Depressed tanker markets continued taking a toll on Greece's Performance Shipping, a US-listed owner of five aframax crude carriers.
The company posted its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, but its chief executive said he continued to expect a recovery soon.
“In the current quarter, we have seen an improvement in charter rates and demand for seaborne oil transportation,” said Andreas Michalopoulos.
“We believe that the tanker charter rate environment will continue to recover in the medium term.”
The statement came as Performance revealed a net loss of $2.2m for the third quarter, from net income of $400,000 in a year earlier, which was the last quarter in which the company was profitable.
In line with slumping freight rates, time-charter equivalent rates (TCE) dropped to $9,335 per day, a 42% slump from a year earlier.
Nevertheless, overall revenue dropped by just 2.1%, as the company added income from the December 2020 acquisition of the 105,400-dwt Yanbu (built 2011), the last of the ships Performance acquired since reinventing itself as a tanker company.
The shipowner used to trade as Diana Containerships. Between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2020, the company sold four containerships for $53.4m and acquired as many aframaxes for a total $112m.
Performance sold its last containership, the 3,739-teu Domingo (built 2001) in August last year.
Performance has piled up a net loss of $7.7m in the first nine months of the year, compared with net income of $6.3m for the corresponding period of 2020. The company has not paid out a dividend so far this year.
