Ardmore Shipping has prepared the ground for share sales worth up to $50m.
The Ireland-based MR tanker specialist has filed a prospectus in the US to issue and sell stock from “time to time”.
The US-listed company has brought in investment banks Evercore Group, DNB Markets and UBS Securities to handle the deals as agents.
They will receive a 2% fee.
Ardmore’s shares closed at $12.65, up 1.7%, in New York on Friday.
This is up from $9.62 a year ago, but the stock has been as high as $18 in February.
Chief executive Anthony Gurnee told TradeWinds: “This is a routine annual filing to refresh our shelf capacity for potential future ATM and share repurchase activity. We typically do this in August or September each year.”
This summer, the owner reported a year-on-year decline in second-quarter profits but said rates were holding up despite concerns over the state of the global economy.
Net earnings were $23.7m for the second quarter, down 18% from the same period last year, when product tanker rates spiked in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Time charter equivalent rates for the 26-strong fleet of MR and chemical tankers averaged $26,541 per day for the second quarter, down $1,265 from the previous year.
In August, private Scorpio Holdings revealed a 5.33% holding in Ardmore, worth more than $32m, amassed over the previous couple of weeks.
Scorpio Tankers president Robert Bugbee told TradeWinds that he believed the market had reached an inflection point and his company was looking to benefit from strong rates.
