Greek shipowner Theodore Angelopoulos is believed to be taking home a profit of more than $50m after selling two aframaxes at a significant markup to the price paid for them as newbuildings six years ago.
US brokers and market sources in Athens are saying that Angelopoulos’ Metrostar Management is selling the 115,600-dwt sister ships Crudemed and Crudesun (both built 2018) at about $70m each.
The buyers are said to be based in South Korea. One source suggests the vessels have been bought against secured employment with China’s Unipec. Managers at Metrostar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To judge from the ships’ histories, however, it is not difficult to make out an incentive to sell them.
Good reasons
Their reported price of $70m each exceeds the $43m Angelopoulos reportedly spent in the spring of 2017 to order them at Daehan Shipbuilding.
It is also far above the $62m to $65m range that Signal Ocean and VesselsValue estimate each is worth.
There are lots of reasons why the pair could fetch more than that.
First, the inventory of modern crude tankers available for sale is “almost non-existent” at the moment, as brokers at Athens’ WeberSeas put it recently.
The Crudemed and Crudesun also passed special surveys in the summer, which means a new owner would not have to incur the same expense for the next five years.
The ships were last known to be operating with Navig8 but are currently under the commercial management of Heidmar.
Metrostar has been a busy player on the newbuilding and sale-and-purchase scenes, having concluded more than 300 such transactions across several ship types since its inception in 1996.
Its latest activity shows the company increasingly focusing on product tankers.
Metrostar has four LR2s on order at Hyundai Vietnam Shipbuilding and two LR1s at Yangzijiang Shipbuilding.
It has five modern ships on the water, of which the Crudemed and Crudesun are the oldest. Their sale would leave it with two 2021-built suezmax crude tankers and an LR2 product tanker built in 2021.
The newbuildings will start delivering in 2024, with three LR2s due that year. Its LR1 pair is scheduled for completion in 2025 and its final LR2 will deliver in 2026.
