Capital Product Partners (CPLP) is looking to sell its only capesize bulker to cash in on rising asset prices.
CPLP acquired the 179,221-dwt Cape Agamemnon (built 2010) with a 10-year time charter attached to Cosco Shipping for $89.5m in 2011 as a drop-down from its sponsor Capital Maritime & Trading Corp (CMT).
CPLP, which has seven LNG vessels and 12 container ships in its current and future fleet, has been trading the legacy asset on the spot market since the Cosco fixture ended last year.
“We have said in [earnings] calls that this is an asset that is a non-core asset for us and we will potentially try to divest,” chief executive Jerry Kalogiratos told TradeWinds on Wednesday while attending the Marine Money 2022 conference in New York.
“We are opportunistic about it.”
He said New York-listed CPLP eyed offloading the Cape Agamemnon at a time when average asset prices were in the low $20m range.
“The first time that we considered a sale, the price was very different,” he said.
“Now that asset values for dry bulk have moved up, when we see the right opportunity, we will divest.”
The ship now has a market value of $29.6m, according to VesselsValue. It went as low as $16.5m in December 2020 before reaching a five-year high of $32m in late October 2021.
It was valued at $25.2m in March 2019.
The average market value for a 12-year-old, 180,000-dwt capesize is $30.1m, according to VesselsValue.
Greece-based CPLP is also interested in selling the capesize because dry bulk vessels are not ideal for its business model, which is to fix ships on charters that are at least several years long, he said.
“We don’t tend to get those too often in the dry bulk business,” he added.
CPLP just exercised options to buy four CMT newbuildings worth a total $598m: a 174,000-cbm LNG ship and three 13,287-teu vessels being built at South Korea’s Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.
“If you look at CPLP almost a year ago, the fleet composition was quite different,” Kalogiratos told TradeWinds.
“We have already added over the last year the seven LNG carriers, the three 15,000-teu container ships, and just a little earlier in the year, we acquired the three panamax container [ships].”
He summed up all these deals as “an extreme makeover” to CPLP’s fleet while speaking on a shipowner panel at the New York event.
“At this point, I think it is important to execute what we have announced,” he told TradeWinds.
“Then I think we will see what we are doing next in terms of fleet growth.”
CPLP is also eyeing divestment opportunities for other older assets, having recently sold the 8,266-teu boxship Archimidis (built 2006) and the one-year-younger sistership Agamemnon to an undisclosed buyer for $130m.
“But again, we are opportunistic about it,” he said.
“I think in shipping if you are dogmatic about what you have to divest and when you can miss out on opportunities for profitable trades.”
