Ardmore Shipping is seeing rates for its chemical and product tankers tick up and is rushing into the spot market to capitalise.
The Ireland-based shipowner said its 21 MR tankers were earning average time charter equivalent rates of $13,725 per day through to 15 February, with 60% of days fixed, while its six chemical tankers fetched $13,325 per day over the same period with 70% of days fixed.
Both were jumps from the fourth quarter, when its product tankers earned an average of $11,424 per day and its chemical tankers $11,274 per day.
“Based upon clear and encouraging fundamentals, we expect our sectors to continue a recovery in 2022 from an already improved first quarter to date,” chief executive Anthony Gurnee said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report.
He said Covid-19, high oil prices and geopolitical issues could threaten the recovery, but fundamentals such as rising tonne-mile demand and ship supply are positives.
“Given this outlook, we have been increasing our spot exposure, while continuing a financially conservative stance in view of the potential cross currents in the market,” Gurnee said.
In the fourth quarter, Ardmore had all of its MRs on time charter, but in the first three months of this year, it expects to have 18% of revenue days covered by time charters, with the remaining 82% in the spot market.
All of its chemical tankers trade in the spot market.
For the quarter ending on 31 December 2021, Ardmore posted a net loss of $8.6m as the tanker market continued to struggle with oil demand issues related to Covid-19.
On a per-share basis, the loss came to $0.25, a penny worse than the $0.24 loss per share consensus calculated by Yahoo Finance.
The fourth-quarter loss was narrower than the $19.5m recorded for the same period in 2020.
Ebitda improved year over year, as well, rising to $5.5m from $900,000 as revenue jumped from $41.7m to $52.5m.
On a full-year basis, it posted a $38m loss, much deeper than 2020’s $6m loss as revenue fell from $220m to $192.5m.
In early trading on Tuesday, Ardmore’s New York Stock Exchange-listed shares ticked up by $0.03 to $3.78.
