Seatrade-Maritime: The business of shipping – raising money because you can

The “Business of Shipping” panel, in the late afternoon of Day 1 of the Connecticut Maritime Association (CMA) Shipping 2026 event, brought together a group of top tier veterans of the New York shipping scene discussing a wide range of pertinent issues. 

The panel’s moderator- James Lightbourn, the CMA’s Communications Chair, began the session by introducing session participants, Morten Arntzen, veteran banker, company leader and now advisor to Macquarie Bank, Ted Young, CFO of listed company Dorian, Peter Shaerf, Managing Director at AMA Capital, Kevin Kennedy, Principal of container shipping specialist Good Ground Advisors, and Jon Chia from media specialists MTI Network. 

The session began with a discussion of ship finance, and the widely observed situation where listed shipping equities often sell below their Net Asst Values (NAV); AMA’s Shaerf commented that “you can sell your ships individually” to achieve value, with Dorian’s Young pointing that “the cost of capital varies over time” along with investor assessments of company valuations. 

Opportunities to trade above NAV

“The beauty of shipping is that we do have opportunities to trade above NAV during the cycle,” Young said, adding that maritime companies taking advantage of this metric could issue equity at those times as Dorian did. “When the stock price is high, you raise money- because you can…not because you need it,” he added.

Moderator Lightbourn chimed in, saying that: “A high valuation IPO is the playbook- if you can do it, you raise the financing when you can.” 

Liner shipping value in the franchise value

Panelist Kevin Kennedy suggested that liner shipping, where the carriers have a real franchise value, is different, and also pointed out that liner operators are often chartering in a high percentage of their tonnage. 

The extreme spikes on $ per teu during the Pandemic era ,at the time that Zim went public, were also a subject of discussion, with Dorian LPG’s Young pointing to entities such as Amazon and Home Depot talking about forays into liner transport, “the rates didn’t cover the cost of capital for years…they gained all their money in two years (after years of mediocre returns before and then after the spike) that’s shipping in a nutshell,” Young said. 

Mainstream media coverage of shipping

The panel also included a lively dialogue about shipping’s coverage in the mainstream media, which- according to MTI’s Chia, “has crept up in recent years”, which he suggested was due to an increased interest in maritime matters from the Administration in Washington, D.C. 

AMA Capital’s Shaerf was quick to add a dose of vociferous disagreement- “It did not start until the Ever Given ran aground [in the Suez Canal, in March, 2021]; It’s all about the supply chain,” he reiterated. 

The conversion then moved to mainstream media mentions of Greek shipowners reaping fortunes in the past weeks amidst concerns about transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Citing a mainstream publication headline citing a “Billionaire Buccaneer” regarding record high tanker hires, Lightbourn pointed out that: “While we are here talking about what’s right for the seafarer, there are folks are that are making fortunes…we are seeing the grass now permanently ruined because of the spike in VLCC rates.”