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DryShips completes $200m share sale

George Economou’s DryShips has completed a $200m common stock offering, raising $198m for the company to continue its recently announced move into the LPG shipping sector.

The share sale, to little-known Kalani Investments, and an 8-1 reverse stock split have both sent DryShips shares plunging this month reaching as low as $1.99 last week, a drop of over 93% from the beginning of the year.

News that the Kalani share sale was completed sent shares up more than 100% today to finish on $5.05, still a far cry from the $8.08 the shares were priced at post-reverse split on January 23.

Commenting on the fundraiser, Economou said: “We are very excited to have successfully raised $198 million of equity and with total available liquidity in excess of $300 million, we have strengthened our position to continue the process of re-building the company’s fleet and earnings capacity and pursuing investments in various shipping segments.”

DryShips still has three VLGC options available to it, having exercised one of the options it acquired from Economou’s TMS Cardiff at zero cost.

The $83.5m LPG carrier is under construction at South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and is expected to be delivered in June 2017. Upon delivery, the vessel is locked into a five-year firm charter with an oil major.

Grant Rowles

Grant spent nine years at Informa Group based in London, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore. He gained strong management experience in publishing, conferences and awards schemes in the shipping and legal areas, working on a number of titles including Lloyd's List. In 2009 Grant joined Seatrade responsible for the commercial development of Seatrade’s Asia products. In 2012, with Sam Chambers, he co-founded Asia Shipping Media.
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