Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp (CCEC) 2025 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Capital Clean Energy Carrier Corp. first quarter 2025 financial results conference call. We have with us Mr. Jerry Kalogiratos, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brian Gallagher, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, and Mr. Nikos Tripodakis, Chief Commercial Officer. (Operator Instructions) This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, May 8, 2025.

The statement in today's conference call that are not historical facts, including our expectations regarding acquisition, transactions and their expected effect on us, cash generation, equity returns, and future debt levels, our ability to pursue growth opportunities, our expectations or objectives regarding future distribution amounts or share buyback amounts, capital reserve amounts, dividend coverage, future earnings, capital allocation, as well as our expectations regarding market fundamentals and the employment of our vessels, including re-delivery dates and charter rates, maybe be forward-looking statements as such, as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.

These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the stated or forecasted results to be materially different from those anticipated. Unless required by law, we expressly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements whether because of future events, new information, a change in our views or expectations to conform to actual results or otherwise. We make no prediction or statement about the performance of our common shares.

I would now like to hand over to your first speaker today, Mr. Brian Gallagher. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and afternoon to whoever you are, and thank you for listening to the Capital Clean Energy Carriers Q1 2025 earnings call. As a reminder, we will be referring to the supporting slides available on our website as we go through today's presentation.

Let's start then on slide 4 with the highlights. First quarter 2025 was an important quarter for the company in many respects. Firstly, net income from operations for the quarter amounted to just under $81 million, including a $46.2 million gain from the sale of two container vessels. This is included in the earnings release in our discontinued operations.

These are the last two of the five 5,000 TEU containers that we agreed to sell last year, and that they were delivered to the new owners during this quarter. Overall, we have raised a total of $472.2 million in net proceeds from the sale of 12 container vessels since December 2023 and have recycled this capital into our focus on gas transportation assets.

Another key development for the quarter is that we have secured employment for two of our newbuilding LNG carriers for five and seven years respectively, both with an additional five-year option. My colleague Nikos will cover that in more detail later. What is more, during the first quarter of the year, the LNG carrier Axios II, commenced its seven-year bareboat charter, where the charter has the option to extend by an additional three years.

The new charters, in addition to certain options exercised by one of our charters, has increased our firm charter backlog to $3.1 billion. We believe that these charters further corroborate our view on the positive fundamentals of the longer term LNG shipping market and provide our investors visibility into both employment prospects and cash flows, well in advance of our first LNG newbuilding delivery.

With that, I'll now turn it over to Chief Executive, Jerry Kalogiratos and Nikos Tripodakis, our Chief Commercial Officer, the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning to everyone listening in today. It has been indeed a very busy quarter across all fronts and is also reflected in our financials, which you will find on slide 6.

As Brian pointed out, we derived a further $46 million in one-off gains this quarter from completing the sale of the last two out of the five container vessels we agreed to sell last year. We will continue to be opportunistic about the sale of the three remaining container vessels, as these are modern eco vessels with long-term cash flow attached.

The dividends, as we discussed in the last call, is a core component of the company's value proposition to shareholders and making this quarter the 72nd consecutive quarter that the company has paid the cash dividend.

Turning to slide 7, we can see that our capital base continues to consolidate and we await the next schedule of ships to be delivered next year. Our cash position continues to be solid, supported by the completion of two further container sales, bringing total cash to $420 million.

With a great deal of uncertainty and volatility injected into capital markets in recent months, money markets continue to factor in almost 100 basis points in interest rate cuts by the Fed during 2025. And we take this opportunity to remind investors that CCEC will be beneficiary of such a move, given 80% of our funding is on floating rates.

Finally, our balance sheet is strong, which is important within the business we operate, but the main development of this quarter is a reduction of our open LNG carrier exposure by one third and enhancing the contract length of our existing LNG charter book. We expect these developments to further enhance our financial flexibility.

I will now turn to the more strategic matters on slide 9. Our average charter duration now stands at 7.3 years across the fleet with our LNG fleet showcasing a charter backlog of 91 years or $2.8 billion of contract revenue.

As you can see at the bottom of the schedule, two of our six LNG carriers under construction have now been placed on an energy super major for five and seven years respectively, with options to extend both charters by a further five years.

This is in addition to certain options exercised by one of our charters for three existing vessels. This translates into on average daily time charter equivalent for our fleet across the [time] charters of approximately [$87,300 or $91,150], that is per day, including all options.

In summary, our charter book continues to expand as we work towards fixing term employment for the remaining assets in our fleet.

Turning now to slide 10 and looking at the contracted revenue base in more detail. The impact of these charter extensions and the two new charters has boosted our total contracted backlog, including our container vessels to $3.1 billion or $4.5 billion, should all options be exercised. The pie chart illustrates the breakdown of our total time charter in the base using the firm charter periods.

This remains a core strength of our proposition as a company that is counterpart to diversity. You will notice a slight departure from earlier presentations where we used the names of all our [counterparties]. As our counterparties increase and also in an effort to preserve confidentiality of certain commercial agreements, we have moved this to a more simplified format.

It is important to highlight here that in the LNG shipping industry charters are typically super majors and other national or international agency companies, utility traders, and the production plant operators with high credit credentials.

Overall, when it comes to CCEC, no single counterparty represents more than 20% of the $3.1 billion contracted revenue backlog. This diversity provides the company with a very strong framework to build a gas transportation portfolio further with a mix of existing corporate relationships and new customers.

I will finish off this section now with a quick look at our newbuilding CapEx program and our expectations with regard to its financing, described with more detail on slide 11.

So, we ended the quarter with $420 million of cash on our balance sheet, which provides a solid buffer for the business. Clearly, a recent contract wins and auction declarations, as we have stated previously, give us further financial flexibility. From our newbuilding program of $2.3 billion on the way, we have already paid advances by quarter end to the tune of $467 million.

Assuming we finance 70% of the acquisition price with the LNG carriers and 60% of the other gas vessels with debt amounting to approximately $560 million, that would leave us with an excess equity of $105 million as slide 11 shows. That is, without taking into account cash flow generation from our existing fleet.

I would like to turn now to our Chief Commercial Officer, Nikos Tripodakis, who will run through our LNG market slides. I will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Nikos, over to you.

Thank you, Jerry, and good morning or afternoon, everybody. There are two important issues to deal before I move on to the market-focused commentary on LNG. Firstly, the effects of the US Trade Representative's recently announced port fees. These are the fees that the new Trump administration has proposed to be levied on ships entering US ports and which have been substantially reduced in their potential impacts from the original proposals.

As far as LNG shipping is concerned, we expect a minimum impact. The US is targeting a rising percentage of US LNG exports to be transported on US flagged, operated, or built LNG carriers from 2028 onwards. And until then, LNG shipping is exempted from any such levies. In any case, CCEC is heavily insulated against this development, as none of our LNG fleet on the water was built in China, and none of our six LNG carriers are under construction are being built in China either.

Moreover, we view any theoretical suspension of LNG export licenses as a low probability scenario with the exact mechanisms of such suspensions still unclear. So as far as the effects of the USTR port are concerned, in our view, our business model is unaffected for now, and we will of course continue to closely monitor any developments.

Moving on to the impact of tariffs, as slide 14 shows, it is perhaps counterintuitive for the US, the largest LNG exporter, and China, the world's biggest importer, to have little direct LNG traffic between them. However, this has been increasingly the case as the graph on the left-hand side shows. Indeed, there have been no direct cargo from the US to China since February, and trade has been modest in recent years between the two nations.

We summarize our thoughts on the medium- and longer-term potential impacts from tariffs on the right-hand side of slide 14. A positive development in this situation could be the signing of bilateral agreements between the US and other nations with the aim to alleviate tariffs and balance the trade deficit with the US.

More sale and purchase agreements for US LNG project will facilitate new final investment decisions and as such, significantly boost demand for LNG freight. A potential headwind these tariffs persist, however, could be the rising cost of the LNG project looking to reach that FID.

The financing, operational and capital funding costs for US projects have risen since the pandemic, and the effect of tariffs is likely to further increase this cost and potentially delay FIDs. This remains a fast moving, complicated and very important issue, and we will be looking to update investors going forward.

Turning now to the LNG market itself. On slide 15, we have highlighted three key areas. Point number one illustrates that newbuilding prices remain firm. There was a single order for an LNG vessel during Q1, for a reported price north of $260 million.

Prices for newbuildings have been above $250 million since February 2023, according to brokers, and have not been affected by the weakness in the spot market throughout 2024 and 2025. This trend is now further expected to increase due to Trump's regulatory release for US LNG projects on the one hand, and port fees on Chinese build ships on the other.

On the first point, we have seen multiple new sell and purchase agreements signed since the beginning of the year, as well as the first final investment decision since 2023 from Woodside on the 16.5 million tons per annum, Louisiana LNG project. And the second point, the US Trade Representative imposed port fees on Chinese vessels is expected to increase demand for Korean-build vessels and as such, strengthen newbuilding prices further.

Point number 2, on graph on the slide 15 illustrates that the longer-term time charter market has remained almost immune from the volatility and largely downward movement in spot rates over the past 12 to 18 months. 10-year rates remain in the high 80s to low 90s range.

As with the strength in new building prices, long term rates continue to reflect the fact that despite the weakness in the front of the curve, the LNG shipping market has and continues to be short modern [tonnage] from 2026 and 2027 onwards.

Lastly, point number 3 shows how short-term time charter rates have been recovering from the lows we have seen in January. While the scale on this chart does not illustrate the scale of this recovery, spot rates have increased by around 300% from below $10,000 per day in January to around $40,000 per day at the end of April.

This recovery has been a combination of an increase in spot requirements throughout the first quarter, windows of open arbitrage to Asia, which removed shipping length in the Atlantic basin as vessels repositioned east and also reduced appetite from charters to regulate their own tonnage. And finally, as is illustrated in the next chart, an increase in the number of idle steam and tri-fuel vessels.

Looking now with slide 16, we can see the LNG carrier vessel supply dynamics. Slide 16 illustrates the effect that the weakness in the current spot market has had on older tonnage and how operators of such tonnage are responding to the low charter rate environment.

On the left-hand side, you can see the percentage of idle steam and tri-fuel vessels, with idle being defined as vessels being static for 14 days or longer. It is clear that there has been a steep increase in the percentage of idling vessels throughout the past year, as the percentage of both idle steam and tri-fuel vessels is currently the highest it has been over the past five years for both vessel types.

According to market analysts, at the end of Q1 2025, the number of idle steam vessels reached 41, up from 19, in Q3 2024 while 18 tri-fuel vessels were idle at the end of Q1 '25 from only two in Q3 2024.

Moreover, there are some interesting points around scrapping as we can see on the chart on the right-hand side. Firstly, whilst relatively small in absolute number, 2024 saw a record number of LNG vessels being scrapped. Secondly, Q1 2025 has already seen the highest number of scrapping of any quarter with three vessels sold for demolition, a number that if annualized would mean that 12 LNG vessels will exit the fleet, which is a 50% increase from the previous record year.

In conclusion, the combination of record high idling and scrapping of older vessels supports our view that in the current LNG market, where large, efficient and regulation compliant vessels are required, there is limited room for older ships.

Moving over to slide 17, we can see what is in our view a relatively neutral approach to the LNG shipping supply and demand balance projection. The approach on this chart is holistic, aiming to consider all parameters that affect both the supply and the demand side. The basic premise under this analysis is that only projects that have reached FID are considered on the demand side and only vessels that are on order are considered for the supply side.

With relatively conservative assumptions around vessels scrapping and [ton-mile] demand, both in terms of east-west arbitras and transiting through Suez, we can see that towards the end of 2026 and the very beginning of 2027, the market is balancing.

From Q1 2028, the market becomes significantly short modern tonnage, with a deficit reaching approximately 100 vessels by 2029. Once we have the recent FID on Woodside's Louisiana LNG. This deficit could widen even further by 2029 to 2030 if we consider the circa 80 million tons per annum of pre-FID projects and the fact that there is limited yard capacity available, especially until 2030.

As we all know, this analysis is multi-bodied and can be affected by many parameters. However, it is a strong view that there is significant upside from this base case. As an example for this, if the proportion of US LNG delivered to Asia instead of Europe increases by just 10%, everything else in the analysis being equal, then the market would rebalance more than a year earlier in Q1 2026.

Thank you, everybody, and I will not turn it back to Jerry for the summary.

Thank you, Nikos. Moving to slide 19. I firmly believe that the progress made during the reported quarter in solidifying our existing charter book and placing two new medium-term charters with a new high-quality customer further improves the company outlook and visibility for our shareholders.

On the remaining LNG carriers, we have an order. We will continue to be opportunistic about fixing long-term employment as there are increasingly fewer and committed LNG newbuildings available at this time. When we see growing activity in the LNG industry, with both new SPAs being signed and FIDs being taken as Nikos described earlier.

We're also engaged in constructive discussions on the rest of our gas vessels, recognizing, however, that this will be employed into a more shorter-term market and it is more likely than not, that we will be able to provide employment updates only closer to their delivery. The few remaining container vessels are well underpinned on long-term contracts, potentially out to the end of the next decade, that provide optionality for CCEC going forward.

Now turning to the last slide in the deck. Capital Clean Energy Carriers has continued to deliver on the objectives we set out, and the scale of the delivery has been strong for this quarter.

Our LNG charter group has increased further. We de-risked one-third of our LNG order book by securing employment for two of our vessels, while retain optionality with three containers on fleet and with a strong balance which includes over $420 million of cash.

Importantly, this company has and will continue to have going forward a very young fleet, delivering the lowest unit freight cost possible today to our customers with the lowest environmental footprint, both critical aspects to success, given the commercial requirements of our customers and the emerging regulatory environment when it comes to carbon and methane emissions.

Looking forward, CCEC is expected to control the largest LNG 2-stroke carrier fleet available to investors upon delivery, in addition to the other 10 multi-gas vessels. The company has considerable contract coverage of over seven years already and strong visibility on cash flows, while we believe that we have an advantage over many of our peers in only being invested in the latest gas technology vessels with dual-fuel capabilities.

However, we're not satisfied or tempted to rest. We need to address the deployment of our LPG and liquid CO2 portfolio that will start delivering early next year. We need to continue to raise the profile and recognition of the company in capital markets and gain traction with investors. So plenty of work to do, but the first quarter shows what the company is capable of on our growth trajectory.

With that, I will now pass it back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Jon Chappell from Evercore.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Jerry. So, first question is on the CapEx schedule, it looks like about $486 million that was pegged for 1Q '26 has been shifted about half to 3Q '26 to 1Q '27. Is that your choice, based on kind of chartering opportunities or was that something from the shipyard or maybe even the financing side?

Yeah, Jon very well spotted. We have been able with our partners to adjust some of our CapEx and operational scheduling, which we have reflected in the CapEx schedule we provide every quarter. And it was, some optionality, that we had arranged with our partners, the shipbuilder at a minimal cost and this, together with the charter opportunities we see in the market and the flexibility that we have in deploying these assets has been a very valuable tool. So we decided to swift some of the deliveries by a few quarters.

Okay, thanks. And then on the gas carriers, I understand that we're going to have to wait to get closer to delivery to have a better idea, but maybe you can just help us understand how the discussions are going at this point, some of the potential liquids that could be carried are relatively new markets, unestablished, what are these conversations that you've had so far and is there a rough kind of target at this point, understanding we're still maybe 12 months away to kind of think about from either duration or a type of rate perspective.

So, as we discussed a couple of quarters ago when we went through the -- I'll start with the liquid CO2 carriers, the handy vessels, right. So, as we discussed a couple of quarters ago, there is a lot of activity on the front of the movement of liquid CO2 and the number of projects, some of them have taken FID, and we have already an operational project, Northern Lights, but the timeline of most of these projects is from 2028, 2029 onwards.

So our current discussions around the four liquid CO2 carriers, which are effectively the [semi-ref hand-size] multi-gas vessels that can carry LPG, as well as ammonia, and other cargos. And in addition, of course, to liquid CO2 is, has been around either large companies that have different types of gas volumes including gray as well as low-carbon ammonia, LPG and are also involved in the liquid CO2 supply chains.

So, some of these guys, they are interested in taking vessels like this for three to five years and be able to deploy them across their logistic needs.

But I think, also you have the more, if you want, normal LPG and ammonia business that would be very much interested in investors like that. The order book for [handy-size semi-ref] vessels is extremely small, actually, we control a big, very big part of it, and we see good interest also for these vessels in the, let's say "spot", right, because this is more, a [short to see] market, so one to three-year type of charters.

Usually, this type of demand was what you see most of the things -- will become more active, much closer to delivery. So multiple type lines of inquiries, but I think the default would be to trade them as effectively [handy-size] LPG ammonia carriers.

Got it. Thanks very much, Jerry.

Thank you. Liam Burke, B. Riley Securities.

Thank you. Hi, Jerry.

Hi Liam, how are you?

Fine, thank you. I hope you're doing well. Your analysis between production coming online in 2027 and an aging fleet would not only imply a stabilization of supply and demand, but capacity constraint beyond the '27, '28 time frame. Are your potential charters of the four unchartered LNG vessels recognizing this, and are you seeing that in your negotiations?

Liam, I'll let Nikos, take this one.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. Hi, Liam, and thank you for this question. It's actually a very good one and I think that's exactly what our recent deals reflect, i.e., the front of the curve can be very low and the spot market can be weak, the one-year market can be weak, but when it comes to the supply and demand fundamentals in terms of serious charters that are looking for multiple vessels, efficient vessels, then the weakness dissipates and we revisit rates and periods around the 90,000 per day mark.

So, I don't know if that answers your question, but charters, yes, understand this deficits coming in the market from '27, '28 onwards and pay rates that reflect that.

Great, thanks. Jerry, on the four handy-size on order, if the -- do you see the potential for them to operate in the LPG spot market, for the time they delivery until you can secure, work for them?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are multi-gas vessels of the [semi-vessel type], very attractive ships, and as I said earlier on because the order book is very small and this is an aging fleet in the water. We see quite a bit of interest from, let's say, kind of normal chartering inquiries that used to trade in the gray ammonia and the LPG business.

Great. Thank you, Jerry,

Thank you, Liam.

Thank you. Alexander Bidwell, Webber Research & Advisory.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the time. So, the three options exercised on the water vessels and the two charters for the newbuilds delivering in 2027 seems to point towards a very clear demand for tonnage 2027 onwards. Are you seeing any uptick in appetite for longer term charters in the near term, so say, late '25 into 2026, or charter is expecting the spot market to be more beneficial to them.

In terms of earlier deliveries, 2025 and 2026, anybody that expected volumes for those periods had already secured shipping for them. And there's sort of a lag in terms of how the delay of some projects we're expecting 2024, 2025 has affected the market exactly because charters had been [covered] with their shipping positions for those periods.

What we do see for deliveries in 2025 and 2026 are opportunistic charters that are trying to take advantage of the weakness in the front of the curve to basically buy some optionality for the years in which they anticipate the deficit of freight to kick in, for example, starting 2025, two years plus one plus one in terms of options, that is something very common recently when we're discussing about the bids in the market for 2025 and 2026, but not for longer periods.

There has been one discussion for 2026 delivery for seven years. That concluded this year, but that has been the only one.

All right, thank you for the color there. Then looking, I guess, over at sort of global supply demand, so there's a significant amount of attention on these new liquefaction volumes hitting the market. What sort of developments are you seeing on the [re-gas] side and what potential headwinds or tailwinds could we see in the carrier market stemming from an over or under supply of re-gas capacity?

It's a good question, and what I can tell you in terms of re-gas capacity both in Europe and Asia is that in the multiples in terms of liquefaction capacity. So, we don't expect any issues when it comes to regasification capacity being able to cover the liquefaction capacity. China, Japan, Europe have multiples in terms of their demand for that capacity.

Okay, and then just a quick follow up, just looking at a seasonal basis. Do you see any, I guess, potential tailwinds from floating storage opportunities as we enter a period of oversupply of local factoring capacity --

If we're seeing any tailwinds form, sorry, I didn't hear that.

So, do you foresee any tailwinds from floating storage opportunities as we enter a period of oversupply of liquefaction capacity sort of in the back half of the decade?

Yeah, it's an interesting question. Traditionally floating storage of LNG has not worked the same way as it does in oil because obviously the boiler it comes at an extra cost. So you need the contango between specific parts of the curve to be steep and what we're seeing right now with, all the risks, the geopolitical risks around Europe and the prices of global markets, European prices and Asian prices, we do not see any floating stores being incentivized right now.

Obviously, this can change and it depends. The load on seasonal patterns, storage, deficits and contango in the curve, but as of now, we cannot really say that floating storage will be or is, there are any indications that it will be a demand factor.

All right. Thank you, Jerry. I'll turn it back over.

Thank you.

Thank you. Omar Nokta, Jefferies.

Hey, hi, Jerry, hi Nikos, good morning, or good afternoon. Just a couple of follow-ups on the two newbuilding charters. Obviously nice to see that and as you mentioned, it shows that the sector, the business is still operating or functioning appropriately.

You didn't explicitly give a rate, but Nikos, you sort of mentioned in your comments that in 2027, rates are closer to 90,000. Should we extrapolate that's kind of what the rate achieved is on these charters?

Yes.

Okay, good, and then what's the expected sort of given the financing that you put on, what do you think the break even is going to be on these newbuildings?

We have not -- hi Omar, it's Jerry. We have not yet concluded on the financing of these assets. We can provide a breakeven number potentially in a couple of quarters when we have more visibility.

Okay, thank you. And then just -- finally, just on those, the interesting kind of note that you have on those charges is that you can swap two other later generation ships at your choosing, it sounds like, clearly gives you some flexibility. Can you just maybe -- just two questions on that? Can you get a sense of well, what would you say is late generation, is that all of your ships or is it just the newbuilds and then also, what circumstances or conditions would you want to do that, where you'd want to substitute? Thank you.

So, it's a very good question. Just to clarify what it means that, it is within our option to deliver any of the vessels we have, our newbuildings to those two charters. And a situation whereby we would be incentivized to do something like that would be, let's say, we would secure a very good shorter term rate for one of the vessels we're delivering in towards the end of 2026, let's say, a six-month winter charter at very high rates and then we could deliver that vessel to all the major charters.

So, it provides a lot of flexibility and optionality for us, which in a market like this, is very valuable.

Yeah great, well, thank you, that's it for me.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Climent Molins, Value Investor's Edge.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Most has already been covered, but I wanted to delve a bit into your US port fees commentary. You mentioned US-built LNG carriers by 2029 sounds optimistic, which is almost a given. But could you talk a bit further about your, let's say, theoretical cost expectations for a US-built LNG carrier relative to the usual Korean build?

And secondly, based on the current proposal, who will be responsible for complying with this regulation?

So, Climent now, this is the more esoteric stuff that we're going into the -- and I don't think anybody has full clarity. What I can tell you from our previous experiences that -- the rule of thumb has been that the cost of the US-built ship of any type has been maybe three, four times the cost of building the same ship in Korea or China.

In this particular case, when we're talking about LNG carriers where they are also additional challenges with containment systems, LNG-fueled engines, cryogenics, and other more complex machinery. I mean, there have been even failures at the beginning in a very large shipyards in Korea, when the shipyard was -- when the industry started trying a new system.

So I think it's going to be quite challenging for a nascent shipyard capacity to take on such projects if that exists at all, which many people say that there's no such shipyard capacity for another two or three years.

Now with regard to who exactly is going to be responsible to implement that, it looks to me, but again, I'm not 100% sure if there is clarity on that it's going to be the liquefaction operators, the exporters that will, they will have to ensure that their volume is transported on US-built LNG ships.

Makes sense. Thank you for the call and thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will now hand the call back to Jerry for closing remarks.

Thank you, Sharon, and thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.