Paragon goes longer

Paragon Shipping has broken with its short-term charter strategy to fix out two of its ships on longer charters

Glencore Grain has taken the 74,500-dwt Pearl Seas and Golden Seas (both built 2006) for potentially thirteen months.

The US-listed bulker owner says Glencore is paying $7,050 per day, per ship with the charters starting in March.

The earliest redelivery dates for the ships is December 2015, but Glencore has the option to keep them until April and March 2016 respectively.

“Although we recently entered into time charters for Pearl Seas and Golden Seas for a period of about 9 to 13 months, so as to enhance our cash flow visibility, the key takeaway remains that the majority of our vessels are running on short-term charters, which gives us significant exposure to the spot market, entering into a quarter which has been historically better than the first quarter,” said Paragon chief executive Michael Bodouroglou.

“Particularly going back to 2006 the only year in which the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) was lower in the second quarter than the first quarter of each year was 2014.”

Last week Paragon posted a fourth quarter loss of $10.2m which pushed it to a loss for the full year of $51.8m.

Revenue for the quarter fell 16.4\% to $11.6m as the time charter equivalent (TCE) rate of its fleet shrank over 30\% to $8,187 per day.

Paragon has sixteen bulkers on the water made up of eight panamaxes, two ultramaxes, two supramaxes and four handysize ships.

It also has three kamsarmaxes and two more ultramaxes newbuildings on order in China for delivery by the end of 2015.

source:www.tradewindsnews.com