COSTAMARE INC. (CMRE): what the price assumes

boothcheck covers COSTAMARE INC. (CMRE) but does not put one priced-in number on it: here the defensible answer is the evidence rather than a point estimate. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-07-29 · Exported: 2026-08-01 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/CMRE

Headline

FieldValue
TickerCMRE
CompanyCOSTAMARE INC.
Sector / IndustryIndustrials
Current price$15.24/sh
CompositionContainer vessels segment 96% / NML 4%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin (value-band context)23.1%
Operating margin today52.0%
Margin compression (value-band)-28.9pp
Multiple paid7x operating income

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 7.1% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range

ReferenceValue
vs own history-0.34σ
cohort percentile (of 222 peers)1
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset0.46x5justifies
Earnings0.49x3justifies
Relative0.37x3justifies
Growth1.41x2expensive

Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 6.7%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=13)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$0.00—noNegative/zero FCF — equity value floored at $0
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$0.00—noNegative/zero FCF or EBITDA — equity value floored at $0
Relative ValuationRelative$41.240.37xyesP/E 14.01x (blended: static sector reference 20x + trailing (TTM) 5x), scenarios: 11.8x / 14.0x / 16.2x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 9.91x
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth$10.071.51xyesStage 1: -0% for 5yr, Stage 2: 3.5% perpetual
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$32.790.46xyesBV/sh $17.36, ROE (TTM) 17.5%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$44.490.34xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$11.681.30xyesRev $0.9B, growth 5% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 1.8x / 2.1x / 2.4x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Growth-Adjusted P/ERelative——no—
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$41.700.37xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.53B × (1−21%) / WACC 6.7% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$44.500.34xyesBV $17.36 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 17.5% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.8%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$33.420.46xyes√(22.5 × EPS $2.86 × BVPS $17.36) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative$52.840.29xyesEBITDA $0.59B × sector EV/EBITDA 13.0x
FCF YieldEarnings——no—
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings——no—
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$19.240.79xyesEPS $2.86 × (8.5 + 2×-0.2%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$28.050.54xyesBV $17.36 × (ROIC 10.8% / WACC 6.7%)
P/Sales SectorRelative$14.611.04xyesRevenue $0.88B × sector P/S 2.0x
PEG Fair ValueRelative——no—
Earnings YieldEarnings$30.920.49xyesEPS $2.86 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$975.7m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)2.71x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)2.14x
Interest coverage5.1x
Share count CAGR (buyback)-0.6%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

Free cash flow is the wrong instrument for measuring a company that spends its cash on ships. Every dollar that leaves to buy a vessel is subtracted from the cash-flow statement and added to a steel hull with a charter contract attached to it, and the standard cash-flow approaches read that as value destruction while the fleet quietly grows. That is why the methods that start from the balance sheet and from what the fleet currently earns all land above today's price, while the ones that start from free cash flow do not. Costamare is a case where the two lenses genuinely see different companies.

The revenue is the least ship-like thing about a shipping company here, because it is contracted. The FY2025 annual report explains that revenue from time charters with varying annual rates is "accounted for as operating leases and thus recognized on a straight-line basis over the non-cancellable rental periods of such agreements", and that the containership fleet sits "under time charters with ten different charterers." A time charter is closer to a property lease than to a freight transaction: the charterer takes the vessel for a fixed period at a fixed daily rate and carries the commercial risk of filling it. That is what makes the earnings visible far enough ahead to be worth valuing.

The company is also simpler than it was a year ago. On May 6, 2025 it "completed the Spin-Off of Costamare Bulkers and distributed to" shareholders the separated dry bulk business, having previously moved into it the shares of 67 wholly-owned companies, 38 of which owned dry bulk vessels. What remains is a containership owner plus a lease financing platform. Neptune, the platform, was "established in 2021 to acquire and bareboat charter out vessels through wholly-owned subsidiaries", and in March 2023 the company agreed to invest up to 200 million dollars in its ship sale and leaseback business. That is a lending-style business earning a spread on other owners' vessels, and it is currently about 4% of revenue.

Scarcity of the underlying asset is the part no model captures cleanly, and a peer says so plainly. SFL tells its own investors that for vessels committed to long-term charters "there is no readily available liquid market for vessels and rigs subject to these agreements and we are limited to obtaining market values free of contracts." A ship with a good charter attached is worth more than the same ship without one, and no screen prices that difference. The asset-based approaches here are working from hull values, not from contracts.

The financing is conservative for the sector. As of December 31, 2025 the company reported an aggregate of 1.5 billion dollars of indebtedness, which is about 2.14 times operating profit, and operating income covered the interest bill 5.1 times over the trailing period. The company is not consuming cash, and it has been retiring rather than issuing paper: the Series E Preferred was redeemed in full on July 15, 2024, every one of its 4,574,100 shares. On the common, a dividend of $0.115 per share was declared on January 2, 2026 and paid on February 5, 2026. This is an owner of long-lived assets being paid to hold them, with the borrowings sized well inside what those assets currently earn.

Bear Case

Start with who actually controls this company, because it is not the common shareholder. The FY2025 annual report states that each share of the Series F Preferred Stock "entitles its holder to 50,000 votes on all matters submitted to a vote of the shareholders." Voting power and economic ownership are therefore separated by design. Everything else in the bear case is downstream of that fact, because it determines who decides what happens to the cash.

The fleet is also not managed by the company in the ordinary sense. Costamare Shipping and Costamare Services perform the management under a Framework Agreement and a Services Agreement, with sub-managers including V.Ships Greece, Navilands, Vinnen and HanseContor, and they "report to us and our board of directors through our chairman and chief executive officer and chief financial officer". Exiting that arrangement is deliberately costly: the annual report specifies that a termination fee "will always be at least two times the aggregate fees over the 12-month period described above." An external manager with a two-year termination cost is not a governance detail, it is a claim on the cash flow that a shareholder cannot vote away.

The related-party surface goes further than fees. The filing acknowledges that affiliated vessels "may compete with the Company's vessels for chartering opportunities". When a charterer calls, two fleets under overlapping influence are bidding for the same contract, and only one of them belongs to public shareholders. This structure is common across the sector rather than unique here, which is part of why the whole cohort trades where it does. DAC describes a similar lineage, telling investors its business "provided seaborne transportation services under the management of the Coustas family." Familiarity does not make the conflict smaller.

Underneath the governance sits an ordinary and unforgiving cycle. The company is direct that "Charter rates are based primarily on demand and supply of vessel capacity at the time we enter into the charters for our vessels", and that demand and supply "can fluctuate significantly over time as a result of changing economic conditions affecting trade flow between ports". Ten charterers means ten counterparties whose own health matters, and the contracts that make today's revenue visible eventually expire into whatever rate exists on that day. GSL, another owner in the same trade, is explicit about what happens when refinancing meets a weak market, telling investors it will "likely require such further funding to meet all of our repayment obligations under the 2027 Secured Notes". Leverage against long-lived assets is fine until the charters roll at the wrong point in the cycle.

The spin-off cut both ways too. Removing the dry bulk fleet simplified the story, and it also removed the piece of the business that was not correlated with containership rates. The remaining company is 96% containerships. As for the downside boundary, there is roughly 106.0 million dollars of equity value held outside the operating fleet, close to 5.6% of the current market value, which floors the bear case somewhere above zero without doing much more than that. The market is discounting this company against nearly every conventional measure. The governance structure, the related-party management and the single-trade concentration are a reasonable explanation for why.

Valuation

The object being valued is a fleet. At $15.72 a share the market is paying roughly 6.7 times what that fleet currently earns before financing costs, which is a level that does not require the business to grow. It does not require it to hold flat either. The price sits below what even a steady 5% a year decline in operating profit would warrant, which is a bound rather than a forecast, and it puts this firmly among value-supported names rather than growth bets.

The methods line up on one side with a single exception. Asset-based approaches, earnings-power approaches and peer multiples all land above today's price. The only approaches that land below it are the forward-growth ones, and the reason is mechanical rather than damning: a shipowner that keeps buying vessels reports negative free cash flow while it is expanding, and models built on free cash flow have nothing to work with. Read the pattern the way a fleet owner would. What the price is discounting is not the earning power of the ships. It is everything wrapped around them.

Valuing the ships themselves is harder than it looks, and the sector says so. SFL notes in its own filing that for tonnage locked into long-term agreements "there is no readily available liquid market" and that owners are "limited to obtaining market values free of contracts." So the asset-based reading here rests on hull values that exclude the charters attached to them, which understates a good contract and overstates a bad one. That is a real limitation on the most supportive family of methods, and it belongs in the reader's head before the discount is treated as free money.

Within its cohort the shares sit in the lower half of the peer multiple range. Every close comparable is a foreign private issuer operating a similar structure: assets financed with secured borrowings, an external or family-linked manager, and revenue contracted forward. The discount is therefore not idiosyncratic to Costamare, and reading it as a company-specific mispricing rather than a sector-wide one would be the error.

Financing is the part that keeps the discount from becoming a distress argument. The company reported an aggregate of 1.5 billion dollars of indebtedness as of December 31, 2025, against liquid assets of roughly 539.1 million dollars, leaving net borrowings at about 2.14 times operating profit. Interest was covered 5.1 times, the company is not burning cash, and the share count has drifted marginally lower over the four years to December 2025. A leveraged owner of long-lived assets with contracted revenue and interest covered five times over is not a solvency question at this price. It is a question about who controls the cash the assets produce.

Catalysts

The defining recent event has already happened and it reshaped what a shareholder owns. On May 5, 2025 the company entered into a Separation and Distribution Agreement with Costamare Bulkers, and on May 6, 2025 it completed the spin-off and distributed the dry bulk business to shareholders. The contributed perimeter was substantial: 67 wholly-owned companies, of which 38 owned dry bulk vessels, 17 had owned or agreed to sell theirs, and 12 were shells held for future acquisitions. Year-over-year comparisons that straddle May 2025 are therefore comparing two different companies.

Capital return has continued through the transition. The board declared a common dividend of $0.115 per share on January 2, 2026, payable to holders of record on January 20, 2026 and paid on February 5, 2026. On the preferred side, the company completed the full redemption of all 4,574,100 outstanding shares of its Series E Preferred Stock on July 15, 2024, funded with cash on hand, which permanently removed that layer of dividends from the payment stack ahead of the common.

The forward items to watch are contractual rather than promotional. The lease financing platform operates under a March 2023 agreement to invest up to 200 million dollars in Neptune's ship sale and leaseback business, so the pace at which that commitment is drawn determines how much of the company becomes a financier rather than an operator. On tax, the company notes that implementation of the global minimum tax rules was not material to its provision for the year ended December 31, 2025, while stating it continues to monitor new legislation and guidance. For a Marshall Islands filer, that is a slow-moving variable worth tracking rather than a near-term event.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Container vessels segment (reported)

NML (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

FY2025 Form 20-F · FY2025 Form 20-F, subsequent events note

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