Stainless Tankers ASA (ZC0.F) Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Q2 '25 results presentation for Stainless Tankers ASA. You have myself, Andrew Hampson, here in London, and we have Irene as well in our Cypress office in attendance today. You're going to have to put up with just the two of us today due to the holiday season. and we will manage through the presentation between the two of us. [Operator Instructions] I'll go through the first bit of the presentation and Irene will then update on the financials. And while Irene's doing that, I will have a look at any questions that have come in during the course of her talk and when we can answer those when we get to the end. So without further ado, we'll click on to the highlights for the second quarter. NAV, the absolute number is actually $73.4 million, which is $0.0544 per share, just under NOK 56 and that is after the payment of cumulative dividends of NOK 2.085 per share, bringing the total return since inception, including the dividends to just under 50%. During the quarter, we saw slightly lower net revenues and EBITDA of $6.9 million on net revenues of $8.9 million. And whilst earnings in the pool rose quarter-on-quarter, you'll recall back in the first quarter, we were at around about $17,000 a day, that has risen to $17,800 per day, still slightly below budget, but encouraging to see that, that has turned slightly. And I think that trend has continued into the early part of the third quarter. Net revenues were also impacted, and we'll come on to this by lower revenue days due to planned dockings on two vessels and also some unplanned off-hire time that we had on one vessel due to a main engine problem. The market, as we turn to pool TCE is averaging $17,800 during the day. July was slightly lower at $17,300, weak in the middle of the summer and then recovery, as I said, through the end of the quarter. We held the company Board meeting earlier this week and the Womar representatives on the Board gave their market view where they are still quite encouraged for performance in the second half of the year, and we are expecting rates to increase through the third quarter and indeed into the fourth quarter. From the basic market perspective of supply and demand, we're continuing to see fleet growth in the 4% per annum range over the foreseeable future, which we're currently taking through 2027, and that should be viewed at in terms of a long-term compound average growth rate of a similar number of 4%. But that will, of course, have many variables in it in the shorter-term periods. We are approaching a period where the fleet is aging and therefore, fleet growth, it's needed, further ordering is needed indeed as we approach the end of the decade to replace older fleets -- older fleet vessels, I should say, sorry. So this morning, you will note that we've declared the Q2 '25 dividend of $0.275 per share, which is an annualized yield of approximately 22% and that will be paid on or about the second of September. I think it's worthwhile pointing out with regard to the dividend that we have now completed the Q2 with two fewer vessels than we had, had previously, having sold the Monax and Marmotas and therefore, the maintenance of the dividend at $0.275 per share is on the basis of seven vessels within the fleet rather than the nine vessels that we had in the fleet at the time we set the dividend at that level. So since IPO, we've then now returned just over 45% of the IPO -- initial IPO proceeds. We've announced, and I think that you're aware that we are in the process of selling the Gwen and that we were hopeful that we could have actually announced that to you today that, that is actually completed. But for purely operational reasons, there's been a little bit of a delay in the last discharge port of the vessel, and we're now anticipating that, that will happen sometime between the 20th and the end of August. At the time when that sale has completed, the Board will determine what amount of special dividend will be made from the net sales proceeds after we have prepaid the appropriate amounts of debt on that. I don't want to put a figure on that just now because I prefer to wait until the end of August when we can see, a, how the pool performance is at that time. And also, I think, as you are aware, we have a number of ships going into dry dock over the next few months. And clearly, there is cost risk variability in some of those. So the Board will make a decision roughly at the time that we're paying the dividend as to what level of special dividend will follow that. I think it is quite inevitable that, that level will take the total amount of capital returned from the current level of 45%, inclusive of the dividend just announced, will take that 45% to over 50%. I don't want to dwell too much on geopolitics, but we've got a slide on that. But I mean, clearly, I think as we're all aware, that is being a major impact on the performance of all of the shipping markets. So just moving on. Two things, really main things to sort of point out here. On the right, we have the chart -- the step chart since inception showing where we are today. On the right-hand side, the market-based NAV, as I just said, of $5.44 per share. The IPO proceeds were at $4.73 and the movement from that in -- broken down into the main key categories is the operating profit of just over $2 per share, increase in vessel values overall of $0.7 per share and then, of course, the dividends that we've actually paid out to date as at the end of Q2 of $2.09, bringing us to the current market NAV. The left-hand side looks at that in terms of perspective of the quarterly performance, so that we can see that we have indeed been experiencing, as we've been reporting, a slight fall in the NAV per share since the peak at the -- in 4Q. And we feel now that, that has flattened out, and we're expecting improvements in rates during Q3, which we feel will be supportive of vessel values at current levels. And so we are hopeful to see a cessation in the fall that we've seen recently in the vessel values. The recovery on the rates, the -- I'm sorry, I got the wrong slide in front of me. Chart on the left, showing the 1-year TC from Clarksons in the blue line and the red line showing the Womar pool and their forecast going forward through the remainder of 2025. Womar pool forecast is that we should end the quarter at or around $19,000 a day, and that is the uptick, which is shown in the small dotted line that we've got on the chart on the left. Near-term demand growth, as I say, challenged by geopolitics and particularly tariff regimes, and we have slightly lowered our forecast for the quarter and for the rest of '25 to be $18,000 a day for Q3 and $18,850 for Q4. As we say, the pool, I think, are what we say here, cautiously optimistic. I think they are quite optimistic based on the strong demand for trade in the main commodities. I think one of the things we are definitely seeing is a slight improvement in the tanker market, particularly in the clean tanker market, and we're seeing that coming through over the last few months. And I think as we're all well aware, there is this crossover between the clean product tanker market and the chemical tanker market where there's a slight cannibalization of one into the other, dependent upon the state of each of those two segments and an improvement in the product tanker markets, I think, is good news for chemicals. Geopolitics. I think that the key -- some of the key things we've seen here are much more sentiment-driven and the issues that we've had under the USTR under trade tariffs continue to worry the markets in general. But I think when we delve a little bit more into them, I think we can see potentially some good news coming out of this at the end of the day. On the left-hand side, looking at OPEC production and oil prices, we are continuing to see small increases in OPEC production, falling Brent spot prices. And we are expecting the product tanker market to benefit from some of these factors as we move into the second half of 2025 and particularly the lower oil prices and stimulated demand, increase in OPEC production and potentially the lowering of the oil price cap -- the sanctioned oil price cap on Russian oil we think, should advantage OPEC exports, which would be for the benefit of the clean product tanker market and therefore, occupying more vessels in that trade and taking them out of cannibalization within the clean products -- within the Stainless products trades. The sanctions, I think, is a very interesting area, and I think we're seeing increasing emphasis as we move forward from various governments and organizations on the sanctions side. We are seeing now more and more vessels which are sanctioned. There's about 10% of the tanker fleet now in total is captured by overall sanctions. And there's a big question as to what happens as and when these vessels try and get back into mainstream trades. We think it's going to be pretty hard for all of them to resume normal business as and when sanctions come to an end, if they ever do, indeed. And therefore, there is a positive impact on the supply side of the fleet in general as a consequence. Turning specifically to the higher -- to the fleet growth chart in Stainless chemical tankers and we're looking here, we call it the [indiscernible] segment, we're looking at 10,000 to 25,000 deadweight stainless steel chemical tankers. So it's quite a specific grouping of vessels, which, of course, encompass all of the vessels within Stainless. We are seeing an increase in fleet growth up to about 4%, as I stated earlier in '25, '26, falling off in '27, but '27 I think still has the propensity for a couple more orders and inevitably, what we see as we move forward, which is clear from the second bullet point on the right, that there is always a little bit of slippage. So if you look at the numbers there, we're now reporting 26 ships to be delivered in 2025. Last quarter, that was 29. That's not because vessels have been canceled or anything like that, it is because delivery schedules are shifting to the right. And therefore, partly as a consequence, 2026 increases since last quarter, which will be those slippage amounts plus potentially a few new orders and then orders going into 2027 increasing slightly, again, for similar reasons. Interestingly, we were chatting with a Japanese shipyard only yesterday evening and looking at slot availability and they were saying there was maybe possibilities of squeezing one or two vessels in to 2027 delivery time frames but except in very special circumstances, we were now into 2028 for deliveries. So shipyards being full is, to me, quite an encouraging situation. It means we have far more visibility on the nearer-term fleet supply growth. So fleet growth, we are averaging 4%, long-term demand growth is roughly 4%. So we think this is a reasonably balanced market. But I think we have to bear in mind also that we have got an aging fleet, and we have got quite a lot of lumpiness in the older sized vessels. So they are going to be -- need to be renewed at some time going forward, and that we feel is very encouraging for us. We'll move on to the financials now, and Irene will take over and chart you through the summary performance, and I'll have a look at the questions that have come in and then we can come back to those when Irene has finished.

Thank you, Andy. So moving on to the financial performance of the quarter. All 7 vessels were trading in the Womar pool during this period. The planned dry docking of City Island and repairs on Lavraki, which now both completed and are back in service, were the main reasons for the temporary drop in the vessel utilization, which, as noted, has declined from 92% in the first quarter to 80% in the second quarter. City Island successfully completed its fourth intermediate survey on 23rd of June at a cost of $1.35 million, slightly under the budget. And looking ahead, three additional vessels are scheduled for dry docking later this year, expected in November, December, which we are continuing to manage proactively and coordinating with the ship managers. As you may recall from the previous quarter, the Lavraki undergone some repairs on its main engine bearings. These were finalized on 17 June, and the vessel resumed trading the same day. While the incident did have a temporary impact on trading days, we expect partial recovery on the [indiscernible] machinery and lots of higher insurance. Moving on to the net pool TC. As already mentioned earlier, this rose approximately to $17,800 per day up from $16,900 per day in the first quarter. Net revenue came in just under $9 million, down from $11.9 million in the first quarter and this was primarily due to the pure trading days. That said, it's worth noting that the reported revenue ship days and net revenue figures, exclude both the insured off-hire period and the expected loss of higher insurance recoveries for Lavraki. These are expected to partially offset the financial impact. On a pro forma basis, had this insured days and estimated recovery has been included, revenue ship days would have been 607, increasing our utilization from 80% to 92% at the same levels of the first quarter. And net revenue would have been higher by approximately $1.3 million, resulting in a total amount of $10.3 million. Operating expenses decreased to $4.81 million from $6.2 million last quarter, mainly impacted by the reduction in the fleet size from nine to seven vessels following the sale of the two vessels in March and April. On the asset side, $3 million gain was realized on the sale of Monax, which was delivered on 23 April. And as for the divestment of Gwen agreed in July, as already mentioned, the transaction is expected to close by end of August. Overall, our net income for the quarter was $2.8 million compared to approximately $4.4 million in the previous quarter. Now turning to the balance sheet. Free cash at quarter end and excluding restricted cash, stood at $7.5 million, an improvement, which was driven by the release of certain cash restrictions from our lending bank, enhancing our operational flexibility going forward. The fleet market value at quarter end was around $160 million with NAV based on this market values at $23.4 million or $5.44 per share, equivalent to NOK 55.9 per share. Our net outstanding loan balance decreased to $48.3 million and LTV improved to $41.7 million. Finally, the Board has declared a second quarter dividend of $0.275 per share around NOK 2.8 per share payable on or about second of September. And this represents a 22% annualized yield on investment equity. With this latest distribution, the total return to shareholders now stands at $2.36 per share, equating to over 45% of IPO proceeds returned to date. And now that concludes the financial overview, and we can now move to any questions. Thank you.

Irene, thanks very much. Thanks very much for that. We've got a few questions here, which we can just chat through. There's a first question about how is the market for selling vessels, so the S&P market and do we foresee selling further vessels? I think, firstly, from a liquidity point of view within the S&P market, we had quite a lot of interest when we put Gwen on the market, and we negotiated between two or three potential buyers before arriving at the current choice. And as I say, that was due to be concluded now, but has been delayed by a couple of weeks for operational reasons, and that will conclude before the end of the month. So I have no concerns with regard to liquidity within the market for the sale and purchase of ships. And so that more brings us down to the question of, if you like, when? And I think there's a number of factors that we should consider there. Firstly is the docking schedules and I'll come on to that in a moment because we have to clearly look at the schedules for the dockings for the ships and decide whether or not we're selling them before docking or after docking. And indeed, if we have docked a ship and spent considerable capital expenditure on them as docking at the moment for one of these and these age of ships costs between $1.2 million and $1.4 million. That's a fairly generic range for the current age of the ships. Clearly, if we're spending that amount of CapEx on a vessel, we'd like to see a return for it. And so we would most likely trade it for a period of time thereafter. But bear in mind at the moment also what the actual return is on the ships, even at the slightly lower rates that we're forecasting at the moment of $18,000, $19,000 a day, one of these shifts on an EBITDA basis is making around about $3.5 million to $4 million per annum that's outside of docking and other corporate costs. If the vessels are valued in the $16 million to $17 million range, that is still a phenomenally good return for continuing to hold these vessels, particularly if we are at a stage in the market where the fall in values has ceased and may indeed even reverse. And so that's maybe a rather convoluted answer to the question. The market -- there is a fluid market in the S&P side. The prices have stabilized. We make very good returns on trading these ships in the freight environment that we're in. So we're not moving away from the initial thesis that we laid out when we launched Stainless Tankers. It is a limited life vehicle. We will progressively run it down over time, but we are making very good returns on the vessels in the freight market that we're in. So we will decide going forward what the correct timing for that is. There's just a brief question there on the debt on Gwen. We don't necessarily break the debt down on a vessel-by-vessel basis. But specifically for Gwen, it's in the region of 50% leverage on that vessel at its sales price. In connection with the first question there, which I'd mentioned the docking schedules, there was a specific question about the docking schedules. You will recall that outside of the City Island and Lavraki, which we've had major CapEx events on those during the first half of the year, we had four further vessels that were due to dock during the second half of the year. One of those was Gwen, which, of course, now we're selling it predock, so that is no longer a capital expenditure that we will be responsible for, and it's been sold prior to that being completed. And we have three further vessels, which are due to go into dock for their scheduled maintenance program during the remainder of the year. I think that answers the question on the dock, specifically in the quarters, two of them will definitely be in Q4. I think one of them may span the latter half of Q3 and into Q4, but the remaining two will commence the docking in Q4, whether or not they will complete during that time or not remains to be seen on the actual schedule of when they arrive at dock. And then there's a further question of are we expecting any meaningful impact on trades following new trade deals and tariff levels since the last update? I think I have partly addressed that, but specifically since the last update, I think the world's quietening down a little bit. I think we're getting -- generally, the world is getting less reactive to off-the-cuff announcements from the U.S. side of things and a little bit more used to it. I think the trade deal with the EU and the U.S., although some of the claims in that settlement are somewhat extreme with regard to the energy sharing and sourcing requirements. I'm not quite sure how that works. But I think that in general, market sentiment is getting calmer when it comes to these announcements, and we're seeing less overall negative reaction to talk about the trade deals. And I think everybody is realizing that there is a way to negotiate around most of the things. I think the issues -- I think the other geopolitical issues with regard to Middle East, with regard to Russia, Ukraine, with regard to sanctions are actually slightly more important and impactful than the trade tariffs or indeed the USTR side of things, which doesn't impact the chemical tankers. Clearly, reopening of the Red Sea and Suez will have a negative impact on clean tanker trades and also on chemical tanker trades, but also has the advantage of making transit between Atlantic Basin and Pacific Basin trades much easier. So there's a negative when it comes to the issues of vessel supply, but a positive when it comes to the issues of ease of move between the various basins of the main trade for these ships. So there are pluses and minuses there, I suspect, slightly negative overall, if the Red Sea were to reopen. But given the state of issues in the Middle East at the moment, I think that remains uncertain, which has always been our position at least for 2025. How much is the product tankers impacting your market at the moment, any estimates going forward? I think the -- I mean, as I said, there is this crossover between the lower end chemicals and the higher-end products. And so there is this sort of downward cannibalization of the chemical tanker trades when the product tanker trades are not as profitable. I think we're about on the cost at the moment or we've got down to the level where we're nearing the sort of cost where it makes chemical trades attractive to the product tanker market or maybe the other way around. The product tankers trades are not as attractive for products, and therefore, they're moving to chemicals. But I think that, as I said before, we have seen a slight pickup and are continuing to see a slight pickup in the product tanker trades in the rates and that, that will, if you like, stop or reverse that trend. So I haven't got a figure to hand of the actual level, percentage level of product tankers in chemical trades. It's a very hard thing to try and assess but the rate environment in the product tanker trade does not encourage that movement across into the chemical trades at the moment. What is the minimum number of ships you need to have in order to set up to not be subscale? I mean, I don't -- in a way that doesn't really matter. The cost of Stainless Tankers to run the company are very, very low. We don't -- the company doesn't have any employees. So from an SG&A point of view, that's really not an issue from the way that we've set the company up, and we've always set the company up to be very SG&A light. And the fact that the ships are all employed in the Womar pool, from a commercial point of view, it doesn't really matter how many ships we've actually got because it's the pool, which is doing the management of the ships and the pool, which is doing all of the commercial activities. So I think we have -- I mean, we have specifically set up Stainless to be a company that started with the seven and then moved to nine vessels and will, over time dispose of those ships. And I don't think we need to change the structure at all. So I think we can operate this in exactly the way that was anticipated at inception without getting to a level where we're sort of subscale, so to speak. So I think that hopefully answers that question. Well, I haven't got any other questions at the moment. I'm aware there is a slight delay between what I say and questions coming up. So unless there's anything else, that we will call that a day. If you do have anything, any other questions that you want, please feel free to address any questions to Irene or to myself. I'm very happy to handle those as and when they come in. So unless there's anything else without further ado, thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you very much for your continued support of Stainless Tankers, and I wish you a very pleasant remainder of your summer holidays, if you've had them or not, and we will talk next quarter. Thank you very much.