Klaveness Combination Carriers ASA

OSE:KCC

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the third quarter results presentation of Klaveness Combination Carriers. My name is Engebret Dahm. I'm the CEO of the company. Together with me, I have Liv Dyrnes, CFO and Deputy CEO.

We will, as normal, start up with going through the market and the performance of the quarter. Liv will continue with the financial update and thereafter go through the performance on the environmental side. And lastly, I will look on how we view the market development over the next quarters and the performance of our company going forward. And please use the webcast solution to write in your questions that we will go through after the presentation.

Before that, I would like to just remind you who we are and what our business is. So we have a fleet of combination carriers. We have 2 types, so CABUs and CLEANBUs that are both tankers and dry bulk vessels, competing against standard MR and LR1 product tankers and Panamax dry bulk vessels.

We have 3 main drivers for our business. We are more efficient than the standard vessels, having between 85% and 90% of the time paying cargoes on board, while our competing product tankers and dry bulk vessels have between 50% and 60% employment. This efficiency advantage leads to higher earnings over time and also substantially lower carbon footprint.

The second is our diversified earnings model, where we have being both in the dry bulk and the tanker space, 2 markets that over time develops differently. This gives us more market opportunities and also reducing risks and gives us better downside protection.

The third driver is the increased flexibility of our fleet, mainly our CLEANBUs, giving more optionality to optimize our operation and the flexibility to move capacity to the market being the strongest.

So then let's take a look on the highlights of the third quarter. So it's been a market where both product tankers and dry bulk earnings have fallen down more than expected. And we still managed to maintain one of our strong earnings and having one of our strongest quarters ever. The average time charter earnings of our fleet ended at $34,050 per day, which is down around $3,400 per day compared to the second quarter. This is keeping up earnings much better than the standard markets. So compared to our guiding and compared to the standard markets, we are doing well in the quarter. EBITDA of $32.6 million and earnings before tax of $21.7 million is 10% and 13% below -- respectively, below the second quarter.

So based on this strong performance, the Board decided to keep the dividend payment stable at $0.30 per share, implying a dividend distribution of $18 million for the third quarter. This is the 24th consecutive quarter of dividend payments, meaning that we have paid out $202 million since the IPO back in 2019. The dividend payment of $0.30 equates to a running yield of around 15% based on yesterday's share price. It's 92% payout ratio, which is well above the policy of paying out minimum 80% of adjusted free cash flow to our shareholders.

Before going into more details about the performance, let me give you more -- a little bit more information regarding the news we released last week regarding the change in the technical management of our fleet. So we have worked closely with Torvald Klaveness, our main owner over the recent year to see how we can optimize the technical operation of our fleet. This figure shows how the operation is today, where Klaveness Ship Management company, the in-house ship management company owned 100% by Torvald Klaveness, has been responsible for the ship management of the KCC fleet based on ship management agreements. And in addition, has been running our newbuild and other technical projects on behalf of KCC and also been running the commercial operations of the KCC fleet based on service agreements.

So in discussions with Torvald Klaveness, we concluded that the best solution going forward is to cooperate with a third-party ship manager and OSM Thome was selected as the ideal partner for KCC and for Klaveness. Based on this, Torvald Klaveness concluded last week an agreement to sell their shares of Klaveness Ship Management to OSM Thome, which is one of the world's biggest third-party technical ship managers, having their main office in Arendal in Svinoddveien, Norway. In parallel, KCC has entered into ship management agreements with Klaveness Ship Management under OSM Thome ownership for the whole fleet. This change will be effective as of 1st of January 2025.

We believe that this new model gives us the best of 2 worlds. We maintain the best of the current integrated model. It protects our business, and you get access to the large operational scale and the large technical resources of the large organization of OSM Thome running around 400 ships every day.

So part of the deal, KCC will take over the commercial operation and technical project department from KSM and it will integrate around 10 employees into the KCC organization. This will bring important combination carrier competency into our organization and will protect this know-how well. We will -- in addition, in the ship management agreement, we have a very good protection of our intellectual property and our combination carrier expertise, ensuring that this will not be available for third-party shipowners.

We have also, through this model, managed to keep the integrated operational model intact, where our charters, the commercial operation people, the technical managers and the vetting people sit close physically together and cooperate on a daily basis. We will have the team of ship managers and vetting people continue to work dedicated for KCC, exclusively for KCC, ensuring that this model continues as before. And in addition, we get additional support from the large OSM Thome team, both on vetting and on projects.

We are, in addition, ring-fencing the crew onboard KCC's fleet that we have developed over the recent years, ensuring that the unique competency of the crew will be maintained onboard KCC ships, and this crew remain dedicated to KCC. So to summarize, we believe the new model is attractive for KCC and will add value for KCC and its shareholders going forward.

So then look at the market development of the recent quarter, starting up with the LR1 tanker market. We show the rather steep fall since early summer with a small fall down in September. We have not yet seen the expected positive effect from the seasonal expected uptick in the fourth quarter.

Looking on the dry bulk market has also fallen back substantially since this spring and early summer from around $18,000 per day, the spot market for Kamsarmax down to today around $10,700 per day. So how have we performed in this market circumstances? We have, as mentioned, an earnings of $34,050 per day, which is around 1.2x the earnings of our benchmark product tankers and around 2.4x higher than the Panamax, Kamsarmax dry bulk vessels.

This graph has 2 main messages. One, again, showing that we have managed to match the earnings of the booming product tanker market in the first and the second quarter of this year. And as the market weakens and the difference between the product tanker market and the dry market decreases, we are seeing the higher relative value generation of our combination carrier concept.

And looking into the fourth quarter that I will come back to later on, we see the continued falling earnings in both the product tankers and dry bulk market and the even smaller differences between the markets, KCC are able to maintain higher earnings and protecting the downside risks of our company.

Continuing on the CABUs, just reminding you about the business we have on the CABUs. Our 8 CABUs perform shipment of caustic soda into Australia, returning with dry bulk cargoes. Each of these round trips with dry bulk and caustic soda takes around 60 days, means that each ship can do around 5.5 rounds per year. So if you add up the fleet of 8 ships, you end up with a capacity of around 44 to 46 cargoes per year.

Why am I telling this? I'm just demonstrating to you that the booking we have had in 2024 of 46 cargoes basically matches the full capacity of the fleet. But there are variations between the quarters in terms of number of cargoes, which is what we have experienced into the third quarter, where we had a little bit too few caustic soda cargoes. This can be reflected in the percentage of -- in tanker space being reduced to 44% from 45%. It's less than you would have expected, which -- and it's rather inflated, partly due to longer waiting time for the combination trading.

You get a better impact of the trading in the quarter with the time spent in combination trade falling from 98% in the second quarter to 88% in the third quarter. We have still been able to optimize the operation, which is noticed in the continued low ballast ratio of around 12% in the quarter.

So the earnings for the CABUs fell back to around $29,700 per day. It's partly a reflection of the weaker MR product tanker market, which we get an impact through the floating rate contracts we have on the caustic soda side, also a weaker dry market. But as much, the effect of lower earnings on combination trades due to more waiting time and also lower earnings based on the dry bulk trading of one of the ships during the quarter because of lack of caustic soda cargoes in the quarter.

Still, we are going into the fourth quarter where the fleet is fully employed in combination trade, where we have a tight situation with full coverage of caustic soda and dry bulk trading, which looks good. Over to the CLEANBUs. The big news for the CLEANBUs for the quarter is that the resumption of the trade from Middle East into East Coast South America, which is the best CLEANBU trade. As you can see from the graph to the left, we had a period of around 11 months from second quarter last year into the second quarter this year, where we had no shipments in this trade. The reason for this change can be seen in the graph to the right, where we see the Russian imports of market share into Argentina and Brazil of diesel, which increased from around 0 percentage back in 2022, increasing up to more than 50% after the EU's ban on Russian product imports in early 2023.

We have seen that the Russian share of the South American market has fallen back, which is part of the reason why we have been able to increase the cargo booking into South America, which has given value for the CLEANBU fleet in the quarter and is expected to give value going forward.

So that means that looking on the CLEANBUs, the main stories are that we have got the CLEANBU fleet back into combination trading. That is partly noticed through the lower share of the days in tanker trade falling from 85% to 69% in the third quarter. It can also be seen by the fact that we now have 84% of the fleet in combination trading up from 56% and also a very low ballast, which is the best ballast -- the lowest ballast we have ever had on the CLEANBU fleet. This shows that we have more or less the full fleet, except the one vessel on time charter back in combination trading that has created value for the CLEANBUs in this quarter.

The earnings kept more or less constant compared to the second quarter despite large weakening of the product tanker market. We have also -- we have had a positive effect of a strong outbound dry bulk market for the sugar transportation we do from Middle East. And again, the efficient trading has supported both the dry earnings and the product tanker earnings for the CLEANBUs in the quarter.

So then Liv, I will leave the word to you.

[Liv Dyrnes, executive]

Yes. Thank you. Yes, I'll start with the financial update before I give you a brief update on our decarbonization efforts. And then it's over to Engebret again after that for the outlook section -- sorry.

Let's see. As usual, I will start with the EBITDA bridge. As you can see here, EBITDA for the quarter ended at $32.6 million. That's a decrease of 10% Q-on-Q. And the main driver behind this change, that's the CABU TCE earnings. The TCE earnings were down by $8,000 per day, and that amounts to a negative change of $5.4 million in total.

CLEANBU TCE earnings quite stable Q-on-Q and hence a limited negative impact of $0.3 million. This was partly offset by more on-hire days. We had less dry dockings this quarter compared to last quarter, and this in total had a positive effect of $2.2 million. Other income, that relates to loss of hire insurance that was paid related to a claim from a situation that we had earlier this year. So that's a one-off. Operating expenses increased by $0.2 million. I will show a bit more details related to that on the next slide. And administrative expenses increased by $0.4 million.

If we have a look at the SG&A for the -- in total year-to-date, that is quite stable compared to last year. So this is more a timing between different quarters. So in total, $32.6 million in EBITDA. If we then have a look at the OpEx, as mentioned, an increase Q-on-Q of $0.2 million or 2%, so a limited increase, but there is some difference between the 2 segments. You can here see the CABU operating expenses per day in the sharp blue graph to the left.

As you can see, OpEx per day for the CABUs were $8,500 per day approximately for the quarter. This is down $360 per day from last quarter. This is as expected. We do expect Q3 and Q4 to be lower than first half. So it's mainly timing effects between the quarters. But if we look at the year-to-date figure, you can see that it is $8,600 per day approximately, and that's an increase of 11% compared to last year. This is mainly related to crew cost as well as technical and maintenance costs, and it relates mainly to the oldest CABU vessels. So I think we can call it a kind of quality cost to keep up the quality at the required level of these oldest vessels.

CLEANBU operating expenses per day for Q3, $10,100 per day. That's up approximately $450 per day from last quarter, and it's mainly timing of maintenance costs. Year-to-date OpEx for CLEANBU, $9,800 approximately per day, and that's an increase of 3% from last year and well within the expected cost change.

We had a limited of 2 unscheduled off-hire days and scheduled off-hire of 38 days for the quarter. The latter relates to the start of dry docking of 2 CLEANBU vessels. These 2 will complete docking in Q4, and then we will start docking for 1 additional vessel in the quarter. You can find more details related to both the schedule for Q4 as well as the initial dry docking plan for 2025 on one of the slides in the appendix.

Then over to the full P&L. If we look at the items below EBITDA, you will see that depreciation is quite flat Q-on-Q, while net financial cost is down by approximately $0.2 million. This relates to the redemption of the KCC04 bond where the gain on the realization of the cross-currency interest rate swaps more than offset the premium paid as well as other costs related to the redemption. So a small positive financial effect of that exercise. This was refinanced earlier this year.

Profit after tax, $21.7 million, a decrease of 13.5% from last quarter. However, the value creation is still very solid this quarter. As you can see to the right, return on capital employed on an annualized basis for the quarter was 17% and return on equity, 23%. And this supports continued high dividend payments of $0.30 per share. That's flat Q-on-Q. It equals a dividend yield of 15%. It is approximately a payout ratio of 83%, and it's 92% of the adjusted cash flow to equity, well above the 80% minimum policy.

You can as well find some more information in the appendix related to the calculation of the adjusted cash flow to equity and the dividend payout ratio. The balance sheet continues to be very solid. Total assets are down by approximately $30 million. And the main one-off event here is the redemption of the KCC04 bond. In addition to that, we have the normal changes such as depreciation, repayment of debt and working capital changes. So equity ratio ended the quarter at above 60%, up from 57.4% at the end of Q2, and that is mainly due to lower total assets, while equity was stable Q-on-Q.

Then over to the cash flow. Both the cash position and the long-term available liquidity position was down approximately $32 million Q-on-Q. As you can see here, EBITDA contributed positively with $32.6 million. Then we had a negative change in working capital of close to $10 million, but that followed a Q2 where the working capital change was positive above $7 million. So normal variations.

Capital expenditures, $3.8 million, mainly related to energy efficiency investments. Ordinary debt service as normal, around $10 million. And then you will see the cash effect of the redemption of the KCC04 bond at $20.8 million. Lastly, we have the dividends of $18.1 million for Q2 that was distributed in Q3. So all in all, a very solid long-term available liquidity position. But as mentioned earlier, this as well includes funds committed for the new builds and energy efficiency investments.

When it comes to the newbuild program, this is coming closer. So the main part of the construction will start last -- no, sorry, next year, where we expect steel cut for the first 2 vessels to be made in Q1. This is also a milestone in relation to the contract with the yard. So the first installments will be paid in Q1. And in total, we expect to pay the yard approximately $40 million in yard installments next year. And then the remaining part will be made in 2026. You will as well find more details regarding the CapEx program in the slides in the appendix. We have -- or we expect the debt funding of the newbuilds to take place next year.

Then over to decarbonization. As you can see here, the carbon intensity measured by the EEOI, the Energy Efficiency Operational Index, which is a metric that is based on the actual cargo carried and not the deadweight of the vessel is down considerably from the previous 2 quarters. So it ended at 6.1 in Q3, down from 6.9 the 2 previous quarters.

CABU EEOI is quite flat over the last 3 quarters, while CLEANBU EEOI has dropped from above 7 over the last quarters to around 6.1 this quarter. Yes. So this is the best quarter that we have ever had on the EEOI and the CLEANBU change, that's mainly driven by the high utilization of the vessel. So we had more combination trading, less ballasting and higher cargo intake. We work every day to reduce emissions. We try to optimize trading that we do. We cooperate closely with the customers. We have high focus on the voyage efficiency as well as investments in energy efficiency measures.

And that brings us to the announcement that we had this morning where we announced that we will invest in wind-assisted propulsion for one of the CABU newbuilds being delivered in 2026. The 2 section sales from bound4blue will be fitted at the bow of the vessel, as you can see in this illustration, and they will be the largest section sales ever being installed.

So KCC's concept is already 30% to 40% better when it comes to emissions compared to the standard vessels that do the same transport work as we do. And this is one of the initiatives that will further improve this competitive advantage. The price of alternative fuels will likely be several times higher than what we see today for the conventional fuels. And of course, then consuming as little fuel as possible will have an even greater value in the future.

So then, Engebret, over to you again for the outlook.

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Yes. As mentioned, the last part will go through the market development and the outlook for our company, starting up with product tankers. We remain optimistic about the product tanker market despite the weakening over the third quarter and to date.

We see that oil consumption globally continues to increase despite the fall in and headwind in China, where Chinese oil demand fell by 4% last quarter. IEA expects an increase of around 1 million barrels per tonne demand increase next year, driven by mainly U.S. and emerging Asia.

Also, the tonne-mile and shipments of products have improved considerably this year with oil products on water increasing by 5% compared to last year over the last quarter. We expect also positive impact of lower inventory levels of diesel and gasoline that will be positive for future shipments. On the negative side, we see lower refinery margins that likely could have a negative impact on refinery runs and also long-haul shipments. The underlying support from the disruptions in the Red Sea looks likely to continue. It's unpredictable, but we see a few signs of any turnaround in that situation in the foreseeable future.

So the main impact on the market and the reason for the weaker market seems to be the higher effective fleet growth caused by the influx of crude carriers into the clean market in the third quarter, where VLs and Suezmax have cleaned up to enter the market.

This development is changing. Both VLs and Suezmax are exiting the clean market going back to the crude market. According to Vortexa, 3/4 of the fleet -- crude fleet being in the clean market in the third quarter are now back into the dirty market. The fleet growth for the product tankers will increase next year. But with the less negative impact on -- from crude tankers trading in clean and also the much lower deliveries of crude tankers, we believe the supply side situation is under control, but still it's a risk factor for the market.

So to summarize, the remaining part of the fourth quarter looks positive. We believe we will get the positive impact from both seasonal factors and also for the lower part of crude carriers in the clean market.

For next year, we expect the demand to continue to increase. We are expecting the supply to be under control with the support of the crude tanker market. So 2025 looks to be another reasonably strong market for -- in the product tanker market.

Also, the dry market has been on a downward slope since the second quarter. It's difficult to be exact on the reasons because the dry bulk demand has been strong. China has continued to import strongly dry bulk commodities. Europe has been a weak side and of course, has negatively impacted the Atlantic market.

The strong grain season has been positive for the Panamax market in the last quarters being positive for the long-haul front-haul trades into Asia. Looking into 2025, China still remains the main risk, but the Chinese stimulus package released over the recent month and also lower commodity prices, in our opinion, should keep the Chinese import level going.

Looking on the tonne-mile, it continues to be supported by the disruptions in the Red Sea. And over the last quarters, we have had some negative effect of the normalization of the situation in the Panama Canal. Going forward, we expect the situation in the Red Sea to prevail. As mentioned, there are a few signs that any reversal of the situation, but it's still a risk factor also for the dry market.

The main explanation for the market is the higher effective fleet growth. The nominal fleet growth in deliveries has been low, but we have seen a much improved efficiency in the trading of dry bulk vessels that have effectively increased the fleet growth.

Especially the grain season and the transportation of grain, this autumn has been very effective, where there have been more ports exporting with strong exports, both out of the U.S. and Argentina, meaning that we have much less waiting time in the quarter compared to last year, where we saw quite large waiting time in Brazilian ports. The supply side remains at the positive element in the dry bulk market, low deliveries next year with supply growth of less than 3% and limited further efficiency potential of the fleet.

So looking ahead, the market balance for the fourth quarter, we see only modest potential for improvements for the remaining part of November and December. There are positive seasonal effects in the Atlantic market, but we expect that to be mainly offset by negative seasonal effects in the Pacific at the end of the year. For next year, we expect the dry market to remain strong with China continue to drive the market and the supply with limited supply, the balance should be pretty strong.

So with this market backdrop, how are we positioned as a company? Starting up first with the CABUs. Looking to the right, we see that we are around 70% of the capacity for the fourth quarter is already booked. And that is more or less the same for the caustic soda tanker capacity of the CABUs.

Looking into next year, we have already booked 35% of the dry bulk capacity of the CABUs on fixed rate contracts, mainly from Australia interfaced with iron ore. In addition, we have floating rate contracts from Australia to the Middle East, accounting for around 12% of the capacity. We are likely to add 1 or 2 more contracts, but -- which will probably bring up the fixed rate coverage up to 40% to 45% of the capacity.

Looking to the right on the caustic soda capacity, we have 7% of the capacity today fixed on fixed rate contracts and 24% on floating rate contracts. These are 2 contracts that expires at the end of 2026. We are in midst of the annual extension discussions for the other 5 contracts we have in our portfolio. We expect to conclude these contracts within the end of the year. The outlook looks good, both for earnings and the cargo volume.

But at the moment, I can't comment more. We will release a news on this once we have completed the program. But the target is to increase the booking from currently 16, 17 cargoes up to the full capacity of the fleet of 45 to 46 caustic soda cargoes, of which 40% to 60% will be fixed rate and 60% to 40% will be floating rate.

Looking on the CLEANBUs, we have booked around 60% of the capacity, both in dry bulk and the tanker capacity for the fourth quarter. Going into next year, we continue to trade the ships in efficient combination trades, mainly into the U.S. into South America and also target to increase the trading into Australia.

These trades, we have repeat customers, partly covered by contracts. We have a higher coverage on floating rate contracts on the dry side, which accounts to between 40% and 50%. We have somewhat lower coverage on the tanker side, currently between 15% and 20%. But we have -- but we expect to increase the coverage and add more floating rate contracts in these trades over the coming months and into 2025.

The fixed rate coverage is limited to 3% for 2025, which is the one ship on time charter that expires at the end of February. We do not expect to renew the ship on time charter. We target to bring back the whole fleet into combination trading and meaning that the whole CLEANBU fleet will be -- likely be exposed to the markets through either spot or floating rate contracts for 2025. Should, however, the market improve substantially, we may add some fixed rate coverage in that market.

So looking at the end here on the outlook for the fourth quarter. We are guiding on earnings for the CABUs, which is approximately the same as in the third quarter with earnings between $28,000 and $29,000 per day. We will, as mentioned, have positive effect of better trading, better booking of caustic soda cargoes, but that will mainly be offset by the weaker-than-expected dry bulk and product tanker market.

On the CLEANBUs, we continued the very efficient trading of the fleet into the fourth quarter. But due to the weaker dry and product tanker market, the guiding has been set between $31,000 and $33,000 per day, which is well below the second -- third quarter earnings, but substantially lower reduction than seen in the spot market for both -- for product tankers. So on average, the guiding is between $29,500 to $31,000 per day, which is $3,000 or $4,000 below the third quarter earnings, which means that also the fourth quarter will be a very strong quarter for KCC.

So to summarize, the main story of the recent quarters has been our ability to take advantage of the very strong product tanker market. And now as the market has weakening and the difference between the product tanker and the dry market has narrowed, the combination trading shows its value. And we can show this better looking at the history. And again, we see the average earnings of KCC compared to the spot markets, the product tanker in blue and the dry in gray. We see that in '22, '23 and year-to-date '24 has matched the very strong and booming product tanker market, while we have outperformed the dry market with more than 2.

But going back in history from 2017 to 2021, when again, there was smaller differences between the dry bulk and the tanker market, the efficiency of operation delivered strong and superior earnings compared to both the product tanker and dry bulk market. So this illustrates again the downside protection we have in our business model and also the lower risk business model we have.

We can illustrate this also by comparing KCC against the other listed dry bulk product tanker and chemical tanker companies. We compare them based on average annual return on investment on the vertical axis and the volatility in returns on the horizontal axis. The further you get up to the left, the better. And this graph again shows the better relation between risk and return of KCC compared to other listed companies. So in the markets we go into with high geopolitical risks, with high macroeconomic risks, the model of KCC with based on efficiency, diversification and flexibility results in the best risk-adjusted return in shipping.

Then we are ready for questions.

[Liv Dyrnes, executive]

Thank you, Engebret. There seems to be no incoming questions today.

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Well, that means that we have answered all our questions. That's good. Thanks for joining today. And please let us know if you have other questions as times pass. Thank you.