Seaspan raises $600 million in NYSE IPO

Seaspan raises $600 million in NYSE IPO    Seaspan Corp., the fast-growing non-operating charter owner best known for having ordered 9,600-TEU vessels, raised about $600 million from the New York Stock Exchange in its initial public offering Tuesday.
   Managed from offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and registered in the Marshall Islands, Seaspan set its IPO price at $21 per share. Its stock closed at $21.30 on its first day of trading Tuesday. The corporation sold 28.6 million of its common shares to the public and gave its underwriters an option to purchase up to 4.3 million additional common shares to cover over-allotments.
   Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the corporation’s shares.
   A fast-growing charter owner in the container shipping sector, Seaspan has charter contracts to provide containerships to China Shipping Container Lines and CP Ships. It said its fleet would rise from 10 vessels (aggregating 50,960 TEUs) to 18 ships (for 84,984 TEUs) at the end of 2006 and 23 ships (for 116,903 TEUs) at the end of 2007.
   Seaspan said it would use the proceeds of the IPO primarily to fund the purchase price of its initial fleet of 10 containerships. In addition, the corporation has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire an additional 13 new containerships as they are completed and delivered, over approximately the next 25 months. The additional 13 containerships will comprise 11 4,250-TEU vessels and two 9,600-TEU vessels.
   Seaspan has a charter contract to lease the two 9,600-TEU behemoths to China Shipping Container Lines and has ordered the vessels from the Korean shipyard Samsung, with their deliveries scheduled for 2007.
   “The container shipping industry has experienced an increasing trend towards ‘chartering-in’ capacity whereby container liner companies are chartering a portion of their vessels from third parties as opposed to purchasing the vessels,” Seaspan said. It added that chartered-in vessels accounted for about 47 percent of the top 10 container lines’ capacity in 2004, up from about 30 percent in 1999.
   The Seaspan stock trades on the NYSE under the symbol “SSW.”