UPDATE: Jefferies Initiates Coverage On Star Bulk Carriers Corp.

In a note published earlier Wednesday morning, Jefferies analyst Douglas Mavrinac initiated coverage on Star Bulk Carriers Corp.

with a Buy rating and a $21 price target. Mavrinac's upgrade comes on the back of an improving dry bulk shipping market due to "significant" incremental iron ore supply from Australia and Brazil. Additionally, Mavrinac noted that with limited dry bulk shipping supply growth (five percent through 2015), the increased demand should spur increased charter rates. Factoring this in, Mavrinac said every $1000 per day increase to average charter rates above his estimate will add $0.06 to his second half 2014 EPS estimate. Amid the upgrade, shares of Star Bulk Carriers recently traded up 2.8 percent.