New York-listed NAT cut its payout from $0.30 to $0.16 per share, a statement reveals.
“The company is assessing expansion plans including ordering of new vessels from shipyards or buying second hand vessels at historically low price,” it said.
“The level of the declared dividend should be seen in the context of a planned fleet expansion.
“Expansion is essentially the same as investing in the future.”
While the payout is smaller for the final quarter of 2012, it does mark the 62nd consecutive dividend from the company stretching back to 1997.
RS Platou valued a new suezmax at $57m in its last monthly report, but sale and purchase activity this week suggests prices may be coming down.
The intense scrutiny on suezmax values follows two resales by George Economou’s DryShips.
Some have dismissed the potential new low benchmark of $50.5m for a resale as irrelevant amid talk the ships have gone to a private Economou company.
Sources close to DryShips say this is not the case, suggesting confusion may have arisen given the involvement of Cardiff Marine in managing the disposal – which comes as part of a wider effort to cut capital expenditure at the Nasdaq-listed company.
If the $50.5m figure is accepted, it would mark a fall from the $55m reported paid for a Samsung Heavy Industries resale last week.
NAT, which is predicted to book a loss of $0.37 per share in the final three months of 2012, has been talking up the chances of adding to its suezmax stable for some time.
It said in its third quarter report: “NAT is in a good position to buy additional vessels or order new vessels at advantageous prices when the time is right.
“Such acquisitions would increase the dividend capacity of the company.”
It has 21 tankers in the water today, with the newest ships built at Samsung Heavy and Bohai Shipbuilding.
