Global Ship Lease, Inc., a containership owner and lessor, today announced that, subject to certain conditions precedent being met, the Company has agreed individual newbuilding contracts for a further five mid-size, ultra-high-reefer, wide-beam, latest-generation containerships for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $413 million. These highly flexible ships have been designed and specified to ensure a superior fit for existing and anticipated future market needs.
Upon delivery from the respective yards, scheduled to take place within 2029, the Newbuilds are contracted on multi-year charters with a TEU-weighted average term of 8.1 years and at rates expected to generate aggregate Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $362 million over their respective median firm charter terms, and an additional $131 million if all extension options are exercised by the charterers which would increase the TEU-weighted average term by approximately 2.2 years. These five Newbuilds bring the Company’s overall newbuilding orderbook to 15 ships, which are collectively expected to generate more than $1.0 billion of Adjusted EBITDA over an average TEU-weighted firm charter term of 7.1 years.
George Youroukos, Executive Chairman of Global Ship Lease, commented: “As with the 10 ships we announced earlier this month, we believe that these additional five best-in-class vessels are ideally positioned to serve as the workhorses of the global container shipping fleet for many years to come. The charter extension options, at rates that are over 25% higher than those for the initial firm periods, suggest that the charterers share our belief in the long-term commercial value and earnings potential of these ships. The needs of the global container trade are becoming ever more complex and variable, lending additional importance to the combination of deployment flexibility, refrigerated cargo capacity, and fuel efficiency that these ships offer to our liner customers. As some of the existing “cash cows” of the GSL fleet begin to age out, the addition of these new vessels with multi-year charters will not only materially reduce our average fleet age but also provide us with a substantially extended cash generation runway into the decades ahead.”