Italy's Premuda will increase its fleet to 35 vessels as its shareholder continues to mop-up distressed vessels from the Italian market.
The Genoa-based tanker and dry bulk owner expects to add another dozen vessel over the next year.
That will amount to a trebling of its fleet since the installation of a new management team 18 months ago.
Chief executive Marco Fiori said that the additional vessel will come from its shareholder Pillarstone Italy, the restructuring specialist which has been taking over distressed debt formerly owned by Italian shipping companies.
He said that would form part of a repositioning of the Premuda from an owner with substantial dry cargo interests towards one focused on the tanker sector.
New management
Fiori took over the helm of Premuda as the head of a new management team in January 2019.
The company has since been expanding what was then a fleet of 13 mainly dry bulk vessels up to a fleet of 23 tankers and bulkers at present.
A further 12 ships from the wet and dry sectors will be added over the next 12 months.
The vessels will comprise ships being taken over by private equity-backed Pillarstone, which acquired Premuda from the Rosina family and financial partners via court restructuring for its debts of €350m (then about $400m) in 2017.
Pillarstone ships
The names of the vessels to be added in the coming months have not been revealed.
But they are expected to include further vessels acquired by Pillarstone, a Milan-based turnaround specialist headed by Gaudenzio Bonaldi Gregori and Roberto Rondelli.
Pillarstone recently completed a debt restructuring completed that will see it take over four of five medium-range tankers in the fleet of Rome's PB Tankers.
It is also in the process of closing a deal that will see it take control of three vessels from Naples-based Perseveranza di Navigazione.
These will add to one aframax and four LR2 vessels that Pillarstone acquired from bankrupt Rizzo Bottiglieri De Carlini Armatori (RBD Armatori) earlier this year and handed over to Premuda for management.
Many of these ships are owned by Fondo Italiano Navi (Finav), a debt fund launched by Pillarstone as the platform to consolidate non-performing Italian shipping loans.
Small loss
Fiori said that Premuda's shareholder were fully backing the plan to help rejuvenate the shipowners fleet.
That is despite a slight loss that Premuda reported on 19 June for its first year of operation under new management
Net loss was €1.9m ($2.1m) for the year ending 31 December 2019.
However, Ebitda rose to €13m to nearly one-third of turnover of around €40.2m.
Turnover increased after several medium-range product tanker joined the Premuda fleet last year.
That expansion continued this year with two Japanese medium-range product tankers on long-term charter.
The 51,000-dwt Yufu Crown (built 2020) is on seven-year time-charter to the Italian shipowner, while a second of the Japanese vessels will join Premuda in the second half of 2021.
Time-charter deal
Fiori confirmed that Premuda has also reentered the time charter market in its first deal for some time.
It reportedly took the 36,300-dwt Perseus N (built 2009) fron Navios Maritime Acquisition for 18 months at $12,300 per day.
Separately, three 34,000-dwt handysize bulkers and the 46,000-dwt PS Tokyo (built 2009) have been refinanced in sale and leaseback deals. That had netted Premuda some $38m in new funding.
Premuda's net result was impacted by extraordinary losses on the sale last year of 158,200-dwt tanker Four Smile (built 2001).
But Fiori confirmed that the long-term goal to list the company on the stock exchange remains part of the "masterplan."
"You find a shell on the beach, then you look, and you have the whole ocean in front of you. There's still a lot to do," he said.
Pillarstone was set up by private equity firm KKR and John Davison in 2015 to partner with European banks to create value by managing their on-balance sheet non-core assets.
