News : Emanuele Lauro’s timing in dry bulk, the last 12 ships to sell and capital gains thanks to Star Bulk and Eagle Bulk

The Monegasque shipowner Emanuele Lauro, founder and top management of the former Scorpio Bulkers in the meantime renamed Eneti, will have definitively sold the entire fleet of bulk carrier ships in the fleet in a few months.

The announcement of the clear diversification (exit from maritime transport of solid bulk and passage to ships for the installation of offshore wind turbines) had arrived just under a year ago and in the last nine months the shipping company helmed by Lauro has progressively sold almost all over 50 bulk carrier ships in the fleet. There are still 12 left to sell.

Looking at the timing of the divestments already completed, some insiders could not help but notice that a large part of the sales completed by Scorpio Bulkers took place just before the surge in freight rates and asset values that was seen in these firsts. months of 2021. A timing, therefore, apparently not too lucky.

The latest Eneti quarterly report revealed, however, that some shipments sold included shares in dry bulk shipping companies, in particular Star Bulk Carriers and Eagle Bulk Shipping, as the price for the transaction. The high value on the stock market of the respective securities listed on the New York market allowed the former Scorpio Bulkers to take home significant capital gains that allowed it to close the first quarter of 2021 with a profit of 41.9 million dollars against revenues from freight rates of $ 59.8 million.

Eneti in the quarterly report specifies that, of that positive net result, 15.5 million dollars are attributable to gains on the value of the shares of Star Bulk Carriers (of which it sold about 2.6 million shares at the price of 45.5 million dollars). The same can happen with the shares of Eagle Bulk Shipping since it will receive 21,315 shares of this shipping company upon the sale of the Sbi Virgo ship scheduled for June.

The fact of having received part of the sale price of some ships in shares turned out to be a bargain for Lauro a few months later, who was thus able to partially capitalize on the market recovery at the beginning of 2021. The same company also holds 2 , 16 million Scorpio Tankers shares as of May 14th.

https://ir.eagleships.com/news-releases/news-release-details/eagle-bulk-shipping-inc-reports-first-quarter-2021-results