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They were supposed to be just a few quick words about the collapse of OW Bunker before then moving onto the main issue of discussing the company's performance during the previous quarter. The sideshow before the main event.

"Before I begin discussing our quarter, I would like to touch briefly on the recent events," E. Nikolas Tavlarios, president of Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc., said yesterday during the company's quarterly earnings call.

However, what he went on to say during his opening remarks ended up being a declaration that Aegean believes that the collapse of OW Bunker will lead to a shift in buyer behaviour that will ultimately result in an increase in market share for the Piraeus-headquartered bunker firm.

"We believe this industry development [the bankruptcy of OW Bunker] will create the opportunity for Aegean to capture market share, increase our base as risk-averse owners move away from resellers and towards physical suppliers like Aegean and potentially bolster our world-class sales force by adding new talented professionals," Tavlarios said.

During his remarks, Aegean's CEO set out to differentiate his company from OW Bunker. "Over the last three years, OW Bunker was able to grow sales volume at a rate of 20 percent per year by offering aggressive pricing and supporting their volume through oil trading operations. I would like to make it clear that this is not what Aegean does - we act as a physical supplier and we do not carry unnecessary risks or take speculative positions. We only hedge our purchased inventory and we will transact with creditworthy customers," he said.

But Tavlarios ended up not only trying to differentiate his firm from OW Bunker, but from all 'resellers', and also implied that physical suppliers were 'less risky'.

"I want to point out that Aegean has an industry-leading set of policies and protocols that are specifically designed to mitigate industry and market risk, and we will continue to adhere to these procedures and look for ways to continue to improve. Aegean has been a public company for eight years with a track record that speaks for itself," Tavlarios said.

"We continue to conduct quarterly reviews to examine our procedures and ensure that we have the appropriate practices to manage risk appropriately," he added.

But isn't Aegean a reseller?

Definition of reseller: A reseller is a company or individual (merchant) that purchases goods or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. (Source: Wikipedia)

Aegean is essentially a reseller; the company buys its products from other refineries, major oil producers and other sources, then stores them and resells them to clients, whilst also carrying out the physical delivery to ships.

In his remarks yesterday, Tavlarios appears to be really differentiating Aegean from companies that carry out back-to-back trading. This practice involves buying and selling fuel but not handling the product.

The world's two biggest sellers of marine fuel - World Fuel Services Corporation and A/S Dan Bunkering Ltd - are both primarily involved in back-to-back trading.

Comparing the numbers

In 2013, the marine segment of World Fuel Services generated a gross profit of $177.1 million. In the third quarter of 2014, the division achieved a gross profit of $49.4 million.

In the financial year 2013-14, United Shipping & Trading Company (USTC) group - owner of Dan-Bunkering - doubled its pre-tax profit to USD 63.9 million. Last year, the volume of bunker fuel sold rose by 10 percent.

In 2013, Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc. posted a full year net income attributable to shareholders of $27.1 million. A loss of $4.3 million was reported for the third quarter of 2014.

Does being a 'reseller' really imply more risk ?

Yesterday, Bunker Index invited Michael Kasbar, chief executive officer (CEO) and president of World Fuel Services, to comment on the remarks made by Nikolas Tavlarios. He did not respond to the request, however he did provide an insight into his company's risk management strategy last month.

Speaking in an earnings call following the release of the company's third quarter results, Kasbar fielded a question from Kevin W. Sterling, Senior Vice President and Senior Equity Research Analyst at BB&T Capital Markets, regarding the company's hedging policy and how it deals with volatile fuel prices.

In reply to the question, Kasbar said: "The company continues to learn by doing. So we made the appropriate changes to make sure that none of our inventory, none of the market got away from us. So we have significant control infrastructure, significant middle office, significant investment in systems. And I think as I said previously, we take a traditional non-speculative approach to hedging."

Kasbar added: "I think it would take quite a while to get into the details of how we manage that so that the market doesn't get away from us. I think, suffice it to say, that we're on top of that and we don't make money by speculating, we make money by providing a value add to our clientele and creating liquidity between buyers and sellers."