John Fredriksen's shipowning vehicle SFL Corp has no intention of offloading older vessels while they continue to bring in plenty of cash in hot markets.

Asked by analysts on a conference call about potential ship sales, chief financial officer Aksel Olesen said the US-listed company is always looking at the older fleet as potential sales candidates.

But there are no immediate plans for disposals, "in light of the current strong market for some of these vessels, like the containerships".

He explained that the company has just fixed its two 1,700-teu feeder vessels built in 2005 at an attractive $27,000 per day for three or three-and-a-half years.

"We have one more vessel in the portfolio of the same type, coming open in the second half of next year," Olesen said. "And we feel quite confident about that.

Bulkers being retained too

"So we are not necessarily looking to sell more ships right now. The same sort of evaluation also goes for our older, smaller bulker vessels at the moment."

Chief executive Ole Hjertaker explained that the Ebitda contribution from the new boxship charters is "probably essentially similar to the sales value".

"So in a way, you get the value through cash flow and you keep the vessel," he said.

The executives were also asked about spending more money in a countercyclical manner in the tanker sector, following SFL's deal to buy three modern suezmaxes earlier this year.

One broking source told TradeWinds that these ships were probably sold by Chinese leasing companies Bank of Communications Financial Leasing or ICBC, and are commercially controlled by trader Trafigura.

Tanker projects under scrutiny

Hjertaker said SFL is looking at more such projects all the time.

"We'll see which projects actually come together and materialise this," he said. "But what we do see here is that [we] have the lowest orderbook on a relative scale since the mid-1990s, which was a record low orderbook level."

Hjertaker said many older tankers are now being scrapped because there was a huge wave of vessels that joined the world fleet in the early 2000s.

"They are now getting to 20 years of age, and therefore, very difficult to trade and very expensive to take through special surveys," he said. "So that in itself could lead to a tightness of the market."

He believes tanker rates can turn very quickly from current low levels.

SFL is managing its new suezmax acquisitions for an unnamed charterer, and Hjertaker said the company could potentially maximise returns by selling one or more of them.

"We think that we have our downside covered quite well through the base charter rate if it goes to the end of the charter period," he said.

"So this is a market where we think being a little opportunistic ... can create value but, at the same time, in a defensive way."