Konstantakopoulos boosts stake in Capesize specialist Seanergy Maritime

Konstantinos Konstantakopoulos has increased his stake in Seanergy Maritime Holdings, led by compatriot Stamatis Tsantanis. This move follows Seanergy’s recently disclosed record results for Q2 2024.

In a 13G filing, Seanergy revealed Mr Konstantakopoulos now holds 1.50M of its 20.60M outstanding shares, representing a 7.3% stake in the Capesize specialist. Costamare’s boss has purchased the shares through Longshaw Maritime Investments, his investment vehicle.

The connection between Mr Konstantakopoulos and Seanergy dates back to July 2023, when the latter announced the prominent Greek shipowner had acquired shares amounting to 5.1% of the company. According to Seanergy’s 2023 annual report, published last March, Mr Konstantakopoulos owned 1.26M shares, representing a 6.2% stake in the company.

Sources told Riviera Mr Konstantakopoulos’ investment in Seanergy is entirely a private endeavor and is not associated with Costamare. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that Costamare, which had focused exclusively on container ships until 2021, has since become quite active in the dry bulk market, building a large owned fleet and launching Costamare Bulkers, an operating platform with chartering activity in the sector.

In fact, Costamare Bulkers has fixed Seanergy’s Capesize bulkers Iconship and Lordship, each for about two years.

Record results

Seanergy Maritime Holdings achieved record profitability in both the second quarter and the first half of 2024, significantly outperforming the average Capesize charter market.

The daily time charter equivalent of Seanergy’s fleet reached US$26,636 in Q2, representing a premium of about 18% over the US$22,600 average of the Baltic Capesize Index (BCI) during the period.

Net income surged to US$14.1M in Q2, a remarkable increase from US$678,000 in the same period of 2023. Net revenues also soared to US$43.1M this year, up from US$28.3M last year. For January to June, Seanergy reversed its 2023 net loss, posting a net income of US$24.28M, with revenues nearly doubling to US$81.40M.

Notably, chairman and chief executive Mr Tsantanis highlighted the Nasdaq-listed company has fixed about 42% of its available days for Q3 2024, at an average gross rate of US$29,500 “which compares favourably to the performance of the BCI to date”.

The Economou involvement

Another prominent Greek shipowner, George Economou, has also invested in Seanergy, holding 8.9% of the company’s shares (1.86M shares), according to the latest filing.

Mr Economou has increasingly focused on acquiring significant stakes in dry bulk companies through open market transactions. In some cases, he has taken a more aggressive approach, criticising entities for poor management and requesting immediate changes to their boards.

This was also the case with Seanergy. Last May, Mr Economou’s investment entity, Sphinx Investment Corp, proposed the resignation of Mr Tsantanis, Christina Anagnostara and Elias Culucundis from Seanergy’s board, nominating Georgios Kokkodis and John Liveris as replacements.

Seanergy responded by stating its efforts to “engage constructively with Mr Economou” had failed, describing his actions as “a costly and distracting proxy contest.”

Sphinx’s reaction was swift, “Our ongoing litigation and shareholder proposals are not based on a simple policy disagreement. This is about what is right and what is wrong”.