New York-listed Danaos Corp is continuing to sell down its stake in Israeli liner operator Zim while remaining a top shareholder.
The Danaos stake is down to 7.18m shares in its fellow container ship company, representing about 6.1% of all shares.
John Coustas-led Danaos had held about 10.2m shares at Zim's New York initial public offering in January 2021, a stake of 8.86% that made it the Israeli outfit's second-largest holder behind Deutsche Bank.
Previous sale
Danaos was known to have sold 2m shares last June in an underwritten offering conducted through Zim, taking its holding down to 8.19m or 7.35% of the company. The sale was at $40 per share, well up on Zim's IPO price of $15 but less than the $61 level it has seen this week.
Danaos has previously disclosed that it earned an additional $76.4m from that sale.
The filing after the close of trading on Tuesday would suggest Danaos has since sold a further 1m shares in the open market.
Zim's IPO was the first successful flotation by a mainstream shipowner in New York since 2015, and at first blush it appeared to be a dud. It not only priced belong range, but then immediately traded down 23%.
But as the container ship trade soared to record rates on consumer appetite for home goods during Covid-19 restrictions, Zim became a remarkable success story: Zim gained 324% and would have been shipping's top performer has it traded for 12 months instead of 11.
Happy returns
Then again, Danaos didn't do so badly either. In addition to the returns it made on the Zim investment, the Greek company's shares soared 253%, making it the third-best performer of the 30 US-listed stocks under coverage of investment bank Jefferies.
The latest Danaos filing does not indicate precisely when the owner sold the additional shares or what price it was able to achieve.
However, Zim has traded over $33 for the entire period and as high as $62.20, suggesting the Greek shareholder has managed to continue to profit handsomely from the holding.
