Gram Car Carriers could be looking to take over Global Auto Carriers.
With its fleet booked for the remainder of this year and only 4% of days open next year, chief executive Georg Whist said the Oslo-listed car carrier lessor had the bandwidth to explore other transactions.
Among them could be a buyout of the joint venture launched in April 2022.
“We’re constantly looking and calculating various transactions,” Whist said on Gram’s third-quarter earnings call. “We’ve said all along, we will have a discussion with Global Auto Carriers once all those vessels are fixed.
“If we can agree a deal with those shareholders at a neutral or accretive valuation to you and to our shareholders, we will go ahead with that. If we cannot agree, they will stay separate.”
Global Auto Carriers was established by Gram shareholders, including German owner F Laeisz, who is Gram Car Carriers’ top shareholder with 28.4% of shares.
As it stands, the joint venture has four 7,000-ceu pure car truck carriers on order at China Merchants Jinling Shipyard in China with an option for four more.
The first of the quartet are expected to hit the water in 2025.
The ships are expected to be managed by Gram Car Carriers with F Laeisz providing technical management and yard supervision.
In the past, Gram Car Carriers has said it would be interested in acquiring some of the ships in F Laeisz’s fleet, which consists of four car carriers currently on the water.
But it also complained earlier this year that there were few secondhand ships available, despite several negotiations as car carrier rates skyrocketed amid growing Chinese electric vehicle exports and a small global fleet.
Gram Car Carriers was able to do some wheeling and dealing in the sale-and-purchase market, flipping two of its smaller vessels — the 2,000-ceu Viking Constanza (built 2010) and 1,000-ceu Viking Princess (built 1996) for $43.5m total — and replacing them with the 5,000-ceu midsize Mediterranean Sea (built 2010), which it had owned roughly three-quarters of.
In the third quarter, the company reported a $25m profit, up from $6.5m for the same period last year.
The performance prompted the company to spend 75% of that profit on a $0.65-per-share dividend, its highest since going public in early 2022.
Fearnleys analyst Oystein Vaagen said the earnings were “spot on” his estimates and that the dividend could grow given its $908m contract backlog that sees most of its fleet fixed to the end of 2025.
He suggested there was room for that dividend to grow, with much of Gram Car Carriers’ fleet fixed at premium rates for the next two years leading to a $908m contract backlog.
“We see dividends increasing further into [the fourth quarter] and thus estimate 19% dividend yield for 2024,” he said.
He added that Gram Car Carriers “has fixed out its entire fleet throughout 2025, with the exception of 4% and 11% of available days for 2024/25 still being open.”
