Braemar Plc (BMS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Braemar Shipping Services plc H1 results update investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself; however, the company may review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. And you'll be notified once they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to James Gundy, CEO, Nick Stone, CFO of Braemar Shipping Services plc. Good afternoon.

Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining the Braemar presentation this afternoon. I thought the important thing to start was bearing in mind some of you may know Braemar, some of you may not. And I'm sure many of you don't know necessarily know who I am and Nick. So maybe a introduction, first of all, to explain why we are and who we are. Obviously, my name is James Gundy. I've been in the business some 35 years. I originally started broking at Clarkson for some 10 years, then moved to a smaller company called ACM. We grew that company and we IPO-ed that in 2006, and I was the CEO instrumental to the IPO. Then moved to become CEO in 2012. Then we merged into Braemar Shipping and it became a reverse takeover on the Shipbroking side and I became the CEO of Shipbroking. A lot of restructuring, it took quite a few years to get together. And from then, I thought it's the right time to move to become group CEO, and that's my position since January 1 this year. Nick Stone is the Group CFO, and I think he should also do a little introduction before moving the presentation. Go ahead, Neck.

Good afternoon, everybody. Yes, Nick Stone, I've been with Braemar just under 3 years. Prior to that, I was with several other small, medium-sized listed companies, not in Shipbroking or shipping space, but generally, people businesses, which Shipbroking is another example. I have been involved in a lot of the restructuring that's gone on over the last 2 years. And for the last year, in particular, working very closely with James to reset the strategy and sort out some of the historical issues with the business, which -- of which we've made some good progress in this period.

Okay. Right. Let's get on with the interim results and the presentation, and I can guide you through that. Obviously, from coming in, as Nick mentioned, I had a strategy to focus the business on the Shipbroking, which was really the core business and to grow and strengthen revenue profits. That's happened, streamline the business, as I mentioned. And the trading has continued so far this year and has improved throughout the year in fact, and we've obviously been upgrading the market accordingly to what's been happening and the balance sheet is obviously strengthened on the back of what we've done. So we can continue. Now obviously, coming in as group CEO, I had to make a bit of an impact and say where I thought I could do and bearing in mind what my past record for the last 10 years, what we've done, I feel it was fair enough to put a certain target. And to say it's ambitious, obviously, but to say that I felt I could obviously double the size of the business in the next 4 years, achieve optimum scale and market share, utilize our position as a U.K. listed company. Now how we achieve this is obviously through organic growth, obviously a key factor, target acquisitions, new product coverage, which we've already set and done that you'll see later on in the presentation, utilize technology and strengthen our business infrastructure. Now since the changes this year, we've seen Board changes, a new chairman coming in. I can obviously say that myself and team have really hit the ground running. Tris Simmonds moved in as COO. I have known Tris for some 25 years. We bought this business in Braemar letting setup our securities business has done exceptionally well, now some 12%, 13% of our business. This is good to come in now as NED replacing on the RemCo side. Now we're scheduling all this, which I managed to do, and that's by bringing them into Shipbroking as well. So I did that. And from there, we managed to defer some of the payments as you can see there, written there. The balance sheet was restrengthened, improved short-term liquidity, planned integration of financial and Shipbroking divisions, obviously, and combined expertise in ship investment and risk management. All this has obviously happened within the year so far. Now I think I'll let Nick obviously go through the Aqualis.

Okay. Thanks, James. So another thing that's been done over the last 3 years basically is disposal of a loss-making division that was Braemar Technical Services. It was put into a listed Norwegian business that became AqualisBraemar. During this period, we have now sold out all of our remaining holding in it. We had cash proceeds in the period of just under GBP 8 million, around GBP 16 million in total, which again went to further strengthen the balance sheet. And then the last piece of the jigsaw really of what used to be a sort of 4 division business is a planned joint venture of our Logistics division, which is called Cory Brothers, with a Dutch competitor called Vertom, where we believe they will form a much stronger pan-European business that will be able to compete on the global stage much more effectively than the either business on its own. We'll talk a little bit more about that on a further slide later on. Then really, the trading overview for the first 6 months of our year, revenue was up by 11%, underlying operating profit up by 10%. The Shipbroking markets that we operate in, we're in dry cargo, sale and purchase and securities were very strong. Tankers was relatively weak, but we are now seeing signs of recovery in that. We had significant success fees in our financial corporate finance business called Naves and revenue there was up by 49%. We also saw revenue and profit growth in Cory Brothers, which is the business that's going into the joint venture. Operating profits, if you include that Cory Brothers element was actually up by 23%. And we're pleased to say that full year trading outlook was in line with market expectations. And also to note that those market expectations have been upgraded a couple of times already during the period. So strong trading in the period as well as dealing with a lot of the the balance sheet issues and the historic baggage that was present in Braemar. And if we look at the numbers, you can see the headlines that I've already run through revenue, GBP 47.4 million, up 11%. Underlying operating profit was mentioned that was up 10% that doesn't include Cory Brothers because it was -- it's treated as held for sale on the balance sheet. If you include that profit, it's up 23%. And then our reported profit before tax was up by over 100%. That's because of the profit that we made on the sale of the AqualisBraemar shares. Underlying earnings per share up 11%. We also have paid an interim dividend, which -- of 2 pents, which we didn't pay one. We passed dividends for 2 periods due to the uncertainty of COVID, but we're now back to paying a modest dividend at both interim and final level. What we talked about the balance sheet strengthening and you can see that over the last 12 months, our net bank debt is nearly half -- is more than half rather and our total net debt has also halved from GBP 30 million at August '20 to GBP 14.7 million at August '21. So there's a lot of noise in our results. But the underlying measures, we think we're all very pleased with, and we think they're all heading in the right direction. James, slide.

Yes. And obviously, there's been many changes in the Shipbroking world, especially from someone who has been into 35-odd years. So I've seen many changes. The one big key factor is consolidation. Obviously, shipping is in the line of discussions regarding carbon reduction. I mean we are presently shipping 2.5% to present more carbon. So that's going to be lot of changes within the shipping world as far as change of fuel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So semis expected to be the short-term choice because that obviously reduces carbon. But that continued -- that creates a supply and demand issue. A large part of the fleet is aging. Shipyards are presently full until 2025, late '25. So there's lots of reasons why it's looking strong. COVID disruption will continue, it's still continuing. We see 13% of the world fleet sitting outside -- on the container market sitting outside of the Los Angeles or China, trading costs increasing. We see the IEA expects oil demand to recover. That's an obvious factor once COVID comes back. So we expect tanker market to return to its strength. As I just mentioned, new building orders are low, 20-year low. And we are seeing that there's a massive demand for steel. So the recycling market is very strong, and we'll see the older vessels start to be removed from the fleet. You can change Nick. Now this is an interesting slide for us is where we need to grow and where we came to that bold statement of doubling our business. Obviously, you can see from the graph below where we're strong, and some of those blue graphs have actually turned blue in the last 3 or 4 years, where we've invested heavily in the Shipbroking side, obviously allows us still to grow the business, especially within the sectors of the world. We already have some 15 sectors around the world already. So we can easily add into that. So that's -- so we will obviously expand on the derivative side globally and obviously, with -- as new markets come in, we'll obviously be part of that as well, so hoping to move into that. Sorry, Nick. I'll let Nick on the Zuma one here.

So one of the things we've done over the last year is invest in a business called Zuma Labs. It was set up by a former trader in the dry freight futures market, who identified a need for better data around some of the shipping related paper trading markets. So we've invested in that business. We now own around 20% of it. And what it provides for us is a screen, which we think provides us the best data for the current trading in the dry FFA market, in particular, but also will be developed in certain other markets like LPG and certain and other paper trading markets that we operate in. It drives customers to the screen to get access to the best data as to what's going on in the market. It's not a trading screen per se, but it does allow customers to put orders for either sale or purchases of these paper contracts, which then allows our brokers to be both more efficient and also have a better view of where the market is heading at any one trading session and since the screen has been available, our revenue on that dry FFA desk has increased by over 400%, so we've actually invested in more people as well, more brokers to sit on that desk. But there's no doubt that this technology has driven more customer, more interest and, therefore, more commissions generated for Braemar as a result of the availability of that data. We see this as an important area where we continue to invest in the future in order to grow the Braemar business. The next slide then, and I touched on this at the top is the rationale behind the Cory Vertom joint venture. Cory is a good business, a great 100-year plus brand in the British port agency market, but it's never really broken away from being a U.K. business. They've worked with Vertom for the last 5 or 6 years. Vertom are very strong in the Northern Europe in the Baltic and in some of the Mediterranean ports as well. So between them, they can cover the whole of Europe in a way that neither could, alone.. And we think that there will be synergies in terms of cost but also, it will be a business that can grow stronger given the increased coverage. We expect this joint venture to be concluded by the end of this financial year. And as I mentioned earlier, this business is shown as held-for-sale on our balance sheet. And the final disposal into this joint venture vehicle will be the final piece of that jigsaw if you like. I'll then just move on. I think James will talk a little bit about the revenues in the business.

Yes. I think the most important thing about, as I mentioned, about the consolidation story, et cetera, is about the diversification of the business. I mean, from being when I was at ACM, we were a smaller aim public business that predominantly focused on tanker market. It's great when the tanker market was obviously strong, but when it was weak, it caused all sorts of problems. So by diversifying in the last 5 or 6 years, we've invested heavily into dry cargo and some key players, whether that be in Europe or whether that be in Singapore obviously into security, I believe in security, you know the futures market is very much at full that the brokers on the physical side need. So with that, you could have -- you can't really attract the top guy to come in unless you've got that desk as well. So you can see from where we were in '21, you can see how strong tankers was. That's partly caused by the oil price went into negative and the forward curve [indiscernible] contango created storage. But you can see, obviously, where we are now on that pie chart, it means that we can -- and it goes back to the graph we showed you earlier about how we can grow our business. The groundwork has already been done. So that's a case of building on those desks globally as well as central. So you can see the profit -- obviously, revenue profit has gone up as well from 42.8% to 47.4%. All right. And then I think at the end, I think I wanted to ask any basic questions regarding Shipbroking. I'm just hoping you understand what Shipbroking is. And if you don't, I guess, at the end, you can ask me questions on that and how it's done, how we make our money, et cetera. Okay, Nick you can go forward.

Yes. And just to add, next year, we will be reporting our segmental data on this basis. These 7 desks, if you like, in the current year because of the transition in the business, we still have 3 separate divisions, which we are reporting separately. And I'll just cover each one briefly in turn now. Shipbroking which is the bulk of what you saw on the previous slide. As you can see, revenues up. Underlying operating profit from Shipbroking marginally down. The margin was squeezed this year. And there's a couple of reasons for that. We have higher deferred share charges during the period, and we have also invested in the business. So we brought in several new teams. We've opened offices in Athens and in Geneva over the last 12 months, all of which has cost money, which has hit that margin, and it's gone down from 15.5% to 14%. You will see, however, though, that the margin is stronger than it was in the previous full year. The other KPI that is very important to us is our forward order book. So that is a business that has been contracted but not yet invoiced, no revenue recognized. So in the period, you can see it's gone up from GBP 43.4 million to GBP 55.5 million. And we've also disclosed that since August, it has increased further up to just shy of GBP 60 million. And so that really is an indication of the visibility of the revenue in the business as we move forward. Then the financial division, this is Naves. It's a corporate finance, a small corporate finance team, 20 or so people, very high-margin business. You can see they generate income through retaining clients and through success fees, basically advising clients on refinancing or sales transactions and work very closely alongside the sale and purchase Shipbroking desks. They had 2 significant transactions in the period. One was a sale, not actually container ships, but container boxes. And the other was actually the refinancing of an offshore vessel business that had been struggling since the oil price came off in 2014 and has finally now been refinanced. So very strong progress. The one note of caution on this is, that it is a lumpy business, and we will see profits that may not just grow in a straight line. And then the final one is Cory Brothers, which we are looking to put into this joint venture. It's traded really well in the period. We have been able to take advantage of that when it comes to the joint venture terms, but a couple of drivers behind what's going on in that business, some of which was Brexit driven as more and more U.K. businesses need help in both importing and exporting post the Brexit changes at the beginning of the year. But the business has also been restructured somewhat over the last 2 years, a new and young management team gone about this in a very effective way, and we're now really seeing the benefits come through the margins. With that, I'll hand back to James.

Yes. So basically, a summary outlook, I mean strong Shipbroking performance driven by dry cargo, securities and sale and purchase. As I mentioned to you in the last 2 or 3 years, it's proven the fact that our investment in dry cargo and securities were definitely improving the results as we presently speak. [indiscernible] Naves and the integration of this obviously is important because that once again is creating -- we're obviously getting the value -- the synergy of the purchase of the business. So by working all together as one team, that's definitely enhancing. A strong trading performance from Cory Brothers, as we mentioned, Brexit-related import and competitors. Disposal-wise, that acquires obviously. Yes, it had its time, but it will probably hang on for too long to some extent. It wasn't necessarily complementing the Shipbroking business. Current rating and outlook continue to strengthen dry cargo, as we said, and sell and purchase and securities, recovery tanker market, which we expect to happen as the world comes back to normal, inevitably, we will be back in demand. You mentioned there on the financials there as well and prosper faster growth logistics as a result of planned first on JB, trading an full year expectations.

That's fantastic. Thank you, James and Nick, thank you indeed for your presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Just want the teams take a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already. I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard on the Investor Meet Company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. Immediately after the presentation has ended, you will be redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. Investors have submitted a number of questions during the presentation. Perhaps if I could just hand back to you, Nick, to read out the questions where appropriate to do so and either take them or direct them to James, and that would be fantastic.

Yes. Paul, just to make sure everyone realizes we have no -- we don't be embarrassed to ask simple basic questions to understand our business because the worst thing I feel is the fact if you don't understand what we do and how we make our revenue, it makes it harder for you to understand what we've said.

Absolutely, please ask away any questions and the team be greatly happy to take.

James, maybe I'll suggest the first one we should take is from Henry. How does the FFA desk fit in with the physical broking desks or do they operate independently?

Are we seeing -- these questions on here as well. I might need to see these questions.

I've got them in front of me, so I'll read them out, James. That's okay.

And that's Henry, from where.

How does the FFA desk fit in with the physical broking desks or do they operate independently?

No. I mean, look, the FFA desk is important for the trading because they are hedging their risk on physical. It's difficult for a trade to understand because of the volatility of the market. So they will be buying a forward curve decision to protect against a forward delivery physical deal. Now obviously, for the broker on the physical desk be watching where the forward curve is, whether it's a negative or a positive. And normally, a sign of a positive purchase on the forward FFA curve is normally -- it's a feeling the fact that the market is probably going to be moving up as opposed to be down. And if it's a sale forward or selling them the front position, there's a good chance that demand is coming off. So it definitely needs to write. It works very much in the dry cargo FFA desk as well as [indiscernible] FFA desk and that LPG desk and we're obviously growing those into other markets as the traders want protection. So -- and what we're seeing also, we're seeing the trading desks, the freight desk within the trading houses are able to take positions to hedge against their own internal movements and trading. So it's using a number of amount of ways. It's a hugely liquidity market now over the last 15, 20 years.

Thanks, James. I'll take the next one, which is about the Cory Vertom joint venture from David. Maybe I wasn't clear in terms of what I said earlier. The joint venture isn't coming to an end. It's the actual execution of the joint venture, which is [indiscernible] Yes. So sorry if that was misleading. The follow-up question on there is, are there any anticipated additional new international office openings? Well, we are looking at adding to certain offices that we've got. Geneva and Athens are important to buy Houston in States. We -- rather than any new offices, I think we -- those offices are all still fairly small and therefore, we're more likely to be looking to add to those offices, new brokers than any new offices per se. And then the third part of that question is. Are we looking at restructuring our loans prior to possible interest rate increases. We are in regular discussions with our main bank as HSBC. And we'll be looking at a new set of facilities sometime over the next 12 months. We have just -- in terms of the liabilities, so the acquisitions we've made, we have just restructured that, and we have some protection in it against interest rate increases already. Next question, James, one of your favorite subjects, I know. The -- how will the Shipbroking market be affected by the green hydrogen propulsion and transport.

Okay. Well, I don't think we're quite there yet on hydrogen transportation yet. It's a bit far away from where we are today. I've had meetings with the new building business with the Koreans and I see in the head of the Dubai office a couple of days ago. And yes, there is some 50% of their present order book on dual fuel basis, which is predominantly basically either LNG or LPG dual fuel or post normal fuel [indiscernible]. And we've seen recently with Moller - Maersk Line, I was looking at methanol. Now there is obviously subject we're seeing the focus of dual fuel being LNG, methanol, ammonia, and there is a talk of hydrogen down the line, but we're too far away from that yet to see where it's all going to go. It's a massive change of the way. And on top of that, the owners aren't necessarily wanting to invest because they are unsure themselves, which way the market is going to go. So it's a long way to go before we start seeing hydrogen personally.

Then the next question, I'll try and answer. And James, please, you can have your thoughts afterwards, but the question is around from Colin. Why there is so much port congestion at the moment. And I think the majority of it is either a hangover from COVID disruption or the result of continuing COVID disruption. Whilst the ports in Europe are generally free of lockdowns and of issues caused by COVID. It's not the case in a lot of the Asian ports, where there are still ongoing quarantines and closures and delays in ships moving in and out, which has just meant that the backlog from all of the disruption that started 18 months ago has just never been cleared. And the situation, as we run up, obviously, to the festive season is adding more pressure onto an already delicate and difficult scenario?

Yes. Let me add to that. I mean what we're seeing, as you can imagine, there's crew changes, so we see in the [ crew ] change every 3 or 6 months. That's been difficult because obviously, for moving it out over different parts of the world, on the big VLCC tankers, they're normally discharging offshore. They're not having to come into the inner ports. On the container ships and the dry cargo ships, they're having to come in and that's where it creates the problem. You see the crew change, it's congestion, it's suddenly -- we're seeing some 1 minute as the port in China gets closed because of the COVID. We've had ships loading in West Africa. Suddenly, 1 person goes down with COVID, then the whole ship has to go into quarantine, crew changes. So it's a never-ending story of problems. It's not easy to move 20 people from -- into a different part of the world, same example like Nigeria to have a crew change. It creates a lot of problems. And with that, it goes -- there's obviously continued issues with potentially tank top scenarios at loading areas or discharging areas where the demand but the cargo is short. So it creates a massive nightmare. So as I mentioned recently, it's going to take another year or so before this is basically unrevealed and unravelled subject.

Next question is from Mike, which is how do we move to a carbon-neutral business? James has already given part of the answer to that around the sort of alternative fuels. But one of the areas that we are looking at, and there's a potential opportunity for our business to grow is providing carbon offsetting an alternative structures for our customers. And we are looking at whether we can set up a carbon trading desk within business so that when -- and increasingly frequent charterers or the ship owners are looking for measures that will allow them to be carbon neutral. We can actually support them with it. In terms of our own business, we have ongoing work on ESG strategy, which will include how we will look to make Braemar itself a more greener business rather than the industry in which we work, and we'll be publishing some of that with our annual report next year. Next question perhaps is from Henry, which is what is our capital allocation strategy? Well, I mean I think from the things we've talked about today, we've made it very clear that we will be focusing our investment within the Shipbroking business. We are -- we've realized cash where we can from the other businesses and the chart that we showed earlier showing where our business is strong and where it is -- where there are opportunities to make it stronger, it gives you a clue in terms of where we will be looking to invest in which desks and in which geographies. What we've made very clear over the last 12 months is that our focus will be on Shipbroking with the corporate finance on as an adjunct. We will not be looking to diversify away from that, but rather diversify within the Shipbroking market, as James was talking about on the revenue pie charts earlier. Right. Are there any questions here I've missed. There's a couple of questions actually about our share price recently. Clearly, we've seen since the middle of the year, the price come off quite significantly. That has coincided with the dry cargo market turning down a bit in the last month. And I think there's been an impact on many shipping stocks, including Clarkson. And we -- other than that, there's not much we can really say. We are trying to lay out our strategy for growing our business and the trust, if we do that job well, the share price will look after itself.

Yes. From my perspective as well, the fact is, obviously, as you can see, how we simplified the business. I mean I was asked questions 2 years ago, how do we present who Braemar is? And I said, well, it's quite confusing for me being the CEO, the Shipbroking side is I can't answer that question. So it's going to be hard to obviously talk about it to outside investors. So now we've simplified the business, it should be easier for an investor to invest into this and understand what we do and how we make our revenue. Secondly, obviously, you can see we've upgraded our on recent R&Ds. We've returned back to dividend. We've got the forward order book as perhaps being one of the all-time highs of $60 million and the business is very much streamlined. Our profile is youngest, our KPI for brokers is over the highest. So for us, I just think we're being under that -- look, the business looking being undervalued, but of course, that's our job to rebuild confidence within our investor to grow the business and improve what we can do.

The next question then is from John. Do we envisage using M&A to accelerate our growth? And I think the answer is yes. We have an ambition of doubling the size of the business, and we think we can go quite a long way toward that with organic growth by bringing in teams, hiring new brokers and increasing our spread across desks and geographies that way. But inevitably, if we are to succeed in doubling the size of the business, we will need some M&A. There are some smaller broking shops out there that we could look at identifying for acquisition. And I think that's inevitable as we go through this next 3- or 4-year period. The follow-up to that is would we allow retail investors to participate in any fundraising? I think we're a bit early for that sort of level of detail. As you may have seen, we've changed brokers recently to Investec. And when the time comes, we'll be certainly looking to maximize the opportunities that come out of any fund raise from raising money from all sources. So we watch this space on that one. Right. We have one more question from David, which is quite a specific one. Do we see any negative effects on the shipping routes due to the Chinese expansion into the South China Sea? Not one, I think I can answer. But James, any thoughts on that one?

Yes, say that last bit again, sorry.

The Chinese expansion into the South China Sea.

Yes. I think anything -- I think that shipping is -- I mean, I can say to that is shipping has been going for thousands of years as a form of transportation of goods for an infrastructure growth. So anything that any kind of rebuilding in any part of the world, whether that be in the Middle East or in China, there is going to be demand to shipping [indiscernible] supply and demand scenario. So anything like that is a positive. Shipping is -- sometimes we have to be a bit careful as a broker because sometimes when we see disasters around the world or impact through, whether that be through war or whatever, shipping seems to become -- you saw this year in alone when you saw the Suez Canal close, some all the forward curves on freight futures market rallied. This is what happens. And as a broker, we sort of tend to sort of benefit from that, not that we want to publicly announce that, but that's a reality. So any kind of growth. demand is going to be good for the ship broker.

Right. One further question just coming from David. Are we seeing material wage pressures? And how easy are we finding it to attract new brokers and teams to join us? I think it's early, sorry James.

Yes. No, sorry. Yes, I mean, look, I think that just to sort of cut in the mix, sorry. But I mean, look, the broking business is pretty standard really across the broking market on the basic salaries. We know roughly where we are, and we know our competition is. The business is driven by a reward of a bonus. Where we now add and it's not just about the -- us as Braemar, it's where our client base wants. Our client base is liking the fact that we're a public company, we are part of our business regulated. The brokers understand the different sectors, we are better protected on their KYC departments, compliance, et cetera. So what we're seeing now is we're able to attract the brokers from the smaller shops and in fact, it puts pressure on the smaller shops to potentially. We saw one tanker broker who was quite a player in the market that purely was tankers closed down in September and we took some of their staff. So I think it's only a benefit for us where we are now, and I feel that we can control that -- so what I'm saying it's the fact that it's not necessarily about the money to [indiscernible] in front of the enticing brokers come and work for us, they feel in a way that by working for us, they can increase their revenue. Does that answer the question?

Yes. And as you are speaking, James, another question came in around what our competitive advantages are, which I think actually a number of them you were just running through.

Yes, exactly. I think that -- trust me, I've worked for a big company, Clarkson, I have worked for a small company, ACM, is very, very small. We now are in a position. You'd be surprised how many people that left maybe to merge in 2014 who have now come back or the ones that left now realize they made a mistake and maybe we don't want back. So -- and I think people -- as I say, realizing that the name goes a long way. Trust me, I traveled around the world in 90s and as a small broking shop with ACM and lucky I got to not much further than the reception. Now when I try to run the world as being just Braemar sort of Athens to Bodrum the various clients come in to see me. So it's a completely different factor there. And yes, many of the interdealer brokers have tried to get to Shipbroking and found that it's very much a relation-driven business and they're finding it difficult and they've given up. So that's why we feel quite strong where we are and so we're quite confident with our growth plan.

James, Nick, I think you've covered off so many questions. Just I guess, any further questions do come through, of course, you can respond to these post the events as well, but perhaps James on that basis, I could just ask you for a closing snapshot to conclude before we redirect the investors to give you some feedback.

Yes. No, exactly. I want to emphasize that how our commission of the broking shop works. I mean we predominantly, it's 1.25% on the freight and 1% on the S&P. So you can imagine the higher price of the ship, you can go from we see ships go recently from GBP 10 million to GBP 60 million in the period of the year. So you can imagine the commission for the brokerage, which increases our revenue. So at the moment, we're in a great spot. We're feeling very confident about the business where we're going to. The hard work has been done over the last 4 years -- 4, 5 years, and now we can only look forward and I think I could comp and understand the business and being a leading by example to one of the large revenue makers for the business, that's how top brokers come and join us and hold what we have. And we're quite proud of where we are today. All right.

That's fantastic. James, Nick, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session to be automatically redirected the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Braemar Shipping Services, thank you for attending today. That concludes today's session.

Thanks a lot. Thank you everyone.

Thank you everybody.