In its second such deal since February, United Maritime Corp boosts its bulker fleet by taking a Japanese-built panamax on bareboat charter with a purchase option attached.
The move accentuates the company’s switch to bulkers and away from tankers — three of which it sold highly profitably last year amid soaring secondhand prices for such vessels.
United Maritime’s latest addition is a 78,020-dwt eco bulker that will join its fleet between July and October. The ship will subsequently embark on a one-year bareboat charter with the company at $8,000 per day.
United Maritime has agreed to pay the ship's owner $3.5m now, and another $3.5m on delivery.
“At the end of the 12-month bareboat period, United has an option to purchase the vessel for $17.1m,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.
United Maritime didn’t identify the panamax. Brokers, however, linked the company earlier this year to the 78,020-dwt Ikan Kerapu (built 2015) — a ship fitting the description in United Maritime’s statement.
Regardless of the exact identity of the vessel, the structure of United Maritime’s deal to buy it is almost identical to how the company took over in February another Japanese-built panamax — the 78,200-dwt Oceanic Power (renamed Chrisea, built 2013).
Stamatis Tsantanis-led United Maritime then paid again $7m by the time it took delivery of the Chrisea, alongside an option to purchase the vessel for an extra $12.36m at the end of an 18-month bareboat charter worth $7,300 per day.
United, a spin-off of capesize player Seanergy Maritime, briefly used to be predominantly a tanker player after acquiring a quartet of MRs last year.
By the end of 2022, however, it grasped the opportunity to flip three of them at a fat profit margin.
Since then, United Maritime Corp has been focusing on widening its footprint in the bulker business — most recently in February, when it added the Chrisea and agreed to buy a pair of kamsarmaxes in a straight secondhand deal, as TradeWinds reported.
United Maritime announced on Wednesday that it has now taken delivery of the two ships: the 82,200-dwt Liberty K (renamed Oasea, built 2010) and the 81,500-dwt Hampton Bay (renamed Cretansea, built 2009).
The company said it has secured time charter contracts for both ships that commenced upon their respective deliveries.
United Maritime funded their $39.2m acquisition through a combination of cash on hand and proceeds from a new $24.5m sale and leaseback facility provided by a European lessor, in which the vessels were sold and chartered back on a bareboat basis for five years.
Bareboat payments for the Cretansea and Oasea run to a monthly tune of $195,000 during that period, at the end of which United Maritime is obliged to repurchase them for a combined $12.8m.
All the moves described above are boosting the size of United Maritime’s fleet to seven bulkers and one tanker.
“We have re-grown our fleet by acquiring high-quality dry bulk carriers at attractive values,” Tsantanis commented on 10 May.
“This re-growth of our fleet has been achieved without diluting our shareholders in funding these acquisitions,” he added.
