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Our Company Corporate Overview Corporate Structure Business Strategy Competitive Strengths |
Competitive Strengths
We believe that we have the following competitive strengths in the shipping industry:
Stable cash flow from well established and reputable charterers. All eight of our product tankers are employed on time charters with remaining terms which expire between mid 2009 and mid 2010. The charters are all with well established and reputable charterers. These charters should provide us with stable cash flow and high vessel utilization rates and should also limit our exposure to freight rate volatility. Young and well-maintained fleet. As of April 30, 2007 the vessels in our product tanker fleet have an average age of 1.8 years. All of the vessels have been built at shipyards with a reputation for constructing high-quality vessels, like Hyundai Mipo, STX Shipyard in South Korea, and Hyundai Heavy Industries. We intend to maintain the quality of our fleet through our technical managers' rigorous maintenance programs. We believe that owning a fleet of well-maintained vessels will enable us to continue to operate our vessels with low operating costs, obtain favorable debt financing terms and secure employment for our vessels with high quality charterers. Sister ships. Our 2 Ice Class 1A Handymax product tankers and 3 pairs of Panamax product tankers are sister ships. The operation of sister ships can result in cost efficiencies and more chartering opportunities. Cost efficiencies can be achieved by maintaining fewer spare parts, because various parts are inter-changeable between sister ships. We believe more chartering opportunities should be available because many charterers prefer sister ships for their services due to various efficiencies they can achieve from the use of sister ships. Experienced management team. Our management team consists of executives who have considerable experience in the management of the commercial and financial aspects of international shipping businesses. Our management team actively monitors the performance of our technical managers. While the commercial management of our fleet is retained in-house. We serve our clients worldwide through offices in Greece and the United States. Reputation of our Technical Managers for high operating standards. Our Vessels are managed as follows:
Our Technical Managers are two of world's largest providers of independent ship management and related marine services. As such, we believe that our Technical Managers have established a reputation in the international shipping industry for high standards of performance, reliability and safety. We believe that this reputation will create greater charter opportunities for us with well established charterers, many of whom consider the reputation of the manager when entering into charters. Low debt level We expect to have a ratio of indebtedness to total capitalization at a low level relative to industry standards. We believe that our level of debt should enhance our borrowing ability to finance vessel acquisitions and implement our growth strategy and dividend policy. |