Klaveness Combination Carriers ASA (KCC.OL) Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Klaveness Combination Carriers' Second Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. We have a packed agenda this morning, so I'm going to go ahead and walk you through that now. First up, we have CEO, Engebret Dahm, who will walk you through a brief summary of the reports, followed by CFO and Deputy CEO, Liv Dyrnes, who will walk you through the financials and the sustainability performance and then Engebret will come back on to discuss some market developments as well as the outlook for KCC for the coming quarters. So of course, we have questions designated at the end. [Operator Instructions] So with that, I think we can go ahead and get started. Engebret, you're up.

Good morning, and thank you, Haley. So the second quarter will be a quarter which will be difficult to forget, with a lot of geopolitical unrest and disturbances, but still posted development in both the dry bulk and product tanker compared to the very weak first quarter. So these rather challenging circumstances, we are happy to present the results for the second quarter, which shows good progress compared to the first quarter. Time charter earnings on average ended $2,200 up compared to the first quarter at $24,561 per day, which is well above the guiding range we presented back in May. EBITDA plus $3.1 million to $18.1 million and earnings before tax, plus $2.4 million, up to $6.7 million. The Board decided to increase the dividend from $0.035 in the first quarter to $0.05 in the second quarter, paying out around $3 million to our shareholders. And we do continue to live up through our policy of paying out 80% of the adjusted free cash flow to equity to our shareholders. The definition and the calculation of adjusted free cash flow, you can find in one of the appendices in the presentation, that would be uploaded on our web page. But have in mind, the definition includes docking costs and in 2025, we have a quite extensive docking program with 7 ships in docks, 2 to 3 ships more than a normal year, implying that this year, we have a low potential to pay dividends that will improve coming into next year. The $0.05 dividend equates to around 3% of the running yield based on yesterday's share price. Looking on the market. The dry bulk market has improved as seasonally normal from second half of February through the spring, but still quite a bit lower than we had expected. But after an uninspiring spring and early summer, the dry bulk market bounced back in July and to date in August, partly driven by a strong South American grain season. After a weak product tanker market in end of 2024 and early 2025, product tanker earnings has capped up well through the spring. And we had a very short-lived spike as an effect of the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran in June and July ended fairly weak. But still, we have had a very strong development so far in August, and it looks quite promising for the next months. The value creation of Klaveness Carriers compared to the standard dry bulk and product tankers are, as we have explained before, partly higher function of earnings and lower earnings volatility over the shipping cycle and in addition, has substantially lower carbon footprint. In the second quarter, we continued to deliver a premium to both the product tankers earnings and dry bulk earnings to the benchmarks that we use. We are 1.1x product tankers and 2.2x the dry bulk markets. KCC's relative time charter earnings performance varies from quarter-to-quarter and needs to be seen over more than 1 quarter. It also depends on the relative strength between the product tanker market and dry bulk market. And as we, over the recent quarters, have shown -- the recent quarters, have got a more normalized relation between product tanker and dry bulk earnings. Our ability to deliver premium earnings, increase in premium earnings should improve based on historical performance. The second quarter premium versus product tankers are lower than our targets and which we'll come back to partly as explained by the not fully satisfactory CLEANBUs performance in the second quarter. Jumping to CABUs, which had a very strong performance in the second quarter. It was partly driven by more days in tanker trading, which is the transportation of caustic soda to Australia. It's also partly driven by improved trade efficiency. As you see from the graph in the middle, the share of the capacity in the caustic soda tanker trades, combination trades increased from 81% to 90%. And the share of the days in ballast fell from 15% to 12%. Time charter earnings is up around $4,000 per day versus the fourth quarter, which is partly explained by more days in tanker trading and also a substantially stronger Pacific dry bulk and product tanker earnings versus the first quarter. The time charter earnings for the CLEANBUs ended at $22,843 per day, a limited increase in light of the stronger product tanker and dry bulk spot markets. The standard KPIs we use to illustrate to you gives limited explanation of this development. As you see from the left, we had only a marginal fall in time in CPP tanker trading, which is our best paying trades, which should have a fairly marginal effect -- negative effect on earnings given the sizing. We had improved trading efficiency with a higher share of capacity in combination trading and lower ballast, which should go the opposite effect. So the main reason for the weaker than expected -- weaker than hoped time charter earnings of the CLEANBUs is the lower trading -- the trading -- less optimal trading of the CLEANBUs, which effects -- offsets the positive effects of a stronger market. The main reason is more days employed in lower-paying trades in the east of Suez, which partly is a reflection of deliberate trading decisions taken in the wake of the quite extreme USTR legislation proposal that was announced in February and partly due to positioning CLEANBUs to and from dry dock, which in total had a negative effect on earnings. In addition, we also had a higher number of waiting days across the fleet. So totality for the CLEANBUs, a less than optimal quarter, but we are, as we come back to, optimistic for the development for the next quarters. So Liv, would you take us through the figures?

Yes. Thank you, and good morning. Over to the financials. EBITDA for Q2, $18.1 million, a 20% increase from last quarter. As you can see here, that's definitely mainly driven by the CABUs TCE earnings. As Engebret mentioned, they increased by $4,000 per day, which had a Q-on-Q effect of in total $2.7 million. Then we have had slightly higher CLEANBU TCE earnings as well, $400 per day, [0.3] in total compared to last quarter. When it comes to the off-hire, we had 57 scheduled off-hire days this quarter compared to 59 last quarter, so very stable. But in addition, we had 12 off-hire days this quarter, which were unscheduled, mainly related to the maintenance and upgrading of one of the CABU vessels, the old CABU vessels. So in total, actually, we had a positive effect of this as we have more days in Q2 compared to Q1. When it comes to operating expenses and administrative expenses, we see normal variations from quarter-to-quarter and only slight changes from last quarter. But all in all, a positive development from last quarter, driven by the CABU TCE earnings. Over to operating expenses. As you can see here, CABU OpEx per day, $8,350 per day and for the CLEANBUs, close to $10,200 per day. For the first half of the year, we are still slightly below the average for last year. I have already mentioned the on-hire and off-hire days for the second -- for the last 2 quarters of this year, we will dry dock in total 4 additional vessels. And as usual, you will see the full overview of costs and off-hire in the appendix. Okay, over to the full income statement for Q2. Depreciation increased by 3.7% following finalized dry dockings in the first half of the year. Net financial cost came down with 13 -- no, sorry, came up by 13% or close to 14%, and that's mainly an FX effect compared to last quarter. Profit after tax, $6.7 million, up 56% from last quarter. Based on the adjusted cash flow to equity, dividend, as Engebret mentioned, is $0.05 per share this quarter, an increase from $0.035 per share from last quarter. This is 80% of the adjusted cash flow, which we base our policy on. And on a payout ratio basis, it's 45%. So while we see quite stable interest costs and from quarter-to-quarter as well as repayment on debt, we do expect EBITDA to come up next quarter, as you will see a bit later in the presentation based on increased TCE earnings for both segments. But we as well, as Engebret mentioned, have quite a heavy docking program this year, and we expect higher dry docking costs for the second half of the year compared to the first half, which also impacts the dividend decisions for the next couple of quarters. Return metrics for the quarter on an annualized basis, 6% return on capital employed and 8% return on equity, so a slight increase from last quarter. Q2 as well ends the first half of the year. So here is the income statement for first half this year compared to first half last year. As you will see at the top here, revenues are down by close to 40%, and this is definitely mainly driven by the underlying markets. So the LR1 average is down more than 50% from last year and the MR down more than 40%, and we also see a much weaker dry bulk markets for the first half this year compared to first half last year. The positive thing here is that we see quite stable operating expenses when comparing these two periods and actually a slightly -- or a small improvement in the administrative expenses. And -- but here, we will see some variations between quarters as well. EBITDA for first half, $33.1 million, down 55%. In addition to the effect of dry dockings on depreciation, we also here in the first half numbers, see an effect of energy efficiency investments that will -- or that is capitalized on the vessels, and that is -- hence, increases depreciation. Net finance costs improved by close to 34%, mainly due to three different effects. We have positive FX effects. We have lower underlying interest rates, and then we have started to capitalize part of the interest cost on the new builds. So profit after tax, $11 million for first half, down approximately 78% from the same period last year. Over to the balance sheet. Total assets increased by $25 million Q-on-Q, and it's mainly due to yard installments. As you can see here, new build contracts increased by $15 million, and this was funded by drawdown on the RCF capacity that we have. In addition, equity increased by close to -- or slightly above actually $4 million. Worth mentioning here is that we, in Q2, redeemed 950,000 shares following the share repurchase program that was finalized in February. So it does not have an effect on equity as that is netted towards treasury shares. But of course, the number of shares will positively impact the EPS and potentially the DPS. The mortgage debt, as you can see in the table to the right, we currently have three bank facilities. We have now secured the refinancing of the CABU facility, as you can see on the top here in the table to the right. We have received commitment letters from four banks. They have received credit approval, and it's still subject to final documentation, but I think the important thing here is that we have received commitment -- signed commitment letters. This refinancing will leave the four oldest CABU vessels unencumbered. So let's have a look at the new facility. There are two tranches. There is one term loan tranche of $60 million that will refinance the existing CABU vessels. This is an upsizing of $10 million, which will, of course, improve our cash position. As you can see here as well in the graph, this pushes the due date for this facility from 2026 to 2031. Then the second tranche, that is USD 120 million, and that's part funding of the newbuilds that we will take delivery of next year. So that is approximately 60% of the delivered cost of the newbuilds. This facility is a full revolving credit facility. And as you can see in the table below the graph, the margin is 1.8%. The age adjusted repayment profile is 20 years, tenor is 6 years. The facility that we refinance is the most expensive facility we currently have with a margin of approximately 2.45%. The other facilities -- the two remaining facilities have a margin of 2.1%. So this will have a positive impact on the cash breakeven as well for the existing vessels. Then lastly, the cash flow. As you can see to the right, the cash position ended the quarter at $46.6 million and available long-term liquidity, $131.6 million. This is down -- or it's up -- actually, the cash position is up $1.5 million, but the available long-term liquidity is down $13.5 million. So this is how we actively manage our cash by using the revolving credit facilities. In addition to positive EBITDA of $18.1 million, you will see that we had limited working capital changes in the quarter of $1.3 million positive. However, we had higher CapEx for this quarter, dry docking CapEx and energy efficiency CapEx of $4.5 million and $2.3 million, respectively. And then we had key laying for the first vessel and steel cutting for the third and last vessel in Q2, amounting to yard installments of $14.7 million. Debt service, as usual, around $10 million. And then we draw $15 million, as mentioned on the RCF. We also had, as part of the long-term incentive program, employees purchasing shares in Q2, which were -- and hence, we used the treasury shares for this program, a slight positive effect. Dividend, $2.1 million for the quarter, a result of last quarter's dividend decision. So long-term available liquidity develops as expected based on the progress of the newbuild program. Then I'll just have some two slides related to sustainability as well. As usual, we will go through the carbon intensity metric for the quarter, which is slightly down, which is an improvement from 6.3 last quarter to 6.2 this quarter. So we see a mixed development for the CABUs and the CLEANBUs, higher EOI for the CABUs and lower for the CLEANBUs, but all in all, a slight positive development. To the right, you will see the CLEANBU performance for each vessel this quarter. As you can see here, the ballast percent at the X axis and the size of the cargo or the weight of the cargo carried illustrated by bubbles definitely have an effect on the EOI. So you see here that the best vessels have an EOI of around 5 because of low ballasting and high cargo weight for the quarter. So this nicely illustrates the effect of the combination trading. So here, we see that our efforts pay off, but we will continue to see volatility based on trading and operations as well going forward. Then lastly, we are counting down to the IMO meeting in October. If this new framework is adopted that regulates the GHG intensity of the fuel used, we will see -- that will have an effect on the fuel cost, either as you have to buy more expensive fuels or that you have to purchase remedial units. So the less fuel you consume is positive, which is positive for our business model. As an example here, you can see that we have calculated the effect on one of the CLEANBU TCE -- on the CLEANBU TCE earnings for one of our main trading patterns. And assuming that the standard freight markets will cover this regulatory cost, this will have a positive effect in 2035 of $4,500 per day for this specific trade pattern. So we hope and believe that this will be adopted in October and the feedback we have received so far is positive. So let's wait and see. Engebret, over to you again.

Thank you, Liv. So I think we know all that we live in quite unprecedented times when it comes to geopolitical risks and many moving pieces that can impact the shipping markets either positively or negatively. But both the dry bulk market and the product tanker market show resilience in the wake of trade wars, military conflicts and also weaker macroeconomic development. There are clearly risks to the development in both markets, but we remain positive to the market balance being relatively strong and also the outlook of the coming quarters. And let give me some examples why we believe this is the case. Starting up with the product tanker market, we see on the graph, very strong development when it comes to seaborne CPP exports in the start of the third quarter. This is partly driven by higher gas oil shipments into Europe and also increased Chinese CPP exports. Higher European imports are partly explained by the graph to the left. A substantially lower inventory situation in Europe and also increasing price differences between East and West, giving incentives to long-haul shipments of especially gas oil. There are concerns that the high growth of deliveries of product tankers, but it is important given the interdependence between the product tankers and crude tanker market to look at the tanker market in its totality. And to give you an example of this interdependence, let's look to the right graph where you see the development of LR2 product tankers trading dirty. You will see that the number of product tankers with increasing fleet of product tankers trading dirty has increased by close to 100 ships and the share of the fleet in dirty trade has increased by -- from 37% to close to 50% over the same period. This reduced the effective fleet growth of product tankers. Estimates suggest that the negative -- a negative fleet growth for product tankers over the last 12 months due to the shifting of LR2s into the crude market. Turning over to dry bulk market. The third quarter is shaping up to be significantly stronger than many expected. The combination of strong Chinese buying of soybeans and a strong South American harvest implies that the shipments out of South America will keep up for longer. And here, we see the graph to left, you see the development and expectations compared to last year. Also China has bought corn, Brazilian corn, which did not happen at all last year. It is -- and this is partly due to reported problems with domestic harvest in China of corn. It is difficult to give projections how this develops. But if you compare on the graph to the right, what happened in 2023, you see the potential of -- to the market of corn shipments from South America to China. U.S. corn harvest is reported to be all-time high, but the trade tensions between China and U.S. poses risks for the shipments and the seasons coming into the end of third quarter and into the fourth quarter, which on the top of the seasonal factors could have a downside risk coming into the fourth quarter. Coal shipments and coal pricing has also improved. To the left, we see the coal prices that has improved and also the forward pricing is in contango that incentivizes purchases and shipments today. Indonesian coal has continued at high levels, partly driven by a hot summer in North Asia and also domestic logistical challenges in Chinese coal production. As shown to the graph to the right, the Panamax is posting a 5% year-on-year growth in June to July in coal shipments compared to last year. The Panamax growth is partly driven by increasing share of coal shipments made on Panamaxes compared to Capes, which is partly due to relatively stronger Cape market. So the optimism is back in the dry market, which is seen on the graph to the left, which is illustrated in green line. You see the forward pricing for the second half of the year, which is substantially stronger than the development we saw last year in the black line. And the columns show the relative difference between last year, and we see after a poor performance compared to last year and the first half, we expect and the market expects a considerably stronger second half than last year. This is partly due to expectation for the Capesize market that where the front-haul shipments of Guinean and Brazilian iron ore and bauxite has -- on Capesize has increased considerably this year compared to last year. And the massive new Guinean iron ore mine, Simandou, comes online from late 2025, which also will have a positive effect. Turning into the outlook for KCC. The booking situation for the CABUs is fairly strong. The third quarter, we are more or less fully booked for both on the dry capacity and the tanker capacity, which is the shipment of caustic soda to Australia. We also have reasonably good bookings for the fourth quarter and also some booking for 2026, but still quite limited on dry to 9% floating rate and in total, 27% floating rate and fixed rate for the tanker exposure. But this is just about to change. We are -- just started negotiating contract extensions for 2026, which has started on a positive note. We expect to increase both the dry bulk and caustic soda booking compared to 2025. That will partly be floating rate and partly be fixed rate contracts. We will increase our capacity into the Australian market in 2026 with the delivery of the three third-generation CABU newbuilds in next year. As you see from the photo to the left, the construction of these ships are progressing well, and the first ship will deliver end of January, only five months to go, ladies and gentlemen. We are very pleased to see the positive customer reception on the new ships that increases our competitiveness in the market. The ships are larger and have around 15% higher cargo intake than the old ships, which will considerably improve the freight advantage and reduce the freight cost for our customers and also deliver higher time charter earnings for KCC compared to the older ships. Secondly, these ships will be able to substantially cut the carbon footprint of the service to Australia due to the scale of shipments and also the large energy efficiency measures that we have implemented on these new ships, which will considerably increase our lead in this field. As we deliver the CABU III vessels, we will phase out two of the older CABU I ships out of the service to Australia. We have started discussions with customers to employ these ships in new trades. Discussions are positive, but it's too early to give any estimate of the probability of success. But we do hope when we meet next time presenting results of the third quarter in November, we can show you some positive news in this respect. The CABUs are more spot exposed. We are fully -- more or less fully booked for the third quarter, while we have relatively limited coverage at fixed rate and also index linked for the fourth quarter and 2026. We have started discussions for contracts for next year, and we are confident we will extend one and hopefully add on more contracts over the next months and into 2026. The most important in this trade is to ensure that the CLEANBUs are employed in the best paying trades where the ships can deliver and create value for our customers and for the company. Looking back, we have in the recent years traded a very high share of the fleet capacity of the CLEANBUs in trades west of Suez, which is in our terminology, includes the trades to and from Middle East, India to South America and North America and also includes the trades between North and South America. These have been our best paying trades for the CLEANBUs up to now. 93% of the capacity in 2024 was employed in these trades, which fell back to 80% of the capacity in the first half of the year. This is partly, as explained, a reflection of trading decisions that were made in the wake of the quite extreme USTR legislation, which were introduced in February, which later was adjusted, which -- into something which is more acceptable and also partly due to positioning ships into dry dock and from dry dock in China. We will, in the third quarter, increase the share of the capacity employed in west of Suez trades that will have a positive effect on the earnings on the CLEANBUs. The east of Suez trade has up to now delivered lower earnings relative to the west of Suez trades, which is partly due to still outstanding customer and terminal approvals, partly due to freight pricing and still not fully optimal trading in these trade lanes. But we are confident that we shall be able to improve across all these factors over the coming quarters and to reach time charter earnings in these trades that are close to the best trades west of Suez. And that is why we keep capacity in these trades and hope over time to increase the share of the fleet in these trades as we progress on the business development, which gives us more resilience to trade changes and geopolitical risks. We have in the recent quarters shown good progress both with customers and terminals in these trades. And we do hope when we meet next time in November that we have some positive news in this respect. So summarizing and looking at the third quarter, it will be a substantially stronger quarter for KCC, backed by both a further uptick in dry bulk and product tanker markets compared to the second quarter and also better trading both on the CABUs and the CLEANBUs. This translates into higher time charter earnings and also, we expect a better relative performance versus the standard markets. You see to the left, the CABUs get the benefit of the stronger Pacific dry and product tanker market and better trading efficiency compared to the second quarter. Based on 87% of the capacity fixed and FFA market for the unfixed days, the guiding for the CABUs are $29,000 to $30,000 per day, an increase of $2,600 to $3,600 per day. The CLEANBUs, however, will show the biggest increase -- improvement compared to the second quarter. The time charter guiding for third quarter imply an increase between $3,200 and $5,200 per day to earnings of between $26,000 and $28,000 per day. This is at the trading, including a higher share of capacity in CPP market and a higher share of trading west of Suez that both give positive effects on earnings in addition to the effect of the stronger markets. So we strive to deliver on the promised value creation of our ships compared to the standard markets, a higher time charter earnings, a lower earnings volatility and in addition, being fully prepared for what's coming and benefiting from the upcoming decarbonization and IMO regulations. This in sum, we believe, delivers what we like to say is the best risk-adjusted return in dry bulk and tanker shipping. Thank you, and we are ready for questions.

If the IMO NZF passes, what changes will it trigger for KCC and the shipping industry?

I think for KCC, it's basically just continuing with what we do, continuing with a higher efficiency, that means that you have a big advantage compared to the standard ships when it comes to paying these redemption units that will have -- that will be costly for standard ships and where we will have an advantage through efficiency. So the standard ships will start and all ships will start to look at biofuel, which is dependent on how the pricing of biofuel develops will increasingly be used. A more difficult task is to transition to the new type of fuels and are still outstanding part of the IMO legislation that will be decisive for how quick the transition to new fuels will happen.

Great. Thank you. We don't have any more questions at this time, so we can wrap up.

Thank you. So thank you for joining this morning, and you know where to find us if you have any more questions to how we perform. Thank you.