Eagle’s nest egg

Eagle Bulk Shipping bagged a $13.7m cash windfall this week but still saw its share price drop on Wednesday.

The coffers are being swelled by the settlement of foreign exchange contracts relating to three newbuildings at a Japanese yard, the Nasdaq-quoted company said in a filing with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

CEO Sophocles Zoullas.

Eagle Bulk had a quartet of 56,300-dwt bulkers on order at IHI Marine Limited but, with the delivery of the Crested Eagle this month, only three remain outstanding.

The Stellar Eagle will join the fleet in March with the Golden Eagle and Imperial Eagle being delivered in the first quarter next year.

The ships were ordered at an average price of JPY 3.7bn ($41.18m today) a piece, the Sophocles Zoullas-led owner said in the Form 8-K filing.

Eagle Bulk also said it expects to report annual revenues of $195m for 2008 with general and administrative expenses hitting $23.4m and fleet utilisation at 99.5%.

It did not, however, give any indication of net profit and did not elaborate on an expected “non-cash compensation expenses” of $11.1m which will hit the books.

The large cash injection was not enough to stop the company’s share price sliding 7.3% to $6.73 a piece on Wednesday.

(To read Eagle Bulk’s filing in full click on the link in the related media section to the right of this article.)

Printable version Newsletter sign up