Eagle Bulk Shipping has pulled off a neat piece of asset play on three bulkers it had designated as “non-core” to its fleet, according to market sources familiar with the transaction.
The sources were able to confirm the sale of the 58,000-dwt Sankaty Eagle, Montauk Eagle and Newport Eagle (all built 2011) for an en-bloc total closer to $49m than the $48m circulated in broker reports.
The trio had been acquired from private equity’s Alterna Capital in 2021 for only $9.4m each in a transaction that partly used Eagle Bulk shares.
The New York-listed, Connecticut-based shipowner is likely to acknowledge the sales in its 4 May earnings report.
A source familiar with the company’s thinking noted that the Chinese-built vessels were the only supramaxes it has purchased in the past six years.
This is because it has a preference for ultramaxes as it strives to make its fleet more modern and of greater carrying capacity within the midsize niche.
Combine the supramax category with the fact that none of the three have scrubbers — about 90% of Eagle Bulk’s ships have scrubbers — and the trio were viewed as outliers within the fleet.
They were probably even more expendable after Eagle Bulk picked up a pair of ultramaxes in the back half of 2022.
It snapped up the 63,600-dwt Stony Stream (built 2015) for $24.3m from US Bank Equipment Finance and renamed it Gibraltar Eagle. This followed the September acquisition of the 62,200-dwt Ultra Trust (renamed Tokyo Eagle, built 2015) for $27.5m.
The combination of circumstances created the opportunity for a slick piece of arbitrage as secondhand valuations have been creeping back up in recent months — regaining at least part of the 25% or so slide from peak market levels in the spring and early summer of 2022.
Eagle Bulk management is understood to perceive a disconnect between current valuations and prevailing rates, which were around $12,000 per day for supramaxes on Monday, without the sales reflecting any long-term pessimism about rates.
