Stainless Tankers ASA (ZC0.F) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Stainless Tankers Q4 Results Presentation. I'm Andrew Hampson here in London; and Irene Michael in Cyprus, to take you through a summary of our quarterly results for the last quarter. [Operator Instructions] But I would hope that what we've got to say will cover most of your questions in any event. But please feel free to ask. We will endeavor to answer the questions at the end. And if there's any outstanding or if any of you think of something afterwards, please feel free to e-mail Irene or myself, and we will try and get to answers to your questions. So with no further ado, I think we will move to the first slide to the highlights for the fourth quarter. And we're reporting a total return since inception of 50.2%. NAV per share is slightly down on last quarter at $4.75 after having paid the $0.135 dividend per share in December. So as at year-end, 57% of the original equity had been distributed, whilst the NAV remained roughly flat. The financial results for the quarter, the return was down during the quarter at 2.3%. Revenue slightly down at $7.3 million and EBITDA at $2.6 million. Now the main reason, I think, as you're all aware, for the impact in the lower results in Q4 was the fact that we sold one of the vessels, Gwen. So we reduced from 7 vessels to 6 vessels during Q3. And therefore, there is that impact on the Q4 results from that. But in addition to that, we also had drydocking of Orchid Kefalonia and Orchid Sylt and that has an impact on the CapEx but also on the off-hire time for the ships. I'll come on to it in a minute, let me just look more generally at the pool and the pool performance. But clearly, also, Stainless is impacted by the general pool docking position, which itself was heavily weighted into 2025. The pool TCEs averaged just under $15,500 a day, down from about $16,800 in the third quarter. January and February, we have seen trending higher from where we were at year-end and that we are expecting to exceed Q3 levels, i.e., the $16,800 and end up around about the $17,000 a day range by the end of the current quarter. I'll come on to the pool docking position later on. I think we see 2026 as a year of transition. We have got a lot of scheduled deliveries falling into '26 and '27. We saw a lot of slippage in deliveries in 2025, and we expect that to carry on and fall over into '26 and then subsequently into 2027. So although the figures that we'll highlight in a couple of pages time look quite extreme, I think reality will actually blend it down quite a lot more. However, we can't escape the fact that there is a large fleet growth coming up in '26 and '27. To balance that, we are seeing recovery in demand, and we are seeing a reasonably flat demand supply balance going forward over the next couple of years. We've declared a dividend for 4Q '25 at $0.135 per share, and that will be payable on or about the 2nd of March. This represents a yield of 13% on the current share price, which is around about NOK 40. Following this distribution, i.e., after 2nd of March, we will then have returned roughly 60% of the initial capital that we've raised. The outlook, we'll come on to in more detail as we look at the supply and demand forces, but we are seeing a lot of impact coming from enforcement of sanctions, a much tighter overall tanker market, and we've seen a lot of movement in the crude and product tanker markets mainly as a result of other geopolitical -- recent geopolitical events, potential other trade agreements, which have been in the press very recently and of course, a tightening and a better crude and product market are good news for the chemical tanker market as this sucks tonnage out, marginal tonnage out of the chemical tanker area. Just turning to the next slide. This really gives a summary of where we are today. Market NAV is now at $4.75 post the cumulative dividends of $2.83 per share, putting us in a very, very similar position from an NAV perspective to the initial sales proceeds. NAV per share has been fairly flat over the last 3 quarters. And I think that we must stress that in our view, 2025 was quite an exceptional year for the number of dockings in Stainless, the number of dockings in the pool and a falling rate environment, where we have seen definitely in the last half of last year, values stabilize. And that's quite an interesting situation where we've had a falling freight rate environment, but we've seen stability over the last 6 to 9 months in the vessel values. Looking at the rates in more detail. The chart on the left gives us the freight rate, i.e. spot index in the blue bars, and we can see that turnaround and tick up in the last few months of last year. TCE rate flattening out at the same time, the dark blue line. The pool results being negatively impacted, particularly in the fourth quarter of last year, predominantly because of dockings, and the pool forecast now coming out around about actually just over $17,000 a day. So as I said previously, the pool TCE was $15,400, 1 year TCEs at the moment, although it's not a very liquid market, around about $17,500 a day. I mentioned the pool performance and the docking. In 2025, the pool had 18 vessels in for drydocking. The figure for 2026 is 8. So there is a significant difference there from a pool perspective, which will, of course, positively impact overall pool results. But I think one of the important things, and particularly given current geopolitical situation with Suez predominantly being closed for our type of vessels. When you have a heavy docking schedule, that usually means that we need to reposition ships, or at least the pool needs to reposition ships east of Suez into the China area. And that has a big impact itself, the actual repositioning particularly going around the Cape of actually moving ships out of the Atlantic Basin into the Pacific Basin. And we've, therefore, ended up not only with repositioning costs, but overall with an overdue volume of ships east of Suez, where we may have preferred them to have actually been on the other side. So the docking impacts are quite important, not just for the CapEx, the cost of the docking, not just for the time off, but also this repositioning of the fleet into areas where you may not necessarily want it. And interestingly enough on that, although I'm not predicting an immediate change to the Suez situation, but clearly, with Suez open, it makes that transfer of tonnage east of Suez to west of Suez much, much easier and much less expensive. So interesting, just the fact there that, that does have other knock-on positive impacts, although it may have some negative impacts on overall supply side dynamics. We've seen demand growth challenged by uncertainty, I think, is maybe the best way to put it during 2025. A lot of tariffs being talked about, not as many tariffs actually coming to fruition. And I think we're beginning to see more trade deals being done maybe under the threat of tariffs, and more trade deals actually been put in place. And we're also seeing China, although admitting that we have much lower domestic consumption in China, 2025 China reporting record trade surplus during the year. So we are still seeing a lot of activity within China. And we have slightly revised our rate forecast to $17,000 a day on average for 2026. And that, as I said before, is slightly below what the Womar pool is currently expecting. The pool is expecting to get up to $17,000 by the end of the quarter and to slightly exceed that as we go through the rest of the year. And much of that is predicated on the COA book, which I can disclose at the moment has approximately 40% coverage at rates which are considerably higher than the current TCE rates, it has covered about 40%. So we've got a 40% book of COAs versus 60% spot cargo exposure. Sanctions, we'll just come on to in a minute, but I think we are seeing one of the things we have seen in the last quarter or the last couple of months, maybe to be more precise is increased enforcement of sanctions and action by the U.S. and also by some European countries. And that is definitely leading to a tightening in the overall crude market situation in Venezuela. The reports over the last couple of days, not sure they'll come to fruition of trade deals between U.S. and India for import of Venezuelan crude, which would have a massive impact on the crude tanker market and again, then sucking up subsequent layers of tonnage products into crude, high-end -- sorry, low-end chemicals into product, which will be good for our stainless steel sector. Just looking more specifically at the sanctions side, the percentage of the tanker fleet currently under sanctions. For those that may not be too okay with the terminology in the chart in the top left, the VLs, very large crude carriers, the Suezmaxes and the Aframaxes are predominantly crude oil carriers, and the Long Range 1 and Long Range 2 and the Medium-Range tanker vessels are predominantly product tankers. And I think that what we're seeing there, overall picture is an increase in overall number of vessels and percentage of fleet under sanctions and particularly in the smaller product area, in the LR1s and the LRs, we're seeing an increasing number of vessels falling under sanctions and therefore, taking them away from, if you like, our competitive arena of commercially trading vessels. The majority of these vessels also are quite old. And so I think that if and when sanctions are lifted, it's very unlikely they're going to return to the commercially trading fleet that would be our competition. On the order book -- sorry, on the age profile, the chart on the -- looking at the chart on the top right here, the left-hand set of bars are for the overall chemical tanker fleet where we see an order book of roughly 20%. And we always look at that in terms of how much of the fleet is over 20 years of age, so i.e., would move into that scrapping or at very least, out of international commercial trading arena over the coming 5 years. So on the overall chemical tanker fleet, although we have a high order book at 20%, we've also got 22% of the fleet is currently greater than 20 years of age. The bars on the right, which are surrounded by the dotted line, look specifically at the size range and type of vessel owned by Stainless Tankers, i.e., Stainless Chemical Tankers in the 10,000 to 25,000 range, and there, we've got a lower order book and roughly the same age profile. So we've got 16% of the fleet in our competitive arena on order versus 21% of that fleet, which is getting over 20 years of age. And there is definitely a 2-tier market over 20 years of age as these vessels move on. As I said at the beginning, the delivery profile is shown on the chart on the left, and you will see that this dash, this is the 16% of the order book. This is specifically for that same size bracket in the 10,000 to 25,000 stainless vessels showing very large levels of deliveries in '26 and '27, 40 and 35 approximately from the chart. I think the only thing I would add to that, and if you go back to the same slide 18 months ago, if we go back to July '24 and look at the 2025 delivery expectation, the figure, which is now a known result for 2025, the dark blue line -- sorry, the dark blue bar for 2025, 17 vessels actually delivered in 2025. If we go back to July '24, the prediction as to what that was going to be was 29 vessels. So there is and always will be, firstly, an overexaggeration of the number of orders because the shipyards like to beef up their perceived order book and that many of them will be optional contracts as well, which they book as firm contracts, but also then there is physical slippage in the actual delivery time. So although the numbers for '26 and '27 looks slightly scary, I think we should be more looking at a blend of that total amount coming in over the next 3 to 4 years. But we're very conscious of the fact that, that 16% of the order book is quite a large number, but we must balance it also against the age profile and hence, our predictions of the light green bars increasing as we move forward over the next 3 years with higher levels of scrapping, which will actually bring fleet growth to a near 0 level in about 3 years' time because of the increased scrapping. We've given the figures there of the actual deliveries and removals, et cetera. So fleet growth is forecast at about 3.4% over that 3-year period on average. We believe that, that is manageable in the context of long-term demand growth, a compound growth rate of approximately 4%, although we may see a blip in deliveries this year. And as I've said repeatedly, I think there is upside from the various geopolitical areas. I think just before moving on to the financials. I think that one of the other areas that I did want to touch on just more on a strategic level, and this answers a couple of the questions which have already been asked, it's clearly that of vessel sales and what the plan and what the strategy for the company is going forward. We said at the onset that this was a 3- to 5-year investment horizon. We've added 2 ships to the fleet. We've sold 3 ships to the fleet, and we are constantly reviewing asset sale opportunities. As I said at the beginning, we saw values fall in the first half of '25, and then the values have stabilized very much since June last year through to current -- through to the beginning of February now. And that's been in a rate environment where we've seen falls in the overall market rates in Q3 and Q4, the values have remained stable. We feel it is quite conceivable that values -- that if we have a rising rate environment as we are predicting in 2026 that we may see some upward pressure on vessel values. We're very conscious also of the docking schedules coming up and the overall age of the vessels. And we will look to dispose of these vessels at an opportune time given the freight rate and value market and given their proximity to the next special survey as we go forward. So I think in answer to the questions about when are we looking for sales, the answer is, we are always reviewing the portfolio for sale possibilities, but we believe there may be more attractive possibilities as we move further into 2026, second half '26, potentially early '27 that if the market plays out as we think it will do, we feel that, that will be the time when there are more attractive possibilities for exits. So I think what I'll do is I will now pass over to Irene to take us through more detailed financial performance, and I will have a look at some of the other questions, which have been tabled in the meantime.

Thank you, Andrew. So on to the financial performance for the quarter. To note that Q4 results reflect the combined impact of the Gwen sale in Q3, the scheduled drydockings and softer market conditions. And these were partly offset by cost savings. And let's walk through the key drivers in more detail. During the quarter, all the vessels are operated in the Womar pool. Vessel utilization was slightly below 86% compared with 97.5% in Q3. This reduction was entirely due to the drydockings of the Orchid Kefalonia and Orchid Madeira, both completed on time and within the quarter. Orchid Kefalonia completed its intermediate survey, its fourth intermediate survey at a total cost of around $1.27 million, which was slightly below the $1.3 million budget. And Orchid Madeira completed on 1st January at a cost of about $1.36 million, also below of the budget. The only vessels scheduled for drydock in -- during this year is the Barbouni, which is already expected to be in the following days at a budget of $1.3 million and expected off-hire days close to 30. Looking ahead, and we expect utilization to normalize post the drydock. Net revenue for the quarter was $7.3 million, reflecting an average net pool TCE of $15,400 per day compared to net revenue of $10 million and $16,800 per day in Q3. The variance quarter-on-quarter is driven by the reduced ship days on the sale of Gwen, which represents approximately $900,000 with the remainder coming from the lower TCE and the dry dock related off-hire. EBITDA for the quarter at $2.6 million compared with $4.4 million in Q3, and this reduction reflects the smaller fleet and the lower utilization partly offset by lower operating expenses and SG&A costs. The company reported a net loss of $1 million for the quarter versus $1 million profit in the third quarter. Quarter-on-quarter movements, as already explained, is mainly from the lower TCEs and the sale of Gwen and the one-off $1.5 million gain, which was booked in the third quarter. Moving on to the key balance sheet items. Quarter end free cash stood at $5.3 million. Total fleet market value, marginally lower than the previous quarter at $98.8 million. NAV was $64.1 million or $4.75. And LTV improved quarter-on-quarter from 40.3% to 39.2%. As already mentioned earlier, the company paid a Q3 dividend of $0.135 in December, and Q4 dividend at the same level has been declared and payable on or around the 2nd of March. This represents an annualized yield of roughly 13% of the current share price. And that brings total shareholders return since the IPO to $2.96 per share, which is approximately 60% of them initial capital raised. This concludes this our presentation, and we can now move to the Q&A.

Thanks very much for that, Irene. Just to move through the remainder of the questions or a number of questions about vessel sales then what are our plans, which I think I'd already answered at the end of my discussion. Barbouni drydocking, the vessel is in dock. At the moment, we have our technical experts attending to it at the moment. We have budgeted 35 days off-hire for that. So that includes the repositioning the dock side work and the dry dock work. So that, if you like, is from ceasing employment to restarting employment, and there's a budget of about $1.3 million for that. Just I think worthy of mentioning there, it was mentioned in the presentation that the Orchid vessels that were docked were all docked within budget, both in terms of CapEx cost and number of days off. So I think we've got good experience of how long it takes and how much it costs. So we're fairly confident with those numbers. A few more questions on the rates. We are aiming to get to $17,000 a day by the end of the quarter. The company's projections are that to be flat then for the remainder of the year. As I said earlier, the pool expectations are for those rates to continue increasing through the year. So a higher on average than $17,000 that we are projecting for the company. January ended up slightly under $16,000 and February currently is just very close to $17,000. So I think we're heading in the right direction. As Irene has already just shown you in those charts, there was a question here about liquidity. Irene has already just shown you in her financial presentation around about $7 million of cash. We maintain a minimum reserve for purposes of bank loan covenants, but also to cover for emergencies and docking. And we also carry quite a healthy balance of free cash within the company. So we're quite comfortable on the free cash level outside of docking periods. We're running at about 1.2x, 1.3x dividend cover. And so we're quite happy with that situation in covering that without any need to have any debt facility to cover that. There's a question about, do we have an undrawn debt facility. The answer is no, we don't. But we do feel we have plenty of capacity if we did want to refinance at any time, but we don't see the need to at the moment. There's a question about purchasing larger or different types of chemical tankers, or are we happy to sit with our IMO. We don't -- our fleet is stainless. It's not IMO IIs. I think one shouldn't get confused here between higher sophisticated product tankers and the trade that we're in. We're in a slightly different trade, the stainless steel tankers trade very differently. But the answer here is very clear. And I think we've been very clear from the start as to what we're doing. This was a limited life full payout vehicle that was owning J19 stainless steel chemical tankers. And we will do what it says on the tin. And if we do have any alternatives to look at, we will come back to shareholders to ask them what they feel about any new ideas we have. But no, the stainless is not established as a growth vehicle. So we're not going to go buying different types of chemical tankers. [indiscernible] No, I think we'll -- there are some questions about China being more chemically self-sufficient. I don't have answers to that question on hand, but I will address those directly when I can to that question. I think the rest are guide, $17,000, the others are all on rates. And I think I've answered those. So unless there's any other questions, I think we'll call it a day. If there's anything, I'm just waiting a few minutes because I know there is a slight delay between my speaking and things popping up on the screen. So I'm just filling a bit of time at the moment in case there are any further questions, but it doesn't appear to be the case. Okay. Well, look, thank you very much indeed for your time. Look forward to speaking to you in 3 months' time, and hopefully, giving you some better results and improving market forecasts as we expect. Thank you very much indeed.