d'Amico International Shipping S.A. (DIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Damico International Shipping Second Quarter and First Half 2026 Results Web Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Federico Rosen, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our earnings call for Q2 and H1 2026 results. As usual, I'll skip the executive summary and go straight to Page 7. Snapshot of our fleet as at the end of June 2026. We have 28 ships on the water, six LR1s, 16 MRs and six Handys. We also have, as you know, 10 ships currently under construction, four LR1s scheduled for delivery in 2027 in the second half of next year, four MRs, MRs MR2s also called and two Handys that are scheduled for delivery in 2029. Modern fleet, 9.9 average years. And moving to the next page. This is our situation on the bank debt front. In H1 '26, in line with our strategy, with our financial strategy that we discussed several times in our previous calls, we kept on voluntarily prepaying some of our existing debt. And we -- for $45.8 million actually in the first half of the year. And we drew down new facilities at a considerably lower cost of debt, taking advantage also of our enhanced credit merit. And also, we also -- we have some facilities which were coming to maturity in 2027, which is also a capital-intensive year for us. As we mentioned before, we take the delivery of four vessels next year. So we also extended our maturity on this debt. So right now, we have 0 debt expiring in 2027 and a very limited amount expiring in '28 -- $13.8 million on a ship that today is worth over $54 million and $70 million expiring in 2029. We are assuming here, as you can see in this graph, to repay debt again in the second half of this year. Actually, this is going to happen in July by tomorrow actually for $13.5 million and to draw a new facility for $16.5 million, again, at a very much improved margin over SOFR. And going into '27 and '29 in which, as I mentioned before, we will take the delivery of 10 ships, 10 new ships. We are assuming at the moment to get a leverage of 50% of the contract price that we have on these vessels. We also show, as usual, our daily bank loan repayments on our own vessels, which tells a lot about our substantial deleveraging plan that we've been implementing. So this figure was $6,147 a day in 2019 and it dropped down to $2,050 a day as of this year. Going back -- going ahead to the following page. Here, as always, we provide a situation of how Q3 looks right now based on everything that we have been fixing so far on the market. So we have, at the moment, 61% time charter coverage, 61% of our Q3 days at an average of $23,562. We also fixed 18% of our Q3 days on the spot market at an average of $30,900 a day. And so this entails a blended daily TCE, so the sum of the time charter and the spot components of 80% of the Q3 days at an average of $25,257 a day. Also, we provide on the right sensitivity relative to the numbers that I just mentioned. So should we run the rest of the year, so the days that are currently unfixed at $25,000 a day, our Q3 '26 potential blended TCE would be of $25,200 a day. Should it be $27,500 a day on the free spot days, this figure would rise to $25,700 a day. And should we made $30,000 a day on the spot market on the remaining spot days, we would achieve a daily average TCE of $26,200 a day. Following page, we show the estimated evolution of our fleet. Here, as you know, we have sold the oldest vessels of our fleet, the High Seas and the High Tide. One of this vessel was already delivered to the buyers. So it's out of our fleet at the end of June. In April at the end of April the other ship will be delivered to the buyers by November, by early November. And of course, as I mentioned, we will take the delivery of 10 ships between 2027 and 2029. On the right up above, we show the sensitivity relative to the spot market to the spot rate. So every $1,000 a day that we achieve plus or minus on the spot market, we would make $1.7 million more or less on our bottom line. Of course, this figure rises for '27 and '28 given the fact that at least for the moment, we have a lower coverage compared to obviously 2026. At the bottom, instead, we show on the left what our estimated net result would be should we run the rest of the year at breakeven level, which is, of course, considerably lower, much, much lower relative to where the market is right now. So assuming this, we would make a net result of $109.2 million. And on the right, we also ran a sensitivity relative to this figure. So should we make $20,000 a day on our free days in 2026 for the remainder of 2026, our potential net result would rise to $117.6 million. Should we make $22,500 a day, we would make almost $122 million. Should we make $25,000 a day, then we would have a net profit of almost $126 million for 2026. Next page. On the cost side, daily OpEx of $8,580 a day in H1 '26, a bit higher, 5% higher compared with the same period of last year. In reality, very much in line with our internal projections. We were expecting this. We were, of course, subject to some inflationary pressure this year and also to some higher logistic costs related to the spare part deliveries, which is very much related to where the ships are actually employed. So there are certain parts of the world in which it's much more expensive to send and deliver onboard spare parts. On the G&A front, a very stable situation, as you can see, so $13.1 million in H1 '26, very much in line with the same period of last year. Of course, as I mentioned several times, the increase that you see relative to the previous years is due to the variable component of the personnel cost of DIS, which is obviously the reflection also of the very good years that we have been having, the very profitable years that we have been having. Net financial position, very meaningful here. We reached at the end of H1 '26, a net cash position of $19.2 million or $21 million, excluding a small residual IFRS 16 effect. We had cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period of $231.7 million and also our financial leverage ratio, which we always calculate as the proportion between our net financial position and the fleet market value of our fleet turned negative because we are in a net cash position situation, and it's minus 1.6%. And I forgot to mention that our fleet market value was assessed at $1.28 billion at the end of the period. Going to the income statement, we recorded a very profitable first semester of the year, $79.4 million, $105.8 million EBITDA, over 67% EBITDA margin, much higher in the same period of last year where we made $38.5 million net profit. Looking at Q2 alone, extremely strong, almost $52 million bottom line with an EBITDA of $64.9 million, which represents over an EBITDA margin of over 72%. Next page, our key operating measures. In the first half of the year, we covered almost 64% of our days at an average of $23,600 a day. At the same time, we achieved on the remaining days, a daily spot average of $40,240 a day, leading to a total blended TCE of $31,125 a day. much stronger, as you can see, compared with the same period of last year. Q2 2026, extremely strong on the spot market. It is a record figure for us. We achieved a daily spot rate of $57,500 a day. We also covered 65.3% of our days at $24,272, leading to a total blended TCE of $35,833 a day. And I pass it on to Carlos.

Thank you, Federico. Good afternoon. So as usual, now we continue with our CapEx commitments. And the total commitments in relation to the new buildings, 10 new buildings we ordered is of around $512 million of which around $437 million still outstanding. Most of the payments occurring in '27 when four LR1s should be delivered to us and in '29 when we should take delivery of two MR1s and four MR2s. Purchase options on lease vessels, we still have these two vessels here that we can exercise at any moment with three months' notice. Given our very strong financial position, net cash position recently, we are now looking into this more closely. And I would say it is likely that we will be exercising one of these options soon. Here, we just like to show that all the options we have exercised on the vessels which were time chartered in and which are today owned vessels. And it's also nice to see that relative to the date in which the options were exercised, some value was created at the time, the delta between the market value and the exercise price was around $57 million. Today, it's closer to $90 million if we compare the market value to the book value of the vessels at the end of June. Contract coverage. Now here, there is some news because overnight, we -- we got fully fixed on a new time charter contract and extension of an existing contract for another three years. So that slightly increases our coverage for this year. It was a contract which should be terminating at around the middle of September, which was extended for three years. But it increases more so our coverage for '27, '28 and also partly in '29. So we are happy about this additional coverage, which provides us more visibility on earnings for the coming years. That's still a very profitable rate. Overall, today, we have 57% of our remaining days in '26 are H2 '26 days covered through period contracts. And we have 31% of our days in '27 covered through such contracts. The markets. Well, as you saw from the figures just described by Federico, we have benefited from extraordinarily strong markets in Q2. The market spiked reaching record levels as is clear from the graph on the left here, the yellow line following the onset of the war in Ukraine. This spike did not last too long, but we were able to capture part of this upswing quite well through some very good fixtures. And the market corrected since then, but stays at very profitable levels. And I would say that most recently, this is maybe not evident in this graph. In the last week, we have seen actually some further strengthening of the market. The market East of Suez is pretty flat right now at low -- mid- low 20s. But in the U.S. Gulf, it is in the high 30s, low 40s in the Atlantic Basin, let's say. So it's still very strong markets, so very profitable markets. Period rates reflect that and reflect the anticipation that these markets should stay strong, very strong for the coming year and strong, I would say, for the coming two, three years. So asset values also have moved up markedly over the last few months and are at very high levels. So very positive outlook for the sector as seems to be indicated by these values here. Refining margins, very strong, of course, very strong because there is a lack of refined volumes coming out from the Persian Gulf, but very strong also because of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, which have led Russia to curtail exports of certain refined products. The disruption to Hormuz oil flows has been significant since the onset of the war. There was much more oil flowing just after the MOU was signed between the U.S. and Iran. That did not last very long, unfortunately. And now volumes are back to levels that we saw in April and May. And so with very limited crossings of the straight of Hormuz. Stocks have declined markedly, but the effect on the rest of the world was dampened by the fact that China took the brunt of this adjustment by lowering substantially its imports of crude oil since the war started by around 5 million to 6 million barrels per day. There were also 2 million barrels per day of releases of strategic reserves. But stocks, nonetheless in OECD countries did come down and in certain parts, in certain areas and for certain specific products, they are starting to reach critical levels. Here, we see -- we have a slide here again, the situation in the Red Sea and more specifically in the Bab el-Mandab Strait is becoming again very relevant. There was an increase in crossings that we were seeing. The situation was normalizing throughout the course of this year. But most recently, the Houthis threatened to attack all vessels linked to Saudi interest. And that should entail, of course, vessels controlled by Saudi Arabia, but also likely cargo loaded in Saudi Arabian ports. So Yanbu -- the Yanbu Port was a critical outlet for crude oil, which helped to mitigate the effects of the lost barrels transiting Hormuz. As we see on the graph on the right top-hand side here, we see that product flows from the Red Sea did not change very much after the beginning of the war, but crude oil flows going -- in particular, crude oil flows going east rose significantly from around 1 million barrels per day to 4 million barrels per day. So with this new situation here, we are seeing that more of this crude is now being redirected through Suez and in some cases, being transported through pipelines -- through the Sumed pipeline to Egypt and then being exported from there. More of it is likely to end up in the Mediterranean, but that means that Asia will then have to import more from the U.S. Gulf. So again, very positive for ton-miles. So this situation here is -- if it were to continue, is likely to provide a further boost to the market and further boost to ton-miles, in particular, for the crude tankers, but of course, indirectly also to the product tankers as the two sectors are linked, especially through the LR2 segment, as we have mentioned several times and as we will see later in the presentation. The slides here confirm, you see here quite evidently how Russia's refined products exports have been collapsing lately as a result of the Ukrainian attacks. Overnight, they attacked another two important refineries in Russia. They attacked again the CPC terminal. So they are going all in, in this strategy, which they realize is being very effective at damaging Russia economically. And that is creating a lot of tightness, especially on the diesel market, which Russia used to be a very important exporter of. And the number of sanctioned vessels on the water continues rising. Recently, another sanction package was approved by the EU. We are now approaching 20% of the overall tanker fleet, which has been sanctioned in deadweight terms. And that, of course, reduces the productivity of this fleet and improves -- leads to a stronger market for also all the compliant tonnage. Venezuela was also a positive effect, the lifting of sanctions on Venezuela. As expected, a lot of -- a large portion of this Venezuelan oil is ending up in the U.S. Gulf. Many refineries in the U.S. were built to process this heavy crude oil that is freeing up more oil from the U.S. to be exported to more distant locations in Asia. And also the Venezuela is importing more naphtha as a diluent for the crude oil that it needs to export, and that is positive also for product tankers. So on these slides here, we will not dwell very much into because these forecasts from the EIA are just as good as their estimates of the timing of reopening for the Strait of Hormuz. So it is very difficult for anyone to make any forecast on this matter. And here, these slides confirm that stocks have been coming down. The graph on the bottom left, the data -- it's a bit dated. The last data point is from May. But for sure, this has continued declining until the end of July, and we are now well below the last five years average. And here, again, we show this, which has been a very important factor supporting product tankers throughout the last year and even more so since the onset of the war in Iran, there has been this huge migration of LR2s into dirty trades. As you can see on the left-hand graph, the yellow line, which has been moving up vertically, whilst there is -- there was a reduction in the number of LR2s trading clean. And that despite the fact that over the last year or so, there were many LR2s deliveries. So here, looking at the period between January '25 and July '26, there were around 100 -- almost 100 LR2s delivered. But nonetheless, there was a reduction of the LR2s trading clean of 71 vessels. So that has tightened the product tanker market for all the other segments, and we have benefited from that. That has happened, of course, because the Aframax market has been extremely strong and has outperformed and is still outperforming the LR2 clean market. Not much change here relative to our last presentation with the refinery additions still occurring mostly in the Middle East, India and China and Africa and which should be contributing positive to ton-miles in the coming years. The fleet continues aging very rapidly. We now approaching 22% of the MR and LR1 fleet, which is above 20 years of age, and we should be at around 25% by the end of '27. We have today 14% order book for the -- for MRs and LR1s. So this gap between the order book and the proportion of the fleet, which is more than 20 years of age continues increasing despite quite a substantial number of vessels ordered this year. And we see on the bottom left, the fact that from '28, we have quite a big percentage of the fleet, which is reaching 25 years of age, which is the average demolition age for these type of vessels. So even if these vessels were not to be demolished at this age, this would either indicate a very strong market or in any case, they would be trading in very marginal trades and not competing with the mainstream tankers. And that, in reality already happens as they -- in most cases, the activity of vessels is already very limited after they cross the 20-year threshold. So that has been and should continue supporting the markets. Demolition, which had been picking up -- throughout 2025, has slowed down again markedly because of the very strong markets this year. Deliveries instead have been rising, and they should continue rising also next year. And the order book here, we see the number of vessels ordered in the first six months of 2026, and we are at almost 90 vessels on the – for MRs and LR1s. So if annualized, we -- that would be 180, which is not too far from the -- 2024 figure. So this is something we have to keep a close eye on. The situation now is still, I would say, positive because of the rapidly aging fleet. But of course, if shipowners were to get carried away ordering vessels, that could be a cause of concern in the coming years. Here, we see that the fleet growth should accelerate next year, but what we are not showing here is the fleet growth of the sub-20 fleet. And there, the growth is much more limited and around 1%. So it's still a very positive situation also for next year. Here, we show our NAV, the NAV -- overall NAV, which reached $1.3 billion, thanks to the positive net cash position and the fleet market value, which is approaching $1.3 billion. And so we -- at the end of June, we're trading at 30% discount to NAV today, slightly smaller discount because the shares have traded up since. And here, we show that we have been quite generous in improving our payout ratio as we have strengthened our balance sheet. And so hopefully, we will continue -- we will be able to confirm a generous payout ratio also out of the 2026 results. And that's it, and I pass it over to you for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Massimo Bonisoli of Equita.

One question regarding the current spot earnings. If you can update us on the number on the market you see for July and in the early fixture for August, how they compare with the volatility we have seen in around Q2, which has been pretty strong considering the trends both in Atlantic and, let's say, East of Hormuz. And the second question is on refining and downstream. Current diesel and gasoline cracks are -- at record level, never seen such a strong refining crack. So I would have expected even stronger demand on the tanker market. So if you can provide some color on that in the sense that I would have expected maybe a stronger demand. And also what I would have expected over the past few months is a level of inventories that have been drawn much faster than what we have seen from the recent data in the sense that EUR 1.5 billion of inventories should have gone over the past few months considering the Strait of Hormuz closure, whereas we don't find such an evidence of drawdown in inventories. So from your privilege standpoint, if you can give us some color on this market.

Yes, Massimo, thank you for the good questions. In terms of starting with the spot earnings, so going back to one of the slides of the presentation here where we provide an update on that. So this is what has been fixed by us on the spot market so far in Q3. So an average of $31,000. Today, I would say that the market is not -- on average, maybe not too far from these levels, potentially depends on how vessels are positioned in the different basins. But as I was mentioning in the Atlantic Basin, usually the markets and still today are slightly weaker in the Northern Europe and in the Mediterranean, and that is what we have been seeing, although they have been improving also in this part of the world. The market for the Handysizes, the dirty Handysizes especially has been very strong in the Mediterranean. We don't have an exposure to that market right now. Although we do have one vessel, we just finished the dry dock Handy vessel, which is going to dry dock in Turkey, and then we will have to find a new employment for that vessel. We still have to decide whether to trade it a bit on the spot market before fixing it on a new time charter. And we are seeing instead quite a strong market in the U.S. Gulf -- currently in the high 30s, low 40s depending on the routes. And it has been -- the U.S. Gulf market, a volatile market. So you have had strong corrections and then the market has also rebounded very, very strongly. But the averages have been quite attractive. East of Suez, we are seeing a market which was -- there was -- market was quite weak recently in the Middle East. There was a bit of a glut of vessels there because vessels had positioned in that area in an anticipation of -- the reopening of Hormuz and which was expected to continue and to actually gain momentum, but there was then this resurgence of violence, unfortunately, and the closure of the trait. So vessels which were there, some started ballasting away from the area, either going to Southeast Asia to North Asia or to -- some cases actually to the Atlantic Basin. And so now that the number of vessels in that area decreased, we are starting to see some improvements in the Middle East again. Whilst the markets which were a bit firmer in the North and Southeast Asia are still stronger than the Middle East market, they are in the low 20s, mid low 20s, but they are -- they have a more soft undertone currently because of the vessels which have ballasted into those regions recently because of the weak market in the Middle East. But overall, it's still a very strong market. I think it could get stronger if we have this positive ton-mile effect because of the closure or partial closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Refining margins, as you correctly mentioned, are extremely strong. But sometimes that is not enough because the volumes, of course, available to be transported are much lower than they were previously. So what is compensating for that is the inefficiencies, the longer distances. But occasionally, there are moments where more product has to be kept domestically and because stocks are low also where refineries are located, not only in import countries. And that is a negative, of course, for the seaborne transportation of demand for refined products. So you have these contrary forces at play. But overall, I think still quite a positive outlook for the market with, of course, the risk that if this were to continue for too long, it could then lead to some -- a bigger increase in the oil price and in product prices than we have seen so far, which could then have very negative economic repercussions -- negative repercussions on demand for oil products and could then end up being a negative also for our market. So in terms of the stocks, I agree with you. I also would have expected a big decrease in -- a bigger decrease in stocks. I think that there was a big decrease in stock in China, which are, however, still at quite high levels because they came into this conflict with extremely high stocks. They were building stocks throughout last year, but they did help to cushion the blow to the rest of the world. And there was this release of strategic stocks, which means that, yes, also strategic stocks came down. And so -- but that helped to mitigate the reduction in stocks of commercial stocks. And of course, there was in certain areas of the world, there was -- which are more price sensitive and where certain measures to restrict consumption were adopted, you have also a reduction in consumption, which helped a bit to rebalance the market and to reduce this drawdown in stocks. So the system proved much more resilient than could have been anticipated. But we are navigating in quite dangerous waters. There is a risk that at a certain point, we might reach an inflection point. where prices don't move just linearly up in a gradual fashion, but they move, there is a more important increase in oil prices. I hope I answered your questions, Massimo.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Well, thank you everyone. If there are no more questions… There's another question.