The 2014-built MR was sold and leased back in 2022. Brokers put the ship’s worth today at twice the option price.
d’Amico International Shipping S.A. (Borsa Italiana: DIS) is buying back a ship it sold four years ago, and the price looks like the point of the exercise.
The Luxembourg based product tanker owner announced on Monday that its operating subsidiary, d’Amico Tankers, has exercised the purchase option in the bareboat charter contract for the MT High Discovery. The consideration is $15.3m, and ownership is expected to pass at the beginning of November. The figure may move slightly with the actual delivery date.
The vessel is a 50,000-dwt medium range tanker delivered in February 2014 by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard in South Korea. It went into a sale and leaseback structure in 2022. Τhe ship’s value appears to be at $33.5m today, which leaves the option struck at well under half of what the tanker would fetch on the open market.
Mr. Carlos Balestra di Mottola , CEO of d’Amico, framed the deal around the balance sheet. It returns a modern Eco-MR from a quality yard to full ownership while “further reducing the company’s financial leverage and cash breakeven.”
One leased ship left
DIS controls 28 double-hulled product tankers, 26 of them owned and two bareboat chartered in, spanning the MR, Handysize and LR1 segments at an average age of about 10 years. When the High Discovery transfers in November, owned tonnage rises to 27 and the chartered-in count falls to one.
This is the closing stretch of a long unwind. DIS has been buying its way out of lease structures for years, taking the 2018 built High Explorer back the same way in early 2023, at twice the price it is paying here.
Renewal at both ends
The buyback sits alongside heavier fleet work. The company has sold the 2012-built MRs High Seas and High Tide this year and has ten newbuildings on order, four LR1s for delivery in 2027 and six MRs due in 2029, according to Splash247. Older tonnage out, modern tonnage in, and the leased ships pulled back onto the balance sheet in between.
d’Amico International Shipping is a subsidiary of d’Amico Società di Navigazione, with offices in London, Dublin, Monaco, New York and Singapore. Its shares trade in Milan under DIS.MI and on the OTCQX Best Market in the United States under DMCOF.
Capital Link Editorial
