New York-listed Global Ship Lease (GSL) is adding three boxships to its fleet in a $48.5m deal.
The company said it is buying the 7,849-teu vessels built in 2004 with a new bank loan on market terms over five years.
The first ship will be handed over in the second quarter and start a five-year charter to Maersk Line.
The other two will join the fleet in the third quarter and have three-year deals arranged with Maersk, with two consecutive one-year extensions attached.
They will generate adjusted EBITDA of $32m for the median firm period, and a total of $47m if all options are exercised.
The fleet will expand to 41 ships of 224,162 teu.
It has not named the vessels, but the only ones that match the specifications are German owner Zeaborn-managed quartet ER Santa Barbara, ER Vancouver, ER Yokohama and ER Montecito.
TradeWinds linked GSL executive chairman George Youroukos' Technomar Shipping to a deal for the Montecito and Santa Barbara last week, at a price of $15.5m each.
Youroukos said on Thursday: “These acquisitions represent attractive additions to the GSL fleet, extending our collaboration with the world’s largest container liner company and meaningfully expanding our long-term charter coverage.
"We are building on recently announced multi-year charters for our high-specification vessels with best-in-class slot costs."
He added: "With anticipated net fleet contraction over the near-term in the majority of the sub-segments represented by our fleet, combined with consistent demand growth for these workhorse vessels, GSL is in an excellent position to continue creating significant shareholder value moving forward.”
The company has already added nearly $130m of EBITDA cover in 2019, CEO Ian Webber said.
"Our integrated management platform and access to capital positioned us to seize this uniquely attractive opportunity, and we intend to continue pursuing additional opportunities to expand our fleet, increase our contracted revenue stream, optimise our balance sheet, and opportunistically lower our cost of capital.”
This story has been amended since publication to reflect that the ship are managed, rather than owned, by Zeaborn.
