Gleanings from Capital Link

Following the CMA, Capital Link held its 3rd Annual Invest in International Shipping Forum at the Metropolitan Club, which was overflowing for much of the day. There were general presentations, panels as well as company presentations. The following were our main takeaways from this forum.

The container sector has been the hardest hit and so we listened with great interest to that panel led by Ken Hoexter of Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch. The panelists included Gerry Wang of Seaspan, Aristides Pittas of Euroseas and Dimitiri Andritsoyiannis of Danaos. The collapse of the market is attributable to simple supply and demand. Overbuilding joined with reduced demand resulting from a slowdown in consumer buying. Mr. Wang believes this is a 12 to 18 month problem with 2012 to 2014 being good years. The lines will survive as they exercise self-help by utilizing alliances, like the airlines. Slot sharing is not as effective as filling a single ship instead of having two partially filled. Mr. Andritsoyiannis espoused the certainty that globalization will continue and that the containership is the only way to efficiently move finished goods. Mr. Pittas reminded everyone that it is a cyclical business and the good market will return. He plays the market more than his fellow panelists. He operates his smaller ships on shorter-term charters taking advantage of good markets and laying up vessels when the market is bad. He currently has three ships in lay-up and is relying on his solid balance sheet to get his company through the downturn.

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Life on the Road

Following on the heels of a conference-filled week, public shipping company management eams such as those at StealthGas and TEN continued to develop their profiles and build their relationships with analysts and investors. Harry Vafias and Andrew Simmons of StealthGas opened the Nasdaq on Wednesday morning. Isabella Schidrich and her team at the Nasdaq celebrated StealthGas’ incredible growth story and presented Mr. Vafias with a special crys­tal for being the youngest CEO of a public shipping company in the world – and a successful company at that.

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TMI?

What a week for investors! Starting with CMA’s annual event, con­tinuing with JPMorgan’s Conference and concluding with the Capital Link Forum, it is conceivable that even the most interest­ed observer of the industry may have suffered from information overload. Thankfully, with Good Friday, many of us had the oppor­tunity to recover with a long-weekend.

Despite the early start, the Capital Link Forum played to a full house. There were company presentations galore interspersed with lively and informative panel discussions. With far too much infor­mation to distill, here is a highly selected compendium of our out­takes.

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