Greek containership owner Costamare is keeping its eyes open for new deals at a time it is seeing reduced competition for purchases and a drop in calls for charters involving scrubber installation.
Shipyards have highlighted demand for new large containerships as a positive, while Evergreen is known to be in the market with a tender for nine giant vessels worth around $1.7bn.
Gregory Zikos, chief financial officer of Costamare, said on an earnings call that the company was actively looking for transactions in the present market environment.
While Zikos declined to comment on specific deals, he said the Constantakopoulos family-backed firm had fewer rivals in business today than it had seen historically.
“I have to say that compared to the competition that we faced years ago, either for newbuilding project and also for secondhand ships in the water, or other sale and leaseback structures … today the competition is definitely much less.
“There are less pure shipowners, providers like ourselves who do have access to debt or to equity and who can fund this capex intensive type of assets.”
Ben Nolan, an analyst at Stifel, said: “In a market where there has been almost no newbuilding activity lately, we expect activity levels must eventually pick up and Costamare is well positioned to be the supplier of those ships, assuming returns make sense. Thus, we expect it could be a busy next 12 months.”
Costamare has five newbuildings under construction against long-term charters with Yang Ming Marine Transport.
It also has been an active player in the sale-and-purchase market, having bought 10 ships in 2017 and 2018, according to data from VesselsValue.
The shipowner has plans to fit scrubbers to 15 ships, including the newbuildings.
However, with IMO 2020 just a few months away, demand to fit scrubbers to ships to meet new charters has cooled.
On the call, Zikos said: “Since the last quarter, I think we have not received any new requests.
“Up until now it's a total of 15 vessels, including five newbuildings, where scrubbers will be installed.
“These are the five newbuildings that we contracted last year with Yang Ming and five MSC [Mediterranean Shipping Co] vessels and five ships with Evergreen.
“All these are larger vessels with long-term time charter coverage.
“Apart of those instances, which we have already announced, we have not been receiving any new requests.”
The comments came after Costamare rang in an improved second-quarter performance and announced a host of higher-paying contracts in a rising market.
Nolan said: “While most contracts were short term, they were at solid rates and certainly better than we had modelled given the uncertain economic landscape.”
