Despite the fact that the dry bulk market remains heavily oversupplied and just as the orderbook of newbuildings had began to shrink, it seems that ship owners have made a significant come back to shipyards, investing once more in new orders. This has been the case so far in 2013 and one could become perplexed as to why owerns are choosing this path, instead of doiong everything in their power to alleviate the tonnage supply pressures currently underway in the freight rate market?
Earlier in the year, shipbroker Intermodal had expressed the view that 2013 would be yet another challenging year, but it would also pose a good opportunity to make investments in shipping, as prices have become quite attractive. "Shortly thereafter, notwithstanding the depressed freight market, the swollen fleet, the remaining orderbook and most importantly the lack of finance, we have witnessed a rather remarkable mini-spree of new orders for dry bulk carriers", Intermodal said in its latest weekly report.
The shipbroker's newbuilding broker, Mr. Theodore Ntalakos wonders whether this new ordering is substantiated or reasonable? He answered by stating that "opponents of new ordering say that the market cannot support further new buildings and those shipowners are shooting themselves in the legs again. However, any rational individual would prefer to buy a new asset at the bottom of its market price. We always advocated that shipping is a non-cooperative game and each rational shipowner would be looking to maximize his pay-offs no matter what the others decide to do. It seems that those who have access to finance are now convinced that prices cannot and most importantly will not go further south; so they place themselves with new orders and purchases. The new ECO designs combined with the lack of modern tonnage from the second hand market are driving buyers to the shipbuilders' meeting rooms", Ntalakos said.
He added that "there were quite a few shipyards that were willing to take orders almost at cost just to safeguard the viability of their production for the next couple of years. In Japan they are also favored by the “Abenomics”, the economic policies advocated by the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that allows the Japanese shipbuilders to offer competitive prices and claim their market share from these new orders. All shipyards have seen the number of visitors and inquiries increasing daily, almost reminding them of the good old days. Still, there isn’t strong enough demand to push prices higher but we have noticed that shipbuilders are now bargaining harder than what they did six months or even a year ago".
According to Mr. Ntalakos, "coming back to the statistics, back in February, the Orderbook/Fleet ratio looked more favorable in the capes and Supramax sizes and this is where we have seen the majority of new orders placed. The Handies followed and then came the Panamax bulk carriers, which looked the least attractive and got the fewer orders. For the first four months of 2013 the fleet has grown, as expected, due to the vast orderbook from previous years at around 2.5% and despite the new contracts the orderbook has contracted by around 13.5%".
Intermodal's analyst finally noted that "the latest orders happened to sync with a small rally in the freight market which had almost pushed rates into profitable territories. Whether these orders were placed at the turn of the market or not only time will show but as all markets, shipping as well is strongly correlated with expectations. Things are not clear and there still is risk involved; however, to quote the American author John Shedd “a ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for”, the newbuilding broker concluded.