Poseidon Containers seeks to raise up to $100m in IPO

With 18 ships already in its fleet, the Athens-based shipping company plans to use the proceeds from an initial public offering to help acquire four more ships.    Poseidon Container Holdings Corp., an Athens-based containership charterer with a fleet of 18 ships, has filed a preliminary prospectus for an initial public offering of up to $100 million in stock.
   In its S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Poseidon said, “We believe that now is an opportune time to acquire modern, high-specification, containerships with carrying capacities of between 1,000 and 11,000 TEU. According to Drewry, liner companies are exhibiting a preference for fuel-efficient, wide-beam, containerships (which represent approximately 30 percent of the current orderbook) because they achieve lower fuel consumption, provide benefits of fuel savings, have the capability to carry more containers than vessels of narrower beam and have the flexibility to serve a wide range of ports worldwide, offering economies of scale and greater employment opportunities.”
   Poseidon said at the end of May about 200 ships – less than 4 percent of the worldwide container fleet – were “of fuel efficient design, including three of our vessels and four of the vessels owned by our common control entities.”
   “While many of the ships currently on order are of eco design, fuel efficient ships still represent a small proportion of total supply,” the company added.
   Poseidon’s chief executive officer is George Giouroukos, who also founded the company’s technical manager, Technomar, in 1994 and its commercial manager, ConChart, in 2010. He has 22 years experience in the shipping business.
   The company says it plans to “increase the size of our fleet through timely and selective acquisitions of additional containerships with similar specifications, in a manner that we believe will create long-term shareholder value.” The company plans to use proceeds from the IPO to help fund the acquisition of four 8,063-TEU ships for $219.2 million, as well as general corporate purposes.
   Poseidon’s current fleet has ships ranging in size from 2,506 TEUs to 6,927 TEUs. Built between 1996 and 2013, the 18 vessels are on charter to companies such as Seaboard, NOL, Evergreen, MSC, MOL, ZIM, COSCO, China Shipping, OOCL, “K” Line, UASC, and A.P. Moller-Maersk.