Former Belships majority owner Sverre Jorgen Tidemand has sold down to a distant number six among shareholders in the Frode Teigen-controlled company.
Tidemand has sold down to just over 3% of shares in the Oslo Stock Exchange-listed bulker owner, with a sale of NOK 67.5m ($7.6m) worth of shares. As recently as the beginning of December, he had held the company's second-largest block of shares with a stake of about 7%.
The sale disclosed on <pmdau involved 5m shares at a price of NOK 13.5 per share. That follows an early December sale of the same number of shares at a lower price of NOK 13 per share.
"I have no special comments," Tidemand told TradeWinds. "It's a normal transaction."
He declined to be drawn on further plans for his remaining stake.
"I will decide that over time," he said. "There is no decision yet."
Tidemand, who held a 67% interest in Belships before its 2018 merger with Frode Teigen's Lightship Navigation, remains a board member.
Belships chief executive officer Lars Christian Skarsgard declined to comment to TradeWinds on the former owner's share sale.
At the time of the December transaction, Skarsgard and majority shareholder Teigen both disclosed that they had acquired smaller stakes in Belships at a price corresponding to Tidemand's sale price. No such acquisitions were immediately disclosed in connection with Tidemand's more recent disposal.
In December, Teigen-affiliated companies Kontrari and Kontrazi disclosed purchases of 500,000 of the 5m shares then sold by Tidemand, bringing Teigen's shareholding in Belships to 53.53%. Skarsgard purchased 50,000 shares at that time.
Meanwhile, as former owner Tidemand has been taking advantage of the strong dry bulk market through share sales, Belships has been raking in profits on secondhand disposals of its oldest vessels.
Belships currently owns a fleet of two supramax and 23 ultramax bulk carriers, not counting two supramaxes destined for delivery to new owners and two ultramax newbuildings on order.
During December, Belships sold its three oldest vessels, bringing the average age of its fleet down to four years.
TradeWinds reported that brokers said just before New Year's Day that the 58,000-dwt supramax Belocean (built 2011) was sold for a price of $19.6m with charter attached. Belships disclosed that the transaction would be booked as a gain of $5.6m in the first quarter of 2022, and as a $13m cash flow, net of debt on the vessel.
