The dealmaking machine that is Angeliki Frangou’s Navios Maritime Partners has been busy spinning bulker sales, with three of its older vessels going out the door in recent weeks.
Built between 2007 and 2011, the trio is but the latest in a long string of older bulk carrier and tanker sales by Navios — a behemoth group that regularly renews its fleet of more than 100 ships with newbuildings.
At the same time, Navios’ latest deals show that experienced players are sticking to well-honed business strategies with little regard for the fragile and opaque state of the bulker market.
With “all eyes” on economic developments in China after the giant economy’s new year break and the lifting of Covid restrictions “all bets are on” in the dry bulk market, Athens-based Doric Shipbrokers said in its latest weekly report.
“Oddly enough, while freight rates are still depressed, sentiment seems to be hopeful and many are expecting a much-needed and very welcome boost in the ensuing weeks and months,” Doric added.
Such buying interest provides the backdrop against which Navios unfolds its latest sales.
In the most recent one, Greek peer W Marine has picked up the 93,100-dwt Jupiter N (built 2011). According to ship management and broking sources, the Taizou Khuan-built vessel changed hands for $16.5m.
The ship’s buyer W Marine is itself in tonnage replacement mode.
In October 2022, the company agreed to part with the 92,800-dwt W Eagle (renamed LC Rochefort, built 2011) at an undisclosed price.
The timing of W Marine’s twin transactions suggests that the Athens-based company booked a profit by selling one 12-year-old post-panamax, only to replace it two months later with another.
18 sales since September?
The other two bulkers sold by Navios Partners over the past few weeks are panamaxes.
In a deal believed to have taken place at the end of last year, Indonesia’s Gurita Lintas spent nearly $15m on the 58,700-dwt bulker Navios Amaryllis (built 2008).
Online ship data platforms show the ship trading with Gurita Lintas under the new name of Mumtaz. This is the second vessel Gurita Lintas has bought from Navios in recent months.
In mid-January, several Athens brokers reported undisclosed interests spending $13.75m on the 75,500-dwt Navios Prosperity I (built 2007).
Navios Partners did not respond to a request for comment on its recent sales.
All three bulkers, however, were earning paltry freight rates on charters expiring in December 2022.
The Navios Amaryllis was fetching $6,650 per day and the Navios Prosperity I $9,500 per day, according to the Navios Partners website.
The income of the Jupiter N was a mirror image of the average Baltic Panamax Index rate of 82, linked to the latter at a ratio of 100%.
US-listed Navios Partners has been piling up an impressively busy sales record. Since September, the company confirmed divesting 14 vessels comprising bulkers, oil carriers and container ships.
The tally stands to rise to 18 if Navios Partners officially confirms its latest bulker sales, as well as a $46m deal reported earlier this month to offload two LR1 tankers.
In exchange, Navios Partners has recently announced acquisition deals or taken delivery of ships that will eventually boost its fleet by five tankers and bulkers that are much younger and larger than the vessels it has sold.
