![COLUMN | Flip, flip, flip: DOF sells to Uthalden, Fredriksen sells to DOF, Borealis sells to both DOF and Uthalden [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-07-27%2Ffywlrf6v%2FUntitled-November-24-2025-at-09.11.06-1.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
On Thursday, the world’s largest subsea vessel operator, DOF, announced it was selling four platform supply vessels (PSVs) and buying two new subsea construction support vessels (CSVs) fitted with 250-ton active heave compensated cranes that are currently under construction at PaxOcean’s yard in China.
These CSVs were ordered in January 2025 by tanker magnate John Fredriksen through his Geveran Trading Company. The CSVs are scheduled for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2027 and the first quarter of 2028. DOF already has one newbuilding CSV under construction at Crist in Poland and slated for delivery in 2027 against a term charter in Canada for Cenovus.
The stock market liked the news that DOF is trading out old ships for new ones. DOF shares are up five per cent over the last month, and have risen 36 per cent over the past year. This is nice, better than Odfjell Drilling’s 26 per cent rise since July 2025, but lower than Tidewater’s stock’s 51 per cent increase and beleaguered Seacor’s 43 per cent appreciation over the same period.
DOF has a market capitalisation of US$3.26 billion on Friday as well as around US$1.5 billion of net debt, giving it a larger enterprise value than Tidewater, which has a market cap of around US$3.9 billion plus US$650 million of net debt.
DOF owns a fleet of 59 owned vessels following the new sales and purchases (including new buildings), and the unfortunate loss of the anchor handler Skandi Amazonas. This 2011-built, 324 tons bollard pull anchor handling tug supply vessel (AHTS) was run aground outside of Macaé, Brazil, on May 15 of this year after hitting rocks and taking on water in her engine room.
DOF also had eight chartered-in ships at the end of the first quarter (including Sea1 Atlas) and seven ships under management, in addition to its owned fleet. As we shall see, DOF will likely also retain management of the four PSVs it sold this week, at least in the short term.
The Oslo-listed company presented the transactions, “as part of further fleet optimisation and high-grading efforts to strengthen [its] position in the company’s core business areas.”
Indeed, DOF said that its fleet has a fair market value of around US$4.3 billion as per the most recent presentation, averaging about US$70 million per ship compared to the US$21 million per vessel value across Tidewater’s older and less complex fleet.
DOF has also consistently sought to sell older, simpler vessels, and acquire the most sophisticated and modern ships. Its biggest transaction was the acquisition of Maersk Supply Service in 2024 in exchange for US$1.12 billion in cash and shares.
DOF bought Maersk Supply Service’s fleet of 22 vessels in total, including 13 AHTS, eight subsea construction vessels, and the US$95 million cable layer Maersk Connector. It then stripped out the older, lower specification vessels. The former Maersk Connector (renamed Skandi Connector after the take-over) was sold and handed over to Taihan Cable and Solution of South Korea just last week.
In 2024 and 2025, DOF also sold four lower specification AHTS from the former Maersk Supply fleet, being the 2010-built, 253 tons bollard pull Skandi Laser; the 2009-built, 171 tons bollard pull Skandi Tender; the 2008-built, 173 tons bollard pull Skandi Trader; and the aged 2002-built, 177 tons bollard pull Skandi Handler.
At the end of 2019, DOF owned 31 subsea CSVs, 20 AHTS and 16 PSVs, a total of 67 vessels. Today, seven years on, DOF has just two PSVs left and 25 AHTS along with 30 in-service CSVs, and now three newbuild CSVs.
Like Solstad, DOF has virtually exited the PSV segment, leaving the space to Tidewater, which is now the largest owner in the North Sea for PSVs. Instead, DOF has doubled down on its CSV and large AHTS fleet, which are typically deployed together for floating production installation and removal projects.
DOF’s strategy is not just to be a charterer of vessels, but to provide its customers with end-to-end customised project delivery. It seeks to be a single point of access to all project resources, including design and engineering, vessels and marine management for offshore installations and decommissioning.
During the first quarter of this year, DOF announced it was buying two of the world’s largest AHTS from German shipping magnate Christopher Toepfer’s Borealis Group for a total price of US$100 million. Aurora Saltfjord, which DOF renamed Skandi Saltfjord, was delivered in April, whilst Aurora Sandefjord is expected to be delivered shortly after completing a docking in Bergen. Both vessels were built in 2011, with bollard pulls approaching 400 tonnes.
DOF has said that proceeds from the sale of the four older AHTS and Skandi Connector fully cover the acquisition of two very high-end AHTS from Borealis.
Simply chartering AHTS is fantastically profitable at the moment. The large AHTS segment is an area with no meaningful newbuild activity and extremely high spot charter rates in the North Sea. Seabrokers reported the following in its excellent Seabreeze market report for June:
“Over the course of June, spot fixture rates peaked at £215,000 (US$284,805) in the UK, and NOK3.9 million (US$393,005) in Norway. For the month as a whole, the average charter rate for AHTS vessels of less than 22,000 bhp (16,000 kW) came in at a staggering £170,830 (US$226,280), nearly 500 per cent higher than the equivalent average for the month of June last year.”
This very obvious opportunity has motivated the wealthy Norwegian investors who bought the eleven 200-ton bollard pull anchor handlers from Hayfin earlier this month. There is no new capacity ordered in the large AHTS segment, but consolidation amongst North Sea operators means that profitability has never been higher, as there is much less competition.
Not for nothing as the 2006-built 200 tons bollard pull BB Octopus been one of the most profitable investments for Norwegian investors since it was acquired in 2019 from Olympic and placed on the North Sea spot market.
The four PSVs – Skandi Mongstad (2008-built), Skandi Flora (2009), Skandi Feistein (2011) and Skandi Kvitsøy (2012) – that DOF has agreed to sell have been bought by yet another project set up by a familiar clique of wealthy Norwegians, we understand. Readers will not be surprised to find that Uthalden, Mr Harald Moræus-Hanssen’s 100 per cent-owned private investment company, is behind the purchase, and the ships are now listed on the company’s website.
The price has not been publicly disclosed, but sources have informed me that the price was US$97 million en bloc for the four vessels, with investors providing US$56 million of equity. This sale will generate around US$50 million in cash for DOF after the loans on the vessels are paid off.
DOF will bareboat the vessels from the new owners until the first quarter of 2027 and will continue to manage them. We understand that the bareboat rate is around US$14,000 per vessel, but this has not been confirmed independently. Two of the ships are on contract in Australia with ExxonMobil on day rates of around AU$72,000 (US$50,000), and two with Equinor in Norway.
I have also heard that DOF has promised to pay around half of the docking costs on the vessels at their next special surveys, but this has not been verified by the company.
Uthalden and Mr Moræus-Hanssen have built up an impressive fleet of offshore vessels in one-by-one ship purchases starting with the 2003-built PSV HM Flipper with 1,000 square metres of clear deck space (acquired from Solstad), and the 2007-built HM Monsoon with 985 square metres of clear deck (acquired from Bourbon).
Only last month, we reported that three PSVs formerly owned by the Fletcher Group – FS Aquarius (2011-built) with 1,020 square metres of clear deck space, FS Sceptre (2013-built) with 902 square metres of clear deck space, and FS Balmoral (2008-built) with 742 square metres of clear deck space – had been sold for a combined price of an eye-watering US$57.75 million to vehicles controlled by Harald Moraeus-Hanssen.
He has also acquired the 700-square-metre PSV FS Aries (built in 2007) and the DOF-managed AHTS Skandi Emerald (with 201 tons bollard pull, built in 2011) and the Aurora-managed AHTS Aurora Challenger (with 190 tons bollard pull, built in 2009). So Uthalden now has ten PSVs in its fleet, and how many anchor handlers?
Surprise! The first of the Hayfin AHTS vessels also now appears on the Uthalden website, the former GH Liberty, now renamed MH Liberty (2010-built).
So, the acquisition of the DOF PSVs appears to be part of a co-ordinated sweep to acquire older offshore vessels that are suitable for the North Sea spot market. It will be interesting to see which other former Hayfin anchor handlers end up on Mr Moraeus-Hanssen’s website and when.
For the North Sea, the sale continues the structural change away from long established market leaders like DOF and Solstad to more speculative, purely financial players like Uthalden and Atlantica Shipping.
For crew, this is not great news. We have already covered how badly DOF treated many of the crew it inherited when it took over Maersk Supply Service, with mass redundancies for European officers and botched communications from the senior leadership of DOF.
The sale to even more transactional owners, but with management remaining with DOF, means that there should be no changes in the short term.
The sale of the two newbuild Salt Ship-designed CSVs by Mr Fredriksen marks yet another coup for him. Readers will recall that in 2024, he was swift to flip the 2021-built CSVs Edda Sphynx and Edda Savanah, which were sold to Pelagic Partners and Clear Ocean and placed under Golden Energy’s management, until their recent resale.
In April 2025, Mr Fredriksen flipped two of his 150-ton crane Salt Ship-designed CSVs under construction at Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry in China to Dutch construction player Allseas. Now he has flipped two bigger newbuild CSVs to DOF.
As well as the 250-ton subsea crane, the CSVs DOF has bought each feature 1,750 square meters of deck space, an overall length of 123 meters, a beam of 25 meters, and POB capacity of 123. Each vessel will also be equipped with two work-class ROVs.
The return on capital to Mr Fredriksen must be insanely high, as 85 per cent of the purchase price for the newbuilds will be paid at delivery by DOF, so Geveran put down only 15 per cent, probably doubling its money with the sale.
However, a quick glance at the DOF shareholder’s register shows that DOF’s second largest shareholder is none other than… Geveran Trading Company, holding more than 12 per cent of DOF’s shares, second only to Maersk, which took 25 per cent of the company as part payment for Maersk Supply Service.
So, Mr Fredriksen still has upside from the ships.
The unfortunate sinking of the AHTS Skandi Amazonas following the “incident” in May has had an upside for DOF. The company declared a constructive total loss on the vessel, because the potential rebuilding cost exceeded the value for which the vessel was insured under its hull and machinery policy.
This will result in an insurance payout of US$115 million to the company, more than the combined price of both the similar Aurora vessels it has just purchased – a sign of how expensive newbuilds are in Brazil.
But DOF will soon wade back into the Brazilian newbuilding market on top of the three CSVs it has on order internationally. In May, DOF announced it had won four 12-year long-term charters/services contracts for ROV support vessels in Brazil with state oil company Petrobras.
As a result, DOF is expected to shortly order four more newbuild vessels to support subsea inspection, maintenance and repair activities in Petrobras' deepwater operations, with expected commencement from 2030.
DOF has said that it will likely contract the newbuilds at the Navship yard in Brazil with planned delivery of the first two vessels within four years after contract signing, aligned with the contract commencement schedule. The 98-metre-long vessels will be DP2-capable and will each be equipped with an offshore subsea crane and designed for deepwater operations, with accommodation for up to 58 people, and two work-class ROVs. The vessels will be ABS-classed and will be considered "green vessels" designed for hybrid fuel propulsion, i.e., ethanol and diesel, and with battery packs.
Financing for the vessels is expected to consist of a large portion of local Brazilian development debt funding at attractive terms, the company said.
Whilst many of DOF’s former crew are angry by their treatment by the company, shareholders are delighted.
Whilst Tidewater has pissed away millions spent handsomely on share buybacks, DOF has focused on paying out cash dividends to its shareholders. In June, it paid out US$91 million in dividends, on top of US$86 million paid in both March this year and November last year, to give a total of US$411 million paid to shareholders since June 2025 when the dividend programme began.
In the same period, Tidewater has paid out no dividends, but it did buy back over US$200 million of its own stock since 2023, often at prices far above today’s stock price.
DOF sets a role model for Tidewater, despite its poor treatment of its seafarers. The Norwegian company has paid out dividends rather than buy back its own stock to boost management stock options, and it is investing heavily in newbuildings.
Backed by the might of John Fredriksen and the Maersk family, DOF is in a very strong place to continue to lead in subsea for the next decade.
