Greece’s Navios Maritime Holdings is talking up its remaining investments after selling its last 36 bulkers.
Sister company Navios Maritime Partners paid $835m for the vessels earlier this year, with US-listed Navios Holdings using the cash to pay off debt of $784m.
Chief executive Angeliki Frangou told a conference call with analysts that the disposal was carried out “at a good time” and that the second quarter was an important one for the company.
Navios Holdings retains a 10.3% stake in Navios Partners and 64% in Navios South American Logistics (NSAL), which has three ports and eight small clean tankers.
Frangou said the Navios Partners investment “has excellent potential economic returns as the analyst-estimated NAV [net asset value] is well above the current market price”.
“We believe that we will also have some margin of safety, as Navios Partners is a well-diversified maritime company,” she added.
Navios Holdings said of its NSAL subsidiary: “Profit has always been good and is improving.”
Food security is expected to benefit exports of agricultural commodities from South America, it added.
Frangou said: “We have the only dedicated iron ore port in Hidrovia.”
She noted a positive outlook for the facility, as well as barge transportation.
Revitalised company
Fearnley Securities said the second-quarter results and fleet sale leave “a new and revitalised holding company”.
“The logistics business will be increasingly important for Navios Holdings going forward and showed positive signs this quarter with $32m Ebitda for the quarter, up 48% year on year,” analysts Oystein Vaagen, Erik Gabriel Hovi and Ulrik Mannhart added.
The fleet sale cleared debt from the balance sheet, but was only completed during the third quarter, so will still involve “some noise” in the next quarter’s results.
Navios Holdings posted a $44.96m profit for the quarter, up from $24.9m a year earlier.
Second-quarter revenue came in at $159.2m, up from $143.6m during the same period last year, in great part due to earning much higher time charter equivalent rates.
