Earnings Call Transcript - TEN Q4 2020

Operator, Operator

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tsakos Energy Navigation Conference Call on the Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2020 Financial Results. We have with us Mr. Takis Arapoglou, Chairman of the Board; Mr. Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO; Mr. Paul Durham, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. George Saroglou, Chief Operating Officer of the company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There’ll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, 24 March 2021.

Nicolas Bornozis, Investor Relations Advisor

Thank you very much, and good morning to all of our participants. I’m Nicolas Bornozis. This morning, the company publicly released its financial results for the fourth quarter and the year-ended December 31, 2020. In case you do not have a copy of today’s earnings release, please call us at 212-661-7566, or e-mail us at ten@capitallink.com, and we will have a copy for you emailed right away. Please note that parallel to today’s conference call, there’s also a live audio and slides webcast, which can be accessed on the company’s website on the front page at www.tenn.gr. The conference call will follow the presentation slides, so we urge you to access the presentation slides on the company’s website. Please note that the slides of the webcast presentation will be available and archived on the website of the company after the conference call. Also, please note that the slides of the webcast presentation are user controlled, allowing you to move to the next or previous slide on your own. At this time, I would like to read the Safe Harbor statement. This conference call and slide presentation of the webcast contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may affect TEN’s business prospects and results of operations. I would now like to pass the floor over to Mr. Arapoglou, the Chairman of Tsakos Energy Navigation. Mr. Arapoglou, please go ahead.

Takis Arapoglou, Chairman

Thank you, Nicolas. Good morning and good afternoon to all, and thank you for joining us today. I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy. Despite the challenging market conditions, 2020 proved to be a year of strong operating profitability for TEN. This allows us to continue paying dividends, repaying yet another issue of preferred stock, reduce bank debt, and meet all our other obligations. In addition, we sold all the tonnage to maintain a young fleet and were able to take non-cash corrective action on certain vessels. In essence, nothing new or different from what TEN has been consistently doing every year since inception. Today, with a substantial cash position and an accelerated specialist survey to best utilize poor market conditions, TEN is perfectly positioned to benefit from the anticipated recovery in the global economy and the resulting release of pent-up demand for oil products.

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

Thank you, Chairman, and good morning to all of you on the other side of the Atlantic and good afternoon to you here in Europe. It was exactly a year ago to the date when our Chief Operating Officer set the exact same date for our call. When we were talking back on the 24th of March of 2020, we were at the beginning of this pandemic and everything looked very, very new, very strange and we were all at a loss. A lot has gone under the bridge since then. Unfortunately, a huge loss of life worldwide, so it is really a different world than we entered exactly a year ago. However, as the Chairman said, we were able to navigate these difficult times, maintaining as hard as it was, a steady hand on the wheel. We are coming out of what has been a very turbulent period in very choppy waters, or stormy waters, to say the least, into calmer waters, helped a lot by the vaccinations that are happening all over the world. In my last call in November, when we announced the nine-month results, I was hoping that we would not have to face a third, or whatever the number is, wave of lockdowns around the world. Unfortunately, it has happened. It's still happening in some parts of the western world. Things are becoming more difficult as far as the pandemic. However, at the end of the tunnel, we have the light, which are the vaccines. A big percentage of the population, hopefully we will be vaccinated by the end of this quarter and next quarter. This medical miracle that happened in a very short period of time has given the world a new go-around, and this is something we are seeing in the rates as of the beginning of the year. 2020 was a roller coaster year. However, things are looking more positive. The natural supply and demand equilibrium is very tight. We saw that last night and this morning when the Suez Canal experienced a significant closure that has driven the market up, mainly in futures. We have been able to renew our affiliate as Mr. Arapoglou said. We sold seven vessels, received four new environmentally-friendly vessels, and added two new builds. All six of the new vessels we delivered or will be delivered are set on long accretive rates. In the last quarter, we focused a lot of attention on re-chartering nine vessels, three of them being our LNG carriers.

George Saroglou, Chief Operating Officer

Thank you very much, Nikolas, and good morning to all of you joining our earnings call. We report today a profitable year for our 2020 operations, with a 40% increase in profitability from 2019. 2020 has been a rollercoaster year for the tanker industry and the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic, social, and health-related repercussions. We continue to successfully navigate the logistic and regulatory challenges of COVID-19 with no impacts to our operations so far. This has been the biggest challenge of the last 12 months and continues to be our number one priority. Because of the pandemic, lockdowns, border closures, and reduced airline capacity, the shipping industry has experienced significant challenges with timely crew changes. We continue to safely perform crew changes, but issues with restrictions and logistics remain as different parts of the world open and close their borders synchronously. We want to take the opportunity to thank our seafarers and the onshore personnel for their hard work, patience, dedication, and professionalism during this unprecedented time. We will continue to work hard to normalize crew changes and bring seafarers safely back home to their families without disrupting the operational readiness and efficiency of the fleet. This has been and will continue to be our number one priority until crew changes and crew repatriation return to the pre-COVID normality.

Paul Durham, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, George. As we've been emphasizing, TEN had a profitable year in 2020 generating a net income of over $59 million before non-cash charges, mainly vessel impairments. Revenue in 2020 rose to an annual record of $644 million for TEN, mainly due to the strong demand for floating storage in the year. We had 94% utilization in 2020 and even 91% in the fourth quarter, which are good signs given that we had nine dry docking in the year. Average daily TCE for the year was $23,600, a respectable average compared to market rates, boosted by a profit share totaling $47 million in the year. EBITDA increased to $267 million, of which $33 million was in quarter four, both significantly contributing to cash reserves by the year-end, despite the $50 million redemption of the C Series preferred stock. In quarter four, revenue fell by $44 million compared to the prior quarter, indicating a weakening of the market in the latter part of the year, which contributed to a quarter four net loss for TEN of just over $14 million, before the non-cash impairment of over $15 million in the quarter. However, even given these conditions, TEN with half the fleet on time charter successfully avoided potentially significant losses. Our time charters do provide enough cash to cover nearly all OPEX, G&A, and finance costs, with vessels on spot providing a further $12 million to cover the shortfall. Generally, our costs were kept at stable levels, with expense categories being similar to the previous year and quarter, despite dry dockings. Average daily OPEX per vessel for the quarter and year was up slightly to $7,800, partly due to dry dockings and a weaker dollar. Quarter four finance costs fell by $4.5 million with interest dropping nearly $5 million, mainly due to lower interest rates, our cost of debt remaining below 3%, and due to reduced loan margins and shrinking outstanding debt while positive bunker hedge valuations rose by $4 million. We sold five vessels to third parties in 2020, generating $94 million, and prepaid $54 million of loans, freeing an additional $40 million of cash. We shall be looking for further sales to consider over the next 18 months. We have an LNG carrier and shuttle tanker being built for a total of over $280 million, of which we have paid $65 million to date, and we have a range of related pre-delivery financing at excellent terms for the ships as both have charters that will generate lucrative cash flow from delivery. Another $384 million net in scheduled repayments and loan pre-payments were made in the year, with new debt for delivered vessels in 2020 and recent pre-delivery debt and loan refinancing amounting to over $340 million. Bringing total debt down to $1.51 billion, with net debt remaining at 48%. Given the current state of the tanker market, it may seem difficult to expect any major recovery in the near-term, but there are, in our opinion, some strengthening positives, as both George and Nikolas have noted, on the horizon. So, we do expect the outlook to be positive from mid-year on and in the meantime, our time charters will hold steady just as they did in quarter four and are doing so far in quarter one. This concludes my comments, so I’ll pass the call back to Nikolas.

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

Thank you, Paul, for your detailed analysis of the results. As we mentioned, we’re happy to be entering our 20th year as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, and we hope to maintain our continuous dividend payment and profitability as we always have. It seems that prospects going forward are quite positive for a strong recovery, similar to what we are seeing in other segments of the industry. Usually, tankers follow dry cargo and container markets, and this is happening as we speak. We see high levels of demand as infrastructure building resumes. There’s also evident activity in the product carriers with more demand for products around the world due to refineries shutting down in the western world. Simultaneously, India is importing more and more from the west rather than being dependent solely on the Middle East, which is increasing tonne-miles as we progress. Additionally, there has been a 16% increase since our last presentation in November regarding conventional competitors like Libya. More importantly, the supply is minimal in the coming two years which signals a significant uplift sooner rather than later. We are observing large conglomerates, including Equinor, one of our largest clients, beginning work on what they claim to be the largest oil field in the North Sea. This product will be available for the foreseeable future alongside the limited amount of vessels and low inventories. Overall, we are optimistic about the future and our renewal program’s progress. We've had great success with delivering new ships without losing a day in this challenging environment. Two more vessels are being built for us, one in 2021 and the other in 2022, both of which are on long-term charters. We are also exploring various potential opportunities. I would like to prioritize the safety and health of our seafarers. Out of about 3,000 seafarers around the world, we had less than 1% COVID cases, thanks to our proactive measures. It remains a daily struggle to ensure their health and mitigate their risk of exposure to COVID. It's essential that seafarers are prioritized for vaccination consideration. This will facilitate operations and help reduce our operational expenses, especially regarding crew repatriations which often involve navigating vessels to locations with open borders. With that, I would like to open the floor for any questions. Thank you very much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Your first question today comes from Randy Giveans from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Randy Giveans, Analyst

Hi gentlemen, how is it going?

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

Hello Randy. Very well! Looking very forward to seeing you face-to-face one day soon, with or without a mask.

Randy Giveans, Analyst

That would be good. Come to Houston, no mask required. But if I make it, I’ll let you know. I have a question around your charters, can you provide some color on the nine vessels recently chartered, both the rates and the conditions?

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

Yes. I think we have renewed four of our product carriers for another three years under existing charters with a major state oil company based on our typical accretive minimum and profit-sharing arrangements. Then, of course, we’ve taken this time to charter out. I was very pleased to confirm that we chartered our LNGs for durations extending up to 10 years either directly from the shipyard or from the latest delivery call. As you know, LNG vessels on the spot market can incur significant costs to your bottom line. Fortunately, we do not have to face that scenario; on the contrary, the ships are earning immediately after their current deliveries and at accretive rates. Additionally, we have conventional Suezmax and Aframax vessels on long-term charters, which are extensions of existing charters. So, that’s a quick overview of the nine vessels we have renewed in the first quarter as we observed signs of recovery.

Randy Giveans, Analyst

Got it. Okay. And next question is regarding Slide 7; looking at the dividend payouts, we’ve observed some fluctuation. How are you approaching the dividend moving forward? I know you have trended towards $0.10 a share; what was the thought process behind that, and what is the outlook from here?

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

As you know, our organization places high value on dividends, and the management family owns a significant portion of shares, so dividends are incredibly important to us. We always strive to maintain our dividend payments. I believe, as George Saroglou mentioned, that in the 20 years we’ve been on the stock exchange, we hope to have paid, by then, more than half a billion dollars in dividends. If you also account for the additional $160 million from buybacks, that totals over $650 million returned to shareholders combined from dividends and buybacks.

Randy Giveans, Analyst

Got it. Lastly, with the first quarter largely over, how are rates comparing to the fourth quarter, and what is your outlook for rates over the next three to nine months? The forward curve suggests some strength, and time charter rates are well above spot rates. Can you provide some insights into the outlook?

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

I must say, when we spoke together in November, I mentioned that we were hoping to see a much better first half depending on any additional lockdowns. On one hand, unfortunately, severe lockdowns are being enforced again in places like Europe, which delays the full recovery of our rates. However, on the other hand, we have the positive aspect of the vaccines that have rolled out in a timely manner. Large percentages of the populations are being vaccinated, and we are optimistic about having an open summer around Europe, as I’m sure is the case also in the United States. We are pleased that the majority of the Far East has managed to control the virus much better in the past couple of quarters. Although we face yet another uphill battle with lockdowns, there’s potential to turn a corner as early as next quarter, which is just a few weeks away. We noticed how the futures and spot markets adjusted recently after the closure of the Suez Canal. The market appears well-balanced for April and May, and I’m confident we will be further celebrating a much better market environment by June during our annual meeting.

Randy Giveans, Analyst

Thanks so much.

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. If there are no more questions, I will ask our Chairman to give his wise words, and I will close after that.

Takis Arapoglou, Chairman

No wise words, Nikolas. Thank you all again for joining. We all look forward to 2021 being a great year for the company and the stock. Thanks again.

Nikolas Tsakos, President and CEO

From my side, I would like to wish everybody a very healthy, safe, and prosperous 2021. May we all return to normalcy and continue to learn from the experiences of the past year. Exactly a year ago, in our last meeting, things were very, very different. We have all grown through this. We navigated a steady ship in very turbulent waters and I'm proud of our renewal program with the new ships. We acquired seven assets and took delivery of four already without losing almost a day in a difficult environment. Those vessels have already started earning accretive rates. Two more vessels are being built for us. Hopefully, they will be delivered within this year, one in 2021 and another in 2022, both on long-term charters. We are also looking at opportunities that may arise. I would like to thank everyone involved for keeping our operations flawless regarding the safety of our seafarers; this is our top priority. We ensure that our team wakes up every day in a secure environment. I look forward to speaking with you all next quarter in a significantly improved market. Best wishes to everyone from Greece, and Happy Easter and holidays to all. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.