Toro Corp. To Spin Off Its LPG Carrier Business

(RTTNews) - Toro Corp. (TORO), a shipping company, Wednesday announced that it intends to spin off its LPG carrier business.

AI OKTO CORP, currently a subsidiary of Toro would become an independent publicly-traded company listed on the Nasdaq post the spin off.

Its initial assets will include two LPG carriers, the LPG Dream Arrax and LPG Dream Vermax, and $45 million in cash contributed by Toro along with Toro's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Petros Panagiotidis, being appointed as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AI OKTO.

"Toro believes that the creation of a pure-play LPG company, with part of its core strategy being to establish an artificial intelligence ("AI")-enabled operating model through partnerships with vendors, data-infrastructure providers, and maritime-technology firms to identify, evaluate, and implement AI-driven solutions across its fleet, will provide significant benefits to both Toro and AI OKTO and their shareholders.", the company said in a statement.

Further, fractional AI OKTO common shares will not be distributed to Toro shareholders and instead the distribution agent will aggregate fractional AI OKTO common shares into whole shares, sell the whole AI OKTO shares in the open market at prevailing rates promptly after AI OKTO's common shares commence trading on the Nasdaq.

On Wednesday, Toro shares closed at $6.42, down 1.38% on the Nasdaq.