Greek shipowner Euroseas has managed to more than halve its first quarter net loss compared to a year ago amid a fall in revenue due to continuing weakness in the shipping market.

In the quarter ended 31 March 2014, Euroseas reported a loss of $2.21m, narrowing from a loss of $4.63m in the previous corresponding period.

Revenue declined 14.8% year-on-year to $9.5mm cushioned by lower drydocking expenses and lower depreciation costs.

“During the first four months of 2014, the dry bulk market weakened whilst the containership market showed some signs of moving slightly up, away from its all-time lows,” said Aristides Pittas, chairman and ceo of Euroseas.

“We expect both markets to show a slow gradual improvement over the remaining of 2014 and 2015 based on the expected demand and supply developments. Our chartering strategy remains to pursue short term charters of 3-12 months in order to retain the opportunity to take advantage of any rate increases,” he said.

Over the last six months, Euroseas has embarked on an investment program for the dry bulk part of its fleet by ordering or acquiring the contracts of four newbuilding vessels and agreeing to acquire a secondhand panamax vessel, positioning itself to take advantage of the expected recovery of the drybulk market.

“We focused mainly on newbuilding contracts as we believe that newbuilding prices have moved only modestly up as compared to secondhand prices,” Pittas said.