Global Ship Lease (GSL) and company insiders have spent $58m in shares of the New York-listed owner as charter revenue becomes plentiful in a searing hot boxship sector.
The Ian Webber-led owner of 61 containerships has purchased 521,260 common shares from major shareholder Kelso & Co at $19.17 each, a 5% discount to Tuesday's closing price on the New York Stock Exchange.
Executive chairman George Youroukos bought the same number of the New York-listed shares at that price.
B Riley Financial initially bought 3m shares at $19.17 before selling 1.42m of them to GSL and Youroukos.
The US-based financial services firm declined to comment on the deal, which lowered GSL's number of outstanding shares to 36.2m.
It also reduced Kelso's stake in the company to 4.9% while raising Youroukos' position to 6.4%.
Cash is flowing
“At a time when we have dramatically increased contracted cash flow from higher charter rates over longer terms and have meaningfully grown our fleet through acquisitions, we are delighted to have this opportunity to repurchase a sizable block of shares at a material discount to our net asset value,” Youroukos said in a statement.
“Moving forward in a container shipping market that looks set to remain robust well into 2022, our best-in-class platform continues to present us with a wide range of opportunities that we believe will allow us to further grow our earnings, accretively expand our fleet, strengthen our balance sheet, and otherwise improve on Global Ship Lease’s leadership as an owner of mid-sized and smaller containerships.”
US private equity firm Kelso, which once owned 49.5% of GSL, co-founded Poseidon Containerships with Youroukos but then sold its 19 boxships to GSL in 2018.
Kelso lowered its stake to 22.8% from 35.8% in April when its sold 4.5m common shares in a secondary offering that gave the underwriters the option to buy 675,000 more shares.
Kelso received 13m GSL shares in January upon converting 250,000 preferred shares after GSL redeemed 9.875% secured notes maturing next year.
