The bell he rang on Tuesday morning resonated solely within the confines of the New York Stock Exchange. However, for chief executive Mikael Skov, its echo reverberated far beyond, reaching the vessels within his expansive fleet of over 200, and resonating through Hafnia’s offices worldwide.
And figuratively that may be true as the product tanker giant made official the expansion of its Oslo Stock Exchange listing to the NYSE with the iconic bell ceremony on Tuesday morning.
Skov shared with TradeWinds that the Singapore-based owner first investigated a Wall Street listing as far back as 2015.
“It does feel like we’ve talked about it forever,” Skov said. “But it really has been nine years. Back in 2015, we were very serious about listing in New York. We were here. We had meetings. But the freight markets just weren’t that receptive at the time.”
Hafnia eventually opted for Oslo in 2019 and its growth there has transformed it into a tanker behemoth with a market capitalisation exceeding $3.6bn. Hafnia will keep the Oslo listing and trade on both exchanges going forward.
“We feel that when you have sufficient scale in shipping, you really should have a presence in the New York Stock Exchange,” Skov said of Hafnia’s thinking.
“As the freight market has improved and the value of the company has gone up, we could see that US investors were getting very active. Over the last year and a half, companies listed here had higher daily trading liquidity.”
Hafnia’s first official trading day in New York saw the stock open at $7.60. They were roughly flat with the open in midday trading in New York on a turnover of more than 320,000 shares.
Skov and the Hafnia team hit Wall Street for an early-morning start that included photos in front of the exchange, a breakfast reception with staff and clients and finally the elevator ride down to the famed trading floor, where financial network CNBC and “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer staged their morning show nearby.
The shares will be traded on the NYSE under the ticker code “HAFN”.
The company will maintain its primary listing status on the Oslo Stock Exchange, trading under the ticker “HAFNI”.
In March, Andreas Sohmen-Pao’s BW Group sold Hafnia shares for $178m to increase trading liquidity ahead of the US listing.
BW Group controls around 43% of the company.
On Monday, another company backed by BW Group filed papers to list in New York.
BW LPG, an Oslo-listed owner of VLGCs, filed a registration statement with US securities regulators to list its shares on the NYSE.
