Earnings Labs

StealthGas Inc. (GASS)

Q2 2010 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 23, 2010

$9.57

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the StealthGas Inc. second quarter and first six months 2010 financial results conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host today, Mr. Harry Vafias, president and chief executive officer. Please go ahead sir.

Harry Vafias

Management

Thank you and good morning everyone. Welcome to our conference call and web cast to discuss the results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2010. I'm Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas, and I would like to remind you please that we'll be discussing forward-looking statements in today's conference call and presentation. Regarding the Safe Harbor language, I would like to refer you to slide number one of this presentation, as well as to our press release on our second quarter and six months 2010 results. With me today is Andrew Simmons, our CFO. If you need any further info on the conference call or the presentation, please contact Andrew or myself. Slide number two. Our primary objective continues to run a highly efficient and modern fleet on secure employment contracts with first class charters that serve a very specific niche market. Our core LPG fleet has no correlation whatsoever to most other shipping sectors, so we continue to be both disappointed and surprised that our stock seems to continue to trade in tandem with the share movements of companies whose vessels trade in sectors completely unrelated to ours. During the second quarter of 2010, we completed the sale of the final three of the five older gas carriers in our fleet that we have contracted to sell by May of this year. I am pleased to confirm that the majority of these sales were concluded at prices very close to the vessels' book values. These vessels have made our fleet more efficient, thus as several of these vessels may have operated for this year at least, in what continues to be a relatively soft spot market, by moving them from the fleet I believe it will improve the overall performance of the company. And as we…

Harry Vafias

Management

Slide number 12. This slide illustrates the volatile freight markets over the past eight years for the medium size and large size gas carriers. In comparison, midsize and smaller semi-ref and fully pressurized vessels, our core sector, have experienced a much lower volatility and until recently, steady growth in freight earnings from mid '05 onwards and a mild recovery in one year charter rates in the sector is evident. It's clear from this data that the type of ships which form the core of our business and that are far removed from dry, wet or the container markets have, over the past eight years, not experienced the wild fluctuations and rates that these average shipping sectors have seen and we are hopeful that this relatively nonvolatile trading pattern will continue as I believe we proved during a challenging 2009, and so I report our results for the first half of 2010 that we are discussing today. This point is further emphasized by [inaudible] year 2000 between the dry bulk crew tankers and the 3,500 cbm fully pressurized gas carriers and 3,200 semi-refs LGP vessels, which are typical of the majority of our fleet. As you can see, based on the mean average for these sectors, over the quite extended period, the level of volatility is far higher in the dry and wet spaces in our core segment. It is the continued expectation that the supply of product will increase during 2011 and beyond, plus the [unintelligible] expectations continue to be steady, particularly in the Far East and the developing world. Therefore, we continue to believe that the outlook of our core market is encouraging. We will continue with the contracted acquisition during 2011 and 2012, or five brand new gas carriers will in the meantime which have already commenced, to…

Operator

Operator

Thank you gentlemen. [Operator instructions.] And we'll take our first question from Natasha Boyden from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Harry, you mentioned in the release, and during your prepared comments, that you believe the fundamentals in the LPG sector are improving and getting better. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that's the case and what are you actually seeing on the demand side that makes you more optimistic? Or is it more of a supply equation?

Harry Vafias

Management

At the moment we are not seeing much. We are seeing a bit more interest on the period side for 2011, which is a very positive sign. Charters and traders and national gas companies are getting interested to get their hands on modern vessels for next year, so something must be going on. Secondly, as you have seen on the graph, there is a negative fleet growth for next year, which I guess is very good news, especially for us, that we have a modern fleet. And thirdly, it all depends on in the winter, again, if it's going to be a cold winter or not, so I guess we'll have to see what will happen from, let's say, October onwards.

Natasha Boyden

Analyst

Okay, great. And then just moving to your new builds. Are all those on track to be delivered on time? Do you foresee any potential delay deliveries at all, or even a [unintelligible] from that?

Harry Vafias

Management

As you know very well, Japanese shipyards never delay by even one day.

Natasha Boyden

Analyst

Okay, all right. So they're not going to be early, they're not going to be late, they're just going to be exactly as you forecast?

Harry Vafias

Management

Unless there is, you know, damage or something that could damage the ships. I think they will be right on time.

Natasha Boyden

Analyst

Okay, and maybe Andrew you can help with this. What is the remaining cap ex requirements for '10 and '11 for those ships. Do you have all the financing in place for them? ndrew Simmons: We've just begun negotiating with a large number of banks in regard to the potential financing of these ships and we're very pleased to have seen the level of interest that we've had from the banks. So we'll be finalizing that over the next three to four weeks. In terms of the cap ex that's required, as we've discussed a number of times before, we're only looking for post-delivery finance on these ships. We have sufficient cash to meet the stage payments that are required on those ships as they come to delivery, four in 2011 and then the last one in May of 2012.

Natasha Boyden

Analyst

Okay, all right, great. That's very helpful. Lastly, just really want to focus on how you gave us some pretty good information on your strategies so far, but going forward, LPG asset values - where are they in terms of your view? Are they attractive or not? Are they still not - still haven't come down to a level where - or there isn't enough availability for you to look at - or would you look at other sectors and continue to look [unintelligible] product.

Harry Vafias

Management

When you trade at the 60% to NAV then the best strategy is to sell ships and buy stock.

Natasha Boyden

Analyst

Okay, all right. Thanks very much. And then how many of - do you have any older ships left that you'd still want to sell, or have you pretty much finished there?

Harry Vafias

Management

We have another three or four, it all depends on what price we might fetch. But if we fetch a reasonable price we would sell them, yes.

Operator

Operator

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions.] And we now have a question from Jeff Geygan from Milwaukee Private Wealth Management. Please go ahead sir.

Jeff Geygan - Milwaukee Private Wealth Management

Analyst

Given your share buyback program in place and the apparent lack of any recent purchasing, say within the last 60 days, is there the possibility that you're preserving cash right now for something other than the new build program, which may be opportunistically looking for additional capacity?

Harry Vafias

Management

You hit it right in the spot. You are 100% correct. We wait to finalize the financing arrangements for the five year buildings depending on what percentage we're going to get from the banks, then we will either restart purchasing shares or we're going to see there's something better to do with the money. I think that if nothing changes in the marketplace, we will continue buying back stock.

Jeff Geygan

Analyst

Great. And what kind of time frame should we be thinking about in terms of your either going to the market to purchase more stock or potentially announcing further fleet acquisitions?

Harry Vafias

Management

Maximum 60 days.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions.] And we have a question from Jason Selch from Providence Capital. Please go ahead.

Jason Selch - Providence Capital

Analyst

Yes, I was just wondering on the acquisition of the tanker that was announced in June, how much equity did you have to contribute into that ship and what's the expected internal rate of return of that investment?

Harry Vafias

Management

One minute, because we're calculating on the spot. One sec. About $11 million in cash we put.

Jason Selch

Analyst

Okay, and what kind of return do you expect to get on that?

Harry Vafias

Management

I think it's between 8% and 10% but obviously since it's a new building it has a very long life. It all depends on what will happen in the end of the current bareboat charter, meaning if the market is good, obviously you can get a much higher rate and obviously return will go up and of course if the market is bad for Alphamax tankers in 2015 the opposite. So it's a bit of a guess.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take a question from Mr. Sean Milligan from Johnson & Rice. Please go ahead. Sean Milligan - Johnson & Rice: I know earlier you mentioned that you were seeing a pickup in 2011 period demand, but could you talk a little bit about your expectations for spot demand over sort of the second half of 2010?

Harry Vafias

Management

As I told you, it all depends on the winter time, and there's always a pickup in the autumn and the winter. Sometimes it's 5%, sometimes it's 15% on the spot side. We don't have any clues yet, but as I told you the positive thing is that since more and more charters are coming and asking for ships for 2011 then that probably means that the spot market for 2011 will definitely be stronger than it has been in the last 12 months.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions.] Gentlemen, we currently have no questions on the queue.