Global Ship Lease, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in owning and chartering of containerships under fixed-rate charters to container shipping companies worldwide. As of March 10, 2025, it owned 70 mid-sized and smaller containerships, ranging from 2,207 to 11,040 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), with an aggregate capacity of 404,681 TEU. The company was formerly known as Marathon Acquisition Corp. …
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Competitive advantage assessment
Key strengths
Margins Consistently Above PeersGross margin at 52.8% (top 19%) and operating margin at 57.8% (top 0%) indicate strong pricing power.
ROIC Sustainably Above PeersROIC at 92.0th percentile exceeds peers and WACC, demonstrating superior capital allocation.
Key risks
Revenue Volatility Signals Weak StickinessRevenue volatility is high (stability score 0.24), suggesting weak customer stickiness.
The dashed ring is the peer median. Defense scores are percentile ranks
against peers, so 50 is roughly the typical company in this group.
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Global Ship Lease Inc New ranks #1 of 28
scored companies in Rental & Leasing Services by moat score — the top 4%.
That makes it the widest moat in the group.
Moat scores for companies ranked near GSL in Rental & Leasing Services
Pricing power is the ability to raise prices without losing volume.
Cost Advantage
Score 90
· 15% of the moat score
A cost advantage means delivering the same product for structurally less — better purchasing, denser distribution, a more automated process.
Customer Stickiness
Score 66
· 15% of the moat score
Stickiness is what makes revenue repeat without being re-won every year.
Capital Efficiency
Score 83
· 18% of the moat score
Capital efficiency asks what the company earns on the money tied up in the business.
Resilience
Score 87
· 17% of the moat score
Resilience is the capacity to get through a bad year on its own terms — enough liquidity, enough interest cover, and enough cash generation to avoid a rescue financing or a forced sale.
Scale & Market Position
Score 68
· 15% of the moat score
Scale matters only when it converts into economics.
Global Ship Lease Inc New (GSL) scores 79 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as strong. It ranks #1 of 28 scored companies in Rental & Leasing Services, the top 4%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 27 companies in Rental & Leasing Services. Its strongest defense is Cost Advantage (90/100) and its weakest is Customer Stickiness (66/100).
How does Global Ship Lease Inc New compare with other Rental & Leasing Services companies?
Global Ship Lease Inc New ranks #1 of 28 scored companies in Rental & Leasing Services by moat score. That is the widest moat in Rental & Leasing Services. The companies ranked closest are United Rentals, Inc. (URI) at 74 just below it.
How is the moat score calculated?
Each company is scored with an industry-specific template — Corporate Default in this case, chosen because the defenses that matter to a bank are not the ones that matter to a software company. Every defense combines several financial signals, and each signal is measured as a percentile against a peer group of 27 companies in Rental & Leasing Services. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.
Why is Global Ship Lease Inc New scored with the Corporate Default template?
Most public companies sell a product or a service at a margin, so the moat question is whether that margin survives contact with competitors. The Corporate template scores the six defenses that show up in a general operating company's financial signature: whether it can hold price, produce more cheaply than rivals, keep its customers, earn a return above its cost of capital, withstand a downturn, and turn size into economics.
Which competitive defenses are measured for Global Ship Lease Inc New?
The Corporate Default template measures 6 defenses, and GSL scores: Pricing Power (81), Cost Advantage (90), Customer Stickiness (66), Capital Efficiency (83), Resilience (87), Scale & Market Position (68). Each is scored independently as a percentile against peers, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another — the overall score reflects how those defenses are weighted for this industry.
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