Bulker owner Golden Ocean Group has spent around $1.2m in repurchasing another 160,000 of its own shares as part of its share buyback scheme.

The John Fredriksen-backed shipowner said it last week it spent around NOK 7.6m ($676,796) in buying back 90,000 of its shares on the Oslo Stock Exchange at an average price of NOK 83.92 each.

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It also repurchased 70,000 of its shares on Nasdaq in New York at an average price of $7.62 per share or around $533,400 in total.

Golden Ocean subsequently owns 927,085 of its own shares, equivalent to 0.46% of its share capital.

The company, which has a fleet of mainly capesize and panamax bulk carriers, commenced its $100m buyback scheme in October. The programme allows for the company to repurchase up to 10m of its common shares over a 12-month period.

Equities analysts from Fearnleys Securities remarked in a note on Tuesday that Golden Ocean therefore “retains plenty of flexibility for future share buybacks”.

Golden Ocean’s share price has fallen by 22% in Oslo and by 26% in New York over the past three months.

“We actually think our stock is undervalued,” chief executive Ulrik Andersen said in a LinkedIn update on Tuesday.

Its shares are trading at around 73% of their net asset value (NAV), compared with their historical average of more than 100%, according to Fearnleys.

Analysis by investment bank Jefferies puts this slightly higher at 75% of NAV on average. This is some way above the other dry-bulk stocks within Jefferies’ coverage, which have averaged a combined 63% of NAV.

Golden Ocean, which counts John Fredriksen as its biggest shareholder, posted a net deficit of $8.8m for the first three months of 2023, its first quarterly loss in three years. But that did not stop the company from distributing $0.10 per share.

Golden Ocean has acquired 34 vessels and paid out close to $900m in dividends over the past two years.

The company still has older tonnage to sell, but the market has become too expensive to buy and “perhaps too premature to sell”, Andersen told TradeWinds earlier this month.