COSTAMARE intends to “move ahead” with its spin-off of the company’s dry bulk business despite the unsettled outlook for global trade, although without any final commitment to the timing of the manoeuvre.

The aim is to gain a separate listing in the US for Costamare Bulkers, separating it from New York Stock Exchange-listed Costamare Inc, which will retain the Greece-based owner’s traditional container shipping fleet as well as its majority-owned leasing finance platform, Neptune Maritime Leasing.

“We are not raising equity,” said Costamare Bulkers chief executive Gregory Zikos, who will continue to act in his longstanding role as chief financial officer of the containership company.

He conceded that if the plan was to do so, this “would probably not be the right time”.

“We know that dry bulk companies today are trading at a discount and this has been more or less the case for shipping in general,” Zikos said.

“Because this is a strategic decision and not a short-term play, we believe it is the right decision to move ahead.

“We feel that for the remainder of 2025 and beyond, having two distinct entities makes sense and it will unlock hidden value that is not reflected in the valuation and in the balance sheet of Costamare Inc.”

Speaking at a first presentation of the plans to analysts and investors, Zikos called it “the right choice” and a “compelling proposal”.

The company had declined to make a final commitment to going ahead, or to completing it within a specific time frame, although it wanted “the option to conclude it soonest”, Zikos added.

Asked about the potential impact of tariffs, slightly before the Trump administration’s announcement of a 90-day “pause” on the majority of those that had been announced, executives of the new bulker spin-off said that the importance of tariffs in key segments was likely to be “minimal”.

Chief commercial officer Jens Jacobsen said the tariffs that had been announced threatened just 4m tonnes out of 2bn tonnes of annual seaborne trade for capesizes, while they would have an impact on only 61m tonnes of panamax trade out of a total of 1.7bn tonnes.

For the other segments in which the company was involved, the figures were about 70m tonnes out of 1.2bn tonnes in the handymax segment and 47m tonnes out about 800m tonnes of trade for handysizes.

The company’s dry bulk business comprises an owned fleet of 38 bulkers and an operating platform chartering in 48 vessels, of which five belong to Costamare’s owned fleet.

The strategy for the operating platform is to focus on risk management and efficiency, according to Zikos.

Meanwhile, the shipowning side would continue to look for opportunities to rebalance its fleet more towards larger sizes, but “we are not going to rush”, he said.

“For us capesize newbuilding prices today do not make sense and we do not feel that secondhand prices have corrected yet, compared to the volatility the capes have seen over the past months.

“We may sit and wait,” he said. “We will not grow for the sake of growing; we will grow only if we feel that the acquisition prices and the earning potential of those assets make sense.”