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StealthGas Inc. (GASS)

Q3 2010 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 16, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the StealthGas Inc. third quarter and nine months 2010 results conference call. For your information, today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Harry Vafias, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Harry Vafias

Management

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call and webcast to discuss the results for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2010. I am Harry Vafias, the CEO of StealthGas and will like to remind you that please I will be discussing forward-looking statements in today's conference call and presentation. Regarding the Safe Harbor language, I would like you to refer to slide number one of this presentation, as well to our press release in our third-quarter and nine months 2010 results. With me today is Andrew Simmons, our CFO, and if you need any further information, please contact Andrew or myself. Let’s begin from slide number two. We continue to operate a highly efficient and modern fleet primarily in the Handy Size LPG segment on secured employment contract with first-class charters that serve a very specific niche market. During the third quarter of 2010 we completed the purchase of one Aframax crude oil tanker which has been declared in the five-year bareboat charter. We were able to obtain this vessel at an attractive price, for value has already increased since the purchase, and we immediately (inaudible) secured long-term bareboat charter thereby providing favorable stable cash flow to the company going forward. We continue to look to sell some of the older and less productive LPG tonnage as we make way for the five brand new ships that are slated to join this fleet in February of next year. Moving them from the fleet, I believe will improve the overall performance of the company going forward. Already, the exports we have made this year and last have resulted in improvement on the average time chart equivalent rate achieved by the fleet compared to the third quarter in first nine months of last year. These…

Andrew Simmons

Management

Thank you, Harry and good morning everybody. We now turn to slide number five for the financial highlights for the third quarter of the first nine months of 2010. At an average of 37.7 vessels are under operations in the third quarter of 2010, realized net income of $1 million and voyage revenues of $26.7 million and produced EBITDA of $9.7 million. The third quarter of 2010 reported a loss of $2.6 million on interest rates SWAP and currency hedging arrangements which included an unrealized non-cash loss of $1 million on currency hedging and interest rate swap arrangements, and a realized cash loss of approximately $1.6 million on interest rates swap arrangements, plus a non-cash 1.1 million gain on the valuation of foreign currency deposits and $40,000 non-cash provision for a restricted stock deferred stock-based compensation. Excluding these non-cash items, our net income was $900,000 or $0.4 per share calculated on $21.1 million average shares outstanding. Our net debt to capitalization stood at 45.7% at the end of Q3 2010. We continue to believe that maintaining our leverage at moderate levels is important. Following the acquisition of the Spike in July as currently structured, no further debt will be incurred by the company until early 2011 when delivery of the five new LPG vessels commences. We now – let’s turn to slide number six. This slide provides you with an overview of the development of our income statement for five consecutive quarters. In comparing our results from the third quarter of 2009 where we had an average of 42.9 vessels in our fleet to the third quarter of 2010, where we have an average of 37.7 vessels in the fleet. Revenues decreased by 6%, EBITDA decreased by 41.2% and our EPS excluding non-cash items, was $0.4 per share compared to…

Harry Vafias

Management

Let’s move to slide number 12. This slide illustrates the volatile freight markets over the past eight years for the medium-sized and the large-sized gas ships in comparison with midsized and smaller semi-ref and fully pressurized ships. Our core sectors 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 is clear from this data that our type of ships, which form the core of our business and with our foreign move from dry, wet and container up-markets have over the past eight years not experienced the significant fluctuations in 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 through our reported operational results for the first nine months of 2010. That point is further emphasized by slide 15, which shows the one-year time charter equivalent will at least (inaudible) the year 2000, between the drybulk crude tankers and 5000 cbm fully pressurized LPG ships, which are the typical majority of our fleet. As you can see, based on the mean average for these sectors over this quite extended period, the level of volatility is far higher in the dry and wet spaces in our core sector. There is a continued expectation that the supply of LPG product will increase during 2011 and beyond. Plus, demand is expected to continue to be steady, particularly in the Far Eastern developing world. Therefore, we continue to believe that the outlook for our core market is encouraging and we will continue with the contracted acquisition during ‘11 and '12 of five brand-new gas ships, while, in the meantime, as we have…

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: Thank you, operator. Good morning, gentlemen.

Harry Vafias

Management

Hello, Natasha. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Hi. Harry, I know you touched on this during the call but you have been pretty busy selling some of your small older vessels, and when you look at your fleet, are there more ships you would consider selling or do you think you sold everything that you would like to use it for the time being?

Harry Vafias

Management

We would like to sell within the next 12 months our five ships, if we could. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay. And are those also the smallest and older ships, so are you looking at selling some near ones to little equity at all?

Harry Vafias

Management

We would look at the older vessels obviously because these are the most difficult to trade in the spot market and also difficult of course to put in long-term charter and obviously some of it comes along and give us a very good price for the modern vessel, we will discuss but obviously we prefer the older vessels. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay. Great. And it sounds of, sort of the strategy going forward, I mean, now you have new vessels coming in but do you find asset values become attractive and sort of having attention to further expand the fleet or are you going to focus now on cash flow generation and deleveraging?

Harry Vafias

Management

I have seen the latter. We don’t think the gases prices have significantly fallen as you might have seen. We have increased the fleet considerably, I think, nearly five times from the IPO as you know well. We have added some very, very special bunkers and the new ones as you know again. So the answer is no. Of course, it is a very good opportunity either on the gas side or the (inaudible) side we look at it. But when you say that the 60% discount NAV, it’s better to delever or buy stock. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay. And that’s going to leave me, my question is with this, sort of, ease of cash, you suspended the dividend and I’m just sort of turn the way up whether or not you would consider increasing your share repurchase program over any desired (inaudible) dividend, will that be fair to say?

Harry Vafias

Management

It would be fair to buy back stocks since it is at such a big discount but as we said before, we will discuss the following with the board when the financing of the five new buildings is in place. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Okay. And then just one last question, are your new building on track to be delivered on time?

Harry Vafias

Management

Probably earlier. Natasha Boyden – Cantor Fitzgerald: Probably earlier. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you very much.

Harry Vafias

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we have a question now from David Wheeler [ph] from Mantaro. Please go ahead. David Wheeler – Mantaro: Hi. Just a quick question on how much you expect to bid – that last you bid on the new buildings?

Andrew Simmons

Management

I think it was around $90 million at the end of the previous quarter.

Harry Vafias

Management

No. We’ve made – we are just in the process of making another payment, which equates to about $6 million that takes us through the rest of this year. David Wheeler – Mantaro: Yeah.

Harry Vafias

Management

And then, we have the small payment to make in early part of next year, but then the expectation is that the balance we made up from financing and in fact… David Wheeler – Mantaro: Okay. Just was wondering if you paid any in, during the previous quarter, during the Q3?

Harry Vafias

Management

Yeah. We did pay some in Q3, yes. David Wheeler – Mantaro: Approximately, how much was that?

Harry Vafias

Management

That was approximately $4 million. David Wheeler – Mantaro: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take our next question from Bill Frazier from Greenhill Capital. Please go ahead. Bill Frazier – Greenhill Capital: Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Harry Vafias

Management

Hello. Bill Frazier – Greenhill Capital: Regarding the number of vessels on spot, you’re desired to have some kind of spot exposure or would you like to have more longer term exposure just need the ways to improve?

Harry Vafias

Management

The latter, we would prefer to have more ships on period with guaranteed inflow of earning. Bill Frazier – Greenhill Capital: And are you seeing those opportunities in the market or is it more of a challenging market right now to get those period deals?

Harry Vafias

Management

I think our last announcement proves that is not very difficult, we announced 12 new below [ph] charges in the last one month, which is an amazing, I think successful company, close to 30% or 40% of the fleet. Of course, it’s much more difficult for the older ships and that’s why we are happy that, thank god we don’t have many old ships and the majorities are modern and therefore we can fix the modern ones may be leave the older ones trading spot. Bill Frazier – Greenhill Capital: Okay. Thank you very much.

Harry Vafias

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Gentlemen, we have another question from Jay Weinstein from Oak Forest Investment Management. Please go ahead. Jay Weinstein – Oak Forest Investment Management: Good morning, guys. How are you?

Andrew Simmons

Management

Good morning. Fine. How are you? Jay Weinstein – Oak Forest Investment Management: Fine. Thank you. Just a quick question about the share repurchases program. I know you are waiting for the financing to be finalized but it’s has the repurchase program been active over the last couple of months or you’ve been working on that or is it been sort of on hold like, I know you bought earlier in the year, I didn’t know obviously curious that what’s been in the last couple of months.

Harry Vafias

Management

I think we are still buying shares around September and we are now frozen it until the financing is in place which we hope everything will be in place before Christmas. Jay Weinstein – Oak Forest Investment Management: Oh! Great. Okay. So that’s kind of what I thought. I just wanted to clarify. Thank you.

Harry Vafias

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Gentlemen, we currently do not have any questions in the queue.

Harry Vafias

Management

Okay. We’d like to thank everyone for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest and trusting our company. We look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for the fourth quarter and 12 months 2010 results in February next year. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

That will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.