CMA CGM Hires Two More Boxships from GSL

Containership charter owner  Global Ship Lease has agreed five-year charters with French liner company CMA CGM for two 2015-built booxships.

The deal involves 6,882 TEU containerships UASC Bubiyan and UASC Yas, and comes on the back of similar charters the company inked with CMA CGM in November for four ships.  The wide-beam containerships were acquired through GSL’s recent merger with Poseidon Containers.

“In addition to the substantial value of the merger as originally announced, our subsequent chartering activity related to Poseidon legacy vessels continues to produce the incremental value that we anticipated, having now added more than USD 280 million of incremental contracted revenue and over USD 200 million of incremental EBITDA, while increasing our weighted average remaining charter term beyond that of the GSL legacy fleet and bringing our charter-attached NAV to over USD 500 million as of September 30, 2018.

“In this way, we are once again significantly improving GSL’s earnings profile and long-term cashflow visibility as we clearly benefit from the substantial value brought to the table by Poseidon Containers,” Ian Webber, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease, said.

GSL said that the charters will commence upon the expiry of the current charters during the second quarter of 2019, are for a period of five years. The company scored hire rates for the duo standing at USD 25,910 per day, up from USD 20,000 per day under the current charters.

Global Ship Lease owns 38 vessels, of which nine are Post-Panamax new-design eco wide beam, with an average age of 10.7 years.