Radziwill-led bulker owner GoodBulk has put its money where its mouth is and has backed up its bullish outlook for 2022 by taking on 100% exposure to the spot market.
The shipowner, which is the public arm of C Transport Maritime (CTM), booked net profit of $4m during the seasonally softer first quarter of 2022, up from $3.1m in the same period last year.
Revenues and other net operating income totalled $57.1m for the three-month period, up from $47m last year, despite the number of ownership days remaining the same.
GoodBulk, which is listed on Oslo’s over-the-counter (OTC) market, will pay out $1.50 per share or $45m in total capital repatriation for the quarter. The firm has paid out $75m in dividends during 2022 so far.
This brings GoodBulk’s cumulative distributions up to $9.34 per share or 84.91% of the price of its shares when it undertook its initial offering on the Oslo OTC in March 2017, which was completed for a total of $280.3m.
Radziwill told TradeWinds that the numbers for GoodBulk’s cumulative distributions are “what we are most proud of”.
“We’ll continue to have a high capital repatriation level. And what we set out to do there is to show the returns that can be generated by buying and selling, owning and operating ships the old-fashioned way,” he said.
Sales
GoodBulk has sold three vessels during the second quarter so far — including its sole panamax, which means the firm is subsequently a pure-play capesize owner.
It confirmed it has sold the 179,362-dwt Aquamaka (built 2009); the 174,008-dwt Aquascope (built 2006) and the 75,395-dwt panamax Aquaknight (built 2007).
“GoodBulk has sold three vessels recently because we look at it as taking long risk off. As GoodBulk, we've never been so exposed [to the spot market] on a percentage basis. We're 100% exposed to the spot market right now,” Radziwill told TradeWinds.
“We have no coverage and we’re usually running pretty substantial coverage, it’s anywhere between 10% and 50% of our fleet in the time-charter market.
“We took all that coverage off because we think the risk-reward is more skewed towards keeping your ship spot and then — as opposed to fixing them out — selling them into the next six months, which we think will be pretty good for the capesize market.”
Radziwill expects a strong but steady capesize market this year, as TradeWinds has reported.
The price of a five-year-old, 180,000-dwt capesize has risen by almost 13% this year to date, according to latest Baltic Exchange assessments, but appreciation has stalled in tandem with the spot market.
“Where asset values are right now, different portfolios have different directions, different mandates and different shareholders, different subjective values. But for GoodBulk, we think probably asset prices are more of a sell than a buy right now,” Radziwill said.
Side venture
Meanwhile, Radziwill-backed investment vehicle Stone Shipping has closed its $10m initial capital raise for its fourth joint-venture fund, which will focus on supramax and ultramax bulkers.
“It’s going to be our biggest; it’s twice the size of the last three [JV funds],” Radziwill said.
Returns are generated for investors through arbitrage trades in the chartering or derivatives market over a roughly 12-month period.
Radziwill is open-minded about the longer term plan for Stone Shipping, but right now wants to focus on getting it right.
“We’re not opening it up yet to the public, so to speak. We want to make sure it’s just friends and family, of which we — let’s say, me — are basically half of the money right now,” he said.
“We want to be very sure before we accept someone’s money that we can generate the return that we say we can.”
