Navios Maritime Falls as Offering Priced
PIRAEUS, Greece (TheStreet) -- Shares of Navios Maritime Partners (NMM) - Get Report fell as much as 8% Friday as the Greek dry-bulk shipper priced an offering of 2.8 million common shares at $12.21 apiece.
The company, which sought to raise $35.1 million through the offering, said it will use the money for fleet expansion, as well as the obligatory "general corporate purposes."
Navios stock was trading midday Friday at $12.09, down 97 cents, or 7.4%, on volume of 1.7 million shares. Average daily turnover had been 120,000 shares.
It's stacking up to be an opportune moment for fleet expansion, many marine-trade observers say. During the boom years, shippers went on a buying spree, ordering hundreds of new vessels from shipyards. But after the global economy crashed, many over-leveraged shippers found that they could no longer afford those previously contracted orders.
Well-capitalized companies, the argument goes, are now in a position to come in and snap up those so called "newbuildings" on the cheap.
Navios's balance sheet is regarded as healthy, with about $195 million in total debt, down from $235 million at the end of 2008. The company also has maintained a conservative chartering strategy, with 100% of its fleet locked into long-term contracts for the remaining 2009 and 2010 days available.
Also Friday, weak demand has continued to weigh on shipping rates for Capesize vessels, which fell to about $27,500 on the spot market, the lowest level since April.
All dry-bulk stocks were under pressure Friday. Among the larger names,
DryShips
(DRYS) - Get Report
declined nearly 2%,
Diana Shipping
(DSX) - Get Report
fell 2.7%, and
Genco Shipping & Trading
(GNK) - Get Report
gave up 2%.
-- Written by Scott Eden in New York
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Scott Eden has covered business -- both large and small -- for more than a decade. Prior to joining TheStreet.com, he worked as a features reporter for Dealmaker and Trader Monthly magazines. Before that, he wrote for the Chicago Reader, that city's weekly paper. Early in his career, he was a staff reporter at the Dow Jones News Service. His reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Men's Journal, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, and the Believer magazine, among other publications. He's also the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005), a nonfiction book about Notre Dame football fans and the business and politics of big-time college sports. He has degrees from Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis.
