Star Bulk Carriers Corp Company Profile

We are an international shipping company with extensive operational experience that owns and operates a fleet of dry bulk carrier vessels. On a fully delivered basis, we will have a fleet of 76 vessels consisting primarily of Newcastlemax, Capesize as well as Kamsarmax, Ultramax and Supramax vessels with a carrying capacity between 45,588 dwt and 209,537 dwt. Our vessels transport a broad range of major and minor bulk commodities, including ores, coal, grains and fertilizers, along worldwide shipping routes. Our highly experienced executive management team, with a combined 120 years of shipping industry experience, is led by Mr. Petros Pappas, who has more than 35 years of shipping industry experience and has managed approximately 300 vessel acquisitions and dispositions.

Our fleet, which emphasizes large Capesize vessels, primarily transports minerals from the Americas and Australia to East Asia, particularly China, but also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Our Supramax vessels carry minerals, grain products and steel between the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and Indonesia and from these areas to China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Our primary objectives are to grow our business profitably and to continue to grow as a successful owner and operator of dry bulk vessels. The key elements of our strategy are:

Preserve liquidity during the current dry bulk market downturn through efficient operations and vessel sales

Dry bulk charterhire rates have reached historically low levels recently, which if prolonged could severely impact the dry bulk shipping industry overall. The Baltic Dry Index, or the BDI, an index published daily by the Baltic Exchange Limited, a London-based membership organization that provides daily shipping market information to the global investing community, is a daily average of charter rates for key dry bulk routes and has long been considered as the main benchmark against which industry specialists and dry bulk shipping owners monitor the movements of the dry bulk vessel charter market and the performance of the overall dry bulk shipping market. In this environment, we are taking all necessary actions to preserve our liquidity through vessel sales, renegotiation of price and delivery dates with the shipyards for our newbuilding fleet, as well as optimization of vessel operations to reduce voyage and operating costs. Our management is focused on making us a leading operator in terms of cost without sacrificing the quality of our operations.

Capitalize on potential increases in charterhire rates for dry bulk shipping

The dry bulk shipping industry is cyclical in nature. The recent historically low dry bulk charterhire rates act as a catalyst for ship owners, who scrap a significant number of vessels, until equilibrium between demand and supply of vessels is achieved. Based on our analysis of industry dynamics, we believe that dry bulk charterhire rates will rise for the medium term due to drastic supply cuts that we expect will result from owners’ actions in the short term. The supply of dry bulk carriers is dependent on the delivery of new vessels and the removal of vessels from the global fleet, either through scrapping or loss. As of the beginning of February, 2016, the global dry bulk carrier order book amounted to approximately 15% of the existing fleet at that time. The level of scrapping activity is generally a function of scrapping prices in relation to current and prospective charter market conditions, as well as operating, repair and survey costs. Generally, dry bulk carriers at or over 25 years old are likely candidates to be scrapped. During 2015, a total of 30.5 million dwt was scrapped, representing the second highest level in the history of the dry bulk industry.We have also observed the conversion of a number of newbuilding dry bulk vessels to tanker and container vessels, which we consider has the positive consequence of reducing dry bulk vessel deliveries and hence supply. We expect that the historically low freight rate environment will continue to dissuade ship owners from ordering further dry bulk vessels. By reducing vessel supply, we believe that the above three factors will have a positive effect on freight rates in the future. While the charter market remains at current levels, we intend to operate our vessels in the spot market under short-term time charter market or voyage charters in order to benefit from any future increases in charter rates.

Charter our vessels in an active and sophisticated manner

Our business strategy is centered on arranging voyage and short term time charters for our vessels given the current low market levels. This approach is also tailored specifically to the fuel efficiency of our newbuilding vessels. While this process is more difficult and labor-intensive than placing our vessels on longer-term time charters, it can lead to greater profitability, particularly for vessels that have lower fuel consumption than typical vessels. When operating a vessel on a voyage charter, we (as owner of the vessel) will incur fuel costs, and therefore, we are in a position to benefit from fuel savings (particularly for our Eco-type vessels). If charter market levels rise, we may employ part of our fleet in the long-term time charter market, while we may be able to more advantageously employ our newbuilding fleet in the voyage charter market in order to capture the benefit of available fuel cost savings. Our large, diverse and high quality fleet provides scale to major charterers, such as iron ore miners, utility companies and commodity trading houses. This arrangement will allow us to take the full benefit of the vessels’ increased cargo carrying capacity as well as potential savings arising from their fuel efficiency, as we will be compensated on a $/ton basis, while being responsible for the voyage expenses of the vessels. We seek similar arrangements with other charterers, providing the scale required for the transportation of large commodity volumes over a multitude of trading routes around the world.