Safe Bulkers has bought yet another capesize bulker on the secondhand market this year, in the hope to boost earnings amid what it expects to remain a profitable market.
The owner of 40 vessels announced late on Tuesday agreed to spend $30m to buy a 181,000-dwt capesize built in China in 2012.
Safe Bulkers didn’t identify the ship, but its description matches Cara Shipping’s 181,000-dwt Stella Anita (built 2012), which TradeWinds reported last month as being in the process of being sold at between $29m and $30.5m.
Cara Shipping has sold several other capesizes in recent months.
Bought with pocket money
Safe Bulkers management said its newly acquired ship will be financed from cash reserves and will be delivered to the company in May, after which it will trade as Michalis H.
“We have further expanded in the cape market segment acquiring our seventh vessel, at what we believe a competitive purchase price, utilizing our liquidity,” Safe Bulkers chairman Loukas Barmparis commented.
This is the second capesize that Safe Bulkers has bought since January, when the company acquired the 181,400-dwt South Trader (built 2014), a Japanese-built vessel for $33.8m.
Amid robust earnings, Safe Bulkers expanded its fleet with both with newbuildings and secondhand acquisitions, while reintroducing dividends and cutting debt.
The company has nine panamax newbuildings on order, with deliveries until the end of 2023.
In a conference last month, company principal Polys Hajioannou said he expected global sanctions against Russia to slow shipping’s switch to new fuels and adoption of new environmental regulations.
The company’s first dividend payment in years was underpinned by strong profitability, with net income climbing to $65.2m in the fourth quarter of last year from merely $7.6m in the same period of 2020.
