Americas News
Aegean: Environmental Regulations "Exciting" Business Drivers
Environmental regulations helped make the acquisition of Hess Corporation [NYSE:HES] (Hess)'s U.S. East Coast bunkering assets attractive, E. Nikolas Tavlarios, president of Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc. [NYSE: ANW] (Aegean) told analysts on the company's Q3 earnings call Thursday.
"The going forward drivers that appear exciting to us are driven largely by regulation," Tavlarios said.
He said rules pushing ship operators to adopt low-sulfur bunkers, and eventually distillates, should "expand the margins" for bunker sales in the area.
Tavlarios added that the $30 million deal for a business with reported earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $60 million was "quite attractive and certainly better than other acquisitions we made in the past."
He said there also appear to be good opportunities for Aegean to take advantage of the new assets to expand its operations in the Americas generally.
Announcing the acquisition this week, Aegean said the deal covers about 250,000 cubic meters of leased tank storage at East Coast ports, with average sales of 1.8 million metric tonnes (mt) per year over the past three years.
