EuroDry at Noble Capital Markets: Fleet Renewal and Market Strategy

On Thursday, 09 October 2025, EuroDry Ltd. (NASDAQ:EDRY) presented at the Noble Capital Markets Emerging Growth Virtual Investor Conference. Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Tasos Aslidis shared insights into the company’s strategic direction, focusing on fleet renewal and market positioning. While highlighting potential growth through newer, fuel-efficient vessels, Aslidis also addressed financial challenges and market dependencies, particularly the influence of China’s economic status on the dry bulk sector.

Key Takeaways

• EuroDry plans to renew its fleet by replacing older Panamax vessels with newer Ultramax models.
• The company faces funding challenges, considering organic growth and non-dilutive share issuances.
• China’s economic performance is a critical factor for the dry bulk market.
• Current trading price of EuroDry shares is significantly below the estimated net asset value.
• Liquidity is expected to improve with the sale of MV Irini and vessel refinancing.

Financial Results

• Debt stands at approximately $98 million.
• Cash flow break-even level is around $12,000, inclusive of $2,800 for loan repayment.
• Net Asset Value (NAV) is estimated between $35 and $36 per share, while shares trade at about $12.50.
• The company is about 50% leveraged.
• Sale of MV Irini is projected to yield $6 million in net proceeds.
• Refinancing two vessels is anticipated to release an additional $5 million in capital.

Operational Updates

• EuroDry’s fleet consists of 12 vessels, soon to be 11 following the sale of MV Irini.
• Two new Ultramax vessels are under construction, expected to be delivered in mid and late 2027.
• The fleet strategy focuses on Supramax to Kamsarmax vessels, ranging from 50,000 to 85,000 deadweight tons.
• All vessels are employed on short-term charters, with some contracts extending to mid-next year.

Future Outlook

• EuroDry aims to renew its fleet with more efficient vessels, enhancing operational performance.
• Funding strategies include organic savings, non-dilutive share issuances, and joint ventures.
• The market outlook remains cautiously optimistic, contingent on China’s economic health and global trade dynamics.
• Long-term charters are considered viable if rates reach $15,000 or higher, ensuring positive cash flow.

Q&A Highlights

• EuroDry is open to long-term contracts at rates of $15,000 or above.
• The newbuilding program’s equity portion, approximately $25 to $28 million, will be funded through internal savings.
• The decision to build new vessels over buying second-hand is driven by cost-effectiveness.
• Enhancing liquidity remains a priority, with proceeds from asset sales and refinancing contributing to this goal.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for more detailed insights into EuroDry’s strategic plans and market analysis.

Full transcript - Noble Capital Markets Emerging Growth Virtual Investor Conference:

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Welcome, everyone, to Noble Capital Markets’ Emerging Growth Virtual Equity Conference, and thank you for joining us. I am Mark Reichman, a Senior Research Analyst at Noble. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of EuroDry Ltd. The company’s shares trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol EDRY. Tasos, the floor is yours.

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: Thank you, Mark. Thanks for the invitation and thanks to Noble for organizing this conference and indeed inviting us. I will take the next 15 minutes, about 15 minutes, to give you some highlights of our company, EuroDry Ltd., which, as Mark mentioned, trades on Nasdaq under the symbol EDRY. Before I start, you are familiar with this, some forward-looking statements. I’m going to flash this. I’m going to talk about estimates for the future and some other ideas about our strategy. That’s why I need to put out these forward-looking statements to put them under that perspective. Let me jump right in and start describing EuroDry Ltd. EuroDry Ltd.

is a company that owns and operates ocean-going vessels that carry dry bulk commodities like iron ore, coal, grains, which we call major bulks, and other commodities that we call minor bulks that include steel products, bauxite, fertilizers, and the like. We concentrate in owning vessels in the middle of the size range of dry bulk carriers from 50,000 to 85,000 deadweight tons. We call them Supramax to Kamsarmax, as opposed to very large ships called Capesize that carry primarily one commodity, iron ore, and coal secondarily. We feel that by concentrating on the middle size, on the middle range of sizes, we exploit the economies of scale within that size group and at the same time reserve enough trading flexibility for our ships.

Currently, we own exactly 12 vessels, but soon we’ll own 11 because one of them we have committed to sell and we are to deliver it to its new owners at the end of the month. We also have two vessels under construction, which we expect to take delivery of in about two years, in the middle and third quarter of 2027. Our company is a continuation of a shipping tradition of the Pittas family that dates its roots all the way back to the 19th century, 1870, if I recall well. The family’s involvement in shipping and in the capital markets started with Euroseas, what we call our former parent, of which we were spun off about seven years ago. All the members of the management team are seasoned professionals. We want to believe in the sector. Aristides, our CEO, and myself have more than 30 years involvement.

Our Chief Administrative Officer, Symeon, has more than 20 years, and the rest of the team has a nice mix of experience and youth. Our board consists of people who have leading positions in their respective fields, and we believe they provide us with sufficient guidance and a sounding board to chart the strategy of the company. We manage our ships through a management company that is an affiliate, and that has also a long experience and is well established in the shipping community. We believe we are a vertically, including the management company, we believe that we’re a vertically integrated group that provides ourselves with everything a shipping company needs. I will flash very quickly the list of our fleet.

You can see that our fleet consists of two clusters, as we say, the modern or new building cluster, which are all Chinese-built ships, three of which, the first three, we built ourselves. The rest we bought. Those are mostly sister ships of our Alexandros that we built. We also have what we call a Panamax cluster. These are older vessels, about 20-21 years old. We sold MV Irini. We sold and will be delivered, as I mentioned earlier, to its buyers later this month. Those vessels were the workhorses of their time when they were built, Japanese-built. Now they are approaching the latter part of their life, and we’re in the process of renewing our fleet. We have sold one of similar ships earlier this year. We committed to sell MV Irini. The two ships at the bottom of this table are our two newbuildings.

It’s the ships that we’re going to carry on our fleet renewal program. We intend to replace the vessels, the Panamax vessels that are older, with newer vessels like the two Ultramax we currently have under construction in Chinese yards. Indeed, this is our growth strategy, to renew our fleet, gradually replace the older Panamaxes with new vessels that are more fuel-efficient and more attractive, commercially speaking. We have a challenge to fund our growth. This can be funded either organically by funds that we generate from our operations. The market has not been very helpful up until last quarter, but it seems to have improved a bit, and hopefully, if it continues to improve, that would provide us enough funds to fund our newbuilding program. Conceivably, we can issue new shares, but we are refraining from issuing shares in non-dilutive ways.

We want to issue shares only in non-dilutive ways. I’ll explain a little bit further down what we mean by that. Of course, we can increase our size and presence by pursuing joint ventures where we establish collaborations at the vessel level, like the two vessels that we bought two years ago, where we own 61% of these two vessels and other investors own the remaining 39%. I’ll give you some very quick highlights of the dry bulk market. This gives you a very long historical perspective of both rates, which is the blue line on this chart, and also the supply side of the fleet, which is one of our major points in our thesis to remain invested in dry bulk. You can see rate-wise, the market has experienced significant swings.

In the early 2000s, we had record-setting rates for this type of ship, a Panamax, in the excess of $70,000. There was a miserable decade after the financial crisis. Things changed again during the COVID years. More recently, down here, we have been at below average rates up until three months ago when rates started improving. I will draw your attention to the red line of the chart, which shows the fleet under construction as a percentage of the fleet at the time. You can see that the fleet under construction has been quite low for quite a long period of time. From 2021 up until this year, it has hovered below 10% or around 10%. This is a relatively low level of fleet replacement, which means that the fleet is underbuilt.

That was our thesis, thinking that since supply growth is limited, any demand growth would create a significant rise of charter rates. Over the last two to three years, that hasn’t really happened. There were some periods in 2024 that seemed to be happening, but the markets declined. There are various reasons for that. Demand did not keep its end of the bargain, so to speak. Rates have not really improved. However, the low supply still provides a good base for the market to recover. I will not bother you with some more historical information. I will repeat the point that we have a fleet profile, a fleet age profile, you can see at the bottom left of the slide, that provides a significant percentage of the fleet over 20 years, about 10% of the fleet over 20 years.

These ships are likely to be scrapped, especially if the market is not very good, or even more so, given the new set of environmental regulations that is being applied on the ships. With a fleet supply growing at modest rates, you can see at the bottom right, the supply growth or the fleet deliveries, I should say, scheduled for 2026 and 2027. These numbers would possibly be reduced by the amount of ships that are going to be scrapped. We have a relatively modest supply growth. We expect that would provide the foundation for increases in the charter rates if demand keeps its own growth rate of historical average rates. This is a chart that gives you some empirical, let’s say, data points about how demand develops. Typically, the dry bulk trade is linked to economic growth.

I mean, it’s not a statistical result, what I’m showing you, but a visual one. When the world economy did well, then dry bulk trade did well. More recently, there were exogenous factors to this relationship that have to do with the pattern of trade and certain routes being changed. For example, the essential closure or significant reduction of the traffic that goes through Suez Canal due to Houthi attacks on shipping forced vessels to go around Africa and thus increase demand. Earlier, in 2024, we had some issues with the Panama Canal. All these are additional factors that create uncertainty and disturbances in the pattern of trade. An overwhelming factor affecting dry bulk trade is imports of dry bulk commodities by China. China imports a fair amount of iron ore, imports grains, and exports steel products and other commodities. It’s a crucial driving force for the dry bulk market.

Over the last three to four years, it has not been at its absolute tip, as the infrastructure of China seemed to be saturated, and the Chinese government tried to stimulate domestic consumption and domestic demand in lieu of exports. Really, an investment in the dry bulk market is an investment in China’s economic health. In 2025, and these are some historical information about the main commodities that our ships carry, based on Clarkson, a research firm in the market, in 2025, demand was really not there, at least based on these estimates that were done in the middle of the year. In 2026, certain trends are expected to be reversed, although still iron ore, which is an important contributor to trade, it makes up about 28% of the overall trade, is facing headwinds. Coal is a special case.

Coal trade consists of two types of coal, metallurgical coal, which is linked to steel production, and thermal coal, which is linked to power generation. Clearly, thermal coal was on a declining path, given that the world was turning away from polluting sources of energy production and fossil fuels. Of course, the election of Donald Trump has changed that situation, potentially, and created even more uncertainty of how the coal trade will move. We’re looking at these estimates, and we expect 2026 to be a better year trade-wise, which, combined with the modest supply growth, will lead to higher charter rates. Indeed, the last three months, and even now, rates have been higher, and we hope that if this level of rates continues, we would be more solidly on a profitable basis as far as EuroDry Ltd. is concerned.

Let me move and give you some highlights about our commercial strategy and fleet. This is, again, the 12 vessels that we currently have in our fleet. The first one, MV Irini, is the one that we have agreed to sell. If you look at this chart that shows how the vessels have been employed, all our vessels are employed on short-term charters. Even the last three ones that are employed on longer-term charters until the middle of next year, the rate is linked to market indices. If anything, our future profitability will depend solely on how well the market is doing. We’re fully exposed to the market. You can see that on this chart, which links our adjusted EBITDA, the black line, and our net income to the time charter rates for the two types of ships that we have, the Panamax and Kamsarmax, and the Supramax Ultramax one.

We’re fully in sync with the market because all our fleet is exposed to it. We have employed our fleet on short-term charters. To finalize my remarks here, this is our debt situation and some highlights from our balance sheet on this and the next slide. We have about $98 million debt. We have recently refinanced two of our vessels, so our debt will probably be a little higher. Overall, we’re about 50%, roughly 50% levered on the cash flow break-even level that you can see at the bottom of the slide. I think our overall cash flow break-even level is about $12,000, which includes $2,800 of loan repayment. As long as the market is above that, it’s above $13,000, which is where about the market is currently, we are making positive cash flow contributions and also making similarly positive net income results.

Final slide before I open the floor for questions, some summary presentation of our balance sheet. On the asset side, we have, it’s a very simple balance sheet. We have cash, some advances we made in the value of our vessels. On the liability side, we have basically our bank debt and some working capital liabilities. All in all, we have a book value of about $90 million. At the same time, our $32 per share, our vessels, though, are worth more than their book value. On a net asset value (NAV) basis, we estimate that our fleet, our shares are worth about $35, $36 each. We trade at $12.5. We trade at a deep discount. That presents an opportunity. You need to know, though, that that discount is a function of the size of the company. We’re one of the smallest dry bulk companies.

That probably justifies the discount and the low trading volume of our shares. If the market recovers, as we expect, all boards will be lifted, and our boat, EuroDry, will be lifted more than our peers. Hopefully, our shareholders will make outsized or better returns than the market would otherwise dictate. I’ll stop here, Mark, and let you ask or coordinate any questions.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Thank you, Tasos. You mentioned that all of your vessels are under short-term charters, and we have seen an increase in rates during the third quarter. At what point do you start to begin to enter into longer-term contracts to take advantage of higher rates?

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: That’s a good question. I think, and let me go back quickly to that chart that shows. I think, as I showed you, our cash flow break-even level is about $12,000. That would be net. As long as the market rates are above $13,000, we are making positive cash flow and net income contributions. I think, as we discussed recently internally, if we see the market being higher, if we can secure vessels at $15,000 or higher, very likely we’ll consider securing some of our capacity on long-term charters to lock positive cash flow contributions. I think somewhere in the mid-teens is the threshold for us to consider long-term contracts. Long-term contracts, not necessarily.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Now, you mentioned the decision to sell the MV Irini, which is one of the older vessels in your fleet, that was part of your fleet renewal program. What are the next steps in your renewal program plan?

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: I think the next step is really to execute and fund the existing two new orders that we placed. We have the vessels cost a little bit more than $70 million together, about $36 million each, roughly. We have made a 10% payment against that order. We have made arrangements to fund the pre-delivery installments. Generally, these acquisitions will be funded with a combination, as always, of debt and equity. The debt side would be of the order of 60% to 65%. We need to fund the equity part, which translates to about $25 million, $25 million, $28 million, of which $7 million have been paid. We are trying over the next period, over the next two years, to save that equity available for the new building program.

If the market does better and more funds come our way, we will definitely look at expanding our fleet, combining any funds that we generate internally, possibly with additional sales of the older vessels, if, of course, we can replace them with younger ones.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Now, would you discuss the trade-offs between build versus buy and the current market environment for buyers and sellers of second-hand vessels?

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: Absolutely. I think that’s another very good question. The chart I showed you earlier about the order book of the fleet that was relatively low for three, four years in a row, which means that the fleet was underbuilt, is a data point that is not seen only by us. Everybody can see that point and draw the same conclusions. Everybody felt that because of the supply support, at some point, market rates would increase dramatically and was positioning towards that thesis, which had as a result that although the market rates were lower, especially earlier this year or at the end of 2024, prices did not come down. It was a very difficult decision to buy a second-hand vessel at relatively high prices while the rates couldn’t support this, at least in the near term.

This was our thinking when we decided to order those two ships because new building prices have not been at a little better levels, comparatively speaking, to the second-hand prices.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Now, the most recent sale of the MV Irini certainly improved the company’s liquidity. Maybe you want to kind of go through that a little bit. Are you satisfied with your liquidity position, or do you have any positions to further enhance liquidity?

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: I mean, we do want to increase our liquidity. We are not satisfied. We’re OK, but we would like to be a lot more comfortable in terms of liquidity. I think MV Irini would provide us around $6 million of net proceeds after we pay a small debt that was on the vessel. I think I mentioned that we refinanced. We haven’t closed yet the refinancing, but we’re in the process of closing the refinancing of two of our vessels, which is going to release another $5 million of capital. We have some money in our balance sheet, not much, but we do have some. We have agreed to finance the majority of the pre-delivered installments for the newbuild. We feel we are in control of our commitment, of the requirements of our commitments for the two vessels. Clearly, we would like to increase our liquidity.

If the market does not provide it through higher rates, as I mentioned earlier, we might consider selling the older ships, which are, and replace them with younger ones.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: You’ve mentioned the improved outlook for 2026. Certainly, there’s been a lot of uncertainty globally, not only conflicts around the world, but changing trade policies. What do you think investors should really focus on or watch in terms of 2026? Are there any risks to your outlook?

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: Obviously, there are risks. Our outlook is modestly optimistic. It’s not outright optimistic. I think really China is the big factor to watch. There is hope that if the wars in Gaza and Ukraine stop, then there would be reconstruction efforts that would require raw materials like the ones we carry with our ships. Those would be on the positive side. There are other things that could affect the trade, the tariffs. We don’t know exactly what is the final effect and if there would be any. Of course, if Red Sea hostilities cease and Houthis are under control, vessels will be able to sail through Suez Canal. That would reduce distances and reduce a bit dry bulk demand, much less in the case of dry bulk compared to containers or other vessels. It will not be a positive effect.

On the flip side, the environmental regulations that continue affecting our fleet, everybody’s fleet, could take a bite and result in removals of certain vessels. That would be a positive. It’s a quite uncertain environment overall. We’re trying to make the best out of it. I believe, although our stock seems to be trading on a discount to our NAV, that might be a reason really to look at it and invest in it.

Mark Reichman, Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: You seem to be navigating the environment very well. I think we’re nearing the end of our time. Tasos, thank you very much for joining us today.

Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, EuroDry Ltd.: Thank you very much, Mark and Noble, for organizing the conference and inviting us. Thank you very much.

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