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Danaos Corporation (DAC)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 28, 2015

$119.92

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day. And welcome to the Danaos Corporation Conference Call to discuss the Financial Results for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2015. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. Hosting the call today is Dr. John Coustas, Chief Executive Officer of Danaos Corporation; and Mr. Evangelos Chatzis, Chief Financial Officer of Danaos Corporation. Dr. Coustas and Mr. Chatzis will be making some introductory comments and then we will open the call to question-and-answer session. Please go ahead, sir.

Evangelos Chatzis

Chief Financial Officer

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I quickly want to remind everyone that management’s remarks this morning may contain certain forward-looking statements and that actual results could differ materially from those projected today. These forward-looking statements speak and are made as of today and we undertake no obligation to update them. Factors that might affect future results are discussed in our filings with the SEC and we encourage you to review this detailed Safe Harbor and Risk Factors disclosures. Please also note that where we feel appropriate, we will continue to refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income to evaluate our business. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and accompanying materials. Now, let me turn the call over to Dr. Coustas, who will provide a broad overview of the quarter.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Evangelos. Good morning. And thanks for joining today’s call to discuss our results for the first quarter 2015. Danaos is reporting an another solid quarter with adjusted net income of $30.6 million or $0.28 per share, more than quadrupling the adjusted net income of $7 million or $0.06 a share that has been reported first quarter of 2014. The company’s profitability improved between the two quarters through $10 million improvement in net financing costs, together with $4.5 million improvement in operating costs and a $3.1 million increase in operating revenues. The trend of reduced financing costs and as a consequence increased the earnings will continue through 2015, as we continue to reduce debt and benefit from the expiration of expensive interest rate swaps. The container charter market, we saw a significant increase in Panamax rates during the first quarter of 2015, due to increase demand resulting from port congestion in the U.S. West Coast and continued shrinkage of the world Panamax fleet. The delay in the opening of the new Panama Canal will further help to absorb Panamax tonnage in shorter, while delays caused by port congestion in the U.S. West Coast, resulted in increase demand in the Asia to U.S. East Coast all weather service. These factors have positively affected TEU mile demand in the industry. We continue to maintain our strong 97% charter coverage in terms of operating revenues, which insulates us for market volatility. Additionally, our $5,622 a day operating costs for the first quarter clearly positions us as one of the most efficient operators in the industry. We will continue our effort to deliver our balance sheet, manage our fleet efficiently and capitalize in the resilience of our business model towards creating value for our shareholders. With that, I will hand the call over back to Evangelos who will take you through the financials for the quarter. Evangelos?

Evangelos Chatzis

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, and good morning again, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I will briefly review the results for the quarter and then give the participants the opportunity to ask questions. During the first quarter, we had an average of 56 container ships compared to 58.6 container ships during the first quarter of 2014. Our adjusted net income was $30.6 million or $0.28 per share for the quarter, higher by $23.6 million or 337% when compared to the $7 million or $0.06 per share of adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2014. This improvement is attributed to $16 million improvement in financing costs together with a $4.5 million improvement in operating cost and $3.1 million increase in operating revenues between the two periods. Our financing costs will continue to improve in the coming quarters as we continue to de-lever our balance sheet and expensive interest rate swaps continue to expire. To put this into perspective, our adjusted net income currently at $30.6 million would have been $50.9 million or $0.46 per share instead of $0.28 if the current interest rate swaps were not in place. These swaps have already started to expire and will continue to expire through the remainder of the year. As a result, we expect the consistent improvement in financing costs over the next quarters, given the market expectations for low interest rates to persist. We have average charter duration of 7.8 years well exceeding the one year less on the swaps. We believe that we will be able to take advantage of the anticipated low LIBOR environment on the back of solid contracted income generation. Operating revenues increased by 2.3% or $3.1 million to $138.6 million in the current quarter compared to $135.5 million in the first quarter of 2014. This is attributed…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Gregory Lewis from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Thank you and good afternoon and congratulations on a good quarter.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Greg.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

John, in your prepared remarks you focused a little bit more on the port strikes on the West Coast and the delays to the Panama Canal is sort of main drivers of the pickup in charter rates. Beyond these two events, which are more transient in nature, are you seeing signs of actual real pickup in TEU demand without those two events?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Well, there is demand and actually what is happening is that as most of the new tonnage is really large Post-Panamaxes then the -- I mean, these ships cannot be used, let’s say very efficiently. So the actual, let’s say -- if I can say efficient capacity that is put into market is lower than the nominal one. So this means that also cascading is a bit becoming, let’s say kind of more difficult in this process. And we see also demand from more regional trades, quite a piece of the intra-Asia, for Africa and all this, let’s say is an important factor. The other thing which I said is that exactly because of the strike in the U.S., then people are becoming almost much more skeptical about using U.S. West Coast and the land bridge, and they shift, let’s say, cargo from the West Coast to all other services either through Panama or water via Suez. So this is a definite increase in demand in, let’s say, the mile demand. And that is a more permanent structural effect that we see happening in the market.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Yes. It seemed like that was only a matter of time before that was going to happen. And then just as we think about your existing -- you have a handful of vessels that roll off charter this year. It almost sounds like those are while historically they might have been or not historically -- over the last couple years they might have been more challenging vessels to reach charter simply because they are more on the sub Panamax. Just given what’s going on in the market, it seems like there will be opportunities. Do you believe to recharter these vessels this year?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we definitely believe that all the vessels that are rolling out this year will be rechartered at higher rates. It will be fair of course how much higher from segment to segment.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

But definitely we see that market being definitely firming. I don’t believe that we are going to see some kind of rates, let’s say, the Pamamaxes up on $25,000 or $30,000 a day. But I think at the level they are now, maybe slightly above, it’s only say to stabilize for the time being.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. And then just one final for me. And I am not sure how much you can comment about this. But it’s our understand that there is still a lot of opportunities whether it’s from existing owners that are looking to sell tonnage or even at this point banks that are controlling some of this tonnage and it’s primarily the KG market. From where you see -- when you look at these opportunities, is this something that Danaos maybe can participate in or is it just more of a function of, hey, we just need to really focus on our balance sheet before we can potentially partake in some of these transactions that are out there in the market?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

We definitely have some kind of higher power and we are actively looking onto interesting, let’s say, secondhand deals. And if we are confidently in touch, we are expecting vessels. So if there is something that we believe that makes sense like for example the last deal with the MOL vessels that we did, we are there to do something.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

You are open for business.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. We are definitely open for business, it does that -- we are not there to do kind of financing type deals, deals that you take ships from the banker with very high leverage, very high percentage at considerably higher price than the market because with these deals you may well make some money in the future, but I don’t believe that. I mean, these deals make sense if you believe that there is a significant kind of asset play and I don’t believe really as what we have a significant asset play let’s say, game here mainly because all kind of asset values and not just in containers but in all sectors are capped by the very big shipyard surplus capacity.

Gregory Lewis

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much for the time.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Omar Nokta from Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Hi there. Good afternoon, guys.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Omar.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Hi. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. One, you obviously spent a lot of time discussing the swaps and those have been obviously going in your favor now. Can you give a sense of during the first quarter what was the average interest rate that you had on the debt that was not swapped?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

The average margin on our debt for Q1 was 200 basis points over LIBOR. And we have a small chunk of debt, which is now down to whatever $40 million, $50 million, which bears an 8% fixed interest rate, has been repaid. And together with the swaps because we are swapped out of LIBOR for certain part, the all in cost is the 200 basis points I mentioned plus another around 2.7%. so for Q1, the all in cost was 4.7% and that will go down to 200 basis points plus LIBOR when the swaps expire.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Got it. Thank you.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

By year end. Yeah.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

And then just sort of thinking about the market and we’ve obviously -- and you’ve been discussing at rates have been on the rise for the mid-size tonnage. Nothing significant, but at least some light that been on the tunnel. Is this sort of continuing and asset value start to gain some traction, how do you see that playing into your loan agreements currently?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Our loan agreements are not affected by the movement in charter free asset values. If that is a question, all of our covenants and asset cover ratios have been harmonized across the board to include the value of the charters. And if anything as asset values continue to improve, these metrics will of course improve, but this will not trigger something specific.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay. Yes. Thanks for that. And then just finally, I just wanted to ask. I know on the last call, you’d mentioned the two NOLs vessels acquired last year. We expected to deploy them on maybe six month charter and churn up looking at your fleet schedule they’re on contract till year end. Are you able to give a rate on -- or what the rate was on those ships?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Unfortunately this is not publicly disclosable due to confidentiality agreements, but I can’t -- what I can tell you is that it’s in the high teens.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Clarkson Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay. That helps. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Charles Rupinski from Global Hunter. Please go ahead.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Global Hunter. Please go ahead

Good afternoon, and congratulations on a good quarter.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks Charles.

Evangelos Chatzis

Chief Financial Officer

Hi Charles.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Global Hunter. Please go ahead

Hi. Just most of my questions have been answered but just look to maybe get some feel from you on to the extent that you are able to do selective acquisitions going forward. What type of sort of size would be the sweet spot in terms of what's most interesting that’s out there? And also potentially what kind of charter length you think might be the -- where you are looking to go on those, just whatever color you have?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Well, we don't really have -- we are looking at let's say every ship on its kind of old marriage. In general, we prefer let’s say the post Panamax to the Panamax segment. But of course, if there is a fantastic opportunity also in the Panamax segment we will have a look. In terms of charter, normally I mean we don't want to buy ships with charter attach that deflate the asset price. We are trying really to buy ships at market price and then charter them out at, let’s say periods that really give a good return in the market I mean between let’s say I don’t a year two or something. But it has more to do with market kind of appetite.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Global Hunter. Please go ahead

Well, great. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our next question comes from Mark Suarez from Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead sir.

Mark Suarez

Analyst · Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead sir

Hi. Good morning gentlemen.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Hi Mark.

Mark Suarez

Analyst · Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead sir

Just looking at your feet right now I'm considering some of the [H][ph] profile with some of your vessels. How should we think about maybe some potential additional asset sales over the next 12 to 18 months? Is there a possibility here?

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

I don’t really see -- we don’t really have -- we only have one ship which was built in ‘94 which in any case its pretty good ship and very good. Actually although it’s a 4700 TEU vessel. It’s a Post-Panamax with very good capacity, pretty comparable to moderate vessels. And it earns a decent charter rate at this moment. So, I don’t really see any kind of -- really, any sales of tonnage that cannot be operated. I think we are done with this scrapping of all kind of older ships.

Mark Suarez

Analyst · Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead sir

Got you. Then maybe just turning to your balance sheet for a second here, I believe you are expecting to pay down north of $220 million in 2015 in terms of debt. I’m wondering if you have a sort of -- a target for 2016, and then how should we think about your interest expense run rate as we head into over the next 12 to 18 months, if you will?

Evangelos Chatzis

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. As you rightly said, our anticipation is that we’ll pay down debt by $225 million approximately this year through our financial model. Our projection is that next year we’ll be able to reduce debt by more than $280 million. And all that you can also find guidance on that in our corporate presentation that is posted on our website, publicly available.

Mark Suarez

Analyst · Euro Pacific Capital. Please go ahead sir

Got you. That’s all I have for now. Thanks, guys.

Evangelos Chatzis

Chief Financial Officer

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

It appears we have no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Dr. Coustas for any further comments or closing remarks.

Dr. John Coustas

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks all for joining the conference call and your continued interest in our story. We look forward to hosting you on our next earning calls. Have a nice day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. We would like to thank everyone for their participation. Have a wonderful afternoon.