Aegean Marine Petroleum has completed the $100m purchase of shares previously controlled by founder Dimitris Melissanidis.
Aegean announced last month the Greek businessman was selling his ownership interest in the company but would remain as a consultant.
Today Aegean said it had bought back the 11,303,031 shares from Melissanidis, reducing its share count to 39,403,822.
President Nikolas Tavlarios told TradeWinds last month work towards Melissanidis’ exit had been ongoing for two years.
“It’s something [Melissanidis] wanted to do. We were able to find an appropriate point to do it. The company had good strength on its balance sheet,” Tavlarios said,
“It was a good alignment of the stats. It worked out well for him, for us and for the investors. Everyone wins.”
Ben Nolan, an analyst at Stifel, noted that Aegean has no exposure to the Hanjin bankruptcy, which could lead to $100m in claims from marine fuel suppliers.
“Late last year as part of the credit review process Aegean stopped directly selling fuel to Hanjin and as a result has no outstanding invoices to the company,” Nolan said.
The analyst believes the introduction of new emissions regulations will also benefit the company by increasing fuel prices.
