Hafnia Ltd

OSE:HAFNI

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Welcome to Hafnia's Full Year 2020 Financial Results Presentation. We will begin shortly. You will be brought through the presentation by Hafnia CEO, Mikael Skov; CFO, Perry Van Echtelt; EVP, Commercial, Jens Christophersen; and EVP, Head of Investor Relations, Thomas Andersen. [Operator Instructions]Certain statements in this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements based upon management's current expectations and include known and unknown risks uncertainties and other factors, many of which Hafnia is unable to predict or control, that may cause Hafnia's actual results, performance or plans to differ materially from any future results, performance or plans expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In addition, nothing in this conference call constitutes an offer to purchase or sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or sell any securities. With that, I'm now pleased to turn the call over to Hafnia CEO, Mikael Skov.

[Mikael Opstun Skov, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you for that. My name is Mikael Skov, and I am the CEO of Hafnia, Let me welcome you to the full year 2020 conference call. With me here today, I have our CFO, Perry Van Echtelt; I have our Executive Vice President, Commercial, Jens Christophersen; and Executive Vice President and Head of Investor Relations, Thomas Andersen. The 4 of us will present the full year 2020 financials for Hafnia. Before we go into details for 2020, I would like to thank all employees, both at sea and at shore, for their extraordinary efforts during these challenging times, and stress that the priority for Hafnia will always be the health and safety of our employees. With that, let's move to Slide #2. This is the disclaimer, safe harbor message, and I would like you all to be aware of the mandatory part of the disclaimer, which I will urge you to read. Moving forward to the next slide. And we will move straight into Slide #4. Thank you. Let me start by giving a small introduction to Hafnia, which is a Singapore-based company with offices in 4 other key shipping hubs. We own or have charted in 101 vessels and commercially manage an additional 83 vessels, bringing us to a total of 184 vessels under commercial management across 4 product tanker segments. Last year, we expanded our commercial management business into a new segment, focused on small product and chemical tankers, which is tonnage under 20,000 deadweight. We set up a brand-new pool called Hafnia Specialized for the commercial management of these vessels, adding an additional pillar to our successful pool management business. We have also expanded our ongoing business further and are now buying bunkers for more than 450 vessels, including third-party clients. Based on the success of our commercial management and bunker business, we plan to expand our adjacent business further in the years to come. In 2020, we had a fee revenue of $23 million from our commercial management, bunker business and technical management activities. We have an industry low operational cash flow breakeven of $13,000. We're listed on Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker code, HAFNI. Moving on to Slide #5. 2020 was the most extreme year in the product tanker space that I have seen. We have seen record high and low earnings and even negative oil prices. I'm very pleased that Hafnia has delivered yet another best-in-class result, when we look at time charter equivalent earnings per day, return on invested capital, return on equity and distribution to our shareholders. Due to COVID-19, 2020 was a year where we were living with confinement restrictions leading to demand disruption and weak economic fundamentals, resulting in a massive buildup of inventories. We can now see that demand is coming back and that inventories are being drawn back to normal, and it is expected that consumption and inventories will be back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the fourth quarter of 2021. In addition, we have together with a strategic joint venture partner invested in a methanol project, exemplifying our strategy to look at sustainable and modern shipping technologies as well as recurring long-term transportation contracts at guaranteed rates. In our Vista joint venture, we have invested in 2 dual-fuel LR2 vessels that are chartered out to Total on long-term contracts. These vessels will be delivered in 2023. Finally, we have sold 3 LR1 vessels, the Hafnia America for $11.6 million, and the compass and compassion for $5.5 million net each. All 3 vessels were sold as part of a planned fleet renewal. Perry, why don't you talk us through the financials?

[Perry Wouter Van Echtelt, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Mikael, and good day to everyone. To summarize the 2020 financials, time charter equivalent earnings for Hafnia was $623.3 million for the year, and then EBITDA was $362.8 million. The commercially managed pool and bunker business generated a revenue of $23 million for the year. We achieved a net profit of $148.8 million. And for the first 2 quarters of 2020, we already paid $77 million in dividends. Including the dividend declared for the fourth quarter 2019, we paid during the year a cash dividend of $98 million. We will pay no dividends for Q4 2020 and have therefore paid then 52% of full year net profit. If we then move to Page 6, focus on the fourth quarter. It was in line with the lower rates, the weakest quarter in the year. The combination of lower rates and the write-off of $11.4 million on assets for sale resulted in a net loss of $26.4 million for Q4. But in all, we feel that we got a very good year in 2020 with a profit of $148.8 million compared to a profit of $71.1 million in 2019. Furthermore, the income from the management of third-party vessels and buying bunker on behalf of third-party clients was $23 million for the year. More on economics of the pools will be explained later. For 2020, the full year resulted in a return on equity of 13.1% and the return on invested capital, or ROIC, of 8.9%. The balance sheet is strong with an equity ratio of 45.1% and a cash position of $101 million. We continue to see strong access to the banking environment, and we are in the final process of refinancing 2 facilities, including the one with a 2022 maturity. Also with the substantially reduced interest rates for U.S. dollar financing, we have gradually increased our interest rate hedging position to lock in lower interest rates to match the tenor our debt profile. And the average estimated broker value of the owned fleet was $1.9 billion as of 31 December 2020. And at the end of the year, Hafnia had a total of 101 vessels, of which 88 owned, including 1 newbuild and 13 vessels chartered in. If you then move on to the next page. With a TCE revenue of $623.2 million basis 34,450 earning days, we made $26,540 per day on the LR2 vessels, $19,475 per day on the LR1 vessels, $17,283 per day on the non-pool Panamax vessels, $17,089 per day in the MR segment, and $15,321 per day in the Handy segment. From the pie chart to the right of this page, you can see that 46% of the total earnings came from the MR segment and 29% from the LR1 segment. And if we move to the next page, a bit more about the pool economics. As said, we made $23 million in fee income in 2020. And this includes pool fees but also fees for bunker services and for technical management. The pools work with a fixed fee and a commission on time charter earnings. So there's $250 per day fixed fee, and a 2.25% commission of net TCE earnings made by a vessel. So in an example, where a vessel makes $20,000 per day, Hafnia will earn $250, plus $450, totaling $700 per day. The $250 per day cover roughly the fixed cost of running the pool for the external vessels. Based on a fleet of approximately 80 externally managed ships and a TCE hire of $20,000 per day gives Hafnia an additional income of $13 million before tax. We will continue to invest in our commercial platform to increase the service level and build scale through the pools. Mikael will now present the next page, before Jens guides us through the commercial developments. Mikael?

[Mikael Opstun Skov, Chief Executive Officer]

So thank you for that. And we are now on Slide #9. So here, we're going to go through a little bit about Hafnia and some of the investment highlights summaries that we'd like to present today. We see 6 important reasons why Hafnia is one of the leading product tanker companies today. So if you look on the left side of the slide, it is the best commercial platform. We have the lowest operating cost; the lowest cost of funding; $23 million in revenue from the pools and other fee-generating activities; a strong focus on environmental, social and corporate governance, ESG; and a firm believer in consolidation. Before Jens takes us through the detailed product tanker market, let me just elaborate on these key differentiators for Hafnia. If we start focusing on the first one, best commercial performance. So over the years, we have benchmarked ourselves against our peers to evaluate our commercial performance while adjusting for fleet composition, speed and consumption. When we look at these so-called apples-to-apples benchmarks, we are the absolute top in all of our segments. We continue to focus on having the lowest operating and funding cost. Our operational cash flow breakeven is below $13,000 per day, the lowest in the industry. Our industry-leading financing costs, our solid balance sheet and low SG&A expenses of $800 per day are also key contributors to our competitiveness. $23 million in fee revenue generated by our pool and bunker operations. And in addition, we plan to expand these businesses further by adding more vessels to existing pools and by focusing on new segments. On the ESG side, it's very important for Hafnia to have a clear ESG profile. We believe that joint global efforts are needed to combat climate change. As a leading shipping company, it is Hafnia's goal to keep providing safe, sustainable and efficient hydrocarbon transportation solutions and thereby contribute to the shipping industry's efforts to reduce environmental impact. Additionally, we have continued to promote diversity at sea and the shore. By 2024, we strive to have 40% female colleagues throughout the organization, including in key management positions. The development, implementation and maintenance of good and well-functioning governance policies and practices are important processes and focus areas for Hafnia. Finally, a few words on consolidation. Hafnia is a firm believer in further consolidation within the product tanker sector. Firstly, our large-scale number of vessels enables better performance in chartering, operations, bunker and back office. Secondly, with consolidation comes clear cost synergies. We have seen examples of how smaller platforms of 20 to 25 vessels could have reduced the daily SG&A per vessel by more than $1,000 per day and saved a total of more than $20 million per year, including better financing. Thirdly, digitalization across a large fleet improves data intelligence significantly and enables faster and better decision-making. Smaller platforms lack the scale needed to properly utilize the added information from a big fleet. We move on to Slide #10, and Jens, why don't you take the next few pages.

[Jens Christophersen, Executive Vice President of Commercial]

Thank you very much, Mikael. This whole page sums up our expectations for the product tanker market. The outlook for the product tanker sector in the first half of 2021 and appears challenging with COVID-19, inventories and lack of oil consumption expected to continue to weigh on market conditions. Against the backdrop of renewed lockdowns in key regions negatively impacting oil demand and refinery throughput, seaborne oil products trade remains subdued. In the first half of 2021, market pressure is further expected from the sustained unwinding of floating and land-based storage, in addition to an underlying global fleet expansion of 2% in the product tanker sector. However, current trade projections suggest a rebound in seaborne products trade in the second half of 2021, contributed, too, by oil demand recovery, normalization of inventories and the anticipated seasonal uplift towards the end of the year. Potential logistical disruption also exists as storage unwinds, whilst efficiencies from port delays, reposition and reactivation could also provide windows of opportunity for rate improvement. Although COVID-19 vaccine programs have bolstered hopes of improved oil demand levels later in 2021, there remains major uncertainty in the outlook with concerns of new COVID-19 variants and sustained high case numbers in some regions. According to Clarksons Research, global oil demand is projected to rebound by approximately 6% in 2021 to 97.1 million barrels per day, improving economic activity and the easing of mobility restrictions relative to 2020, aided by the rollout of vaccines across major regions, is projected to provide support predominantly for gasoline and diesel demand. According to IEA, order demand in the fourth quarter of 2021 is expected to be 99.2 million barrels against 100.6 million barrels in the final quarter of 2019. Around 1.2 million barrels per day of global refining capacity was closed, mothballed or converted in 2020. However, the addition of 0.7 million barrels per day, potentially rising to 1 million barrels per day in 2021, is likely to exacerbate the existing surplus of refining capacity. This is likely to result in the closure of inefficient refineries near consumption areas and could lead to an improvement in ton mile demand. In line with improving oil demand and refinery runs, seaborne product trade is expected to see improvements in 2021, with volumes expected to grow by 6% year-on-year, following the disruption in 2020. Trade volumes for 2021 are still anticipated, however, to remain below 2019 levels as the demand for certain fuels, example given, jet fuel, would require more time to recover from the impact of COVID-19. Total product tanker tonne mile demand or tonne mile trade in 2021 is projected to exceed growth, measured in tonnes, expanding by circa 7%, partly as disruptions to trade flows continue to raise average voyage duration. We are currently seeing that oil demand is higher than oil supply. Hence, we're drawing on oil inventories. The cargo split for 2020 shows that gas oil was the most important [indiscernible] carried, followed by gasoline and fuel oil. Historically, small order book, total tonne mile outgrowing supply of new tonnage and growth in oil demand following the decline in 2020. We expect peak oil to be 10 years into the future. It is not because we are blind to the green evolution, but we can also see that this is not something that happens overnight. The capacity to build new infrastructure and power to x facilities are simply not there to do it faster. Looking at the oil inventories of industrial stock in the OCD region. We note that the growth in inventories plateaued in the May, August period 2020. And we expect that it will continue its downward trend over the next few months as OPEC has agreed to reduce production. The most important element to watch is the inventories measured in days of consumption, which has dropped from just below 80% to just above 70% by year-end. We move to the next slide. Floating storage has been a significant driver for the overall tanker market in 2020, with a massive increase in capacity used for floating storage in the second quarter. However, we've seen it peak in May and have reduced with approximately 200 million barrels since then. The most important element to note is that the expected oil demand by end 2021 will be on par with the oil demand in 2019. Here, we show the main trading routes being Middle East to Asia, Middle East to Europe, North America to Latin America and into regions. Further refinery expansion is also projected in China, in particular in the independent refining sector. The product trade is expected to see new long-range trading patterns as 1.3 million barrels per day of export-orientated refinery capacity comes on stream in the Middle East in 2021. This is likely to lengthen the tonne miles for the product market. Whilst 1.2 million barrels per day of global refinery capacity was closed, mothballed or converted in 2020, not including capacity temporarily off-line due to the impacts of COVID-19, and with an additional 0.7 million barrels per day announced for 2021 closure potentially rising to 1 million barrels per day. This is significant. When we look at the global product tanker fleet, the most interesting thing to note is the very low order book that result in the lowest tanker fleet growth for the next 2 years in the last 20 years. In year 2020, the product tanker order book was just below 7% of the fleet, And the net addition this year is expected to be 2% and 0% for 2022. Here on this slide, we simply see the extreme rates in 2020, both record highs and record lows. Average MR earnings peaked at a record of $74,000 per day in April, whilst there are 2 earnings on the benchmark Ras Tanura-Chiba route spiked to $168,000 per day. Weighted average earnings across product tanker markets hit a record of over $90,000 per day in late April, and the first half of 2020 was the best half year period since 2008. In November, clean MR and Handy spot earnings averaged circa $5,300 per day and $1,200 per day, respectively. The second lowest monthly average on record in both sectors. And with this, Mikael, over to you for the next few slides.

[Mikael Opstun Skov, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you for that. We will now be moving into Slide #18 and talk a little bit about Hafnia's ESG strategy. So in Hafnia, we based our ESG strategy on 5 sustainability pillars: safety of life, environment, governance, right people and right resources. These are founded on 16 material issues in our day-to-day work that again is based on UN's sustainable development goals. Moving into Slide #19. Here, we see one of the accomplishments, which we are most proud of this year, Hafnia's progress on the IMO's carbon intensity targets. Hafnia believe that our sustainability journey starts with decarbonization. We strive to support and promote the industry decarbonization, while still transporting the resources necessary to sustain the modern world. Hafnia has achieved some significant milestones in our work to reduce overall emissions and improve vessel efficiency through years of investment in emissions reduction -- in emission reduction measures and by continuously optimizing vessel operations. We are in full compliance with the IMO 2020 regulations on sulfur emissions, and we are on track to meet the IMO's greenhouse gas reduction goals of reducing carbon intensity by 40% by 2030, using 2008 levels as the baseline. In 2020, across Hafnia's own fleet, our carbon intensity has measured by annual efficiency ratio, also known as AER, was 5.7 grams CO2 per deadweight ton per nautical mile. This is 5.6% below the present IMO baseline. We have set a goal to reach IMO's 2030 target already in 2028, by reducing our current fleet carbon intensity to 4.47 grams CO2 per deadweight ton per nautical mile. We are constantly looking to improve our existing vessels to smaller but impactful optimization measures that improve operational efficiency and reduce environmental footprint. Moving on to Slide #20. At Hafnia, we have a strong focus on corporate governance, first and foremost, through a highly reputable Board of Directors, a seasoned Audit Committee, internal audit, an extensive authorization metrics, remuneration committee and fully aligned incentives with no fee leakage. All of these issues safeguarding a best-in-class governance structure. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions.