With ship financing getting ever so difficult to procure during the past year or so, ship owners had to get creative in order to persuade banks and other financing firms to invest in them and their good judgement when it comes to choosing the best available deal. As a result, 2012 bore witness to several prominent shipping entities teaming up with powerful players from the financial scene in order to back their purchasing efforts with the use of the more liquid US money markets. Intermodal's latest weekly report asked the question of "how could ship owners have generated sufficient interest towards such a highly cyclical and volatile industry during such times of uncertainty?"
According to Intermodal's Christos Mantzios, "one answer could possibly be the close to historical lows asset prices, thus reducing substantially the cost of acquiring such an asset and therefore making the entry into said market a more viable possibility from a medium-term investment perspective.
Although the market entry point for both the dry bulk and tanker assets is at relatively low levels, the “bottom of the barrel scrapping” charter rates experienced throughout 2012, as well as the poor market fundamentals for 2013 (daunting overcapacity), should have caused most of these major financial players to show a preference in the tanker market which showed more promise during 4Q2012. This revived strength in the tanker market (dirty during 3Q and clean during 4Q) was epitomised by the fresh wave of new ordering at S.Korean yards by major market players such as BP (Aframax , Suezmax), Sinokor (MR) and US-listed Scorpio Tankers (MR) towards the end of the year. But if the current state of the dry bulk market was so bad, why the increased interest in Panamax bulkers? In 2012 Panamax bulkers accounted for 26% of all dry bulk SnP deals, compared to only 19% in 2011. At the same time the majority of these involved older aged units (10-15year old) which seemed to also show the strongest drop in prices. This generated a strong appetite for Panamax tonnage, especially amongst Greek owners, pushing for en masse acquisitions of the numerous available Japanese candidates built in the 1996-2002 bracket" said Mantzios.
He added that "buyers have on their side the fact that asset prices for both Panamax bulkers and Aframax tankers are close to their historical lows. The value of a 5 year old Panamax bulker currently stands at approximately USD 17.5mill, a far cry from the USD 26-27mill required a year ago..... For a 10 year old vessel the figure is around USD 12-12.5mill and for a 15 year old its less than USD 10mill.. That is a substantial difference from Nov 2011 when the price for a 10 year old Panamax stood at USD 21mil. Of course, back in Nov 2011 such a vessel was seeing earnings in the region of USD 13,000-14,000/day compared with USD 8,000/day currently seen for 1 year TC. This may well be part of the explanation as to why prices have eroded over the past year, but it’s important to also note that the replacement cost (newbuilding price) for such a vessel back then was in the region of USD 29mill, while it now stands at around USD 25,5mill. Therefore it has started to make much more sense today to buy a 10 year old Panamax bulker then placing an new order compared to roughly a year ago where a 10 year old Panamax bulker was equal to 70% of the then price of a newbuilding (comparably this same percentage is now 46.6%)" he said.
Intermodal's analysis also indicated that "on the Aframax front the explanation could be slightly different due to the fact that a 10 year old vessel was worth USD 20,5mill and faring USD 14,000/day back in Nov 2011 and a replacement cost of USD 52,5mill, compared with a value of just under USD 17mill, TC of USD 14,000/day and newbuilding price of USD 48-49mill respectively in today's market. Thus the answer possibly lies in the supply/demand landscape which for Afras stands most favourably, with the orderbook representing 5% of the existing fleet which is by far the best ratio in not just all the tanker but also the bulker segments. But stronger buyers’ appetite might eventually be good news for owners/sellers of same tonnage, as it would help keep prices more buoyant and even allow them to strengthening again at some point" the report concluded.