$6.21
0.11 (+1.80%)
StealthGas, Inc. (GASS)
CAPS Rating:
The Company and its wholly owned subsidiaries, owns a fleet of twenty-eight liquefied petroleum gas carriers providing worldwide marine transportation services under long, medium or short-term charters.
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The lasts new show that they will be involved in a lawsuit because of contract breaking and they arrested some of those ships that will be standing waiting court decision, this will may cost thousands a day just to maintain those. Can they keep paying div?
Can anyone shed some light on this one?
The arrested ships are from another company that broke their contract. This should have a very small impact on their bottom line with the exception of having another ship on the Spot Market. The market segment that GASS is involved in has not been affected as dramatically as other areas like Dry Bulk or Cargo. Are time charters down yes, but its a relatively small percentage. I think management is torn about the dividend, they want to pay the dividend which they can afford with the write off of depreciation alone, but the CEO believes that with GASS trading at 25% of its Net Asset Value that the cash might be better used to buy back the cheapest asset they can get right now which is their own stock. You may be surprised that even with a dividend cut this stock could increase.
is this a buy before or after 1st quarter earnings?
I don't know how much earnings will impact GASS, they are so underfollowed, although growing. I am predicting that earnings will only be a couple of cents above the analysis consensus of .28 simply because their revenue stream is so predictable that it can't really vary by that much without something strange happening like a loss or gain on an interest rate swap. If the dividend goes away I think you would have a buying opportunity on the short term as I think it would be construed as negative news but I don't think anyone really knows what mgmt will decide it was kind of buried in their press release.
even a cent over the estimates is reason for the stock to rally in this economy. But like you said if the dividend doesn't remain then it could drive this stock lower.
Thanks for all your help.