By Barry Parker (gCaptain) –
The International Maritime Organization is expected to codify a transitional (i.e. 2030) energy efficiency pathway for commercial ships in an upcoming meeting in June of its Maritime Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC 76).
This is a big deal because the language coming out of the soon-to-happen meeting will then find its way into the language of MARPOL, the international legal framework for all matters related to maritime emissions, by 2023.
Energy efficiency (measured by EEDI, EEXI and the like), specific to individual vessels, is really a subset of broader issues related to the bigger picture of where shipping fits into greenhouse gas emissions targets farther out to 2050. Getting to these targets will certainly require technical actions, related to the vessel design and captured in EEDI type measures. But meeting the longer-term targets also will require expansive and expensive paradigm shifts.
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More shipowners have come to Wall Street than have left over the past half decade. Yet most of the new arrivals have been micro-cap stocks and some of the recent departures have been big names.
On Monday, liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipping giant
GasLog Ltd. (NYSE: GLOG) announced plans to go private.
The delisting of GasLog follows on the heels of January s definitive agreement to fold
Navios Containers (NYSE: NMCI) into Navios Partners (NMM), December s take private announcement by
Seacor (NYSE: CKH), the delisting of Teekay Offshore s common (but not preferred) units in January 2020 after the takeover by Brookfield Business Partners, and the privatization of DryShips in October 2019.
Matson (NYSE: MATX) and
(Chart: Koyfin)
The ‘retail horde theory
Why has the broader shipping-stock space revved up in February when rates for most non-container segments have not?
One theory particularly in the wake of the
GameStop (NYSE: GME) stock spike in late January is that the retail horde has alighted on shipping stocks. It happened before, in April 2020, when traders on retail platform Robinhood ran up the stock of
Nordic American Tankers (NYSE: NAT). If it s happening again, this month s price gains could be fleeting.
Evidence for this theory: Micro-cap shipping stocks favored by day traders are performing exceptionally well. Robinhood restricted trading in various stocks amid the GameStop frenzy. One of them was
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After years of failed attempts, ocean carrier ZIM finally went public on Jan. 28, pricing an IPO and listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). At first blush, its debut looked like an embarrassing flop. The IPO had to be downsized. Shares immediately plunged. But just two weeks later,
ZIM (NYSE: ZIM) is riding high.
The IPO was priced at $15 per share, below the $16-$19 per share target range. Then it got worse: Shares collapsed all the way to $11.38 within hours of being listed.
Since then, however, it s been all up. On Thursday, the stock closed at $18.69, 64% higher than its post-IPO nadir. Over the past 11 trading sessions, its market capitalization (shares outstanding times share price) increased $837 million to $2.14 billion.