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Navios Maritime Partners L.P. (NMM)

Q1 2025 Earnings Call· Wed, May 7, 2025

$72.15

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for joining us for Navios Maritime Partners First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With us today from the Company are Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Frangou; Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Stratos Desypris; Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Eri Tsironi; Chief Trading Officer, Mr. Vincent Vandewalle. As a reminder, this conference call is being webcast. To access the webcast, please go to the Investors section of Navios Partners website at www.navios-mlp.com. You will see the webcasting link in the middle of the page and a copy of the presentation referenced in today's earnings conference call will also be found there. Now I will review the Safe Harbor Statement. This conference call could contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 about Navios Partners. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of Navios Partners management and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Such risks are more fully discussed in Navios Partners' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information set forth herein should be understood in light of such risks. Navios Partners does not assume any obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. The agenda for today's call is as follows: First, Ms. Frangou will offer opening remarks. Next, Mr. Desypris will give an overview of Navios Partners' segment data. Next, Ms. Tsironi will give an overview on Navios Partners' financial results, then Mr. Vandewalle, will provide an industry overview. And lastly, we'll open the call to take questions. Now I turn the call over to Navios Partners' Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Frangou. Angeliki?

Angeliki Frangou

Management

Good morning, and thank you all for joining us on today's call. I am pleased with the results for the first quarter of 2025, in which we reported revenue of $304.1 million and EBITDA of $147.6 million and net income of $41.7 million. Earnings per common unit were $1.38 for the quarter. The economic environment over the past month has been particularly uncertain, with the global expectations being driven by the unprecedented U.S. tariff proclamation, followed by revisions, pauses, and exceptions. In response, sentiment turned bearish, and the U.S. and other financial markets were extraordinary volatile, recovering on last week in the U.S. to the pre-tariff announcement levels. I would add that the tariff announcements conceal an underlying worry due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. I remarked last quarter that we are waiting for more information as the U.S. administration did not provide a concrete tariff roadmap. In general, this continues to be the case as the U.S. administration tactically maneuvers towards a tariff regime furthering its policy aspirations relating to national security and fiscal austerity. However, a faint outline is starting to emerge. While the future maybe challenging, it appears the potential impact on maritime transportation may not be as severe as we initially feared. And I note that during this recent period of uncertainty, the spot rate market has generally been healthy, although and even between the maritime sectors. Preparing for difficult periods is part of our job requirements. In prior periods when sentiment allowed, we enter into long-term charter arrangements. We currently have a contract backlog of $3.4 billion. In addition, because of this and other measures, our contracted revenue is $12.5 million larger than our total cash expenses for the remaining nine months of 2025. We are also actively managing our interest…

Stratos Desypris

Management

Thank you, Angeliki, and good morning all. Please turn to Slide 10, which details our operating free cash flow potential for the remaining nine months of 2025. We fixed 66% of our available days at a net average rate of $25,703 per day. Contracted revenue exceeds our total cash expense by about $12.5 million, and we have 14,117 remaining open/index linked days that should provide substantial additional cash flow. So that you can perform your own sensitivity analysis. On the right side of the slide, we provide our 41,901 available days per vessel type. Please turn to Slide 11. We are constantly renewing our fleet in order to maintain a young profile. We reduced our carbon footprint by modernizing our fleet, benefiting from newer technologies and advanced environmentally friendly features. In 2025, we took delivery of four vessels, two LR2 aframax vessels which has been chartered out for five years at an average of $26,349 net per day, and two 7,700 TEU LNG dual fuel containerships that have been chartered-out for 12 years at an average rate of $41,753 net per day. Following these deliveries, we have 21 additional newbuilding vessels delivering to our fleet through 2028, representing $1.4 billion of investment. In containerships, we have four vessels to be delivered with a total acquisition price of about $0.4 billion. We have mitigated this risk with long-term credit worth of charters expected to generate about $0.3 billion in revenue over a five-year average charter duration. In tankers, we have 17 vessels to be delivered for a total price of approximately $1 billion. We chartered-out 15 of these vessels for an average period of five years, expected to generate aggregate contracted revenue of about $0.6 billion. We have also been opportunistically replacing older vessels. In 2025, we sold three vessels with an average age of 19.1 years for about $35 million. Moving to Slide 12. We have a strong backlog of contracted revenue that we build over the previous years that create visibility in an uncertain environment. Our total contracted revenue amounts to $3.4 billion. $1.4 billion relates to our tanker fleet, $0.2 billion relates to our dry bulk fleet and $1.8 billion relates to our containerships. Charters are extending through 2037 with a diverse group of quality counterparties. I'll now pass the call to Eri Tsironi, our CFO who will take you through the financial highlights. Eri?

Erifili Tsironi

Management

Thank you, Stratos, and good morning all. I will briefly review our unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025. The financial information is included in the press release and is summarized in a slide presentation available on the company's website. Moving to the earnings highlights on Slide 13. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2025 decreased to 4.6% to $304 million compared to $319 million for the same period in 2024 due to lower fleet time charter equivalent rate, available days and revenue from freight voyages. Our fleet time charter equivalent rate for the first quarter of 2025 decreased by 1.1% to 21,271 per day and our available days decreased by 0.6% to 13,456 days compared to Q1 2024. In terms of sector performance, the TCE rate for our container fleet increased by 2.2% to 30,501 per day. In contracts, the TCE rate for our dry bulk and tanker fleet was 10.5% and 7.1% lower respectively and 12,722 per day for dry bulk and 26,082 per day for tanker vessels. EBITDA was adjusted as explained in the slide footnote. Excluding these amounts, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 2025 decreased by $11 million to $154 million compared to Q1 2024. The decrease is driven primarily by $14 million revenue and $7 million increase in vessel operating expenses, mainly due to 4.8% increase in our OpEx days, and the change in the composition of our fleet partially mitigated by $12 million decrease in time charter and voyage expenses due to less freight voyages. Adjusted net income for Q1 2025 was $48 million compared to $71 million in Q1 2024. Adjusted net income decreased by $24 million, mainly due to an $11 million decrease in adjusted EBITDA and $9 million increase in depreciation and amortization and $4 million increase…

Vincent Vandewalle

Management

Thank you, Eri. Please turn to Slide 17. Visibility into the global trade has been clouded by many tariff announcements. It appears that 3.7% of the global trade will be subject to declared tariffs. Announced tariffs are not expected to have a significant effect on tankers and dry bulk trades a part of cranes. The heaviest tariff impacts will be on containers, cars and LPG. We will continue to monitor how further developments affect global trading. Please turn to Slide 18. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports rose to 145% on a wide range of goods as of early April. China retaliated with 125% tariffs. The U.S. also imposed tariffs of 10% to 50% on most other countries. On April 9, the U.S. paused all tariffs for 90 days, except for the tariffs on China. The U.S. is currently negotiating tariffs on a country-by-country basis. On April 17, USTR released a revised Section 301 fee proposal targeting Chinese vessel operators and Chinese-built ships with extra port fees when calling U.S. ports. These fees are to take effect from October 2025. Please turn to Slide 19 for a review of the current trade disruptions. The Red Sea entrance leading to the Suez Canal is a strategic maritime transit point. It continues to operate at restricted transit levels. Through the end of April, transit through the Suez Canal were lower than the 2024 average. Red Sea disruptions have caused rerouting of ships via the Cape of Good Hope, raising costs and distances last year. Should the situation remain unchanged during the rest of 2025, we believe that total ton TEU miles are projected to experience modest improvements across all sectors. Before we move to the analysis per sector, please be reminded that the analysis that follows maybe materially different depending on the final…

Angeliki Frangou

Management

Thank you, Vincent. This completes our formal presentation, and we open the call to questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Omar Nokta with Jefferies.

Omar Nokta

Analyst

Thank you. Hi, Angeliki. Hi everyone, and good afternoon. Thank you for the update. Clearly, a lot of fast-moving, very quick changing dynamics in the geo macro. And clearly, you've done a good job, obviously navigating through this. And I think on Slide 9, you highlight the securing the liquidity and having the revenue stability and basically optimizing the balance sheet as much as you can in this environment has been, first and foremost, what you've been focusing on. I guess as we think about how things are from here, it seems that share repurchases have somewhat accelerated this year relative to the pace that we saw in 2024. Just wondering, as you kind of think about how things are situated today, any change in how you approach capital allocation, whether the buyback pace changes or fleet renewals that takes a back seat? Do you focus on cash preservation? Any kind of changes or shifts you would say in this environment for Navios?

Angeliki Frangou

Management

Thank you, Omar, and good morning to you. To be honest, there is one big thing, patience, patience, patience. I mean we are living in an incredible uncertainty. I mean, on top of two wars that were already complicated, Ukraine and Russian war and the Middle East war, we are basically having U.S. tariffs that the U.S. administration is looking really to reshape trade on volume and origination of goods. So this is a very big thing because basically, we are changing the global trading pattern. To what extent, how this is something we will have to see. And to be honest, during these very uncertain times, what we did before is the most important thing. It's more important than what we are doing today. And before this period, what we did, as you very well said in Page 9, we built liquidity, $340 million in our balance sheet. We built $3.4 billion of contracted revenue, giving us flexibility on the medium – also with that, we have short-term flexibility. Our operating cash flow, we have $12.5 million excess of contracted revenue this year on the nine months over our total cash expenses on the 2025 on the ninth month. This gives you flexibility of thinking. On top, you focus on your balance sheet. You focus on deleveraging. We provided a 22% deleveraging from the end of 2022 to today. We renew our fleet and modernize our fleet. And also, as you can see today, we're also concentrating on mitigating interest rate risk. We have 30% of our debt fixed. Because I think in this environment, you are better off to be more conservative, and we are fixed at an average rate of 5.5%. Now on top of all this, we look on how we return capital to our – how we can return to our shareholders, to our unitholders. And we have a program, a dividend program and a buyback. And we are here looking on that as well as we are looking on what the new environment will develop. This is a situation that we need to almost every day concentrate and see what is changing. Look at the news of last night, you wrote a piece about the hoodies. What was the day before? We see that today, tomorrow, there are going to be negotiations between the U.S. and China. There was a stimulus in China. In this kind of environment, you need to be focused on the important thing and keep all the flexibility there.

Omar Nokta

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Angeliki. That makes a lot of sense, focus on what you can control. I guess maybe just in that context, you were obviously very – not this year, but in prior years, you have been very acquisitive, especially on newbuildings where there are opportunities to enter into long-term charters to derisk those investments. And you did so in the fleet renewal process by selling the older ships. How are you thinking about that right now? Are there still opportunities given the noise in the market to continue to acquire assets, whether they're newbuildings or in the open market that come with contracts? Or has that quieted down in this market?

Angeliki Frangou

Management

Listen, the big long-term charter deals where you will have a newbuilding with a charter is not at this point. There's a lot of uncertainty, so you don't see it. But today, you may see new deals developing. United States is repositioning, and we have to be very aware of that. And that will mean different trading patterns that will have to be serviced by different vessels with particular specification. So we are very open to this. You need to follow exactly how it is developing. I mean United States will have needs that will have to be secured by a fleet that they will like to have visibility about. I don't think that today, we can make – you can say one way or the other. You need to be very flexible and see how you position. The good thing is that we are basically sold a lot of the older vessels. This is something that makes us feel comfortable having a modernized fleet. And we have a lot of ability to wait and see how this is developing. We don't have to rush into one direction or the other.

Omar Nokta

Analyst

Yes. Certainly. And maybe just one final one, if you don't mind, just in terms of the three main parts of the business, which are containers, tankers, dry bulk, each are moving in their own direction with some excitement potentially ahead for tankers with OPEC. Dry bulk is still kind of reandering perhaps, not exciting, but not bad. And then containers up until very recently, you had a very active, we would say, liner appetite for charters. How would you kind of, from your vantage point, what are you seeing in terms of asset values in those segments? Is there one that feels maybe very firm perhaps, one that's – whether it's rising or is there softness you see in one segment? Just can you give some color from your eyes on vessel values?

Angeliki Frangou

Management

I mean you have seen that tankers and especially, you have a you have very good – with the assumption of fleet of 10%, it gives you – in the order book, it gives you a good positioning and you see that the values of the vessels have been in this market, there's a lot of sales, and you see it in a good level. But I will say one thing. What I was very surprised that given the uncertainty that we were facing, it is amazing how you can see that the spot market, which is really an indication of how we are transacting today. If you want to have a real data on every day, even in the darkest moment is what is the spot market. And you can say that in dry bulk, which you have a real depth of the spot market, you see that it was healthy levels. I mean, don't forget about a month ago, the world looked like we are coming to a new great depression. So having this data point where you saw – I'm not talking FFA, I'm talking spot market at this point where a person – an entity is willing to trade. With all this uncertainty, I think the world kept quite well, I will say. So patience. I mean the good thing is we have a lot of – we have done a lot of work prior to this situation, and this gives us the ability to have time to think and see how we can go to the next opportunities.

Omar Nokta

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Angeliki. That's very helpful.

Angeliki Frangou

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's question-and-answer session. I will now turn the program back over to Angeliki for any additional or closing remarks.

Angeliki Frangou

Management

This completes our presentation for the Q1 results. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.