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Teekay profits down,
Spot Tankers down,
Bjorn Moller,
Shipping downturnINTERNATIONAL tanker company Teekay Corporation made Q1 net profit of US$10.9m compared to adjusted net profit of $60.7m for the same period in 2008. The weaker market has prompted Teekay to sell several ships.
"The current weak spot tanker market highlights the value of Teekay's business model of building industry-leading franchises within our Marine Midstream platform, which generate long-term, stable cash flows," said Bjorn Moller, Teekay Corporation's President and Chief Executive Officer. "As well, we have taken additional measures over the past several months to further strengthen our position," continued Mr Moller. "We have reduced our exposure to the spot tanker market by selling and chartering out a number of our spot vessels and allowing our existing in-charters to expire. Significant progress has also been made on company-wide initiatives to reduce overhead and vessel operating expenses, which combined with our rapidly declining in-chartered fleet will reduce our cash flow breakeven levels. Recently, two of our daughter companies were able to raise a total of $139m of equity capital and we successfully extended a portion of our 2011 debt maturities, both of which give us additional financial flexibility. Although we have over $2.0bn in consolidated liquidity and a fully-financed newbuilding program, a key focus for the company is to further enhance our financial flexibility through deleveraging and building on our already significant liquidity position."
