Torm PLC

CSE:TRMD A

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Christian Søgaard-Christensen]

Thank you for dialing in, and welcome to TORM's conference call regarding the results for the first quarter of 2019. My name is Christian Søgaard-Christensen, and I'm the CFO of TORM. As usual, we will refer to the slides as we speak and at the end of the presentation we will open up for questions.With that, turn to Slide 2, please. Before commencing, I would like to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement on this slide. Slide 3, please. So the presenters today is Executive Director, Jacob Meldgaard; and myself, Christian Søgaard-Christensen, CFO of TORM.Slide 4, please. And as we turn to the presentation of the first quarter of 2019, I will hand over to Jacob.

[Jacob Balslev Meldgaard, CEO & Executive Director]

Thank you, Christian, and good afternoon. TORM's first quarter of 2019 results reflect the strong operating performance the company has had due to an improving product tanker market as well as the benefits we derive from our fully integrated in-house platform. This is shaping up to be an exciting year, and I'll describe later in the presentation how we look at this.First, let me summarize our results. In the first quarter of 2019, we realized a positive EBITDA of USD 61.5 million and a positive profit before tax of USD 23.5 million or down to USD 0.31 per share. TORM's return on invested capital was positive at 8.8%. The estimated net asset value was USD 829 million as of 31st March. And later in the presentation Christian will take us through a breakdown of this metric. Illustrating our continued focus on maintaining a solid balance sheet, the net loan-to-value was 52% at the end of the quarter, and available liquidity was USD 438 million. TORM realized an average TCE rate of USD 17,949 per day in the first quarter of 2019, as the strong market from the end of 2018 carried over into the new year. The market has softened a bit since the strong start due to various factors, which I'll revert to shortly, although rates are still well about last year's levels. As of 7 May this year, TORM has covered 58% of its second quarter earnings base at an average TCE rate of USD 16,248 per day. We believe that there are positive dynamics present in the market to support a sustained recovery, and I will comment on the market in detail on the following slides. In the first quarter of 2019, we sold 2 older MR vessels as part of our continuous fleet renewal activities. We still have 7 MR vessels and 2 other ones on order. Following the completion of our newbuilding program and assuming no further changes to our fleet, TORM's fleet will consist of 78 owned vessels, and we will have a footprint across all key market segment.As part of TORM preparations for the IMO 2020 regulation, the company has recently decided to install 13 additional scrubbers, bringing our total to 34 scrubbers. We expect that 30 of these will be installed in 2019 and the remaining 2 in the first quarter of 2020. This corresponds to 44% of our fleet. TORM has committed to a balanced approach towards compliance with IMO 2020 regulations, and supporting operations we currently have 2 scrubbers already in operation. We will gain valuable experience in advance of the 2020 deadline. I'll in further detail explain the impact from the IMO '20 regulation throughout our slides.Slide 5, please. The majority of TORM scrubbers will be produced by ME Production China, the joint venture TORM established last year along with ME Production, which is a leading scrubber manufacturer, and the shipyard GSI.Our entry into this joint venture was both important strategically as well as timely. Scrubber retrofit capacity has become a bottleneck with yards' production capacity tied up across the industry. Also, one of the most significant risks with scrubber installations relates to quality control and the capability of the manufacturers. Due to our strategic partnership, we've secured the required production slots and deliveries are on schedule. Delivery and installation schedule will ensure that TORM is ready to reap the benefits of the increased demand of clean petroleum products expected from the implementation of the IMO 2020 regulation.Slide 6, please. Now I'll turn to the product tanker market. In the first quarter of 2019, our product tanker fleet realized average TCE earnings of USD 17,949 per day. In the LR segment, TORM achieved LR2 rates of USD 22,469 per day and LR1 rates of USD 18,089 per day. For TORM's largest segment, the MRs, TORM achieved rates of USD 16,765 per day, and TORM's Handysize segment achieved rates of USD 18,875 per day.Product tanker freight rates remained at strong levels in the beginning of 2019 following a mild reversal that began in the middle of the fourth quarter, reaching levels not seen since the beginning of 2016. Key inter-regional product arbitrage spreads, which have been close for most of 2018, widened and lifted the demand for product tankers. Both the price spreads for gasoline and naphtha between West and the East as well as spreads for diesel and jet fuel between the East and the West became supportive of product tanker flows. Product tanker supply feature was similarly positive as a large of LR2s shifted from clean to dirty market during the fourth quarter of 2018. However, we saw strong headwinds from increased market cannibalization from high crude newbuilding deliveries in the beginning of the year. The significance of this factor can be highlighted by the fact that crude newbuildings accounted for 35% of all gas oil trade from the East to the West in Q1, up from around 18% for the full year of 2018. As the quarter progressed, spring refinery maintenance commenced in Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, leading to decreased product exports. Towards the end of the quarter, the Transatlantic and Transpacific markets were supported by unplanned refinery outages in the U.S. East Coast and U.S. West Coast, which incentivized the gasoline trade to the U.S. Plus, in the second quarter rates had moderated, although they remain at healthy levels for this time of the year. Our most refineries in the U.S. Gulf and 40% of refineries in Europe have come back from maintenance compared to Q1. Spring refinery maintenance in Asia is at its peak right now, limiting export flows from that region. Looking ahead, we expect trade flows to increase with seasonal trends and receive an additional boost from preparations to IMO 2020 as prominent supplies start building inventories of compliant fuels during the second half of the year.Slide 7, please. Looking at product inventories, which have been a negative effect on the market for the last 2 years, the situation is much more sustainable now as global theme for petroleum product inventories are back to 5-year average levels. This means that increases in demand are more likely to translate into increases in trade flows and not inventory products. Looking at individual products, we even see inventories below average levels for diesel in main importing regions, which should be supported for trade. On the gasoline side, we see tight gasoline inventories in the U.S., supporting trade flows, although gasoline inventories in Asia are still relatively high and hence potentially limiting gasoline flows from the West to the East. It will be important to watch these inventories as 2020 approaches as regulations may impact inventories in certain geographies, when -- which, of course, in turn can lead to increased trade flows.Slide 8, please. The structural dislocation between product demand and refinery centers is expected to continue, and more refined products will be produced and exported from the Middle East to the rest of the world. Over the coming years, the expansion in the region is expected to be significantly higher than in the previous 3 years and more comparable to the level in 2015 as facilities such as the New Saudi Aramco refinery Jazan and KPMC's (sic) [ KNPC ] new refinery Al Zour will come online. TORM expects this to reinforce the role of the Middle East as the key clean product exporter contributing positively product tanker TORM demand -- to a mild demand in the coming years.Slide 9, please. The shipping industry is preparing for the IMO 2020 regulation and the accompanying shift in marine bunker fuels towards cleaner fuels. One way to comply with these new rules is to use marine gas oil, and we expect a large scale shift from currently used high-sulfur fuel oil towards marine gas oil, which is a type of clean petroleum product that we transport. For the shipping industry to comply with this regulation, it will be necessary to build and maintain stocks of compliant low sulfur fuels in bunker ports around the world. This may create increased trades for product tankers. Fuel tankers are also expected to gain from IMO 2020 due to increased refinery runs and the need to store excess high-sulfur fuel oil. In preparation for the 1st January 2020 deadline, we expect to start seeing the effects from the second half of 2019. TORM currently expect the IMO 2020 sulfur regulation to lead to incremental diesel demand of 1.1 million barrels per day, implying an increase of around 5% in the product tanker trade in 2020. This increase will depend on the refining industries' ability to shift to very low sulfur fuel oil production faster than expected. I'm convinced that the demand effects of the IMO 2020 sulfur regulation, combined with our strategic steps ahead of the implementation date on 1st January 2020, will prove beneficial for TORM over the coming years.Slide 10, please. To elaborate on the demand effects of IMO 2020, stricter sulfur rules means that the shipping industry would need to use additional marine gas oil, which is a type of fuel that belongs to the family of diesel. While the demand for marine gas oil or more generally diesel will increase in all world regions, flexibility to increase diesel production is much higher in regions that are already net exporters of diesel today. For examples, considerable volume of new refinery capacity comes online in the Middle East and Asia. Russia is producing more diesel as part of its refining upgrading program, and the complex U.S. Gulf refiners are expected to process more high-sulfur fuel oil. That becomes cheaper after 2020 in order to produce extra diesel. At the same time, the main important regions, the ones that produce too little diesel, does not see any new refineries coming online in the next 2 years. Therefore, their ability to respond to increased demand due to IMO 2020 is only limited to changes in refinery utilization and product use. This suggest that on top of the trade flows we're seeing today, even more diesel will be flowing from export regions to import regions due to IMO 2020. The majority of the incremental 5% trade growth from IMO 2020 will stem from long-haul trade and intra-Asian medium-haul trade. But on top of that, we also expect to see more short-haul regional trade for redistribution of compliant bunker fuels. In terms of product tanker trade, IMO 2020 effect would account for around 60% of the total growth in 2020, the rest being what we will call organic growth.Slide 11, please. The product tanker order book to fleet ratio currently stands at 8.3%, which is slow in a historical context. TORM estimates that the product tanker fleet will grow by 4.3% this year, but lower deliveries in the next 2 years will result in an average fleet growth of around 3.2% per year in the period 2019 through 2021.It is down to around half from an average of approximately 5.8% during the previous 3 years. It is also important to mention here that the actual fleet growth in 2019 might come in at a somewhat lower level than the above mentioned 4.3%, as a number of vessels will be removed temporarily from market in combination with scrubber retrofitting and tank cleaning. This could potentially remove about 0.4% of the fleet capacity. The slowing fleet growth rate is a key point through the fundamental processes whenever we expect for the product tanker industry as a whole.Slide 12, please. In TORM's largest segment, MR, we have continued to obtain very competitive freight rates, and I'm pleased that our results are at the top of our peer group again this quarter. In fact, when we look back to 2015, we have outperformed the peer group average 16 or 17 times, which translates into additional earning of more than USD 100 million over the period and USD 8 million in the first quarter of 2019 alone. In general, I am very satisfied that TORM's operational platform delivers very competitive TCE earnings and that we are well positioned to take advantage of the promising supply/demand fundamentals in the market. I'll now hand it over to Christian for a further review of TORM's cost structure and financial position.

[Christian Søgaard-Christensen]

Thank you, Jacob. Let's turn to Slide 13, please. With our spot-based profile, TORM has a significant leverage to increases in the underlying product tanker freight rates. As of 31st of March 2019, so the end of first quarter, every $1,000 change or increase in the average daily TCE translate into an increased EBITDA of around $18 million for the year 2019. The corresponding figures increases to $28 million in 2020 and $29 million in 2021. So TORM has a positive long-term view on the market, and we believe that we are well positioned to generate significant cash flows in the period to come.Slide 14, please. Before taking into our OpEx and admin expenses, I would like to remind you of TORM's operating model. We have a fully integrated commercial and technical platform, including all support functions such as internal segment purchase team, and we believe that TORM derives a significant competitive advantage from this. Importantly, it also provides a transparent cost structure for our shareholders and eliminates related-party transactions. Naturally, we are focused on maintaining efficient operations and providing a high quality of service and flexibility to our customers. Despite having this trade-off, we have seen a gradual decrease of 16% in our OpEx per day over the last 5 years, and that is despite inflationary pressures.So OpEx was slightly -- was around $6,450 per day for the first quarter of 2019, which we find very competitive in light of our fleet composition. We have also remained disciplined with respect to our general and administrative expenses, although these can be expected to fluctuate a bit based on the size of our fleet.Slide 15, please. Taking a look at our CapEx and liquidity coming out of the first quarter of 2019, we had available liquidity of USD 438 million. Cash totaled USD 155 million, and we have undrawn credit facilities of USD 283 million. If we then look at our CapEx commitments, they were around USD 300 million, of which we expect to pay around USD 270 million this year. The remainder will fall due in 2020. The large majority of our commitments relates to our remaining 9 high-specification newbuilding vessels that all include scrubber installations. But the figure also include $40 million in 2019 for retrofitting scrubber installations on overall vessels under water. This figure also includes the 13 additional scrubber retrofits that we announced today. So with cash and underlying credit rights -- drawing rights of USD 438 million, the CapEx commitment are fully funded and very manageable.Slide 16, please. Finally, I would like to sum up our financial position in terms of 2 key metrics such as net asset value and loan-to-value. Vessel values, as you can see on this slide, have decreased slightly during the first quarter of 2019, and the value of TORM's vessels stood at USD 1.599 billion at the end of March. Outstanding cost debt amounted to USD 728 million, and none of these debt facilities are maturing in 2019 or 2020.Finally, we have outstanding committed newbuilding CapEx of $258 million and cash of USD 155 million. This gives TORM a net loan-to-value of 52% at the end of the first quarter, which we consider to be a conservative level and it's also decreasing since what we saw coming out of the full year results. The net asset value is estimated at USD 829 million coming out of first quarter. This corresponds to about $11.2 per share or DKK 74.5 per share. Before commencing this call, TORM's share were trading at DKK 55.5 or just about $8.5 per share. So there is still a considerable discount to net asset value. In short, we have a balance sheet that provides us with strategic and financial flexibility.Slide 17, please. With that, I will let the operator open up for questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We do not have any questions over the phone, sir.

[Christian Søgaard-Christensen]

So this will conclude the earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2019. Thank you for dialing in.

[Operator]

Thank you. That concludes our call for today. You may all disconnect and thank you all for participating.