The University of North Carolina Wilmington said Wednesday that its monthly measure of ocean-related economic activities rose 10.11% in May.
Colin Waltsak, a research assistant in the UNCW Economics and Finance Department, told Coastal Review Friday that the UNC Wilmington Blue Economy Index was originally developed in 2018 but officially launched in February of this year.
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The index is published on Bloomberg (Ticker: BLUEECO), which provides daily financial data.
“Our index measures global ocean economic activities. Just as the S&P 500 Index reflects the health of the US capital market, our index offers an estimate of the blue economy,” Waltsak said in an email response.
He said the goal is to get the index picked up by an asset manager to take it public.
The index, which follows the World Bank definition of the “Blue Economy,” a broad swath of sustainable uses of ocean resources. These include the harvest of living and nonliving resources, renewable or inexhaustible natural forces such as wind or wave energy, carbon sequestration, and ocean- and waterways-based commerce, transport and trade.
“The index continues to outperform its closest benchmarks, the MSCI All World Index, the S&P 500, and the S&P 500 Industrials,” UNCW said in the announcement. “While S&P 500 Industrials showed the weakest gains throughout the month, rising only 1.69%, the MSCI All World Index and S&P 500 were neck and neck, achieving 4.10% and 3.93% respectively. Despite these major indices showing modest growth in May, the Blue Economy Index surged past them, delivering gains more than double those of its nearest benchmark (MSCI) and closing the month with a remarkable 10.11% increase.”
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The top performer, according to the index, was TPI Composites Inc, a US-based wind blades manufacturer, which saw a 72.33% increase. The gains followed a recent earnings report in which TPI announced revenues that were 0.94% higher than expected.
A Taiwan-based shipping company, Wan Hai Lines Ltd., also performed strongly, posting a return of 57.70% for the month after launching a direct service from Indonesia to West India.
According to the index, the worst performer was Mitsui E&S Holdings, a shipbuilding company in Japan focused on engines and automated gantry cranes. The firm had posted a disappointing earnings report for the first quarter.
The UNC Wilmington Blue Economy Index was developed in collaboration with the UNCW Cameron School of Business, UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), CIE’s Alliance for the Blue Economy, and FactSet, a data and software firm serving investment professionals worldwide.
The UNCW index places an emphasis on environmental impact and offers investors insights into what its developers describe as a “burgeoning economic landscape surrounding coastal communities.”
