Low-profile Turkish owner Gokhan Ozcan is about to double his investment in a handysize bulker in less than a year.
Ozcan has agreed to sell the 32,500-dwt MS Charm (built 2010) to Greek owners for $12.5m, according to brokers and ship-management sources in London and Istanbul.
The former chartering broker bought the Chinese-built vessel from Turkish peers in October for $6.5m. This is a considerable asset play, even allowing for the fact that the price tag is said to include a time charter until early next year.
In an email to TradeWinds, Ozcan confirmed that an initial memorandum for agreement had been signed for the ship, but declined to comment on any details due to confidentiality clauses.
"I normally try to follow the simple rule of selling when the market is up and buying when [the market is] down," Ozcan said, adding that he has carried out several other asset plays through the ups and downs of the shipping cycle in his long career in the business since 1983.
Ozcan is the founder of ship-management companies Kelebek Gemi and Burtrans Shipping.
Costamare up to 40 ships?
Ozcan’s asset play would not have been possible without a red-hot market for bulkers — particularly handysizes, which have been earning some of the highest freight rates in a decade.
Optimism about the market’s prospects has spawned intense buying interest from companies that have been hoovering up ships in the sale-and-purchase market.
US brokers suspect one of them, Costamare, to be behind the acquisition of the MS Charm.
The US-listed company said on 1 July that it had bought 28 bulkers as it was expanding outside its core business of containerships. Some market sources believe Costamare has continued buying bulkers on the secondhand market since, with the tally potentially reaching up to 40 ships.
The company may provide details of how many bulkers it has bought, and which, when it announces second-quarter results on 28 July.
At least a quarter of the bulkers Costamare has acquired are understood to be handysizes.
Bought in the doldrums
Greeks can be found on the selling side as well. Diligent Holdings sold the 28,300-dwt Geki Star (built 2008) to undisclosed buyers for $10.55m, market sources said.
Diligent spent just $6m to buy the ship in February 2016 during the dry bulk market crisis.
The company has started selling ships recently. In May, it offloaded the 28,500-dwt Nordic Bulker 2 (renamed East Wind I, built 2002). This was the first ship in Dimitris Michalos-led Diligent's fleet when members of the Kefalas family set up the company in 2011.
Trading as the Doris at the time, the Geki Star turned out to be the first buy in an impressive acquisition campaign that saw Diligent's fleet grow from a single vessel to 14 today.
This story has been amended to reflect that the Geki Star was sold for $10.55m.
