Danaos Corp, a major boxship owner that has made waves by buying dry bulk stocks lately, is now acquiring bulker tonnage outright as well on the secondhand market.
According to ship-management sources and brokers, the Greek company has clinched a provisional deal to lay its hands on five capesizes put up for sale by China Development Bank Leasing (CDBL).
The ships are the 176,000-dwt Bulk Integrity, 175,900-dwt Bulk Peace (both built 2010) and Bulk Achievement, 176,000-dwt Bulk Ingenuity (both built 2011) and 175,600-dwt Bulk Genius (built 2012).
The five ships, built at China’s Jinhai Heavy Industry, are to change hands for about $103m in total.
However, the deal has not been finalised yet. According to sources, it is still on sellers’ subjects that could be lifted on 17 July.
If the agreement is finalised, Danaos is expected to take delivery in about three months.
In that case, the traditional boxship owner would be making its first bulker purchases since 2002, when it bought eight bulkers in quick succession.
By the time Danaos went public four years later, it had flipped all these vessels at a fat profit to join the New York Stock Exchange as a pure-play container ship player.
Buoyed by record profits from the 2020/2021 pandemic, it started investing in bulkers again this summer, building a 16.7% stake in US-listed Eagle Bulk Shipping.
This move made waves, especially after Eagle Bulk management took steps to prevent Danaos from increasing its stake further.
Difficult to resist
However, TradeWinds understands that Danaos’ tentative $103m investment in the five CDBL ships is independent of the developments at Eagle Bulk.
Costing about $20.6m each on average, the five vessels are attractively priced for Danaos.
Furthermore, the opportunity to get his hands on five large vessels at one stroke must have been difficult to resist for Danaos chief executive John Coustas, who seems to be interested in quickly building as big a bulker footprint as possible.
Other counter-cyclical Greek players have been busy making bulker expansion moves as well lately.
Costamare, another US-listed container shipowner that has expanded considerably in bulkers over the past two years, is believed to have purchased its first capesize recently.
Costamare principal Konstantinos “Costis” Konstantakopoulos has separately revealed purchasing, on his personal account, a 5.1% stake in Seanergy — a US-listed pure-play capesize player.
