Diversified shipping company DryShips (DRYS) on Thursday said it has swung to a profit in fiscal 2018 from a loss last year. On a per share basis, the company earned 22 cents per share this year, compared to a loss of $1.13 a year ago.
For the fourth quarter, earnings per share grew tripled year-over-year to 6 cents per share, helped by higher shipping rates. Excluding the one-off items for the quarter, earnings improved to 9 cents per share.
The George Economou-led firm reported a 15% jump in revenue in Q4 to $49.2 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter grew to $19.4 million from $9.9 million in the same period last year.
DRYS shares closed over 6% on Thursday as investors remained unhappy with the company’s share buybacks. The stock has gained over 45% in the trailing 52 weeks.
On Friday though, shares opened slightly in green during pre-market trading as some DRYS investors were willing to take the shares at the dip.
As of February 28, 2019, the Greece-headquartered firm had repurchased a total of 6,523,854 shares of its common stock for $37.3 million. DryShips added that it may repurchase up to $50.0 million of its outstanding common shares until October 29, 2019. There are currently 86,886,627 shares of common stock outstanding.