Greek owner Tsakos Energy Navigation (TEN) is to order a pair of tanker newbuildings but is remaining mum on much of the detail.
The NYSE-listed outfit revealed the planned order as it unveiled a third quarter loss in the top of the range it had indicated in its profit warning last month.
An unidentified “national oil major” has penned long-term charter contracts with Nikolas Tsakos-led TEN for a pair of tankers which do not yet exist.
Barely anything else about the proposed order was revealed in a brief note on the matter in Tuesday’s stock exchange announcement.
The charters are for 15 years “at an accretive rate” with the ships described only as “high-spec crude tankers that the company will purposely build for an industrial project”. The name of any prospective shipyards was also not mentioned. Finance chief George Saroglou was not immediately available for comment.
Athens-based TEN will be delving into its $85m kitty garnered in late October’s stock offering. At the time the company indicated the offering was intended to use to expand the fleet and for general corporate purposes.
“Management has already commenced discussions with banks and is confident that a competitive financing package, both in terms of leverage and applicable interest, will be agreed,” Tuesday’s bourse announcement read.
The company intends on issuing more details about the planned project “before the end of this year”.
For now TEN is contending with a $5.34m net loss for the three months to the end of September as tanker rates continued to sit in the doldrums. This compared with a profit of $2.25m in the comparable period last year and represented a per share deficit of $0.14, at the top of the indicative range of between $0.10 and $0.15 given in late October.
The reason for the slide was a fall in revenues from $106.2m to $95.52m. Average daily time charter equivalent (TCE) rates slipped from $21,116 a year ago to $18,315 this time out while the fleet shrank from on average 47 units to 45.7.
Although vessel operating expenses were cut by over $3m, voyage expenses were up by the same amount as the owner’s only LNG ship, the 149,700-cbm Neo Energy (built 2007), rechartered for a year at a lower rate and incurring repositioning costs.
