Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd (TEN) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tsakos Energy Navigation Conference call on the Third Quarter 2021 financial Results. We have with us Mr. Efstratios Arapoglou, Chairman of the Board; Mr. Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO; Mr. Paul Durham, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. George Saroglou, Chief Operating Officer of the company.

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session (Operator Instructions) I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I will now pass the floor to Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President of Capital Link, Investor Relations adviser of Tsakos Energy Navigation. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning to all of our participants. I'm Nicolas Bornozis of Capital Link, Investor Relations adviser to Tsakos Energy Navigation. This morning, the company publicly released its financial results for the third quarter and nine-month period ended September 30, 2021.

In case you do not have a copy of today's earnings release, please call us at (212) 661-7566 or e-mail us at ten@capitallink.com, and we will have a copy for you e-mail right away. Please note that parallel to today's conference call, there is also a live audio and slide webcast, which can be accessed on the Company's website on the front page at www.tenn.gr.

The conference call will follow the presentation slides, so please we urge you to access the presentation slides on the Company's website. Please note that the slides of the webcast presentation will be available and archived on the website of the Company after the conference call.

Also, please note that the slides of the webcast presentation are user-controlled, and that means that by clicking on the proper button, you can move to the next or to the previous slide on your own.

At this time, I would like to read the Safe Harbor statement. This conference call and slide presentation of the webcast contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may affect TEN's business prospects and results of operations.

And at this moment, I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Takis Arapoglou, the chairman of Tsakos Energy Navigation of TEN. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Nicolas. Good morning, all. Thank you for joining our call today. Nothing much for me to say other than that we manage, as always, in a typical countercyclical fashion to grow the company within an extremely challenging market, probably the worst market ever, and have come out [unscaled].

We booked new incremental accretive business with state of the art environmentally friendly vessels. And now we are perfectly positioned to capture the market recovery that seems to be around the quarter as indicated by the recent improvement MR and LNG rates. Nothing else from me, other than wish you all happy holidays and a happy new year. So Nikolas Tsakos, over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman, and good morning and good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for joining our call and sorry for having our third quarter earnings so late this year. It is the fault of the good friend Nicolas Bornozis. For the last 15 years, we usually are in New York, and we report live from New York and ringing the bell for a great day. This year, thanks to Omicron, we were not able and it was canceled, but (inaudible) but it is better late than ever as I would say.

And also, we are able to give you a better overview of where things seem to be going. As our Chairman said, the first nine months and significant -- and mainly the third quarter was one of the worst quarters in recent memory. I think I was reading it the worst quarter in 30 years. I'm almost old enough to remember that since the [days] there in the '80s. However, we have been able to maintain a very steady course with them.

Our modern fleet, our long-term relationships, our strategy of utilizing as matters possibly the resources of the fleet have given us good growth prospects, and we are in a good position to know that the fourth quarter, which is coming to an end is going to be a significantly better quarter for us as a company because of the measures we took. We took 17 vessels were dry-docked in the first nine months, out of which half of them were prematurely dry-docked in order to have their vessels ready when the market turns a corner.

The signs are there. The LNG market reminds us of the container market. Finally, we are earning -- we will be earning on LNG, which is going to be delivered in two weeks in triple-digit figures. I think the last average was around $200,000 a day, and we are on market-related territory with our charters, which we are very happy.

About our LNG is also -- the ones that are coming for charter will be taking advantage of this just shortly after in March and April and of course, the new acquisitions of our shuttle tankers together with our dual fuel ships are going to create a very solid core of growth for the company, which we're very proud -- very proud of. We are seeing the product carrier market very strong here in the West right now. We're -- and we have 26 product carriers, of which 1/3 of them right now are taking full advantage of the spot market through our pooling arrangements with big pool partners like Cargill and Maersk and on the spot market.

So I think the plan set is starting to taking more and more positive features as we talk right now and on top of this, of course, our new arrangements and the new vessels that we have charted forward for Dual-Fuel vessels. And with this, the long term picture today, the international Energy Association announces that there is a very good chance because of the lack of energy that we will be looking at a significant contango in February 2022, very similar to what happened two years ago with the -- when the outburst of the virus started.

If this is -- if half of this is true, I think we are for a much better first quarter for sure. And with this, I will not take any more of the time, and I will ask George to give us a quick overview of what has happened in the nine months. George?

Thank you very much, Nikos. Good morning to all of you joining our call today. Let's go to the slides of our online presentation. Starting with Slide 3. We see that in TEN since inception in 1993, we have faced four major crisis, and each time, the company, thanks to its operating model has come out stronger. This time is no exception.

While we navigate through the challenges that COVID pandemic has created, we have grown the company and prepare the company for its next phase. In September, we signed new building contracts to build four -- up to six Dual-Fuel LNG powered Aframax tankers against long-term employment to a major oil concern. Factoring the latest orders and considering the company started in 1993 with four modern tankers, we currently have a pro forma fleet of 71 vessels for an average annual growth of 15% in terms of deadweight tons.

In slide 4, we see the pro forma fleet and its current employment profile. We have a combination of vessels in fixed time charters and in flexible employment contracts, time charters -- time charters with profit sharing, contract of affreightment, and spot trading vessels that capture the market upside. All dark blue color vessels, 24 in the slides are on fixed time charter rates, while the light blue and red color vessels or 63% of the fleet currently in the water have exposure in the markets upsides. This means that TEN is well positioned to capture the positive tanker market fundamentals and expect a recovery in freight rates.

And in fact, in product tankers, we have seen the recovery is starting this quarter, and we expect this to be shown in our results in the fourth quarter of '21. We took advantage of the low freight market environment to bring forward the number of scheduled special survey [repairs] to have these vessels available once the freight market for tankers rebound.

Fleet modernity is also a key element to our operating model. During the year, we concluded the sale of three of our older tankers, and we replaced them with the new building order for the six Dual-Fuel Aframax tankers that will enhance the company's environmental footprint as these LNG Dual-Fuel powered vessels are the first such investments in the company's history.

In addition, we are building one more DP2 shuttle tanker and one LNG carrier. All six new buildings are coming with long-term employment attached. Our newest LNG vessel will enter the market in mid-January and will significantly contribute to our bottom line as the LNG sector is currently very strong, as our CEO has also mentioned.

On Slide 5, we see the left side that presents the all-in breakeven course for the various vessel types that we operate in TEN. We have a low-cost base, as you can see. During the nine months of the year, the revenues generated from the time charter contracts were again sufficient to cover for the company's cash expenses, paying for the vessel operating expenses, overheads, chartering costs, and loan interest.

We must also highlight the purchasing power of Tsakos Columbia Shipmanagement, our technical managers, and the continuous cost control efforts by management to maintain a low OpEx average for the fleet while keeping the high fleet utilization rate quarter after quarter -- quarter after quarter. Despite scheduled and [forward] broad dry dockings of 17 vessels during the year, we achieved an overall 91% utilization for the fleet. And thanks to the profit-sharing element, which is a cornerstone of our chartering strategy. For every $1,000 increase in spot rates, we have a positive $0.48 impact in annual EPS based on the number of vessels that currently we have exposure to spot rates.

Slide 6, debt reduction is an integral part of the company's capital allocation strategy. Since the company's debt peak in December of 2016, we have repaid $368 million of debt and repurchased $100 million in two series of step-up prefers that we had outstanding. In addition to paying down debt, dividend distributions are important for common shareholders and for the management team. TEN has always paid a dividend irrespective of the market cyclicality, about [$500 million] in dividend payments have been distributed since the New York Stock Exchange listing in 2002.

Global oil demand continues to recover. There is a slowdown as a result of the new omicron variant. However, actually, believe that the effect is going to be small, and this will mainly affect air travel and jet fuel demand of around 100,000 barrels per day. Still, the prediction is that oil demand will increase by 5.5 million barrels per day in 2020 and another 3.3 million barrels per day in '22 when it will return to the pre-pandemic levels of close to 100 million barrels per day.

On the global oil supply front, OPEC+ producers continue to manage supply with discipline, and global oil stocks are now 240 million barrels below the most recent five-year average. Non-OPEC production is set to increase in 2022 and in the near term, we had a coordinated effort to release in total approximately 70 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserves of the United States, China, India, South Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom in an effort to ease energy prices, which was successful as oil prices are now trading $10 per barrel below the levels we had at the start of November.

With oil demand recovering, let us look in slide 9 of the forecast for the supply of tankers. The order book stands at around 6.6% or 340 tankers over the next three years, the lowest it has been in more than 20 years. At the same time, a big part of the fleet, almost 30%, is over 15 years and almost 7.2% or 390 tankers are currently over 20 years.

As the next slide shows, 2018 was one of the highest scrapping years of records with 22 million deadweight ton removed from the market. Last year and the year before as expected, scrapping was lower. We had a strong August and September this year and with scrapping prices at very high levels in excess of $600 per light ton, we have so far seen 170 vessels or 13.3 million deadweight tons exit the global fleet with more environmental regulations coming, discussions for alternative fuels and 7.2% of the global fleet over 20 years, we expect scrapping activity to remain high and a balancing act for flip supply going forward.

To summarize, oil demand, we see that the recovery of oil demand continues. Oil supply monthly production increases by OPEC+. Non-OPEC production is also set to rise in 2022, bringing more cargoes to the market at the time when global oil stocks are below the five-year levels and demand is increasing towards the pre-COVID levels. Order book supply of tankers, the order book to current fleet ratio is at historical low levels.

A big part of the fleet is reaching phase-out edge, pointing to a tighter supply of tankers for the next 18 to 24 months. If we look at the company, we have a modern fleet, well-positioned to capture the expected recovery of the market. We continue to reduce debt. We have a strong balance sheet, strong banking relationships that will allow the company to take advantage of the opportunities that will be presented. With the expectation of better days ahead, I will ask Paul to walk you through the financial highlights of the third quarter and 9 months of the year. Paul?.

Welcome to everybody from the London office of Tsakos. So as indicated, we are beginning to see market conditions improve. Given the market conditions up to now, we feel that quarter three net loss of $25 million to be comparatively mild and indeed a possible turning point with the product market-leading the way and at least possibly resulting in breakeven and profitability in the early part of the new year.

Despite the market, our time charters, which represented half the fleet, we are able to generate $66 million, and our spot vessels provided a further $65 million, bringing total revenue in quarter three to over $130 million. For the nine-month period, revenue reached over $400 million, further indicating that this sector is bouncing from the bottom of the trough.

Daily TCE per vessel in quarter three averaged nearly $15,700 and $17,100 for the nine months, again, exceeding average market rates in both periods. Fleet utilization in quarter three reached 90% despite nine vessels in dry dock. Prospects for the near future are promising. We are expecting soon to add two new vessels that together will provide $9 million extra revenue each quarter. That includes the LNG carrier that alone is expected to generate about $100,000 a day net income.

There was some increase in total expenses in the quarter, partly due to the dry dockings and associated voyages, while rising fuel costs, which are included in the voyage expenses also increased. The increase, however, was offset by 9% fall in operating expenses, the daily OpEx per vessel falling to $7,300 due to savings on the part of our technical managers.

A large part of these expenses were covered by the revenue generated by our time charters. Finance costs fell 39% to just over $8 million as interest rates and margins were reduced, keeping our average cost of debt to only 2%. The repayment of debt by $115 million since the start of the nine-month period, including $46 million in quarter three, also resulted in reduced interest.

Bunker hedge gains provided a further $2 million. Despite debt repayments and CapEx commitments, we continue to strengthen our balance sheet through the ATM program and by securing our vessel revenue and as in the nine months, selling three vessels. In addition, we have refinanced the loans of several of our vessels at mutually beneficial terms. At the same time, we continue to consider opportunities for disposal of older vessels that may further reduce debt and free up cash to be effectively replaced by new vessels such as the Aframax's recently ordered. And now I'll return the call back to Nikos.

Thank you, Paul, and keep safe in London. I hope you and your family are safe, and looking forward to see you here, and thank you for your input. Well, with this, I would like to open the floor for any questions. Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions) We will now take our first question.

It is Randy Giveans from Jefferies. I guess, 2 questions. First, can you discuss the decision to put those [TEN] vessels on time charters? What are the terms of those time charters, durations, and rates? And then is the expectation of further kind of lock away tonnage in the near term?

Well, I will give you a very, very, I think, a nice overview, and then we will have a private call because we don't want industrial (inaudible) As you know, we always have a long-term relation company, and that's why we are weathering relatively unscratched and growing the company. So we had our 2 VLCCs and VLCCs are our two largest vessels, and we charter them out based on profit selling arrangements with a minimum, which if you go back to George (inaudible) breakeven that George portrays covers the all-in breakeven cost of those ships.

If you see VLCCs are around the $26,000 rates, even more than that. And that allows us then a significant upside in the market of 50-50 based on the index. I think that has been a decision. We, like most of the owners, we're waiting for the right time to do so. We had -- we've been approached, having very modern ships like ours. We've been approached to charter those ships for the last years. But of course, it didn't make any sense of the rates that we're offering.

Now I think we are way above-average breakeven, and we have an upside. So I think that has to do. Very similar situations with four Aframaxes. Again, you can see the breakeven. So that's always our goal. We cover our breakeven a little bit more. I think Aframaxes were closer to 19% as a minimum, and then 50-50 upside on those. So I think this is day-to-day business that keeps the shop open and helps the growth of the company. So we're very happy that we had. These are all transactions that we've done in the fourth quarter and we stopped some of the -- of the third quarter.

The third quarter, which was actually historically one of the lowest quarters in the history of tankers, is not the time to do so, but in the fourth quarter, things turned around.

Got it. Okay. And then I guess, secondly, on the ATM, you issued 14.4 million new shares in the third quarter, another $32 million or so in the fourth quarter, I believe. On the last call, you had $15 million remaining in authorization. So just curious how that $32 million came about and what is the current remaining authorization.

Well, we had our Board meeting, which was in November, authorized another $100 million of ATM program to top-up this program. So we have this. I mean it took us to go through the last $100 million about 10 years. So yes, it's not that we are spending. But as you know, we are growing the company with opportunities. And I am more of someone who likes to keep very solid cash balances.

And how much is your current remaining authorization?

I think about $80 million -- $80 million to $85 million -- sorry, $85 million.

And then I guess, conceptually here, your shares are trading at a steep discount to NAV. We have at least a double-digit NAV. But yet you're issuing some dilutive shares to purchase vessels. So why is that?

Well, we are not only -- I mean, we are issuing a combination of preferred, which, as you know, our preferreds are trading very well at around the 24 to 25. So it's -- so we try to make a combination of issuing our preferreds, which are trading very, very at par. And then at good times, some shares because we believe that the growth prospects that we are seeing in -- because we are in a very, very exciting part of the industry right now, but very similar to when a big number of our ships had to be changed from single donors to double donors.

So we have to start turning our fleet into Dual-Fuel or even hydrogen or ammonia. So we have to be liquid and ready to go. I mean we are a growing business, as George said. We've been growing 15% since inception, and this is a business.

Okay. And then lastly, just on OpEx, it seems to have fallen from 2Q to 3Q. Is that the new run rate? Or was there some one-off items that you expect to have increased here in the fourth quarter?

Well, as you know, when things are bad, you have to start you know, you guys that you watch a lot of basketball. We start with defense. So the first thing, there's not much we can do in changing the market conditions, but what we can do is be more [different] and I'm very glad that George and all of the technical managers for the results they are making down on the second floor, which you've been where we run. I mean, that's the beauty of running everything within one building inside here. So we can just try and stop as many expenses as possible when we need to and this has been done in a very difficult environment where more than $20 million in our expensive budget from -- come from direct or indirect COVID-related burdens.

I mean we had to navigate ships to change crew at huge costs. We had at the same time to wait outside the Chinese ports for two weeks for quarantine -- this was our lowest utilization ever, which is compared to our peer group is still very high, 90%. But if you go back to (inaudible) the last 20 years, because we had also to wait of quarantine our crew before we go for repairs. So it's been a tough part, but I think the team has navigated very well.

We will now take our next question.

Nick and team Tsakos, this is Magnus Fyhr from H.C. Wainwright. Just a couple of questions here. Starting with the -- going back to your comments on spot rates in the fourth quarter. You mentioned that they're significantly higher than 3Q, well 3Q was probably the lowest in history. But can you give us some kind of magnitude? Are they up at least 20% in 4Q? Or what should we expect? Just trying to get kind of an impact.

I think if I had to give a figure without the infusion of the Q1, (inaudible) LNGs because the way we have structured the pricing of the LNGs. We know that for the first quarter, they will be earning in excess of $100,000. The way the pricing works because it works in a retrospective manner, so -- which I do not want to get into too many details here. I'll bore you. But I think for the rest of the fleet, is -- I would say, it's at least 25% betterment, which is, I would say, more than 500% betterment on the LNGs, 50% betterment on our Aframaxes, and then, of course, fivefold -- half of the fourth quarter, at fivefold effect of the market in the -- on the MRs, where we have 12 of them directly taking advantage of the market as we speak today. I would say if you put it in between 25% and [30%].

Okay. And you had secured a couple of time charters in the quarter. I mean, do you have a different strategy on the products versus the [crude] going forward given that it seems like the products are picking up? Or are you still kind of focused on kind of covering your fixed cost and then 50:50 profit sharing?

All the products, as you know, I mean, utilization is very important for us, and we are not -- we are participants strategic -- participants in various pools. Very -- with very good names from the north like Maersk and Cargill. And so what we do, we have full utilization of our product fleet, which is very important. And so we are never off fire, and we get the upside of the market. So I think I am supportive of [pools] and that's what we're doing with our smaller ships.

Okay. And as far as the appetite for more time to orders, do you see a change here with the charters coming into the market? Or I mean, you've seen what you've been able to secure a couple of charters, but what's the appetite for more from your side? And you think there's more appetite from the charters?

Yes. I mean, we saw the appetite on the VLs. We saw a big appetite on Aframaxes, and we are seeing now an appetite for Suezmax.

Just one more question for Paul, perhaps. You mentioned that you issued both equity on the ATM and also the preferred. Can you give us a sense of how many -- what's the outstanding amount of the preferred by the end of 3Q and you do it in the fourth quarter?

I will have (inaudible) answer that. Okay. George.

I think all the preferred combined, and we have (inaudible) a little over 15 million.

Okay. And that's at the end of 3Q?

That's up to now.

We will now take our next question.

It is J. Mintzmyer from Value Investor's Edge. I haven't talked to you in a while, but congrats (inaudible). So I joined a little late on the call, and I heard the last gentleman asking about the ATM. I just wanted to get some details on that. You mentioned $14.4 million in the third quarter, $31.9 million thereafter. I'm curious about the split between the common and the preferred, like how much dollars in each amount and also the average share sale price?

Well, just as George said, it's a $15 million of the preferred, the remaining is on the common for this year -- for this year period. And I think we can have -- please call George if you need later to give you all more details. I mean, on the action of figures, the price.

Okay. Are you planning to file like a Form 6-K or something with more financial details on that?

Of course. We always file our 6-K, and I think it's going to be filed early in the year.

And then you have the one shuttle tanker. My understanding is the original new building contract included two options for those. Has there been any decision on those options?

The one -- I mean, actually, you're very correct. You have a very good memory. But I mean, we took this -- the one we are building now is the second option. We had the first call the Lisboa, which we took over a couple of years ago and then we had an option, which we're building now in Porto. And there is a third option, which we're currently discussing. However, the -- as you understand, the price, and this is something we didn't mention. The price of steel has skyrocketed the new building prices. I mean, the value of our fleet -- of our existing newbuilding ships is right now, it has at least a 30% increase. So I mean, when -- so we've done two out of the three options.

Yes. I was curious on those options because I imagine they're significantly in the money on those.

We took -- I mean, the first vessel, we called it Lisboa. The second is Porto, which will be delivered at the second option, which will be delivered in June -- June or July for our new building department against a very long-term contract in Brazil.

Yes. What's the timeline on that third option? How long do you have to exercise it? And what would the lead time be for building that ship?

We are currently negotiating it. We are negotiating for a very long contract, which I believe we might have used this side of the year.

We'll look forward to that news. And then last question, just kind of general specific on the company. Look, I mean, Tsakos has been public for a very long time. You have a very impressive fleet, long [storage] management. But there's been a recent trend towards reporting extremely late. I mean, it's 2.5 months late.

You missed my introduction, but I would expect, again, because I apologize, and I said that the reason for the last two delays had to do with -- I was joking, but it's true with Nick Bornozis events that we do the capital link. Because as you know, we have not been able to travel to the United States which the majority of our shareholder base is. So we were taking the opportunity on yesterday, the 15th of December was a typical day of ringing the ball, and we were going to report today. So then we would spend before everybody gets into the Christmas spirit to do a roadshow.

However, all of this fell apart because of the omicron and but our data was set because of that. So I think as we go back from March, we are going to be back to normal again. Hopefully, we can travel within the time frame.

All right. We look forward to earlier results. Very last question. Again, I appreciate your time today. If you have a current number? I think is it $23 million, is that still current for the common shares?

Yes, it's just shy of $23 million. That's right.

As of today.

We have no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Thank you very much, and we wish all of you a very safe -- stay safe, holidays and hopefully, early in the new year, we can report better news to you. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and happy holidays.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.