Danaos Corp (DAC)

[Ecomike]

I am long here, have been for about 6 months. I have some done DD on this one and I have found some interesting things. They have a high debt to equity but most of that debt is backed up by hard assets, ships, many other competitors in there market have ships parked sitting around according to many wire services, but DAC is still making record earnings as all their ships are on long term leases out as far as 10 years! Their biggest issue is the need to come up with more cash as their new order ships arrive over the next 2-3 years. In order to come up with more cash, they may need to issue new shares, which means dilution, which is a fear keeping the stock price down, plus the unfounded fear of loosing leases. I have noticed that other stocks seem to rocket up and stay up for a while this year just before a big issue of new stock hits the news wires (EXM is a good example). Since DAC has not made such a move in price, and the other issues are already discounted in the current stock price, I think DAC is a good buy right here for a move up 50 to 100%, perhaps right after or just before earnings are announced this quarter. The PE is real low, about 2:1 last time checked.

One other note of interest, it seems the CEOs family owns 80% of the DAC common stock in a trust, so the float is very small compared to what you would think.