Heidmar Sees Tanker Rates Staying High

Lee Klaskow (0:07)

Hi, everyone, this is Lee Klaskow, and we're Talking Transports. Welcome to Bloomberg Intelligence, Talking Transports podcast. I'm your host, Lee Klaskow, Senior Freight Transportation and Logistics Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, Bloomberg's in-house research arm. Before we dive in, a quick favor. If you enjoy the podcast, please take a moment to follow, rate, review, and share it with a friend or colleague. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with leaders shaping transportation and logistics.

If you'd like to connect, you can find me on the Bloomberg Terminal, LinkedIn, or an X at LogisticsLee. Few transportation markets demonstrate the impact of geopolitics quite like tanker shipping, where oil is produced, where it's consumed, which trade routes are available, and which vessels can participate can dramatically change voyage distances, vessel availability, and freight rates.

Joining us today is Pankaj Khanna, CEO of Heidmar Maritime Holdings. Heidmar has been operating and shipping for roughly four decades, and today provides commercial and pool management and other maritime services with a significant presence in crude and product tankers. Today, we'll discuss the outlook for the tanker markets, the very different fundamentals we're seeing across crude and refined products, the impact of geopolitics and sanctions on global oil flows, and how Heidmar's Asset Light Business Model positions the company to grow through shipping cycles. We'll also get Pankaj's perspective on technology, dry bulk, and where he sees the biggest opportunities across maritime markets in the years ahead. Welcome to the podcast, Pankaj.

Pankaj Khanna (1:44)

Hi Lee, good to see you.

Lee Klaskow (1:45)

Yes. So Heidmar, it's a different model in shipping. Can you just talk about the company and the business model?

Pankaj Khanna (1:54)

Sure. As you said, Heidmar has been around for more than four decades. It started off as a company doing commercial management and got into tanker pools. This is where we aggregate ships, similar ships together, and the earnings of those vessels are aggregated and then distributed depending on the type of vessel it is.

When I bought out the company in November 2020, I decided to look at the model again and see where we would go with it, and the market has been evolving. Today, we not only do tanker pools of different sizes, but we also provide what is called commercial management of vessels, so where we become the extended commercial desk for ship owners. We also provide technical management, so this is providing the crews and the day-to-day management of the vessels so that the vessel can actually run.

We provide the technical management, we provide the earnings, the commercial management of the vessels. For investors, we are a one-stop shop. So effectively, if you are a financial investor looking to invest in shipping, we can run the project from identifying what's a good investment, acquiring the asset, financing the asset, technically running the asset, providing the employment or earnings for the asset, and then eventually helping to sell the asset. So it's a full-cycle service. So that's what we are. We are listed on NASDAQ. We listed last year in February. The ticker is HMR.

Lee Klaskow (3:16)

Right, and it has a market cap of roughly $106 million.

So you mentioned that the company, you acquired it in 2020, but the company's been around for a long time. It's been around, as you mentioned, for around 40 years. It's changed considerably, I would say, under your leadership. Can you talk about how Heidmar today compared with the company that you took over?

Pankaj Khanna (3:43)

Yeah, so as I said, in the past, the company did tanker pools. So we had pools on the crude side in VLCC, Suezmax, Afromax, and there were no clean pools at the time. So I basically looked at the model. We basically said that if we had to develop, let's look at what the owners want in the market. The owners want their flexibility. When you put a ship in a pool, you're tied to the pool. You have minimum periods, you have to stay inside the pool, you have to provide working capital, you have to basically give notice if you want to exit the pool. So owners came to us and said, fine, I may put some ships in the pool, but I also want flexibility where I want to be part of the decision making on how my vessel is fixed, where it goes, what earnings it makes. So firstly, we changed the model from that. So we still do pools.

We provide that service to the people who want that. But the people who want the commercial management will provide that.

And then later on in 22, when the markets went really up, I saw an opportunity to provide what I would call is boutique technical management. There are very large technical managers out there who manage 600, 700, 500 ships. And so you get a commodity service. Whereas with some owners who were looking for what I would call boutique service, they wanted the ships to be managed as how they would manage it. They did not have the resources to do it. But I came from 30 years of ship-holding background. I am now providing that service to them where I manage their ships like they would manage it. So the combination of technical and commercial is great because technical management brings me commercial management, and then commercial brings me technical. The owners are happy, and then I'm happy making more money.