Rickmers Maritime widens 2015 loss on higher impairment charges, lower revenue

The Singapore-listed shipping trust reported a full year loss of $129.23m, compared to the loss of $15.96m in 2014.

Rickmers Maritime incurred an impairment on vessel of $143.09m last year, compared to the smaller impairment of $44.45m in 2014. Excluding the impact of impairments in 2015, the shipping trust would have registereda profit of $18.8m.

Full year revenue was recorded at $108.55m, down 17% year-on-year due mainly to lower market charter rates of vessels which commenced new charters in the year.

Distribution per unit (DPU) remains suspended since November 2015 so as to conserve cash, and the company aims to resume when it is in a position to do so sustainably.

“While the market remains depressed, we are seeing pockets of opportunities within the panamax segment,” said Soeren Andersen, ceo of Rickmers Trust Management (RTM), the trustee-manager of Rickmers Maritime.

“More vessels of our type are being deployed by feeder operators to serve the influx of large tonnage to move containers to hub ports. For example, Moni Rickmers is chartered to Maersk Line’s intra-Asia feeder operator, MCC Transport,” Andersen said.

“The depressed oil price also reduces our customers’ cost savings from utilising large containerships, making smaller vessels like ours more attractive to the market in the medium-term,” he added.

Rickmers Maritime operates a fleet of 16 containerships which achieved a full year utilisation of 99.2% in 2015.

The fleet, through existing charter agreements, has $144.6m of secured revenue between 1 January 2016 and the expiry of the last charter party contract in 2019. As at 19 February 2016, the fleet has secured employment of 53.6% for 2016.