Concordia Maritime directors want to sell out to Stena.
The Swedish family-owned giant’s investment arm Stena Sessan is offering SEK 468m ($44.8m) for the remainder of Concordia’s class B shares — a deal the Stockholm-listed tanker owner is inclined to take given high asset prices.
“The company has over the past year evaluated a number of projects and business opportunities… including offshore wind, dry cargo and product tanker shipping,” Concordia said in a statement disclosing the deal.
The company said its independent bid committee is unanimous in its support for the offer, as is investor Peter Edwall, whose Ponderus Investment owns just under 5% of shares.
“Since many segments in shipping are historically highly valued, it has been difficult to find the right realization plan,” Concordia added.
“These business opportunities all have in common that they require significant capital injections from shareholders over time, something that the company’s board of directors has deemed very challenging to achieve.”
Stena Sessan already owns 52% of Concordia. The offer works out to SEK 9.80 per share for the remaining 43.7m shares.
Concordia shares finished Monday at SEK 6.30.
The company said the offer is a 55.6% premium to current trading levels and a 59.2% premium on the SEK 6.16 volume-weighted average trading price over the last 90 days.
Concordia has been steadily whittling down its fleet since August 2021, selling 12 vessels since 2021.
Three of those sales came this year and the valuation service suggests the company was able to capture multi-year high valuations for its last seven deals.
The moves leave Concordia with a single ship: The 62,000-dwt Stena Polaris (built 2010).
In the statement, Concordia said the market was weak when it chartered the vessel to Crowley for US government work.
It said it would make SEK 8.3m quarterly if the US owner were to hold onto the ship through August 2026, the earliest it can be redelivered. If Crowley keeps the ship through 2030, Concordia will make SEK 9.1m quarterly.
The Stena Polaris is worth SEK 29.1m on a charter-free basis and between $19.5m and $24.5m on the secondhand market with the charter included, the company said.
Concordia had spent much of 2023 evaluating its future across shipping segments. In May, chief executive Erik Lewenhaupt said owning just three vessels was not ideal for the company.
The company said the bid committee explored the option of running Concordia as a single vessel owner, but that the Stena Polaris would only trade for another seven years and that its useful life would be even shorter if Crowley were to return the vessel ahead of 2030.
