Ultrapetrol (Bahamas) Limited (ULTR)

Ultrapetrol (Bahamas) Limited was a shipping company focused on South America. Its main business was a large fleet of river barges and push boats that carried soybeans, iron ore and other bulk cargo along the Parana-Paraguay waterway through Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. It also operated platform supply vessels serving offshore oil producers, mainly off Brazil, and an ocean business with product tankers and container feeder ships along the South American coast. Its river operation was one of the biggest in the region.

The company was incorporated in the Bahamas, with management based mainly in Buenos Aires. It priced an initial public offering of 12.5 million shares at $11 each in October 2006, below its proposed range, and its stock began trading on Nasdaq under the symbol ULTR. Over the following years it borrowed heavily to build new barges, push boats and offshore vessels, betting on rising grain and iron ore exports from the interior of the continent.

Weak commodity markets, low river levels and the collapse of oil prices in 2014 and 2015 cut into revenue and made the company's debt hard to carry. The offshore unit suffered as oil companies reduced spending, and the ocean business was sold off in pieces. In 2016 Ultrapetrol began negotiating with its lenders and bondholders, and its share price fell well below one dollar, leading Nasdaq to start delisting proceedings in August of that year.

A Nasdaq hearings panel denied continued listing, trading was suspended on October 19, 2016, and the shares were formally removed from Nasdaq on December 19, 2016. On February 6, 2017 Ultrapetrol filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 case in New York. Under the plan, creditors owed about $290 million received roughly $84 million in cash, the river business was sold for $73 million and the offshore business for $2.5 million to companies linked to Southern Cross Latin America private equity funds, and shareholders received nothing.

The company planned to dissolve after the sales and stop filing reports as a public company. The river barge fleet kept operating on the Parana-Paraguay waterway under its new private owners. For shareholders, the outcome followed a long decline: the stock had traded above its IPO price during the commodity boom of the late 2000s but lost almost all of its value as the company's markets weakened and its debt load grew. The ULTR symbol was later released for reuse.