Officials at Scorpio Bulkers have strenuously denied that the company is looking to sell out all its remaining ships to Greece’s Angelicoussis Shipping Group.
Sources in Italy told Splash that the Emanuele Lauro-led bulker giant is negotiating with John Angelicoussis for a $720m deal to take over all of Scorpio’s bulkers, 48 in total, split evenly between ships afloat and newbuilds still to deliver. The fleet including newbuilds equates to approximately 3.5m dwt.
“The information is totally wrong,” a senior source at Scorpio Bulkers told Splash, adding: “We have no negotiations with Angelicoussis at the moment and we are not interested in selling all the fleet.”
The speculation comes on the back of recent moves by the Lauro family to up their shareholding in the New York-listed firm.
According to Deutsche Bank, Scorpio Bulkers has a current market capitalisation of a little over $60m. Its enterprise value is nearer to $1bn.
The bulker mix of the company is predominately made up of ultramaxes and kamsarmaxes.
Anangel Maritime Services, Angelicoussis’s dry bulk division, is made up 48 ships, predominantly capesizes and very large ore carriers. The addition of Scorpio Bulkers would propel it to second in the dry bulk rankings, according to statistics provided by VesselsValue.com, with just China Cosco Shipping Group ahead of it.
So, a question to those following this story- what would Angelicoussis do differently than Lauro with this big fleet? Just wait out the market, or would there be some more creative financial structuring that Angelicoussis could do that Lauro/ Bugbee could not?
I agree. It is “just” a matter of deep pockets at this point in time.
JA has deeper pockets. SALT would get $4-$5/sh in this deal. SLTB would cash out at $25. If Scorpio keeps trying to fight, eventually they are going to go bankrupt- SALT gets $0 SLTB gets $0-$5.
Take the deal.
Tradewinds reported a different story. It will be interesting to see who is right.
Shipping Trader, they just made their story up. Its written 5-6 hours after ours, and their “sources” are our story – all the information they have was written in our story. They just don’t have the denial, as they never contacted Scorpio.