Polys Hajioannou-led Safe Bulkers said it ordered two newbuildings in Japan, bringing the total number of ships it has under construction there to four.
The pair of 87,000-dwt post-panamaxes is scheduled to be delivered in the first half of 2023, the New York-listed bulker owner said on Wednesday.
That delivery date is "attractive", company chairman Loukas Barmparis said.
Safe Bulkers did not identify the yard or cost of the newbuildings, other than to say that the contract was concluded at "attractive prices" and will be financed out of the company's cash reserves.
TradeWinds understands the newbuildings will not be equipped with scrubbers and there are no options attached.
They will be built to the same energy-efficient specifications to the kamsarmax and post-panamax bulkers that the company has on order at Oshima Shipbuilding. They are due for delivery in 2022.
Safe Bulkers ordered the ships to meet Tier III emissions standards and the latest requirements of the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% compared to the 2008 baseline.
The Athens-based company recently reported its best quarterly performance in seven years, with net income of $21.3m for the first three months of 2021, compared with a $9.9m loss in the same period of last year.
It said it will use the cash earned in the market upturn to gradually and selectively acquire environmentally top-notch vessels that it expects to generate superior returns in the future.
At the same time, Safe Bulkers is selling older ships while deleveraging its balance sheet.
As part of that policy, the company also announced on Wednesday the sale of two, 10-year-old Chinese-built kamsarmaxes for $44.5m in total.
Safe Bulkers did not identify the pair but its description matches three ships in its current fleet: the 81,600-dwt Pedhoulas Builder, Pedhoulas Fighter and Pedhoulas Farmer (all built 2012). The Pedhoulas Farmer, however, is subject to a sale-and-leaseback agreement and on a period charter that expires in April next year.
The sale of the kamsarmax pair will increase Safe Bulkers' liquidity by $16.5m, as the company will repay $28m of debt relating to them before it hands them over to their new owners later this year, by the third quarter.
That debt repayment is in line with another throng in Safe Bulkers' policy to deleverage its balance sheet. Going further in that effort, the company also announced on Wednesday that it will voluntarily repay a $27.3m loan, which shrinks its debt pile to $594m.
The figure is expected to drop further to about $546m, following a sale-and-leaseback agreement for one its vessels that the company has already announced.
Including the two ship sales revealed on Wednesday, Safe Bulkers has disposed of four older vessels since December last year. The other two were the much older, the 74,300-dwt Paraskevi (built 2003) and 76,000-dwt Vasos (built 2004), and fetched $16m in total.
The company is active in the secondhand market as a buyer as well. During the first quarter, it spent $14.1m on the 75,000-dwt Fortune Daisy (built 2011), which is already trading in its fleet as the Paraskevi 2.
