Euroseas Ltd. (ESEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Euroseas Conference Call on the Fourth Quarter 2019 Financial Results. We have with us Mr. Aristides Pittas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Anastasios Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer of the company. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. Please be reminded that the company announced their results with a press release that has been publicly distributed. Before passing the floor to Mr. Pittas, I would like to remind everyone that in today's presentation and conference call Euroseas will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are within the meaning of federal securities laws. Matters discussed may be forward-looking statements, which are based on current management expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that may result in such expectations not being realized. I kindly draw your attention to Slide #2 of the webcast presentation, which has the full forward-looking statements and the same statement was also included in the press release. Please take a moment to go through the whole statement and read it. And now I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Pittas. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us today for our scheduled conference call. Together with me is Anastasios Aslidis, our Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our financial results for the 3- and 12-month period ended December 31, 2019. Let's move to Slide 3 to see our income statement highlights. For the fourth quarter, total net revenues were $13.3 million. Net loss was $0.8 million. Net loss attributable to common shareholders after the $0.2 million dividend on Series B preferred sales was $0.9 million or $0.18 loss per share, basic and diluted. Adjusted net loss attributable to common shareholders for the period was $1.6 million or $0.32 per share, basic and diluted. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.2 million. I have to say that in this quarter, we had the dry docking of our bigger ships, the motor vessel Akinada, which resulted in significant -- contributed to the results of this quarter negatively. Please turn to Slide 4 for details of our fleet expansion activities. The company is focused on its strategy of providing a public consolidation platform. We continuously evaluate opportunities that would allow us to expand or renew our fleet. This has already happened twice during the last 2 quarters with the addition of 8 additional containerships in cash and share transactions, 1 in August and 1 in November 2019. Specifically, in August 2019, we acquired 4 vessels from affiliates, EM Hydra and EM Spetses, both 1,700 TEU vessels; EM Kea, a 3,000 TEU vessel; and M/V Diamantis P, a 2,000 TEU vessel were delivered to our fleet in the beginning of August 2019. Their average age is about 14 years. The vessels were bought through a combination of cash and shares issued to the affiliates at $5.68 per share-based on the -- on current share prices after the reverse split. The transaction was approved by a committee of disinterested independent members of the Board. At the time of acquisition, these vessels reduced the overall average age of the fleet by more than a year and increased fleet size by more than 35%. This transaction was followed, in November 2019, with the transaction we did in acquiring 4 Panamax intermediate size vessels or 4,250 TEU built in South Korea and with average age of 10 years from Synergy Holdings limited, a totally unrelated party. Again, we acquired the vessels for cash and shares issued at the same price of $5.68 per share, equally to the seller and some affiliates. The acquisition of a younger fleet reduced the overall average age by almost 2 years and increased fleet size by more than 25% in terms of number of vessels and about 50% in terms of carrying capacity. Please turn to Slide 5, where you can see our current fleet profile after the latest additions. Our fleet is comprised of 19 vessels, which include 14 feeder containerships and 5 intermediate containers, with an average age weighted by TEU of 15.8 years and the carrying capacity of 660,000 deadweight tons and 51,000 TEUs. Please turn to Slide 6 for our chartering, operational and dry dockings developments during the quarter. Akinada Bridge was fixed for a period of minimum February 10, 2020, to maximum May 20, 2020, at $16,500 a day. We have recently received charterer delivery notice for February 29 and are seeking a new employment. The Evridiki G was extended for a period of minimum September 1, 2020, to maximum November 15 at $10,250 per day. The EM Athens was charter at $9,250 per day until mid-October to mid-November 2020. The Aegean Express was extended for a period of 140 to 180 days at $7,500 per day. The Ninos was fixed for 3 to 5 months at $7,750 per day as was the Kuo Hsiung. Then EM Corfu was extended until minimum November 15, 2021, at $10,250 per day. And the EM Joanna was extended for a period of 12 to 14 months at $8,050 per day. All these fixtures were approximately at similar levels on average to the expiring time charters. Regarding our operations, repairs and dry dockings. The Akinada Bridge dry docking and repair lasted 65 days in dry dock between 24th of September to 28th of November. After redelivery from the charterers and en route to the shipyard to perform the scheduled dry dock and water ballast installation, the ship suffered a stern tube bearing damage which caused a delay of about 30 days to her initial schedule, and consequently, the cancellation of the event charter. The cost of the repairs of about $600,000 is fully recoverable under the company's hull and machinery insurance policy. On January 19, 2020, there was an engine room fire on EM Oinousses while sailing of Mozambique carrying empty containers. The fire was extinguished, but the vessel lost power and was towed to Nacala. General average was declared. Surveyors from various insurers boarded the vessels to assess the extent of the damage. We are waiting for the final reports to take the appropriate course of action, but we expect insurance to cover the majority of the costs. Slide 7 shows our vessel employment as of February 1. We have about 40% coverage for the remaining of 2020 based on minimum periods. Please turn to Slide 8. Over the last 5 years, our operational and fleet utilization has been, on average, about 99%. Euroseas has an outstanding safety and environmental record. But at the same time, the company is managing to keep costs low despite running on all the fleets of the average company. For the fourth quarter of 2019, operational fleet utilization was 99.7% compared with 9.9% -- 99.9% the same period last year. Commercial fleet utilization in the fourth quarter of 2019 was 100% compared to about 91% the same period last year. The graph on the page compares daily costs, excluding dry docking since 2011 with our peers. As you can see, overall, our costs remained among the lowest of the public shipping companies. Let's now turn to Slide 10 to discuss the market highlights of the fourth quarter and the beginning of this year. Time charter rates in the fourth quarter for feeder and intermediate size vessels ranging from 1,000 to 5,600 TEU vessels had a mixed picture as the 1,700 TEUs fell about 3%, while the bigger ships rose from 7% to 18%, as you can see in detail on the slide. Whilst January started out rather strongly from the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic, the rates have started correcting and are back to levels similar to where they were at the start of Q3 2019. Average second-hand prices for older than 20-year old vessels remained around their scrap prices in the fourth quarter. However, for younger vessels of about 10 years old, there was a rise around 5% for the 1,700 TEU ships and a drop of 5% for the 2,500 TEU ships. New building prices, Tier 2, no scrubber, China built, remained stable at around $23.5 million and $29 million for the 1,700 and 2,500 TEU vessels, respectively. But truth is, we have not seen lately any new deals in the market. The idle fleet was 1.4 million TEU as of February 3, 2020, about 6% of the fleet. This includes idle due to scrubber retrofitting, mostly larger vessels of about 1 million TEU. Scrapping remained at the same level as in the third quarter, relatively low for the current market. Total of about 180,000 TEU scrapped in 2019, i.e., about 0.8% of the fleet. Overall, the fleet grew by 4% in 2019, without accounting for idle vessels reactivation. Please turn to Slide 11. The IMF projected world GDP growth in 2020 inch down to 3.3% from 3.4% in the previous quarter, but still 0.4% higher than the growth in 2019. The IMF's prediction for the Chinese GDP growth was an increase of 6% -- to 6% from 5.8% previously. However, this was just before the coronavirus issue arose, which analysts predict to have a damping effect on the Chinese growth of at least 0.5% on a yearly base, and about 2% on Q1 growth. For the advanced economies, the revision to U.S. growth for 2020 reflects the slightly less strong performance of 2% compared to 2.1% in the previous quarter. Similarly, predictions for Eurozone are expected at 1.3%, just a bit lower than the 1.4% expected in October. Indian growth has been lower to 5.8% from 7%, with Brazilian growth is now expected at 2.2%, a slow uplift from 2% previously. For 2021, the IMF predicts a healthy global growth rate of 3.4%, while for the U.S., it is expected to scale back to just 1.7%. Growth in the Euro area is expected to stay the same at 1.4%, whereas the '21 -- 2021 forecast for the major countries of the rest of the world is expected to be slightly higher in 2021 to 2020, except for Japan and China, where a slight reduction is expected. In terms of demand for containerized trade, demand measured in TEU per mile is expected by Clarksons to grow less compared to world GDP and settle around 2.4% in 2020, similarly to 2019, when demand growth of 1.7% was the third lowest in container history and lower than the actual global GDP growth. These figures are quite a bit lower than the expectations 3 months ago. It is extremely difficult to forecast trade and growth projections with any degree of confidence at the moment as the coronavirus effects are still very uncertain. Please turn to Slide 12 to review the containership age profile and order book delivery schedule. As you can see on the containership age profile chart on the left side of the slide, it shows the young fleet with a mere 5.5% of ships being over 20 years old. It is important to note that the vast majority of these vessels are feeder vessels. On the right side, the chart shows the delivery schedule of the current containership order book, which is expressed as a percentage of the fleet. Please note that the figures above the past years 2015 to 2019 reflect actual fleet growth after scrapings and slippage, while for 2020 onwards, slippage and scrapings are not accounted for. The deliveries are expected to be around 4.5% in 2020 and 3.9% in 2021. The actual fleet growth is, of course, expected to be less due to slippage and scrapping. If we try and assess what the fleet growth in the feeder sector will be in 2020, after taking an account of expected scrapings and slippage, we would expect a growth of less than 4%, which is a bit less than the 5% expected demand growth in the feeder sector. Let's turn to Slide 13. The left side of the slide shows the evolution of the 1-year time charter rates for containers of 1,700 since 2000. Since the financial crisis of 2008, rates stayed rather depressed with 3 spikes within the $5,000 to $12,000 per day range. Currently, we are hovering a charter rates slightly below the median levels. The right-hand side of the slide shows vessel values in relation to historical prices since 2000. As you can see, containership values are still below the median historical values and, of course, significantly lower than historical levels. Therefore, in our view, this is more a buying opportunity than a selling one based on where historical prices are. The fundamentals also looked quite good until the coronavirus epidemic emerged. As the facts that vessels will be out of service for installing scrubbers, we estimated 1.9% of the fleet is expected to be absorbed in 2020 in such retrofits overall, coupled with a slower streaming speeds to help deal with generally rising fuel prices and efforts to control carbon emissions, together with signs of a slightly growing demand, all pointed towards a strengthening market in 2020 and even more so in 2021 when deliveries of new vessels [Audio Gap] continue to believe this will be the most probable outcome, but we'll closely monitor the coronavirus situation and adapt our growth strategy as things become clearer. And with that, I will now pass the floor to our CFO, Anastasios Aslidis, to go over our financial highlights.

Thank you very much, Aristides. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. I will take you the next 4 slides to give you an overview of our financial results for the 3- and 12-month period ended December 31, 2019. The figures that we will review, at least as far as the comparison for the full year is concerned, refer to the continuing operations of Euroseas, that is we stripped out the contribution of vessels that were spun off in May 2018 into EuroDry. Let's start by looking at Slide 15. For the fourth quarter of 2019, we reported total net revenues of $13.3 million, representing a 66% increase of our total net revenues of $8 million during the fourth quarter of last year. We reported net loss for the period of $0.8 million and a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $0.9 million as compared to a net loss of $0.5 million, and net loss attributable to common shareholders of $0.8 million, respectively, for the fourth quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $1.2 million, unchanged from the fourth quarter of 2018. Basic and diluted loss per share attributable to common shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $0.18, calculated on 5.03 million basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $0.53 for the fourth quarter of 2019 calculated on 1.48 million basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding. These share counts that I mentioned, reflect the 1 for 8 reverse stock split that took effect on December 19, 2019. Excluding the effect of the loss attributable to common shareholders for the quarter, of the unrealized gain in derivatives and the amortization of below market time charters acquired, the adjusted loss attributable to common shareholders for the quarter ended December 31, 2019, would have been $0.32 basic and diluted compared to $0.55 basic and diluted for the quarter ended December 31, 2018. Usually, security analysts do not include the above items in their published estimates of earnings per share. Moving now to the right part of the slide to talk about the full year results of 2019. For the full year of 2019, we reported total net revenues of $40 million, representing a 16.3% increase over total net revenues of $34.4 million during last year. We reported a net loss for the year of $1.7 million and a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $3.5 million as compared to a net loss of $0.7 million and a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $2 million, respectively, for the 12 months of 2018. The results of 2019 include $0.9 million of amortization of below-market charters acquired and $0.04 million of unrealized gain on derivatives. The results for 12 months of 2018 include a $1.3 million gain on the sale of a vessel and $0.2 million of unrealized gain on derivatives. Depreciation expense for the 12 months of 2019 was $4.2 million compared to $3.3 million during 2018, and that is due to the increased number of vessels in the company's fleet. Adjusted EBITDA for 2019 was $5.3 million compared to $4.3 million for 2018. Basic and diluted loss per share attributable to common shareholders for the 12 months of 2019 was $1.21 calculated on 2.86 million basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding compared to a net loss of $1.41 for the 12 months of 2018, calculated on 1.4 million basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding. Again here, excluding the effect on the loss attributable to common shareholders for the year, of the unrealized gain on derivatives and the amortization of the below-market time charters acquired, the loss per share -- the adjusted loss per share attributable to common shareholders for 2019 would have been $1.52 compared to adjusted loss of $2.51 for 2018, the year during which we excluded the gain on the -- from the sale of a vessel. Again, as I previously mentioned, security analysts do not include the above items that we based our adjustment in the published estimates of earnings per share. Let's now turn to Slide 16 to review our fleet performance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2019 and compare them to the same periods of last year. Let's start first with our 3-month numbers and first look at our utilization rates. As usual, we have broken down the utilization rate in commercial and operational. As you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, for the fourth quarter of 2019, we reported a 100% commercial utilization rate and 99.7% operational utilization rate as compared to 90.8% commercial and 99.9% operational utilization rate for the same period the fourth quarter of 2018. I want to remind you here that our utilization rate calculation does not include vessels in scheduled dry dock, scheduled repairs or in lay-up, if any, during the reported period. In the fourth quarter of 2019, we operated an average of 16.84 vessels with a time charter equivalent rate of $9,085 per vessel per day compared to a time charter equivalent rate of $8,577 per vessel per day that our vessels in the same period of 2018, a period during which we operated 11 vessels on average. Total operating expenses, including management fees and general and administrative expenses, but excluding dry docking costs were $6,182 per vessel per day for the fourth quarter of 2019 compared to $5,782 per vessel per day for the same period of 2018. As Aristides mentioned earlier, we believe we maintain one of the lowest operating cost structures amongst our public peers. And we think this is one of our competitive advantages in the business. Let's now look at the bottom of the table to our daily cash flow breakeven levels presented here on a per vessel per day basis. So for the fourth quarter of 2019, we reported an operating cash flow breakeven level, including loan repayments, but before any balloon repayments of $9,133 per vessel per day as compared to $7,838 per vessel per day during the fourth quarter of 2018. Let's now look at our 12-month figures for 2019 in the right part of the table. For that period, for the full year, we reported a 99.2% commercial utilization rate and 100% operational utilization rate compared to 96.7% and 96%, respectively, for the same period for the full year of 2018. We operated during the year an average of 13.1 vessels, a reported time charter equivalent rate of $8,762 per vessel per day compared to a time charter equivalent rate of $9,179 per vessel per day during 2018, a period during which we operated 11.49 vessels on average. Total operating expenses, again, including management fees and general and administrative expenses, but excluding dry docking cost for the year were $6,294 per vessel per day for 2019 compared to $6,225 per vessel per day for 2018. Again, looking at the bottom of the table, our daily cash flow breakeven level for the year of 2019 was $8,870 per vessel per day compared to $8,465 per vessel per day during 2018. Let's now move to Slide 17. This slide shows on the right-hand side our cash flow breakeven level expectation for the next 12 months, and I will return to that in a second. And on the left side, we can see our scheduled debt repayments over the next several years. As you can see from the chart on the left part of the slide, we have loan repayments of a bit more than $17 million in 2020, including about $5 million of loans that could be repaid in shares under certain conditions. In 2021, we'll repay -- we're here to repay in addition to our normal loan repayments, a balloon repayment of $19.2 million for a loan that covers 9 of our vessels. And similarly, in 2022, we have to pay a balloon of $1.7 million and more balloons in 2023. We believe that we can refinance those balloons, as we have done in the past, when the time for -- when the time comes. Expressed in dollars per vessel per day, our loan repayments over the next 12 months amount to about $1,850 contribution to our cash flow breakeven level, again, not including the $5 million repayment to an affiliate that could be paid in shares, as I mentioned earlier, under certain conditions. Looking now at the right part of the slide and the table there and making assumptions for the remaining components of our cash flow breakeven, that is our operating expenses, G&A expenses, interest, dry docking and our preferred dividend. We come up with an overall cash flow breakeven level for the next 12 months of $9,050 per vessel per day. Let's now turn to Slide 18. For me to give you some highlights from our balance sheet. As of December 31, 2019, we had cash and other assets of about $10.6 million. The book value of our vessels was about $116 million, and we estimate that was about 15% below their market value as of the end of December. On a book basis, our total assets were approximately $127 million. Again, as of the end of the year, we had an outstanding bank and other debt of about $90 million, preferred equity outstanding of about $8 million and other liabilities of about $7.5 million for total liabilities of about $106 million, resulting in a book -- in a net book value of about $21 million as per our balance sheet at the end of the year. If we adjusted our net book value for their market value for our vessels, and as I mentioned earlier, we estimate that is about 15% above the book value, then our net asset value would be in the order of about $38 million or about $6.75 per share. Thus, there is an share price trading range of our stock of just around $3.25 represents a level that is a significant discount to the value -- to the intrinsic value of our company. With that, I would like to turn the floor back to Aristides to manage the remaining of the call.

Thank you, Anastasios. Let me open up the floor for any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group.

This is Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. First question, if I may, on the balance sheet and the comments about paying off some of the current debt with shares. Is that -- can you talk about -- I see there's a related party loan, current amount 5 million and then due to a related company, about 0.8 million. Is it the total potential shares issued, the current stock price divided by that amount? Or can you clarify that, please? And when is the timing potentially for that?

These loans to the affiliates, as you mentioned, are to be paid within 2020. There's one loan scheduled repayments for payments 1 every quarter. The other one is to be paid in the balloon, in a bullet form at the end of the year. We have to make payments in cash, except if there is limited liquidity in the company, in which case, we -- the company might elect to pay in shares at the price of the share at the time with certain adjustments.

Is there any potential discussions with other lenders to extend that debt? Or is that -- I mean, on your longer-term facilities? Or how does that pair with your longer-term debt, please?

I don't think these ranks junior to our longer-term debt. And based on our understanding of how our trends, our financial trends are going to be, we expect to make full payment of the loans in cash.