Seahawk Investments: Dislocations due to Russia sanctions to support tanker segments

Transportation and energy - two markets that have seen strong movements in recent months. Corona pandemic, supply chain issues and, last but not least, the Ukraine war have had a major impact on these sectors.

"The imminent international sanctions against the raw material producer Russia are creating investment opportunities within the tanker segments" explains Hubertus Clausius, Managing Director of Seahawk Investments GmbH.

For 3 years now, he has been managing a very successful long-short equity fund specialized in the transportation and energy sectors, which has just received top ratings from Refinitiv Lipper.

Tankers in focus

The fund now has an exposure within the international crude and product tanker segments, as European sanctions against Russian oil should trigger increased demand. While the previous transport routes for crude oil from Russia were rather short, the suppliers now favored are located much further away in North America and the Middle East.

There are further factors which could support the tanker segments:

• Current valuations are about 15% below net asset value,
• oil demand continues to rise and is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels within H2 2022,
• and there continues to be little new shipbuilding activity in the crude and oil product sectors in the next two to three years.

"Over the last three years we have been able to identify mispricings in the markets through our sector expertise and in-house database and use them for our investments," Clausius explains.

Fund innovation of the year

The investment experts of the Seahawk Equity Long Short Fund, which was named "Fund Innovation of the Year" at the 2021 German Fund Boutiquen Award, use the expertise of its Singapore-based parent company Transport Capital Group and its industry network to select the most promising investments.

"We continue to take advantage of the opportunities that keep coming up in our niche segments. The various sub-industry segments of transportation and energy are often diverging, which naturally plays into the hands of our long-short investment strategy with its absolute return focus."

Strong results also in 2022

Since the fund’s inception in May 2019, the Seahawk Equity Long Short Fund (ISIN LU1910828935/LU1910828851) has posted an impressive cumulative performance of +76.5% (EUR) and +67.3% (USD) respectively. The year-to-date performance for investors has been +29.6% and +20.8% (as of 6/30/2022), while most international equity indices have declined significantly.

As of the 30^th June 2022, the current Lipper Leaders awards were given both for performance and consistency of returns based on a three year track record . They should provide further tailwind for the fund, as many investors only include investments with at least a three-year track record in their portfolios.