AM Nomikos has ended a seven-month acquisition hiatus on the sale-and-purchase market for bulkers, in a move indicative of how demand for secondhand tonnage is gathering pace among Greek owners.
AM Nomikos features the 58,600-dwt Cygnus Ocean (built 2013) on its website’s fleet list under its new name, Armonia. TradeWinds understands clients of the company took delivery of the ship last week after agreeing to buy it in March from Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp for about $12.5m.
That is the lowest that the vessel, built at Nantong Cosco KHI Ship Engineering (Nacks), which Japan's Kawasaki co-owns in China, has been worth since the market trough of early 2016. Market sources indicate that price levels for such ships have dropped even lower since the purchase was agreed.
AM Nomikos was again on the lookout to acquire supramax tonnage in January, when some brokers mentioned it bought the 58,700-dwt Easter N (built 2013).
In hindsight, company managers will be relieved they did not make a move: the Japanese-built ship went to different Greek buyers for about $15m — a price that looks high by current standards.
Other Hellenic buyers have been making moves even more recently, as prices fall enough for offers to start matching demand.
“Greek buyers have been slowly emerging over the past couple of weeks,” said Zisis Stilianos, an S&P broker at Athens-based Intermodal.
Greek players are also believed to have acquired another Japanese-held supramax reportedly sold last month — the 56,000-dwt Royal Epic (built 2008) for $7.8m.
Buying is not confined to Greek companies. Some brokers say Indonesian interests picked up the 76,500-dwt Diamond Wind (built 2010) for just $10.25m.
This would be far below the ship’s fair market value of between $11.3m and $13.2m estimated by forecasting platform MSI Horizon. However, other brokers report that Japan’s NS United — the Diamond Wind’s owner — was paid $12.5m for the ship.
Waiting in the wings
Interest is geared towards smaller sizes. “At this point, we witness a preference for medium to smaller size segments, as well as for more vintage units,” Allied Research said.
Two Japanese-controlled handysizes are a case in point. Greeks are reportedly behind the purchase of the 28,400-dwt Wave Friend (built 2010) for about $6.5m and the 34,300-dwt Swakop (built 2013) for about $8.5m.
"These are quite significant discounts to what we used to see in the market recently," said another Athens broker.
Those deals notwithstanding, most buying interest is still biding its time, waiting in the wings. “Most potential Greek buyers are expecting values to drop a little further yet,” Stilianos said.
Other market observers agreed. Buyers are still “rather hesitant to hugely invest" at current prices,” said analysts at Athens-based Allied Research in their weekly report on 1 June.
Meanwhile, Greeks are also sitting on the selling side of the fence, divesting vessels to Asian buyers — mostly Chinese.
TradeWinds is told that Stavros Meimetis-controlled Bulkseas is in talks to offload its 76,700-dwt Lucky Star (built 2002) for about $6.5m.
London-based Lomar Shipping is also in discussions to sell the 52,400-dwt Ocean Prelate (built 2002) for about $4m.
(This article has been amended since original publication to clarify the purchase timing of the supramax Armonia and its builder)
