Global Ship Lease (GSL) is a containership owner, leasing ships to container shipping companies under industry-standard, fixed-rate time charters. The Company is a Marshall Islands Corporation, with an administrative office in Athens, and has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since August 15, 2008, under the ticker NYSE:GSL.
We focus on mid-size and smaller containerships, the workhorses of the global fleet, which tend to serve the faster-growing non-Mainlane and intra-regional trades collectively representing over 70% of global containerized trade volumes.
Our goal is to provide our liner operator customers with well-specified, operationally flexible, reliable, fuel-efficient, high-reefer capacity, low slot cost containerships to support their operations within the highly competitive global logistics industry.
We take a partnership approach with our customers, providing flexible chartering solutions which enable them to free up capital and management resources to focus on other strategic priorities.
As a containership owner, our business is both pro-cyclical - with chartered tonnage used as a growth platform by liner shipping companies, and counter-cyclical - with sale and charter-back structures used by liner companies as a balance sheet management tool.
Our investment model seeks to combine strong, longer-term contract cover with selective shorter-term exposure, providing a firm base with downside protection and forward visibility on cash flows, while also offering access to upside earnings potential in a highly cyclical market.
We aim to grow selectively, opportunistically, and always on a value-accretive basis. Our growth track record includes both organic acquisitions and a transformative strategic combination, completed in Q4 2018, which doubled the size of our fleet, materially improved our capital structure, and substantially enhanced our commercial footprint and competitive positioning.