The symbolism was hard to mistake.
Here were Jonathan Chappell of Evercore ISI and Randy Giveans on Jefferies speaking on the closing analyst panel at Marine Money Week and flanked by three counterparts from Oslo.
That’s two from New York, three from Oslo. On a panel less than five miles from Wall Street.
And finally Chappell just said it.
“We have three Norwegian analysts and two American analysts sitting on a panel in New York,” he said.
“We’ve had three fallen comrades in the last weeks and some other colleagues just hanging on,” Chappell said, before congratulating the Norwegians for their support of the industry.
The message was at once gracious and indicative of frustrations surrounding US-based equity analysts who have seen Magnus Fyhr of Seaport Global Securites, James Jang of the Maxim Group and Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley separated from their jobs in the past two months.
Shipowners raised $1bn in capital across Oslo’s four exchanges last year, rivaling the $1.53bn in New York but also providing fresh listings while the US has not cleared an IPO since June 2015.
But has the culling of US analysts stopped? TradeWinds has heard talk that at least one significant bank may do away with shipping coverage and presumably its analyst in the coming days or weeks.
With each such turn away from shipping, it arguably becomes easier for the next bank to justify a similar decision, and no one seems quite sure where it stops.
Even with the Norwegians, this year’s analyst panel was less than half the size of some previous gatherings that had been known to close the three-day conference with a bang under the moderation of Robert Bugbee, the Scorpio Group president.
Now Bugbee has moved on to other duties. And the sound this year was more of a wheeze following days of explanations as to why investors have become “fatigued” with shipping after heavy losses spanning five years and longer.
Once again, Chappell was blunt:
“The easy answer is it’s been really tough to make money in this industry in the last few years,” he said.
“Shipping means everything to us but it’s this little speck in the public markets. Energy has had a horrible year. Energy hedge funds have been liquidating their positions. Shipping is full of illiquid, highly volatile stocks. It’s really not that surprising.”
And per the recent trend, neither will it be surprising when the next investment bank comes forward and indicates shipping is no longer in its immediate playbook.
Each day the remaining US analysts don’t hear those words is unquestionably a good day.
