Norden slashes full year losses

Norden is positioning itself for a recovery in both the dry bulk and tanker markets by leaving more vessels days open for 2014 and investing in 18.5 newbuilds in 2013, adjusted for ownership share. The nine owned and 9.5 long term chartered vessels with purchase options bring the company's orderbook to 37 ships with total investments over $1bn.

The company hailed its business strategy of "growth in challenging times" for 2011-2013 as a success, despite losing $278.7m in the period, and has embarked on a new strategy named "capture value in improving markets." The new focus will mean investment predominantly in the dry cargo market, lower coverage for the fleet and "right steaming", whereby the profitability of increasing a vessel's speed will be considered.

The company's outlook for 2014 is one of gradually improving markets with a slow start to the year. At the start of 2014, the company had covered 59% of its ship days in the dry cargo fleet and 24% of the available days in the tanker fleet, down from 76% and 27% respectively at the same point in 2013.

"As expected, 2013 was a year of investment and not of profit making," commented ceo Carsten Mortensen.

"Even though we are outperforming the market in both dry cargo and tankers, it is not satisfactory that the results for the year constitute a loss. However, we have spent the year well and invested in the future. We believe in better times within both segments and have increased our investment programme to more than $1bn with an order book now counting 37 fuel efficient vessels. And the timing of the orders appears to be good. Ship values have increased significantly."

During the course of 2013 the market valuation of the fleet rose to $92m above book value, a $228m jump from the $136m drop in 2012.

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