In Dry Bulk Market,Hellenic Shipping News 01/08/2016
Dry bulk
Tanker
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
Dry bulk ship owners appear to be ready to trigger more deals for second hand carriers, as prices seem to have stabilized over the course of the past few weeks. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Alibra Shipping noted that “for a little while now, the story has been “Now’s a great time to buy bulk carriers, asset prices are low…” We’re cautious of following the herd mentality so we wondered: is that still the case or has the moment passed? On Monday, the Baltic Exchange assessed the price of a five-year-old, 74,000-dwt Panamax at $13.6m. This is quite a decline on 18 months ago, when the benchmark vessel was assessed at $20m in the first week of January 2015. But the value of the Baltic’s benchmark Panamax has been appreciating ever since hitting an all-time low of $11.14m on March 29 this year. Unfortunately – or fortunately, if you’re a prospective buyer – the appreciation seems to have plateaued and has been more or less static around the $13.5m mark for the past month. This week’s Baltic assessment is an increase of just $7,000 on a week previously. As for Alibra’s own assessments, we estimate $21m for prompt resales, around $9m for fiveyear-old vessels and around $6m for 10-year-old Panamaxes”, said Alibra in its note.
It went on to add that “so, returning to our original question, is now still a good time to pick up secondhand Panamaxes? The market seems to think so. July has so far seen 13 S&P transactions for Panamax and Kamsarmax bulk carriers, of which the majority were picked up by Greek buyers (a certain gauge of cyclical timing). Since January 1, we’ve tracked 76 sales, compared to 61 during the same period in 2015. Interestingly, the majority of the Panamaxes sold this year have been built in Japan (37 vessels), with Chinese and Korean yards accounting for just 17 and 16 vessels respectively, showing that buyers are opting for quality builds while prices are low. Kamsarmaxes still command a price premium and account for 29 of the Panamaxes sold this year so far. Last week, Greek owner Blue Planet Shipping picked up four Kamsarmax resales being built in China for $19.5m each, a very healthy price considering the rest of the market”, Alibra concluded.
In a separate note last, shipbroker Intermodal had noted that “a buying spree that included a number of en-bloc sales took place last week as perspective buyers in both the dry bulk and tanker sectors seemed keen to invest before heading off on their summer holidays. On the dry bulker side, we had the sale of the “MATILDE CORRADO” (72,863dwt-blt 02, S. Korea) which was sold to Greek buyers for a price in the region of $4.9m”.
Meanwhile, in the dry bulk market this week, Alibra noted that “rates for short period business saw a general fall over the past week as few cargoes and overtonnage was the case in most major trips, with a notable exception being Handies in the Pacific. Ever since reaching their highest rates for 2016 last week, 6 month period Supras fell to $6900 and $6300 for Atlantic and Pacific voyages respectively. Meanwhile, large tonnage has seen the largest decrease over the past week, with the BPI and BCI both falling between 14 and 15 percent w-o-w to 719 and 780, with Capes currently at their lowest point since mid-May”.
In the tanker segment, Alibra said that Handies and Afras experienced small w-o-w declines for shorter periods, with 1 year Handy rates declining to $13,750 and 2 year Afra rates down from $20,000 to $19,000, continuing a 3-week slump. 1 year MR rates are down $750 to $14,250 from last week with 2 year LR2 rates down since last week to $20,250, both attributed to continued excess capacity relative to longhaul cargo availability. Long period rates have also fallen, with VLCCs at $34,000 for 3 years and $35,500 for 5 year periods.
