Taylor Maritime (TMI), the specialist dry bulk shipping company, is to make a compulsory purchase of 46% of its shares on 30 January in order to complete the $143.4m return of capital announced last month following the sale of a “large portion” of its fleet. The dollar shares will be bought at a price of 94 cents compared to their current 86 cents. In a trading update for the last quarter of 2025, chief executive Edward Buttery said the company sold 22 vessels last year, bringing the total to 50 since the start of 2023. He said the disposals at an average 3% discount to fair market value were motivated by concerns of over capacity in the shipping industry and the state of the world economy.
“While healthy demand for key commodities provided grounds for improved TCE [time charter equivalent] earnings during the period, we remain concerned that elevated fleet growth in 2025 and 2026 is forecast to outpace demand growth, amid ongoing trade and geopolitical uncertainty. We have greatly reduced our market exposure and set in motion a substantial $143.4m return of capital to shareholders as we see potential downside to asset values and have proactively sought to preserve value.
“Given the substantial return of capital, we will review our dividend policy for the next financial year. Nonetheless our remaining fleet gives us a degree of optionality; we have a baseline operating platform, with lower costs (aligning to a smaller number of ships) and a sound balance sheet with a forecast cash position of c$55m following the proposed compulsory redemption and dividend,” said Buttery.
Tritax Big Box (BBOX), the £4bn logistics investor, has integrated the £1bn portfolio of warehouses and depots it bought from Blackstone last October, with “multiple asset management initiatives underway” to extract full value from the acquisition. The company also said it was negotiating terms with a “leading operator tenant” for the Manor Farm data centre it built last year at Heathrow where it is targeting a 9.3% yield. In a full-year trading update, BBOX said contracted rent had grown to £360.9m from £313.5m with £52.8m added by the Blackstone portfolio, in return for which the US asset manager received an 8.7% stake. A further 1.8m square feet of development was under construction with potential rental income of £19.6m of which 53% was pre-let.
Chief executive Colin Godfrey said the company had been “very effective in rotating capital into higher returning opportunities”, having now sold over £800m of assets over the past three years. “With strong occupational interest across both logistics and data centres, the successful integration of recent acquisitions, and clear structural tailwinds supporting our portfolio, we enter 2026 well positioned to deliver on our ambition to grow adjusted earnings by 50% by the end of 2030.” The shares extended their recent rally that has reduced their discount from 26% to 15%. They rose 3p, or 1.9%, to 163.8p.
