Costamare has captured an upturn in the post-panamax containership market and deepened its investment in scrubber technology ahead of IMO 2020 rules coming into force.
New York-listed Costamare revealed it had inked charters for five larger vessels at improved rates as it reported stronger than forecast first quarter results today.
At the same time the shipowner has doubled its count of ships to be fitted with scrubbers following a new agreement spanning five further vessels.
Greg Zikos, chief financial officer of Costamare, said: “The larger vessels continue to benefit from strong fundamentals with low supply and strong demand.
“The number of idle ships has fallen across all vessel segments as liner companies launch new services.”
Illustrating the upward shift in the market, Costamare pointed to a new 10 to 12.5 month charter for the 11,010-teu Cape Tainaro (built 2017).
The ship will earn $39,500 per day from the new deal with Zim, up from $28,250 per day on its previous contract.
Further highlighting the rise is Evergreen’s charter of the 8,531-teu Navarino (built 2010) for around a year at $21,900 per day. Previously, the ship had been earning $17,400 per day.
Costamare has also employed the 6,648-teu Maersk Kobe (built 2000) and the 7,400-teu Kokura (built 1997) with Maersk Line and the 5,600-teu Ensenada with ONE at higher rates, its quarterly report explained.
Last year Costamare made its first scrubber move with the equipment fitted on five ships time chartered to MSC.
Now, it has agreed to install scrubbers on a series of five 14,424-teu vessels which have long-term charters in place.
Costamare – which confirmed the scrap sales of the 5,000-teu Piraeus (built 2004) and the 2,000-teu MSC Pylos (built 1991) – recorded a net loss attributable to shareholders of $9.3m for the first quarter against a profit of $12.3m at the same stage in 2018.
Its adjusted profit, which stripped out a $18.4m loss on vessel sales, came in at $13.6m, almost unchanged from this time last year.
On an earnings per share basis an adjusted profit of $0.12 was ahead of the $0.095 per share forecast on Wall Street.
