SHARES of maritime vessel maker Yangzijiang Shipbuilding sank on Tuesday (Feb 25) in early trade, after the US Trade Representative (USTR) office proposed to slap fees on Chinese-built vessels entering US ports.
At 11.21 am, the counter was down 12.7 per cent or S$0.38 at S$2.61, with nearly 57 million shares switching hands. The last time it traded at such levels was in November 2024, according to ShareInvestor data.
During early trade, it dropped 11 per cent or S$0.33 to S$2.66 at 9.35 am, with 29.7 million securities changing hands.
This marked a second straight day of losses for the stock, which lost 7.1 per cent or S$0.23 to close at S$2.99 on Monday.
On Feb 21, the USTR office proposed to hit Chinese-built vessels entering US ports with fees of up to US$1.5 million, as part of investigations into China’s rising dominance in the global shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sectors.
The probe’s findings, published in January, were that China’s global shipbuilding tonnage share rose significantly over 1999 to 2023 from 5 per cent to 50 per cent due to hefty state subsidies and preferential treatment for state-owned businesses that are hurting international competitors, Reuters reported.
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It is proposing port entrance fees of up to US$1 million per vessel owned by Chinese maritime transport operators, or alternatively, a charge of US$1,000 per net tonne of a vessel’s cargo capacity.
Non-Chinese maritime transport operators that operate Chinese-built ships face fees of up to US$1.5 million per port entry.
Those with more than 50 per cent of their fleet comprising Chinese-built ships would be charged US$1 million per vessel entry regardless of origin. Those whose fleet’s percentage of Chinese-built ships is between 25 and 50 per cent face US$750,000 in fees, and those with a percentage under 25 per cent face a US$500,000 fee.
Yangzijiang Shipbuilding was one of the Singapore Exchange’s top performing stocks in 2024. Its latest financial results showed strong year-on-year profit growth of 77.2 per cent to 3.1 billion yuan (S$553.7 million) for its first half ended June 2024.
Its win of shipbuilding contracts worth US$2.6 billion announced in December 2024 brought its order wins to US$14.3 billion for the year till Dec 2. In January, the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock bought 10.8 million of its shares.
