A couple of days ago, I had a chance to skim a couple of June issues of Investors Business Daily (IBD) Top holdings. Although the publication has a longer list, I typically just skim the Top 30. IBD has a proprietary model of metrics to rate the various companies. A few months back, a pair of cruise line companies made the Top 30. But, the two June IBD issues I skimmed had a different name.
The new shipping name on the IBD list was Costamare (CMRE). Who are Costamare? Greek shipping company that was previously only in the container shipping segment. The last couple of years the company has diversified and now has a dry bulk shipping fleet.
Per their Q1 2024 earnings report, the company had a contracted backlog of $2.3B - this seems to be in the same ballpark as entities such as NMM, SFL or GSL. My categorization of all four names is a Tier 2 player i.e. each company owns most of their vessels, and charters or leases their vessels to the Tier 1 players (Major liner companies like MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, etc).
The container shipping segment has improved a lot in the last few months. But, the real beneficiaries are the Tier 1 players. They realize the benefits of higher rates. The Tier 2 players are beneficiaries if they had vessels rolling off charters (the more vessels, the better). Some additional factors come into play wrt chartering. Newer vessels are generally more fuel efficient, so all else being equal, that’s the type of vessels a Tier 1 player would prefer.
I know little about Costamare’s dry bulk fleet. I do know that CMRE took a position in Eagle Bulk (EGLE). Since SBLK eventually took over EGLE, I would guess CMRE had a monetary gain on the position.
In any case, IBD’s June 24 edition has CMRE in the 16th position.
