They are not especially concerned about the social cost and economic hardship on the general population from their decisions. They place more important on their longer term ideological political goals that they feel are good for society and their political careers.

We will see in the next few months how this political debate evolves and how soon we reopen. The political climate is looking toxic and divisive. Inevitably we are entering a new post globalization era for the shipping industry with far reaching consequences.  Stopford parallels the challenges as analogous to the transition from sail to steam in the 19th and early 20th century.  The political and economical ramifications are huge.

Scrubbers revisited.

Back in October 2018, I published on this blog a somewhat negative article on scrubbers as a means of compliance for IMO2020 regulations.  Today we are close to finishing the first month of IMO2020 in full implementation.  I think it opportune to revisit this subject in view of the experience to date with these regulations now in force.

I always saw scrubber refitting as speculative by nature depending on fuel differentials.  I never liked the concept of making a ship a factory to remove sulphur from heavy residual fuel oil.  I considered direct use of compliance low sulphur fuel oil from the refineries as a more efficient solution.  Also I believe in a level playing ground for the shipping industry and scrubbers create a tiered market for the vessel segments where they are widely used.

In fact, the initial fuel differentials have been much wider than initially forecast.  The actual fuel price spreads are well above projected levels to support the scrubber investment.  This has made the prime movers like Scorpio, Star Bulk and others the winners and substantial beneficiaries on the initial scrubber wager. Indicatively, Okeanis VLCC's are earning a staggering US$ 121 m per day as scrubber savings kick in.  The Greek shipowner says it has already made back 44% of the retrofit bill for its big tankers.

Further scrubber refitting is proving to be an excellent asset play.  Close to 20 modern or resale VLCCs are being touted for sale at high prices in a market that is offering shipowners strong returns.

Looking ahead, we do know yet whether fuel spreads may narrow.  The high differentials may be simply a product of the supply disruption in initial market conditions. Over time, the prices may normalize to lower levels.  Fuel spreads may drop significantly.

One issue to be resolved is the matter of the continued supply and availability of traditional heavy residual fuel oil.  Refineries have ramped up production of low sulphur fuel oil and are earmarking HSFO for other uses than marine fuel.  A smaller supply of HSFO and tighter availability may result in higher prices and also storage issues for the smaller quantities in the market for marine fuel.  Already it is reported that there are availability issues for supply of HSFO in the Far East and ships forced to Singapore to bunker heavy residual fuel oil.

In any case, the scrubber school is presently at the top of the shipping world as the winners in this debate. Some are thinking about monetizing their position by selling the scrubber-fitted units at a premium, but this depends on willing buyers and nobody knows how long present fuel spreads will remain of whether fuel spreads may narrow.

Furthermore, dry bulk rates are very weak and tanker rates are falling, so regardless of whether the vessels are fitted with scrubbers or not, the earnings margins are not improving.

Postscript: Fuel spreads have now collapsed with the dramatic fall in oil prices.  Plans for scrubber installations are now facing massive cancellations, particularly in the dry cargo and containership sectors. We will see in coming quarters whether the wagers made by companies like Star Bulk and Scorpio Tankers pan out in earnings results for their shareholders.

CMA-CGT merger with Ceva and its challenges

The Ceva merger is a milestone for CMA-CGT.  It represents an effort to move away from a transport provider business model to a logistics operation, in hopes of creating more value content to services sold and better earnings margins for shareholders

The liner industry has been through years of stress.  This is related to many years ofovercapacity and intense competition sending box rates to very low levels, despite China entering the WTO and a global trade boom with a massive rise in volume of container traffic on head haul routes to Europe and the US for finished goods.

The liner industry has basically exhausted any possible way of improving profit margins within its present business model as transport provider to freight forwarders.

• Initially there was an attempt to move to large tonnage to defend earnings margins by lower unit costs.  The industry moved to Panamax size to post-Panamax for the huge 10.000 teu plus vessels that are employed on head haul routes today.  Whilst this process created a cascading of the small older tonnage to other routes. Every liner company was obliged to follow suit to remain competitive in the alliance system. Financially weaker operators resorted to chartering larger units from vessel provide companies, who could carry them on their balance sheet against the period charters. None of this provided any sustained relief with improved box rates and better earnings margins.  The larger units and cascading generated more overcapacity in the process.
• The Global Financial crisis in 2008 created substantial trade disruption that put all the major liner companies in massive losses.  |Defensively the major liner companies resorted to slow steaming for lower fuel costs and soak up as much tonnage overcapacity as possible.  This mitigated the operating losses and provided some reprieve. Eventually slower speeds became a norm in the liner industry.
• It did not prove to be any game changer, however.  Eventually two major Korean lines - Hyundai and Hanjin - had serious financial problems leading to debt restructuring and the bankruptcy of Hanjin.  The Hanjin bankruptcy helped rebalance the industry. There was a revision of the alliance system to three major alliances.  For a brief period there was some improvement in box rates with this industry consolidation.
• IMO2020 and higher fuel costs is a tremendous challenge to the liner industry.  The liner industry has been the most proactive shipping segment to deal with these challenges.  All the options are painful.  Using compliant low sulphur fuel requires securing in advance necessary fuel supply to support continuation of liner service without disruption.  Fitting scrubbers on larger container vessels is an expensive CAPEX investment and means the immobilization of the significant number of vessels for refitting. Use of LNG requires new building orders for another generation of container vessels.

Last year there was a partial recovery for some of the liner companies, but others remained with operating losses.

After the 2008 GFC, CMA-GGT nearly went into bankruptcy.  They were compelled to take on a Turkish partner for fresh capital.  Only recently last year did CMA-CGT start to generate again operating profits.  This despite a merger with APL and moving operations to Singapore.;

The CEVA acquisition is an major attempt to revise their business model.  But CMA-CGT remains with a weak balance sheet and the merger execution is a major financial challenge for them.  They are looking to divest of their terminal business to raise cash to complete this merger.  CMA-CGT has also ordered a new generation of LNG powered containerships.

CMA CGM is saddled with US$ 20 bio debt and serious liquidity issues.  They must get a grip on  their debt and improve  liquidity in 2020 or CMA CTGT may have to restructure its balance sheet, 

Meanwhile the liner industry faces further challenges.  The Chinese economy is maturing and China is moving to slower GDP growth.  Trade patterns are changing.  Trade is becoming more regional.  Production is moving closer to consumption areas.

The general containership outlook remains bleak.  Box rates are likely to remain low. Older vessels may be subject to extraordinary value depreciation.  We have seen this before with container vessels even younger than 20 years going to scrap.

The only bright side is improved supply-demand balance in interregional trade and better time charter rates for old Panamax vessels and smaller containerships.

The scrubbers conundrum

IMO 2020 is a daunting challenge for the shipping industry. After initially a long period of ‘wait and see’ with considerable verbal resistance to retrofitting their ships with scrubbers, there is a sudden rush since June this year of companies jumping on the bandwagon to retrofit their fleet with scrubbers. Whether over time this proves an effective means to meet the environmental challenges ahead for the industry remains to be seen. It is likewise questionable in terms of the interests of the shipping industry as a whole. 

The IMO 2020 regulation places an impossible burden on the shipping industry. Normally environmental regulations on matters like exhaust emissions start with the engine makers and refining industry, not with the end users of the equipment. 

Here the shipping industry will be monitored and fined for exhaust emissions from not using compliant low sulfur fuel oil (LSFO). The existing fleet is equipped with engines designed to burn heavy sulfur fuel oil (HSFO). It not clear that the refining industry will be able to supply sufficient LSFO. The refinery industry is not mandated to do this under IMO 2020. They do not know themselves how much HSFO will continue to be used and how much LSFO will be needed. Changing the refinery cycle to produce LSFO requires investment. Also possibly this will necessitate change of supply chain for crude oil in favor of lighter crude grades more amenable for production of LSFO.

None of the means of compliance for ship owners is guaranteed to be without risks, expenses and issues. 

• Scrubbers are an exception in the IMO 2020 legislation that allow ship owners to continue to burn HSFO in their engines. No one knows for how long the regulatory authorities will continue to permit this exception. The technology is based on land applications in heavy industries like power plants. Scrubbers are heavy and expensive equipment. The residues from the process have a disposal issue. The process requires additional energy and has maintenance costs. Fitting scrubbers is a costly capital investment in the millions of dollars per vessel as well as requiring off-hire and expenses for installation. The CAPEX may be recovered in the operation of the vessel with cheaper HSFO but no one yet knows how much the price differentials will be between HSFO and LSFO and how long or soon will be the payback. The growing sentiment for scrubbers at least for larger tonnage comes from fear of being left out with charterers, who will give preference to vessels that can burn the cheaper HSFO. Some major oil company charterers are offering period charters at substantial premium to current T/C rates for vessels fitted with scrubbers. 
• Burning compliant LSFO will have considerably higher costs than previously with the HSFO. Nobody knows whether there will be sufficient supply. Ships could be forced to wait for supply and be immobilized. There are no clear fuel standards. There are technical and safety issues in burning LSFO in conventional engines built to run on HSFO. 
• LNG is prima-facie an elegant alternative but this practically can only apply to new buildings since the costs of refitting existing vessels with new main engines is simply not practical nor feasible. The major oil companies are preparing to supply LNG for fuel but so far availability is only at a few major ports and use of LNG as fuel is only feasible regionally in ECA areas like the Caribbean, Northwest Europe and the Baltic Sea. With LNG, there is another potential environmental issue with methane slip, where there might be future regulation. 

Lately in the Trump administration in the US, there is growing concern about the impact of higher transportation costs to consumers from IMO 2020 and talk about finding some means for delay in implementation of IMO 2020. Since these regulations have been ratified many years ago, the general feeling is that delay in implementation is not too likely. Simply, 2020 will be a tumultuous year in the fuel business and there will be considerable lenience until supply issues are settled. 

There will be three categories of vessels: 

• Those fitted with scrubbers, mainly larger vessels with higher fuel consumption that perform long haul voyages. 
• The modern ECO vessels without scrubbers with low fuel consumption. • All the other vessels available. •
• Smaller vessels will be the least affected. Many of them are burning mainly gasoil distillates, trading in ECA’s. They are too small physically to fit scrubbers.

A key issue for the shipping industry is the incidence of the higher fuel costs – on the ship owners or on the charterers? The shipping industry is a very low margin business with some sectors like tankers making operating losses. Already fuel costs are mounting this year with the rise in oil prices internationally. The liner companies are posting fuel surcharges. Already some are starting surcharges for IMO 2020. The shippers are protesting but given that this sector also is low margin and low making, there is not much to protest or otherwise more liner company bankruptcies. 

My view is that the shipping industry would be best served to boycott scrubbers and force the higher fuel costs on the charterers, letting the politicians face the regulators over the higher costs to consumers for use of more expensive fuel. Also slow steaming is a constructive measure that reduces emissions as well as oversupply of vessels for better utilization of the existing fleet. 

The shipping industry, however, is highly fragmented. Shipping companies have no market pricing power. They are price takers. Essentially it is a highly competitive, low margin business with low returns on assets and investment, except for market swings and asset arbitraging. 

2020 will be an interesting year. There may be a silver lining in term of more cargo volume, especially in the product tanker sector to supply LSFO and generally lower supply of vessels with increased scrapping pressure on older, less fuel efficient tonnage and vessels taken out of the market for scrubber refitting.

Brookfield buys into TeeKay Offshore

TeeKay Offshore Partners (TOO) has been an industry leader in the shuttle tanker and floating storage business. It most direct competitor is Knutsen Offshore, more recently listed but an established operator with Japan’s NYK as partners. Although the offshore business is under stress, shuttle tanker are on long term employment, there are entry barriers to the business and the assets are in limited supply. TOO has recently struck up a new business partnership with Brookfield Business Partners - a new dominate shareholder - that rewrites their balance sheet. This ring fences TOO liabilities for parent TeeKay Corp and makes TOO a formidable player in the marine offshore infrastructure market.

Latest 1st Quarter financial results for TOO showed profits of US$ 15 mio and distributable cash flow double that amount. Both the shuttle tankers and the FPSO floating storage business were profitable. There were no Auditors remarks. These were better result than a year ago 1st quarter 2016, when they had some small losses, most likely from asset impairment charges. Their bank leverage is on the high side (70%) but not yet to the point of breaching LTV covenants.

What destabilized TOO was the generally poor business climate and concerns about possible future difficulties. The catalyst for this was last June when their Lenders sold some US$ 75 mio of the company's secured debt in the secondary market at a discount, reportedly at levels between US$ 0.75 and 0.85 on the dollar.

This precipitated a panic in the share price and spiked over to the parent company TeeKay Corp. It was all about future issues, not  present liquidity issues that risked possible insolvency. There was the matter of future asset values for very specialized assets in a narrow resale market. Oil rig assets in recent distressed sales have lost as much as 60-70% of their value. There was the matter of future contract renewals. In fact, TOO was recently obliged to renew at reduced rate one of its FPSO contracts. Queiroz Galvao Exploracao e Producao. Finally, there was the impact on TeeKay Corp struggling itself in the currently beleaguered tanker market.

The situation was an opportunistic investment for Brookfield Business Partners with a capital injection of US$ 610 million. Brookfield is taking a 60% stake in the company. TeeKay Corp retains a 14% share in the business, injecting a smaller capital amount of US$ 30 mio. Brookfield is also taking a 49% stake in the general partner and providing them an intercompany loan of US$ 200 mio, allowing them to restructure their debt and extend maturities.

They are planning to separate the shuttle tanker business from the offshore floating storage and placing an order for four additional shuttle tankers.

Brookfield is reputedly a low risk investor, seeking 15% long term returns, which is a realistic target in the shipping industry. Given the general situation in Offshore and uncertainties with low oil prices, etc,, it may take a few years until recovery but there is a fair likelihood that the curtailment of new offshore projects the last few years will lead to shortages as older fields like the North Sea are depleted and new projects in the future.

Odfjell acquiring Georgiopoulos chemical vessels to be delivered and taking the commercial management of the delivered vessels in a common pool.

When Peter Georgiopoulos jumped on the band wagon back in 2014 and moved into the chemical tanker sector with a speculative order in China and establishing Chemical Transportation Group, it was clear that the MR/ handysize stainless sector was clearly going to be over invested and rates would disappoint from the excess capacity.  I have mentioned this in a prior post: Is Peter G’s sudden foray into chemical tankers a clear signal to short the sector?  http://amaliatank.blogspot.gr/2014/04/is-peter-gs-sudden-foray-into-chemical.html.

Peter was a chemical tanker outsider with no knowledge of the industry and a career of speculative asset plays. Peter G is essentially an asset trader with mixed reputation on operating profits. He has made some very good asset plays and had also some very bad calls resulting in disastrous hits for his investors that crashed into bankruptcy and reorganization like Genmar and Genco.

Now we see Georgiopoulos monetizing half of his chemical fleet and breaking off from his pool managers, Hansa Tankers, to a new pool with Odfjell, who already has Celsius Tankers backed by Breakwater as clients. This appears a wise move on his part. Doubtful that he is making the profits that he expected but then he walked into a sector of the market where he had no experience.

Chemical tankers have had traditionally poorer returns on asset than any other shipping sector. It is small market that is only 3% of the entire tanker market. Stainless steel chemical tankers are expensive, specialized assets that only a few can operate efficiently because of the parcel nature of the cargo lots and the need for a contract base with end users. The vessels are often built to order for the needs of the major operators. It is generally a very narrow resale market where the best contenders are a handful of peer operators. It is difficult to time the sales because the vessels are committed to contracts and cannot easily be freed up. Because it Is a relatively small market size, it does not take a lot of ordering to flood the market with over capacity.

A great deal of ordering has been motivated by the shipyards. In this particular cases, Ding Heng in China wanted to develop a niche market reputation for handysize stainless-steel chemical tankers. Building a stainless chemical vessel is much more difficult than an LPG carrier. In the case of LPG vessels, the cargo tanks are pre-fabricated by the manufacturer and then mounted into the vessel by the shipyard. LPG vessels only have a very few cargo tanks. In the case of stainless steel vessel, the cargo tanks are many and they have to be built into the vessel. This work is very costly and requires skilled welders that know how to work with stainless steel. It can also result in painful, loss making contracts for novice shipyards with higher construction costs, unexpected delays and performance problem.

The Italians built the last generation of stainless vessels back in the late 1990’s under state yard subsidy schemes. They were replaced in part by a new generation of vessel with Marine Line coating built speculatively in Turkey. None of these vessels built every made much money for their owners from these two periods of ordering binges.

The Japanese have been very successful in building high quality clad stainless vessels with very standardized designs without room for modifications. They are supported by domestic Japanese owners, who then time charter them on a long term basis to the major operators like Stolt, Odfjell and Tokyo Marine. These are very reliable cookie cutter designs of good quality.

The above major chemical tanker operators are a ‘defacto’ industry oligopoly. The entry barriers with the end users for major contracts are substantial. They create base cargoes for which profits come from the completion cargos on the spot market. As in any competitive, relatively low margin business, the major operators are best served with a mixed fleet of chartered and owned vessels, where they can add and subtract tonnage according to market conditions. Speculative owners are very much price takers in this process.

Georgiopoulos tried to soften this by turning to Hansa Tankers in Bergen, Norway for pool employment. Hansa was a break off from the collapse of Bryggen Tankers where one of the partner, Hans Solberg, decided to go on his own. Hans Solberg has built up a very impressive commercial/ pool management business in this sector with an impressive roster of clients, comprised of some major Japanese names, some institutional investors in the sector like Princimar and Greek operators like Interunity and Georgiopoulos who moved into the sector a vessel operators without chemical tanker commercial management skills. Commercial management in the chemical sector is a lucrative business.

Currently, the chemical markets are weak. Last year was not a good year and this year is proving difficult. The Odfjell move makes sense and is no surprise as part of the inevitable chemical tanker industry consolidation process. You have a major chemical tanker operator partially absorbing a novice operator as well as undercutting Hansa commercial management and poaching the existing Georgiopoulos vessels to their own management.

Major Management changes after Aegean Petroleum disappoints with signficant earnings shortfall

Aegean Petroleum (ANW) with its unusual business model compared to its bunker supplier peer competitors has been courting trouble for a long time that is finally beginning to roost on is management.  The company reported much worse than expected earnings for 1st Quarter 2017. Its CEO John Tavlarios resigned.  Neither Tavlarios - as director - nor Peter Georgiopoulos as Aegean Chairman garnered enough shareholder votes to continue on the Aegean Board of Directors.  Aegean announced that they want to move to an asset light business model, effectively throwing in the towel and following their competitors’ business model.  In my mind, it was a miracle that they were able to continue their previous course for so long in this brutal, overly competitive, low margin business.

I have been warning for years on Aegean and its weak and incoherent business strategy.  See my previous posts.  Aegean Marine Petroleum Network: lagging competitors with low return on investment and mounting financial expense eroding earnings margins http://amaliatank.blogspot.gr/2013/01/aegean-marine-petroleum-network-lagging.html.

The marine bunker business has the worst earnings margins in the fuel business.  The competition is brutal.  The normal course of most marine bunker companies is eventually to sell out to competitor companies.  Aegean stock price performance – always below NAV - has been crying out for years that its shareholders would be better served by this path given that a merger with an established competitor like World Fuel would offer them better value. 

Many of the peer companies are arms of major commodities traders such as the case of Chemoil that was acquired by Glencore.  Others like World Fuels (INT) are highly diversified in the fuel business in other more profitable areas like fuel for land trucking and jet aviation.  They are companies that have low leverage and are able to finance their sales with ample working capital. 

Aegean followed an inherently Greek strategy to build up assets and leveraged up in the process with debt.  Their IPO was to acquire an owned fleet of double hull bunker vessels and somehow gain competitive advantage with this delivery system. Never mind that marine bunker supply is a trading business and these assets are cost to them as part of their delivery system in their sales to customers, making this a ludicrous strategy for competitive advantage.   

Why Aegean attracted so many major value investors is something that I find inscrutable.  I have done consulting work on Aegean over the years for some of them and the experience was disconcerting.  I discovered the most incredible misconceptions about Aegean.  Many actually believed that Aegean with its bunker vessels was another Greek shipping company with tankers instead of a bunker supplier!!!! They were shocked when I tried to bring them to reality of the Aegean business model and explain to them how the bunker fuel business works. 

Several years later under the urging of Aegean’s founder, Mr. Melissanides, who had some land in Fujairah, Aegean embarked upon a strategy of building oil terminals for its bunker oil to be sold to customers.   

Now liquid storage for third parties as a business Is normally more profitable with better returns than selling bunker oil or even transporting oil for third parties, but this was to acquire the physical commodity and then sell it to its customers in competition with its peer competitors.  The logic was along the same lines as its fleet of bunker tankers.  Adding these assets to the balance sheet as well as the bunker fuel inventory required additional financing, for which Aegean increased its leverage and finance costs. 

By comparison, Glencore – a major trading company – upon acquiring Chemoil started to divest of Chemoil storage facilities to lighten up the balance sheet on the logic that rented space would be cheaper and more efficient.  Moreover, peer competitor companies generally avoid physical bunker commodity, preferring to purchase from producers like major oil companies and hedge their sales to customers with derivatives.   They all fostered an asset light business model to support their bunker trading business competitively given the very low margins on sales.  Concurrently, they wanted to keep finance costs to a minimum. 

Aegean actively bought market share as a growth strategy and raised additional capital to do so.  Over time, Aegean got more and more bogged down with a heavy asset based balance sheet and aimless expansion without a coherent strategy for competitive advantage and better earnings margins. 

Personally, I give enormous credit to John Tavlarios that he managed as well as he did to hold on for so long given the extensive challenges that he faced with such an unproductive business strategy against a lean, brutal competition.  But these dramatic events where Aegean now publicly want  themselves to move to a more asset light business model that they have finally seen the light and thrown the towel here. 

Agile low-cost newcomers are cropping up in their major fuel hubs.  The market is saturated with back to back trading entities.  Aegean is going to have to start selling off its assets, deleverage and consider potentially exiting less profitable markets. 

The biggest jack asses in this mess are Aegean’s two largest shareholders  Canada’s Senvest Management and US-based Towle & Co. who bought into Aegean and are the largest shareholders.  They should have realized years ago the incongruities in Aegean with its asset heavy approach.  The case speaks for itself!  Hopefully, they will work themselves out of this to create some value for their investors.  Despite the challenges, I believe that Aegean shareholders could see better days with the management in the right hands.

Hunter Maritime Capesize acquisition deal flops

It is very surprising that a shipping acquisition deal promoted by the Saverys SPAC, Hunter Maritime and a major NY investment bank, Morgan Stanley would fall flat on its face with investors.  Saverys is a well-known and regarded figure in shipping circles.  Morgan Stanley is a major Wall Street investment bank that has done a lot of  high profile shipping deals.  What went wrong???

This deal was for the purchase of the 175,000-dwt Charlotte Selmer and Greta Selmer (built 2011), the 175,000-dwt Tom Selmer (built 2011), and the 175,000-dwt Lene Selmer and Hugo Selmer (both built 2010). They were all built by Chinese shipyard New Times Shipbuilding.  It was a pure asset deal, not the purchase of a going concern company.  

The originally announced price tag of US$ 139,4 million was higher than the US$ 123 million market valuation.  Eventually the price was reduced to US$ 133.5 million, still a rather hefty premium.   The deal hinged on completing a tender offer to buy back 8.2 million of its Class A common shares, roughly half of the shares sold to the public last year, at $10 per share.  Too many shares were tendered.  

Several knowledgeable sources explained that Investors hated this proposed deal.  Normally to induce SPAC investors to stay and recycle the investor base to de-SPAC, there has to be an acceptable arbitrage over the nominal US$ 10 share value.  The share buyback, moreover, was at par and gave shareholder nothing from it. The deal was poorly put together: small for a US$ 150 mio raise.  Even worse arbitrage and in a sub-sections that traded at a discount of P/Nav!!!  

Morgan Stanley is not considered by the Street a SPAC bank.  They appear to have fallen flat on their faces, unable to help Saverys/ Hunter recycle the shares nor assist in structuring the deal properly to be workable with shareholders in term of the share arbitrage. Why was Morgan Stanley not on the ball here???

Hunter has a 24-month deadline from its public offering last November to find potential acquisitions or return capital to its shareholders. The company said it is still looking for potential acquisitions.

Hanjin collapses into bankruptcy and receivership: Sursum Corda!

I have been predicting this sort  of high profile bankruptcy of a major liner company as inevitable for years now.  There are just too many loss making liner companies and sooner or later state support would reach its limits.  The whole matter of counterparty risk for the vessel provider companies has been misconstrued for years now on the false assumption that the liner companies were just too big to fail. 

Seaspan's Gerry Wang calls the Hanjin bankruptcy a nuclear bomb and mixing his metaphors a 'Lehman moment', but did not Wang see this coming?  For years, he was ordering aggressively and chartering out to loss makers like Hanjin.  His policies contributed to this!

This industry suffers from chronic overcapacity and low margins.  Further their business model based on China and head haul routes is in risk of becoming outdated with the slowing of Chinese growth and trade rebalancing as well as technologically obsolescent with the robotics, 3-D printing, etc.  I have always been in agreement with my friend Christopher Rex of Danish Ship Fund on this industry and its prospects. 

I have argued this time and again with my Wall Street investment bank friends. Hopefully, with this Hanjin case, they will start to wake up and understand better the container industry dynamics.  See some of my  blog articles on this subject over the years.  For example, I was very early to point out the large exposure of Danaos (NYSE: DAC) to financially weak liner companies. 

Danaos was somewhat fortunate with the HMM charters receiving shares in restructured HMM in return for reduced charter rates.  In the case of Hanjin, DAC has estimated exposure of US$ 560 million on Hanjin.  First estimates are creditor returns of 35% for secured claims. But only 5% for unsecured claims and zero on liquidation.  That is quite a mark down!

Over the years, Wall Street has made some bad shipping calls like the earlier reckless, irresponsible dry bulk speculative asset plays.  Investors in shipping stocks have frequently lost their shirts. 

Of course, the great thing about shipping markets as opposed to politics in the US and EU - where the usual reaction is to double up on failed policies, buy time and hide the truth from the public - is that you cannot hide financial losses, financial resources are limited and there are natural market corrections, asset write downs and consolidation.  Raw Schumpeter capitalism always prevails keeping the industry lean and mean over the long run, but not without significant volatility and market swings. 

It is not a good idea to get lost in the noise and ignore supply chain logistics that generates the underlying cargo demand for marine transport.

Hanjin Shipping wins Seaspan concessions: the inevitable for the vessel provider companies!

The current plight of Hanjin is representative for the Liner industry: substantial operating losses, need for recapitalization and over indebted balance sheet.  The container industry panacea of ever larger units to reduce unit costs and defend eroding earnings margins is not working out as hoped.  This has created more overcapacity with cascading.  Now there is talk of the Panamax sizes going for scrap. 

World trade growth is slowing. It is not clear that the old model of large ships for headhaul lines is going to meet the requirements of the future with trade rebalancing in China, robotics and the sharing economy of the future.

The cold truth is that there are already more liner companies than the market can support.  A large number of liner companies are making losses.  Some like NOL have been put on the block for sale and are being consolidated into other companies like CMA-CGM, others like HMM and Hanjin are staving off bankruptcy with financial restructuring.

Vessel provider companies like Seaspan and Danaos have built their fleets by every larger vessels that they let on term time charter to financially weak liner companies that want the larger units to defend themselves from the ordering and competition of the stronger liner companies but unable to carry the vessels themselves on their balance sheets.

I have repeatedly signaled out this risky business policy of the vessel provider companies on my blog.  I have stressed that it was not a sound and sustainable business strategy.  The vessel provider companies would face inevitable challenges in the future as the financial situation of the liner companies deteriorates, leading to bankruptcy and restructuring that would inevitably entail charter renegotiation.  I pointed out the heavy exposure of Danaos to HMM and Hanjin as major charterers.  I stressed the aggressiveness of Seaspan to service financially weak Asian liner companies with ever larger units.  Cosco for example recently announces losses of over US$ 1 billion in their liner business, one of their customers.

I have always felt that Gerry Wang's assertions about having a leasing company business model were overstated and disingenuous to investors.  Seaspan lets its tonnage on time charter with operating risks.  With Hanjin in financial crisis, Wang took the hard line on charter negotiations for investor ears, but Seaspan is in a weak position with its exposure in large containerships.  It cannot easily withdraw and redeploy its vessels because the market for these units is not large.  Inevitably as its liner company customers begin to face financial difficulties, Seaspan has no choice but to accept cuts in charter rates to keep them going with their creditors as long as possible. 

Since the original writing of this piece, Hanjin's restructuring negotiations have not worked out and they are going into receivership.  Seaspan is hoping for a merger between HMM and Hanjin and that perhaps with some sort of state support, they might be able to avoid cuts in charter rates.  We will see over time how Seaspans fares.  This is a test for their exposure to other weak Far East charterers and possible state intervention to keep them afloat.

I restate again these points because I have often met dead ears in NY investment banking circles, still enamored with the containership industry.  Over time, the bankers and financial industry are going to have to face the reality:

• The containership industry is just as challenged as dry cargo with overcapacity. 
• The growth days from the global megacycle and China boom are over and gone.
• Liner companies will inevitably be forced to consolidate for survival. It is not clear that very large containerships will be needed to extent anticipated.
• Vessel provider companies are going to face a long period of thin margins as their liner company employment base shrinks in the consolidation process.
• Inevitably there is renegotiation risk on their charters that they will not be able to avoid with their liner company customers. 

Greek Maritime Cluster: Role of the small family shipping business – challenges and opportunities.

What will be the future landscape of the Greek maritime cluster in the coming years ahead?  The Greek maritime cluster has been facing a period of rising unemployment and shrinkage in the small medium sector,  It has been hit by the bankruptcy of the local banking system, tight money, rising taxation on ships and most significantly the very poor dry cargo markets the last few years, where there is a very heavy exposure.  Generally these smaller private companies have a lot of bias against their larger listed company compatriots and their use of capital markets and private equity money, which they see as an unsustainable passing fad and a primary reason for the over investment in shipping assets and poor markets.  These companies generally have older and smaller vessels, primarily handy size bulk carriers, with the larger better capitalized companies operating also Supramax and Panamax bulk carriers. This sector has been the incubator of the maritime cluster, allowing newcomers to enter.  Given the larger number of this type of company, it is a key market for the local Greek service companies such as chartering and ship brokerage firms, crewing, insurance and suppliers.   As George Economou astutely observed during Posidonia this year, Greeks have been predominate in shipping because they were willing to accept the lower long term returns on shipping assets that others found unattractive. There are a variety of historical reasons for this:   Greece is a small, relatively resource poor country. This drove many Greeks to the sea and created a maritime tradition.  Greece was prior entry to the Eurozone, a soft currency country with constant moderate inflation, where investment in assets was a hedge to currency depreciation and an opportunity for capital gains. Because of the abundance of local seafarers and the family nature of the business, the Greek ship was cheaper and more efficient than most competitors on operating expenses, but this advantage started to erode and has largely been eliminated with the Greek entry into the Eurozone, where Greece lost many other local industries such as ship repairs, textiles, etc. Still today despite the hikes in ship taxation and EU pressure to eliminate Law 89 offshore law, the cost of maintaining a shipping office in Greece is relatively low compared to lower tax jurisdictions in the Far East like Singapore and Hong Kong. There is an abundant supply of personnel with the increasing unemployment in the sector. The Greek business model is owner operator. It is based on owning shipping assets and chartering them out for hire with the crew. About 70% of the Greek maritime cluster is invested in dry cargo vessels because of the lower capital requirements and the ease of entering the sector, which is highly fragmented. The period of growth and success of Greek shipping from the early 1970’s was due to several key factors:     The ability of Greeks to acquire older vessels and keep them running for longer than expected trading life.   The inflation of shipping asset and scrap values along with market fluctuations created significant capital gain opportunities that allowed the company to borrow against higher values to expand and renew their fleets and reduced the nominal value of the bank debt. Abundant bank debt to finance ship acquisitions and roll over the fleet at low cost. Greek shipping was initially fueled by petrodollars and merchant banks, then the German landesbanks and the expansion of the local Greek banks until the 2008 financial crisis and the Greek national bankruptcy within the Eurozone.

The past few years, the climate has changed for Greek shipping. Money has become tight and more expensive, ship values and scrap prices have declined. Earning margins have tightened. The dry cargo chartering market has become more age conscious with a tiered market structure similar to the tanker sector. Ships over 15 years have become less preferred with lower rates with the overabundance of newer tonnage in the market for hire.

Investments in older tonnage at close to scrap levels are no longer a guarantee of safe returns. The earnings margins are very poor, sometimes negative. Often over time, the vessel values erode such that it is not possible over the limited remaining trading life of the vessel to recuperate the asset impairment loss.

This is a highly emotional and very controversial subject in Greek shipping circles. Most of the local Greek shipping industry would vehemently contest this view, but I can safely say that I have seen frequently this phenomenon reflected in balance sheets for older vessels over the last few years.

The present hope today is for a surge in investment in dry cargo shipping assets, even with negative carrying costs as a means of substantial future profits to reflate the sector. This is very understandable with the current depleted balance sheets of the industry and the suffering service industries, particularly the local chartering and sale and purchase firms. A lot of private Greek money has been invested this year in dry bulk shipping assets. More units keep employment for the shipping offices, and create needed income for the local Greek brokerage firms.

For a family business, the top priority is to reinvest in the future of the business that is their prime source of livelihood. Under these conditions, it is quite a different investment decision than an institutional investor or shipping industry outsider. The key differentiating factor is the returns criteria. An outsider is looking for the best possible return for his risk profile in a variety of alternatives. A family business dependent on the shipping industry is willing to live with much lower returns and higher risks initially, even to the point of no returns or negative carry for the prospects of future capital gains. The reason for this is obvious: The critical factor is the future of the family business. A family shipping business without outside investors does not really need profits, investing their own money in their business as long as it stays solvent and supports a good life style.

Another important point to be considered is that the local Greek banks have a lot of older, unattractive dry bulk assets on their books and they will make every effort to keep these assets operating with local family companies rather than scrapping them and taking losses now on weak balance sheets. They will also be willing on a limited basis to finance older vessels for local companies that have the necessary liquidity to carry them.

So there will always be a place in the market, particularly for older bulk carrier operators. More than likely than not, there will be less scrapping and more efforts to prolong trading life than the larger players invested in new tonnage would like to see. The fragmented nature of the bulk carrier industry will allow space for this, even with the lower operating costs and fuel consumption of the newer vessels because the family operator will accept lower margin business and remain viable.

Unless present economic conditions change, however, I do think that there will be inevitable further consolidation in the Greek shipping SME’s as well as the larger operators and less space for new comers in the industry. The profits on capital gains will be subdued and below expectations for some time to come because ship replacement value will remain low and there will not be sufficient banking liquidity to support the sale and purchase turn overs to generate a significant rise in asset prices. The older tonnage will eventually be scrapped at low prices.

Those companies with resources to invest in younger vessels, build up larger fleets and develop good trading platforms will be the best positioned for the future.

BREXIT and other challenges for Greek Shipping

Despite a successful Posidonia this year, our shipping cluster is facing many challenges.  Our competitors in Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark) and Far East (Singapore, Hong Kong) are not in the deep shackles of Eurozone creditors and their debtor in possession bailouts nor the scorched earth of a bankrupt local banking system from years of depression, double digit unemployment/ emigrating youth. 

These countries have their own issues, but no crushing legacy debt burden and also more promising growth prospects than the EU, whose share in world trade has been steadily shrinking over the years and suffers from serious structural problems with a political class in self-denial and complacency and dangerously disconnected from an increasingly desperate electorate on which they have been consistently exploiting by monetizing enormous financial losses from years of constant policy failures.

These points have become even more salient by the recent BREXIT vote in the UK, which is both a challenge and opportunity.   If the EU choses to punish the United Kingdom by repressive actions for the anti-EU popular vote, this will not only disrupt existing trade relations and cause a general recession in Europe but also further  inflame voter antipathy to the EU elite and more exit-type referendums. If the EU opens a dialogue to correct its existing dysfunctionalities and gives more devolution to its members, this may actually lead to better growth and more harmonious trade relations.

The Scottish issue is a microcosm of Greece.  The Scots live above their means with perks like a generous pension system, subsidized by British taxpayers.  The EU could encourage the Scots to seek direct EU membership to spite and pressure the withdrawing UK, but such actions would be detrimental to both the Scottish people and the EU with another weak new member needy of EU transfer funds and who cannot support a heavy currency like the Euro (more of the same EU failure pattern).  In a short time, Scottish unemployment would rise, more Scottish youth will emigrate and Scotland will be become a debt slave of Brussels.  An ‘emancipation’ that risks degenerating to Brussels colonialization and an additional EU vassal state that the Brussels would be ill supported to carry.

The better outcome would be that the UK is given an exit agreement similar to the present EU trade status of Norway.   This arrangement could become a benchmark for other suffering EU members, who want more sovereignty and breathing space from Brussels bureaucracy and escape the stranglehold of German debt deflation economics for better growth rates.  It might even facilitate a future GREXIT along with generous debt forgiveness to allow a new start to Greece as another Norway-like associate membership.  That would be more suitable for Greece as a sea power and on the EU Periphery.  

A customs zone for the EU Periphery would be the best outcome, where the core might still remain in the Eurozone and could support more integration in a controlled and workable context that is unworkable for the periphery countries.

Finally our maritime cluster has excessive exposure in dry bulk, where there are few entry barriers, low earnings margins, no control over pricing and tremendous over supply of ships. 

The Greek vessel provider business model is very heavy in relatively low yielding assets and weak on commercial, trading platform.  This setup works extremely well coupled with low cost bank leverage in times of high inflation, but it’s not effective in times of deflation, where the bank debt and interest expense burn up liquidity and eventually lead to negative equity and bankruptcy or zombification from pretend and extend lending practices of which the Germans are probably the world champions. 

Our maritime cluster needs to take more elements from Norway and Denmark, moving to a wider marine service economy with a bigger cargo operator element over the current vessel provider business model.  We also need to lighten up and consolidate on dry cargo exposure as well as continue expansion into more diverse marine sectors like industrial shipping where there is better pricing power, more of a trading element and less asset speculation.

Pyxis reverse merger: an imaginative capital market entry with big challenges

Pyxis marked the first time a Greek managed shipping company became publicly listed via a reverse merger.  They are merging with a San Francisco-based tech outfit LookSmart, already listed.

It was a novel entry to public markets by a small product tanker company, who failed to develop sufficient interest in a previous attempt to do an initial public offering. Will this entry allow them to raise capital in public markets as they would like, or will it prove in the end nothing more a Pyrrhic victory that simply increases administrative expenses for the public listing without any benefits to capital markets access for fund raising?

Present conditions in capital markets this year have not been easy for fund raising in shipping ventures. Enthusiasm and interest among institutional investors to put money on shipping assets has waned considerably over the past two years. Funding for expansion has reverted again to traditional bank financing. The market has become generally very selective on shipping projects.

Investors have been burned by bad positions in dry cargo shipping companies, where the markets turned against them, ship values have declined and these companies are making substantial operating losses. Even in the tanker sector, which is doing quite well this year with resurgence in freight rates and cargo volumes, investor interest is limited only to a handful of large tanker companies. Conversely, a number of private equity joint ventures are putting their tanker assets on the market for sale to monetize their positions.

Pyxis would probably never have succeeded in their reverse merger operation without the support of Larry Glassberg at Maxim Securities. Maxim is mid-sized investment banking firm that has not only a base of institutional investors but also a substantial base of retail investors. Glassberg has an exceedingly long experience in the investment bank industry and shipping operations.

Pyxis did not attract sufficient interest for an IPO (initial public offering) because it is a relatively small operation with a fleet of six MR product tankers, two smaller chemical feeder tankers and one MR new order yet to be delivered. Vessel age ranges from three units built in the late 2000’s to a small two-vessel MR NB order of which one unit has been delivered.

The company is certainly on the right side of the market in product tankers, but they face much larger peer companies like Ardmore and Scorpio Tankers. Major established companies like BW Pacific and Hafnia Tankers would like to list publicly, but are themselves constrained to wait for improved market conditions to do an IPO listing. It’s only a matter of stock flotation, but also obtaining favorable valuation with their listed peer tanker companies still trading below or close to NAV despite a surge in profits. This was a basic hurdle that Wilbur Ross was not willing to accept in the case of Diamond S going public.

Vessel values have improved but still remain below what would be expected given current earnings. Part of this may also be due to the restricted bank financing market, where loans are given only to existing customers and preference to larger clients.

The true test here will be if Pyxis can leverage their public listing to raise capital to facilitate growth. That is clearly the motivation of Pyxis for the costs and increased administrative expense of a publicly listed company. With a fleet of eight vessels, they will have to absorb additional administrative expenses of at least US$ 800.000 to 1.000.000 annually. Pyxis as a listed company has an estimated US$ 70 million market cap, of which US$ 66 million will be controlled by its principal, Eddie Valentis. The remaining US$ 4 million of stock has traded less than $100,000 per day. Pyxis remains essentially a private company under total control of its owner. It has no trading volume and will not attract any analyst coverage.

Going into the market to raise capital, the valuation issue becomes critical. Pyxis will likely trade at a discount to NAV [net asset value] and to established companies like Ardmore Shipping or Scorpio Tankers. Should investors put a low valuation, what will be the appetite of the principal shareholder, Eddie Valentis, to dilute his personal share holdings, selling his stock to investors at a discount? Of course, there are other means to raise capital. Pyxis could look to bond issues, for example. Financial expense will be higher than a conventional bank loan, but amortization schedules may be more favorable, providing more free cash flow liquidity that could be reinvested in further expansion. They could also consider convertible bonds or CoCo’s that would get around the share dilution conundrum.

At least, Pyxis is on the right side of the market in the tanker sector. They have a relative young fleet. This listing operation may prove a spring board for future growth, depending on the quality of incremental investment that they take to market for investor support and the prevailing market appetite to invest in the shipping sector.

Is asset arbitraging a valid investment theory for the shipping space in today’s economic environment?

Asset arbitraging accounts for at least 90% of all investment in the shipping industry. It is particularly predominant with institutional and private equity investors. Major groups like Oaktree, Apollo and Bayside have taken large positions in various classes of shipping assets. The rationale is cyclical market recovery. This been the bread and butter of many ship owners in the past, but can this work in the current environment of immense shipyard overcapacity, weak global demand and soft commodities prices?

I have never been a warm fan of asset arbitraging as a strategy to build value in the shipping industry. It is another version of the old stock market trading theory of buying low and selling high. The concept is that prevailing shipping assets are somehow mispriced too low. Eventually markets will pick up and the true higher prices will be revealed, when the shipping assets can be resold with a markup.

This viewpoint distorts the nature of the shipping industry, which is a service business to transport cargo. The fundamental driver in this space is cargo volume. The more cargo volume to be transported for the existing fleet available, the better the freight rates. Higher freight rate expectations result in higher vessel valuations in terms of future earning capacity. If you take away the noise from the volatility of the freight markets, long terms returns on shipping assets tend to be moderate and earnings margins restricted.

Costs in shipping are highly dependent on capital and labor. Ships are very capital intensive. They are wasting assets that require considerable maintenance. They have a limited trading life until they are recycled and sold for scrap. Getting in and out of shipping assets depends on class of ship and the liquidity of the resale markets.

I use the term ‘asset arbitraging’ for these shipping asset plays because it reminds us of what this process is and where it leads. Arbitraging eventually evens out market fluctuations. If enough investors see that a class of shipping asset is underpriced and then take speculative positions, then this supplies the market with ample tonnage that provides the end users more than ample vessels for their cargo transport needs and keeps a lid on freight rates. The whole effort is a wash out with no profits.

The dry cargo space illustrates this situation. Several years ago there was an orgy of private and institutional money in dry bulk shipping assets. The purest version of this was Scorpio Bulk (SALT), where they made a massive play in new building orders without even having an existing operating company in dry bulk shipping. All this was predicated on the new building deliveries coming at the time of a market upturn in rates that would lead to significant appreciation in vessel values. Now Scorpio Bulk is trying to lighten up and reduce their position by resales of some of their new building contracts, even possibly some conversions of the orders to tankers.

Unfortunately, the current economic environment does is not supportive of these asset plays:

• There remains significant shipyard overcapacity.
• China and emerging markets, which are the main source of cargo volume growth, are slowing down.
• Advanced economies are still in sluggish recovery and substantial debt overhang.
• Vessel working life is growing shorter, with both dry cargo and tankers facing age restrictions and trading limitations after reaching 15 years (3rd Special Survey).

Added to these factors is the industry consolidation that is reducing the universe of buyers in the resale markets and the limited credit from the banks available to finance these sales.

So I was not surprised by the recent Tradewinds article on Apollo Global Management putting the 12 Suezmaxes of Principal Maritime onto the market, where some finance sources expressing reservations that it will be easy to find a buyer for an all-cash deal. Also I would not expect the mark up in price to be as much as Apollo was hoping, depending on how much hard cash they can get as opposed to payment in shares from a publicly listed entity.

The other factor is vessel replacement cost. I am not optimistic here. There is an overcapacity of shipyards. Order books are thinning. Steel and scrap prices have been falling. New building prices are more likely to fall in the near future than harden.

Consequently, the best positioned people in these market conditions are freight traders who are asset light business models rather than those heavy in shipping assets. The institutional money in the shipping space has done wonders for end users in providing them more than ample tonnage for their needs to transport cargo, keeping freight rates very low.

Changes in perception of Shipping Risk

We are now well into the fall season. The expected rebound in rates has been tepid. There is growing concern that the slowdown in global growth is structural and not temporal. Integration of economic activity across borders beginning to plateau. The vast pool of low-cost workers in China is no longer available and the credit-driven expansion cycle based on large state-sponsored infrastructure projects has reached its limits. In time, the impact on seaborne demand volumes and travel distances is likely to be profound. There may be a rise of regional production centers that shortens seaborne distances. Commodities prices are softening. Freight rates and secondhand prices may stay low for some years. Risk perception towards the shipping industry is changing, making it harder to raise money in capital markets. Investors playing a short-term asset game may find it difficult to exit with the expected profits. 

 My concern since the 2008 financial crisis is that the central bank policies of low interest rates, quantitative easing and flattening of yield curves is compressing risk premium and distorting asset pricing, which has been spilling over into the shipping industry. Weak commercial bank balance sheets have led to a zombification of the shipping industry, keeping lame-duck companies alive and second-hand prices artificially high.

Current shipping industry environment characterized by:

• Deflation and weak demand, low profitability, frequent credit defaults and limited bank finance availability.
• An inflow of speculative money into shipping assets, searching for yield from resale at marked-up prices with a cyclical shipping recovery. · 
• Preference for new ordering rather than industry consolidation of existing tonnage since asset prices are not marked down and remain stubbornly high in relation to present earning capacity.

To sum this up, zero interest rates together with chronic shipyard overcapacity has caused an inflow of investment money into new building shipping assets exacerbating over supply of tonnage. Weak economic recovery and slowing growth in emerging markets does not generate sufficient increased cargo volume to absorb the tonnage overhang. This puts the shipping industry into a vicious cycle of prolonged secular stagnation. 

The world shipping fleet age profile in bulk commodities dry bulk and tanker tonnage is composed of modern vessels and a dwindling number of scrapping candidates. Useful life of shipping assets is shrinking and ships are now going to the breakers at earlier ages. This has led to increasing asset impairment charges on older second hand tonnage that are highly unlikely to be recouped in current marginal freight markets. Buying older bulk carrier shipping assets is no longer a risk free investment secured by scrap value. 

On the other hand, speculative orders of new tonnage in projects like Scorpio Bulk carries more risk than normally perceived because new building prices may begin to soften again in the next few years. The price of steel has been steadily weakening, making potential replacement cost lower. In the meantime, Scorpio Bulk efforts to develop a chartered fleet for an operating company prior the new deliveries has resulted in operating losses due adverse arbitrage and compressed earnings margins. New deliveries in a period of slack demand and softer replacement cost would create a perfect storm that no one in this venture was originally prepared.

Industry consolidation in mergers like the Oaktree-generated merger of Excel Maritime into Star Bulk is no industry panacea. This is a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall fragmentation in the dry bulk sector and does little to consolidate pricing power.   The speculative new ordering at Star Bulk in open employment positions offsets pricing power.

This is an operation - like Scorpio Bulk - with a highly concentrated position in dry bulk shipping assets. Present returns on shipping assets are low. Profit margins frequently cannot cover depreciation expense. The whole investment exercise depends on the degree and timing of a cyclical market recovery and sufficient financial liquidity to turn over the assets at marked up prices to lock in the capital gains profits on assets.  No shipping investgment can make acceptible returns without asset gain on market uplift in future years.

Case in point is Scorpio Tankers - heavily exposed to the MR product tanker sector and underperforming with the eco-ship argument - where the only appreciable profits have been capital gains from VLCC's sales and potential sale of the Dorian shares from the LPG sector, which has performed well this year.

There are pockets of better quality shipping business in the tanker sector and specialty trades like gas shipping. But there always hangs the Damocles sword of shipyard over capacity where earning margins can be put under jeopardy with new ordering that quickly leads to softening of freight rates. We have seen this in the LNG sector very recently.  Rates are beginning to soften in the LPG sector after a very good run this year.

Sentiment on shipping risk is changing.  Capital market deal volume for shipping transactions is down from last year’s levels. Investment groups have moved on to other sectors. There is increasing discussion about how institutional investors are going to divest of their present shipping holdings in the current climate and how the expected mark up in asset prices for a cyclical shipping recovery may disappoint. 

I have long been skeptical of how this would ever work on any scale to repeat the boom years, not only because of the changed macro-economic conditions with slower Chinese growth rates and chronic ship yard overcapacity, but also because of the finance gap in the banking market needed to facilitate sales at higher prices. What is required is greater demand and exit of the present deflationary environment.  

This is still a work in progress for policy makers and central bankers struggling with an increasingly restless public!