It was a tough week for shares of Greece's GasLog Partners after a disappointing earnings report as other US-listed stocks mostly were treading water in value.
GasLog posted a one-week drop of 17.3% on Friday, making it the only shipowner among the 30 New York-traded equities followed by investment bank Jefferies to move more than 5.3%.
The group gained 0.1% overall against a rise of 0.4% in the S&P 500 and a climb of 0.8% in the small-cap Russell 2000 index. The Jefferies shipping index is now up 47.5% so far in 2021 and 35.5% compared to this time last year.
GasLog's big dive came against the backdrop of a significant run-up earlier in July, noted Jefferies lead shipping analyst Randy Giveans.
"GasLog units shot up to start the third quarter as the price went from $3.50 to $5.50 in the first week of July. There was no real news or reason for the uplift, but clearly investors were expecting a lot on the upcoming earnings call," Giveans said.
Investors sent the stock down more than 20% on 27 July after they did not like what they heard in the earnings report.
"The partnership missed on second-quarter earnings, underwhelmed on guidance, didn’t increase the distribution, and made no announcements regarding consolidation," Giveans told TradeWinds.
The stock, nonetheless, is up more than 10% in the past month and 32% over six weeks, the analyst noted.
Jefferies actually raised its price target for GasLog to $5 and at the same time downgraded the stock to "hold" from "buy," saying "we believe asset values and GLOP units are now fairly valued".
Two other analysts following GasLog — Ben Nolan of Stifel and Michael Webber of Webber Research & Advisory — already had hold ratings on the owner and maintained them after the earnings report. Webber raised the price target to $5 from $4, while Nolan held steady at $4.
GasLog was still falling in Monday morning trading in New York, slipping below $4 on a 4% slide.
GasLog's big drop was enough to send the LNG group under Jefferies coverage to a 5% loss on the week, the only sector to lose ground.
But yet another New York-listed LNG company not under Jefferies' coverage could have made the numbers a lot worse.
New York Stock Exchange-listed Hoegh LNG Partners plunged 69% on the week after announcing that a dispute with charterer PGN LNG had forced it to slash its dividend from $0.44 to $0.01.
Tankers, dry bulk and LPG carriers all gained an average 1%, while containerships picked up 2% in the Jefferies tables.
At the company level, tanker owner Tsakos Energy Navigation was the top performer with a 5.3% gain, followed in the top five by bulker player Diana Shipping, Israeli liner company Zim, LPG's Navigator Holdings and containership owner Global Ship Lease.
