Global Ship Lease agreed to new five-year time charters for the Eco 9,115 TEU Al Khor and Maira XL vessels with a liner operator. The new charters will commence at the conclusion of the vessels’ current charters in mid-2022.

The vessels, which are currently earning $31,650 and $34,000 per day, respectively, are expected to generate aggregate adjusted EBITDA of approximately $206 million over the five-year charter period. Adjusted to include these newly signed charters, Global Ship Lease’s total contracted revenue will increase to $1.85 billion.

The agreements materially reduce open days in 2022, which are now at minimal levels, and together with the increase in contracted revenue from other year-to-date charter renewals and from growth, provide additional cash flow visibility. Accordingly, Global Ship Lease’s board of directors intends to increase the quarterly dividend to be paid to common shareholders by 50% to $0.375 per share, with the increase taking effect from Q1/22. This increased dividend represents more than triple the amount initially announced in January 2021.

“These new long-term charters at excellent rates, agreed well ahead of current charter expiry, are in line with our strategy of locking in attractive cash flow for multi-year periods,” George Youroukos, executive chairman of Global Ship Lease, said. “They demonstrate not only the continued strength of the charter market for high-quality, Eco post-panamax containerships, but also the dramatic earnings growth potential of the GSL fleet. Having increased the size of our fleet by more than 50% over the course of 2021 through a series of immediately accretive acquisitions, these newly signed charters are a powerful demonstration of the operating leverage of our business model.”

“Taking into consideration all of these highly supportive developments, our greatly expanded contract cover and our continued positive assessment of mid-sized and smaller containership prospects for some time to come, our board of directors is confident that GSL can sustainably support this significant increase in our quarterly dividend for common shareholders to $0.375 per share, more than three times the level we announced in January 2021.

“Looking ahead, we continue to see opportunities to create shareholder value by further growing the fleet with accretive acquisitions of on-the-water vessels to opportunistically work with our customers to renew and improve our fleet on a non-speculative basis and to pursue a range of value-creating activities for the long-term benefit of our shareholders.”