First Ship Lease Trust - Purchase and Analysis of Purchase

I purchased some FSL Trust today at a market price of S$1.17 to add to my portfolio. After doing some research on the Internet and on forums for high-yielding stocks, I chanced upon shipping trusts. There are 3 of them currently listed on SGX, namely Rickmers Maritime Trust, First Ship Lease Trust (FSL Trust) and Pacific Shipping Trust (PST). Since this was a relatively new asset class and promised high yield, I decided to do my research to see what I could sniff out in terms of yield and returns.

Apparently, of the 3 shipping trusts, only FSL Trust works on a bareboat charter basis, which means that they are not responsible for the costs of maintaining the vessels under their care. The business model for all 3 shipping trusts is similar: buy vessels and lease them back to the shipping operators on an operating lease (usually 7 to 9 years lock-in). The trust will then collect the lease revenue, pay off the trust's management and distribute the remainder as dividends to unit-holders. What differs is that FSL Trust does purely bareboat chartering, in which the cash flows are stable and certain as they are NOT exposed to operating costs and NOT exposed to technical/vessel downtime. As a result, they are able to more or less guarantee a specific dividend being paid out of their profits as profits are more certain and predictable. This qualifies it as a "safe" investment as I do not like surprises when it comes to high-yield instruments.

FSL Trust started off by launching its IPO at US$0.98 which began trading on March 27, 2007. Initially, the trust had a portfolio of 13 vessels, of which 4 are containerships, 4 are product tankers, 3 are chemical tankers and the remaining 2 are dry bulk carriers. The average age of the vessels are 5 years old and they are leased to international shipping operators such as Evergreen Marine, Berlian Laju Tanker (which is also listed on SGX), Schoeller Holdings, Siba Ships and James Fisher. There is flexibility with regards to structuring such lease arrangements for lessees which makes FSL Trust's business model attractive. In addition, to date, FSL Trust has only utilized US$50 million out of a potential US$250 million loan facility to acquire new vessels. This leaves more room for yield-accretive acquisitions which can increase DPU (distribution per unit).

A business update by the company dated November 9, 2007 shows that they had acquired 3 product tankers on June 1, 2007 from James Fisher for US$45 million, marking their first acquisition post-IPO. In addition, there is also an option given by James Fisher to sell and leaseback a fourth vessel by June 30, 2008. The lease term is 10 years and is accretive to DPU. Another 2 product tankers were acquired on November 7, 2007 for US$113 million from Groda Shipping and Transportation for a lease term of 7 years. This acquisition is immediately accretive and we will see the effects in the upcoming 4th quarter DPU announcement due on January 16, 2008 (Wednesday).

Now for the numbers: The previous DPU for the period July 1 to September 30 (paid on November 23, 2007) was US 2.23 cents per share, thus annualized DPU based on this payout would be US 8.92 cents, or about SGD 12.67 cents using a conservative exchange rate of 1 USD: 1.42 SGD. At my purchase price of S$1.17 per share, this would represent a dividend yield of 10.82%. This is obviously much better than any REIT and bank account, and beats inflation by almost double (inflation is expected to hit 5% for 2008). The additional positives are that the trust will be looking out for more yield-accretive acquisitions to add value to shareholders, while yield plays generally do quite well during market corrections.

There are always risks to any investment, and the risk in this case is that distributions are paid out in USD, and the USD is currently on a decline, hitting 1.428 as I write this post. There is also a risk of lease rates slowing down and moving lower, thus limiting FSL Trust's capacity to acquire vessels to increase yield for unitholdings. Of course, the ever present risk is of capital loss, as in any investment which is listed on a stock exchange, but hopefully the impact can be mitigated by a higher dividend yield.

Comments are welcome and I appreciate some healthy feedback on shipping trusts in general, as well as FSL Trust.