Major Greek shipowner Thanassis Martinos has agreed to acquire a trio of MR product carrier newbuildings that will be delivered shortly in South Korea.
Managers at Martinos company Eastern Mediterranean Maritime confirmed purchasing the 50,000-dwt tankers at Hyundai Mipo Dockyard. Identified as Hulls No 2789, 2790 and 2791, the ships are nearly complete.
Price details have not been disclosed due to confidentiality reasons. According to market sources in Athens, the vessels are changing hands for more than $35m each, giving the overall deal a value of at least $105m.
The vessels are equipped with scrubbers and other high-specification features including enhancements of the hull, propellers and other parts of the vessels to decrease fuel consumption and reduce emissions.
Eastmed is familiar with MR tonnage built at HMD. In 2017, the company ordered three of the tankers at the yard and took delivery of them two years later.
More than just marking a return to the same yard, Eastmed’s deal for the Pistiolis trio provides firm evidence of the company rejoining the ranks of buyers in the tanker market.
Eastmed used much of 2020 to offload older tonnage at advantageous prices – particularly during a period of spiking tanker values in the first half of the year.
Between February and September, the company sold seven oil carriers built between 1999 and 2002, raising around $130m in total, according to TradeWinds calculations.
Eastmed started expanding in tankers again late in 2019, when tanker markets were still in the doldrums amid the Covid-19 pandemic and no Western country had approved a vaccine against the disease yet.
The company confirmed buying the 105,300-dwt product carrier Champion Prince (built 2012) for about $24m. At about the same time, Eastmed bought two of the best-quality bulkers circulating for sale in the secondhand market for bulkers.
Dizzying array of transactions
Pistiolis' sales of the MR trio sale to Eastmed is not unusual for the Greek owner.
To the contrary, it provides a vivid example of his elaborate transactions that involve, at times, his private interests, his public company Top Ships and third parties.
Pistiolis’ private arm, the Central Group, ordered the MRs at HMD in September 2019 at an undisclosed price.
In May 2020, companies affiliated with Pistiolis sold the newbuildings to Top Ships for $18m in total. The deal included secured, long-term employment for the trio, which the Central Group pledged to fix upon completion for five years at $16,200 per day.
Top Ships also said at the time it was expecting to enter into financing arrangements for the vessels before HMD delivered them in early 2021.
These arrangements would most likely take the form of a sale-and-leaseback. Most of Top Ships’ operating fleet, which consists of six MR2s and two suezmaxes, are financed that way.
No such refinancing deal was reported, however, and on 8 January 2021 Top Ships announced it was selling the three ships back to Pistiolis.
In exchange, Top Ships received a number of things: $10m in cash, forgiveness of a $1.2m debt the company owed to Pistiolis, a 100% stake in a suezmax newbuilding ordered by private Pistiolis interests at Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries, and a 35% interest in two VLCCs ordered by private Pistiolis interests at Hyundai Heavy Industries.
The suezmax and the two VLCCs are due for delivery in January and February 2022, respectively, and have secured multi-year employment with private Pistiolis companies and unidentified major oil traders.
The stock market seems to like that dizzying array of transactions. Top Ships shares climbed to their highest level in almost five months in New York, rising 4.2% on 12 January to $1.72 apiece. The day before, the share price had jumped 16% to $1.65.
A more direct assessment of the deal is impossible since no information exists into quite how much money Pistiolis ordered the trio for back at HMD in 2019.
According to a bourse filing by Top Ships in July 2020, nearly a year after the order, the company had outstanding payments of $99.5m to make on the three ships.
