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What specific features of VesselsValue do you use to gain better market visibility?

Lila Global leverages VesselsValue, a comprehensive database of valuations and data on the world’s fleet, to maximize transparency across the shipping markets, including the S&P market.

“The obvious one is the exact fair market valuation as well as prediction of what is going to be the projected valuation in one year’s time, six months’ time, and so on and so forth,” adds Panagiotopoulos.

While Lila Global uses the earnings forecast quite extensively, the fixed age value can provide the level of granularity they need to conduct a historical analysis of vessels specifications: “I was able to always track down the historical value of a similar ship, similar age, deadweight specs, everything throughout, let’s say the recorded last 15-20 years.”

Through real-time data and reliable reporting, Lila Global has also been able to improve their time and efficiency when doing their discounted cash flow projections due to the platform’s accuracy in providing residual values.

“We have been using other tools, such as the database of ships. Of course, we have given specific focus on the ultimate beneficial ownership of the vessel, which has assists us also on KYC requirements.”

How are you embedding AI and other digital solutions into your workflows?

“We can definitely understand that technology is implementing faster processes, more efficient processes, and eliminating to some extent also the human error.”

Panagiotopoulos shared the value digital solutions provide in analyzing legal fees in terms of crosschecking clauses and verifying their KYC: “You can save cost, save time, [and] eliminate error.”

It will provide a machine learning element where you can feed more and more things into the system. End of the day, it can learn from its mistakes, can be optimized better.”

In what ways has VesselsValue assisted you with making investment decisions?

So, technology overall and specifically the VesselsValue tool—that we have been using for the past, I think six years or something like that—has been quite innovative and quite a breakthrough in the way we have been negotiating and conducting deals with our counterparties.”

Before VesselsValue, it was incredibly difficult to map expectations of all their counterparties, especially when it came to the sale and purchase of vessels.

“We didn’t really understand where they were coming from with regards to their pricing when they were selling to us or with their offers when they wanted to buy from us. So this really helped us out, because VesselsValue has actually been one of the market drivers on this and it has actually created the market itself.”

 With VesselsValue, Lila Global knows the exact price of their vessel and where to benchmark themselves, helping them make more informed decisions and better position their company in the market.

Additionally, the platform’s transparency has also improved the relationship between Lila Global and their counterparties.

“Before VesselsValue, we used to do a lot of this work manually. We were actually calling people to try and find out who the ultimate beneficial owner is, who the technical manager is—all this data now is readily available and given to us”