Earnings Labs

BW LPG Limited (BWLP)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 18, 2021

$19.81

+5.48%

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Transcript

Lisa Lim

Operator

Welcome to BW LPG's Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Presentation. Bringing you through the presentation today are CEO, Anders Onarheim; CFO, Elaine Ong; EVP Commercial, Niels Rigault; and EVP Technical and Operations, Pontus Berg. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we wish to highlight the legal disclaimers in the next slide. Again, we wish to highlight the legal disclaimer shown in the current slide. This presentation held on Zoom is also recorded. I now turn the call over to BW LPG's CEO, Anders Onarheim.

Anders Onarheim

Analyst

Thank you, Lisa, and welcome to our third quarter results for the period ending 30 September 2021. As always, I am joined by Elaine, Niels and Pontus. Finally, the leadership team and I are on the road this quarter. We will be speaking to you from various corners of the world. Me back in Oslo, Elaine from Frankfurt, Niels and Pontus in Singapore. And we certainly look forward to meeting our investors and business and bank partners face-to-face very soon. While we see a gradual easing of COVID-related restrictions around the world, operations remain challenged. We also continue to insist on strict measures to protect crew and staff from COVID-19 also going forward. On the business and commercial front, the third quarter allowed us to again deliver decent returns and we remain optimistic for the rest of the year, and we think will provide another good year for returns from BW LPG. We turn to Slide 4. The shipping industry is really at a crossroads, and ship owners must plan the next steps carefully. Our decisions cannot only cater to short-term market investor demands but must also accommodate long-term developments in technology and regulations. At BW LPG, we strive to maximize the return on our assets. And one important way we are doing so is through focusing on technology. The pioneering LPG propulsion technology now powers 10 of every VLGCs. This is the world's largest fleet of lower emission VLGCs. And let me remind you, LPG has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions profile of any carbon-based fuel. With LPG, we benefit from a 17% decline in CO2 emissions versus MDO. And by retrofitting, we save over 1 million tons in CO2 emissions versus ordering new builds. With 10 vessels on water, 2 yards and over 10,000 hours in operation, we…

Niels Rigault

Analyst

Thank you, Anders. Good morning and afternoon to all of you. On Slide 8, we are sharing our view of the market. Currently, the market is robust, and we expect rates to continue to firm up. This is driven by strong fundamentals such as winter heating demand in Asia and increasing shipping and efficiencies, especially for the Panama Canal. Last on fixture we did for December lifting out of the U.S. with discharge into Asia, gives a run rate above $40,000 per day. We have fixed approximately 80% of our Q4 available fleet sales at an average rate of $32,000 per day on the discharge-to-discharge basis. As Anders said, we continue to be optimistic for next year. The current high oil and gas prices will support stronger production growth out of both U.S. and the Middle East. The shipping efficiencies will continue to support the tool demand offset vessel supply and add market volatility. Today, we have seen the Panama Canal waiting days increasing to more than 1 month for both lines. And we believe the consistence in the Panama Canal will become the new norm. As a result, we expect more traffic around case of good hope for the U.S. products to Asia. Turning to Slide 9, and talk about the seaborne LPG trade overview. Driven by high oil and gas prices, we continue to see a recovery in U.S. upstream activity. North American LPG exports have increased by 16% year-over-year. The strong exports despite the high LPG prices continue to illustrate the strength of the LPG import demand. Despite holding petrochemical margins, China LPG imports recovered strongly by 30%. China is set to drive the most meaningful LPG demand growth moving forward. There are 21 PDH development scheduled from '21 to '24 in China. Those plants will generate…

Pontus Berg

Analyst

Thank you very much, Niels. Turning to Slide 15, please. Anders has earlier mentioned that to date, we have actually 11 LPG-powered will less serving our customers with the lowest greenhouse gas emission profile in the sector and the water. BW Freyja is currently undergoing sea trial following her conversion. She is expected to be redelivered to commercial by the end of next week, and she will thus be #12. The 3 final vessels in the retrofitting program are planned for conversion during Q1 next year. Furthermore, we have 5 vessels due for normal drydocks, where the majority are scheduled in the second half of '22. In total, we estimate 290 days of planned off-hire due to scheduled dry docks in 2022. As we progress our retrofitting program, we also continue to invest resources to answer the question of what's next? Our engineering and innovation teams are busy working on the task. And in an uncertain future, our next-generation VLGCs must comply with long-term trends in emission regulations and yet make business sense in the short term. We remain convinced that LPG propulsion is part of the solution as we wait for technologies to progress and for alternative fuel supplies to mature and reach the scale needed to make economic sense. In the meantime, we are exploring hydrogen, batteries, rotor sales and ammonia as alternative fuel sources. We continue to optimize our assets and operations by looking at how we can improve hardware systems and designs. We are also exploring the feasibility of carbon capture onboard for future compliance requirements. As we explore what is next in terms of technology and design, we are also making good progress with digitalization of our fleet. Over 50% of our ships are now connected to Alpha-Ori SMARTship system, sharing real-time data with our…

Elaine Ong

Analyst

Thanks, Pontus. Let me just begin with a few comments on the table on this slide. Thus far this year, we have spent $89 million on fleet upgrades. This relates to the retrofitting of 9 dual-fuel propulsion engines as well as installations of ballast water treatment systems and SMARTship technology onto our vessels. We plan to spend a further $31 million on these fleet upgrades in 2022, of which the remaining 3 retrofits will be financed by new debt. The remaining capital expenditures relate to the regular scheduled maintenance on our vessels. Let me now provide a few highlights on our income statement here where we reported $29 million in net profit this quarter. Our TCE income was $105 million for the quarter. Similar to the previous quarter, we have a higher-than-usual plan off-hire with 4 of our vessels at the yard undergoing LPG propulsion retrofits. The TCE number includes a net positive impact of $1 million related to the effects of IFRS 15, which is an adjustment to the guided TCE that we provided earlier on a discharge-to-discharge basis. Vessel OpEx was $8,400 per day, which was explained earlier by Pontus. We concluded the sale of 3 vessels during the quarter, realizing a net gain of $8.7 million. The vessels were delivered to its new owners for further trading in July and August. We also exercised the purchase option for the Yuricosmos in August, reporting a $2.5 million gain which represents the difference between the lease asset and lease liability on our balance sheet. Page 17 provides a snapshot of our balance sheet and cash flow statement. On our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $127 million of cash and $1.8 billion in vessel book values. We also have $1.3 billion in shareholders' equity at the end of the quarter, which translates to $9.35 per share. Our operating cash breakeven for 2021 is at $22,200 per day. And at the end of September, our available liquidity is at $383 million, with our net leverage ratio at its lowest level in 7 years at 36%. Our net debt position at the end of the quarter was $765 million, and we will have no major balloon payments due in the next 5 years. Lastly, let me provide a quick update on our financing. We are in the documentation stage for the financing of the remaining LPG retrofits, which we expect to close by year-end. On this note, I would like to open up the call for questions. End of Q&A: