Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Capital Clean Energy Carrier Corp First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. We have with us Mr. Jerry Kolodziorata, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brian Gallagher, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, and Mr. Nikos Tsiprasakis, Chief Commercial Officer. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. at which time, if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. I must advise you that this conference has been recorded today, Thursday, May 8th, 2025. The statement in today's conference call that are not historical facts, including our expectations regarding acquisition, transactions, and their expected effect on us, cash generation, equity returns, and future debt levels, Our ability to pursue growth opportunities, our expectations or objectives regarding future distribution amounts, all share buyback amounts, capital reserve amounts, dividend coverage, future earnings, capital allocation, as well as our expectations regarding market fundamentals and the employment of our vessels, including re-delivery dates and charter rates, may be forward-looking statements as such. as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the stated or forecasted results to be materially different from those anticipated. Unless required by law, we expressly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether because of future events, new information, a change in our views, or anything expectations to conform to actual results or otherwise. We make no prediction or statement about the performance of our common shares. I would now like to hand over to your first speaker today, Mr. Brian Gallagher. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and afternoon to whoever you are, and thank you for listening to the Capital In Energy Carriers Q1 2025 earnings call. As a reminder, we will be referring to the supporting slides available on our website as we go through today's presentation. Let's start then on slide four with the highlights. First quarter 2025 was an important quarter for the company in many respects. Firstly, net income from operations for the quarter amounted to just under $81 million, including a $46.2 million gain from the sale of two containment vessels. This is included in the earnings release in our discontinued operations. These are the last two of the five 5,000 TEU containers that we agreed to sell last year, and they were delivered to the new owners during this quarter. Overall, we have raised a total of $472.2 million in net proceeds from the sale of 12 container vessels since December 2023, and have recycled this capital into our focus on Jack's Transportation Assets. Another key development of the quarter is that we have secured employment for two of our new building LNG carriers for five and seven years respectively, both with an additional five-year option. My colleague Nikos will cover that in more detail later. What is more, during the first quarter of the year, the LNG carrier LNG-2 commenced its seven-year fair vote charter, where the charter had the option to extend by an additional three years. The new charters, in addition to certain options exercised by one of our charters, has increased our firm charter backlog to $3.1 billion. We believe that these charters further corroborate our view on the positive fundamentals of the longer-term energy shipping market and provide our investors visibility into both employment prospects and cash flows. We want to advance our first energy new building delivery. With that, I'll now turn it over to Chief Executive Chair, Yves-Alain Girondis, and Nikos Girondis, Chief Financial Officer, for the remainder of the presentation.

Thank you, Ryan, and good morning to everyone listening in today.

It has been indeed a very busy quarter across all fronts, and it's also reflected on our financials, which you will find on slide six. As Ryan pointed out, we derived a further $46 million in one of the eight this quarter, from completing the sale of the last two out of the five container vessels we agreed to sell last year. We will continue to be opportunistic about the sale of the three remaining container vessels, as these are modern eco-vessels with long-term cash flow attacks. The dividend, as we discussed in the last call, is a core component of the company's value proposition to shareholders, making this quarter the 72nd consecutive quarter that the company has paid a cash dividend. During slide 7, we can see that our capital base continues to consolidate and we await the next schedule of seats to be delivered next year. Our cash position continues to be solid, supported by the completion of two private container sales, bringing total cash to $420 million. With a great deal of uncertainty about liquidity injected into capital markets in recent months, mining markets continue to factor in almost 180 points in interest rates had by effect during 2025, and we take this opportunity to remind investors that CCEC would be a beneficiary of such a move, given 80% of our funding is in floating rates. Finance and balance sheet is strong, which is important within the business we operate, but the main development for this quarter is a reduction of our open LNG carrier exposure by one-third and enhancing the contract flex of our existing LNG traffic book. We expect the development to further enhance our financial flexibility. I will now turn to the more strategic matters of Line 9. Our average charter duration now stands at 7.3 years across the fleet, with our LNG fleets showcasing a charter backlog of 91 years, or $2.8 billion of contracts ready. As you can see at the bottom of the schedule, two of our six LNG carriers under construction have now been placed on an energy supermajor for five and seven years respectively, with options to extend both charters by a further five years. This is in addition to certain options exercised by one of our charters for three existing vessels. This translates into an average daily time charter equivalent for our fleet across the firm charters of approximately 87,300 or 91,150, that is per day, including all options. In summary, our charter book continues to expand as we work towards fixing term employment for the remaining assets in our team. Turning now to slide 10 and looking at the contracted revenue base in more detail. The impact of these charter extensions and the two new charters has boosted our total contracted backlog including our container debt to 3.1 billion or 4.5 billion should all options be exercised. The pie chart illustrates the breakdown of our total time saturated in the base, using the same target periods. This remains a core strength of our proposition as a company, that is, counterparty diversity. You will note a slight departure from earlier presentations, where we included the names of all our counterparties. As our counterparties increase, and also in an effort to preserve confidentiality of certain commercial agreements, we have moved to this more simplified format. It is important to highlight here that in the energy industry, doctors are typically supermajors and other national or international energy companies, utility traders and the equipment plant operators with high credit credentials. Overall, when it comes to CCC, no single counterparty represents more than 20% of the $3.1 billion contracted revenue backlog. This diversity provides the company with a very strong framework to build our gas transportation portfolio further, with a mix of existing corporate relationships and new customers. I will finish off this session now with a quick look at our new building CAPEX program and our expectations with regard to its financing, described with more detail on slide 11. So, we ended the quarter with $420 billion of cash on our balance sheet, which provides a solid buffer for the business. Clearly, our recent contract agreements and option declarations, as we have said previously, give us further financial flexibility. From our new building program of $2.3 billion on the way, we have already paid advances by quarter ends to the tune of $467 billion. Assuming we finance 70% of the acquisition price of the M&G carriers and 60% of the other gas vessels, with debts amounting to approximately $1 billion 560 million, that would leave us with an exit equity of 105 million at slide 11 shows, that is, without taking into account capital generation from our equity fleet. I would like to turn now to our Chief Commercial Officer, Nikos Tripozakis, who will run through our LNG market slides. I will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Nikos, over to you. Thank you, Jeremy, and good morning or afternoon, everybody. There are two important issues to deal with before I move on to the market focused commentary on LNG. Firstly, the effect of the U.S. trade representatives recently announced foresees. These are the things that the new Trump administration has proposed to be levied on ships entering U.S. ports and which have been substantially reduced in their potential impact from the original proposals. As far as LNG shipping is concerned, we expect minimum impact. The U.S. is targeting a rising percentage of U.S. energy exports to be transported and U.S. flagged, operated, or built energy carriers from 2028 onwards, and until then, energy shipping is exempted from any such levies. In any case, CCC is heavily insulated against this development, as none of our energy fleet on the water was built in China, and none of our six energy carriers under construction are being built in China either. Moreover, we view any theoretical suspension of LNG export licenses as a low probability scenario, with the exact mechanisms of such suspensions still unclear. So, apart from the effects of USPI and port fees are concerns, in our view our business model is unaffected for now, but we will of course continue to closely monitor any developments. Moving on to the impact of tariffs. As slide 14 shows, it is perhaps counter-intuitive for the US, the largest LNG exporter, and China, the world's biggest importer, to have little direct energy traffic between them. However, this has been increasingly the case as the draft in the left-hand side shows. Indeed, there have been no direct cargo from the US to China since February, and trade has been modest in recent years between the two nations. We summarize our thoughts on the medium and longer-term potential impacts from tariffs on the right-hand side of slide 14. A positive development in this situation could be the signing of bilateral agreements between the U.S. and other nations with the aim to alleviate tariffs and balance the trade deficit with the U.S. More trade and purchase agreements for U.S. LNG projects will facilitate new final investment decisions and, as such, significantly boost demand for LNG freight. A potential headwind if CARIX persists, however, could be the rising cost of the energy project, looking to reach that FID. The financing, operational, and capital funding costs for US projects have risen since the pandemic, and the effect of CARIX is likely to further increase this cost and potentially delay FIDs. This remains a fast-moving, complicated, and very important issue, and we will be looking to update investors going forward. Turning now to the energy market itself. On slide 15, we have highlighted three key areas. Point number one illustrates that new building prices remain firm. There was a single order for an LNG investment during Q1 for a reported price north of $260 million. Prices for new buildings have been above $250 million since February 2023, according to brokers, and have not been affected by the weakness in the sports market throughout 2024 and 2025. This promise is now further expected to increase due to Trump's regulatory release of US MNG projects on the one hand, and 40 days of Chinese-based ships on the other. On the first point, we have seen multiple new payment-purchase agreements signed since the beginning of the year, as well as the first final investment decision since 2023 from Woodside on the 16.5 million tons per annum Louisiana MNG project. On the second point, the U.S. trade representative imposed four-season Chinese-built vessels is expected to increase demand for Korean-built vessels and, as such, strengthen new building prices further. Point number two on the graph on slide 15 illustrates that the longer-term time-travel market has remained almost immune from the volatility and largely downward movement in sports rates over the past 12 to 18 months. 10-year rates remain in the high 80s to low 90s range. As with the strength in new building prices, long-term rates continue to reflect the fact that despite the weakness in the front of the curve, the energy shipping market has and continues to be short, modern tonnage from 2026 and 2027 onwards. Lastly, point number three shows how short-term and time-sharp rates have been recovering from the lows we have seen in January. While the scale on this chart does not illustrate the scale of this recovery, spot rates have increased by around 300%, from below 10k per day in January to around 40,000 per day at the end of April. This recovery has been a combination of an increase in spot requirements throughout the first quarter, windows of open arbitrage to Asia, and also reduce appetite from charcuters to relive their own tonnage. And finally, as illustrated in the next chart, an increase in the number of idle steam and trifuel vessels. Looking now at slide 16, we can see the energy cargo vessel supply dynamics. Slide 16 illustrates the effects of weakness in the cargo spot market has had on loader tonnage and how operators of such tonnage are responding to the low charcuter rate environment. On the left-hand side, you can see the percentage of idle steam and dry fuel vessels, with idle being defined as vessels being static for 14 days or longer. It is clear that there has been a steep increase in the percentage of idle vessels throughout the past year, as the percentage of both idle steam and dry fuel vessels is currently the highest it has been over the past five years for both vessel types. According to market analysts, at the end of Q1 2025, the number of idle steam vessels reached 41, up from 19 in Q3 2024, while 18 tricycle vessels were idle at the end of Q1 2025, from only 2 in Q3 2024. Moreover, there are some interesting points around scrapping, as we can see on the chart on the right-hand side. Firstly, while relatively small in absolute number, 2024 saw a record number of energy vessels being scrapped. Secondly, Q1 2025 has already seen the highest number of scrapping of any quarter, with three vessels sold for demolition, a number that, if annualized, would mean that 12 energy vessels will exit the fleet, which is a 50% increase from the previous record year. In conclusion, the combination of record high idling and scrapping of older vessels supports our view that in the current energy market, where large, efficient, and regulation-compliant vessels are required, there is limited room for older ships. Moving over to slide 17, we can see what is in our view a relatively neutral approach to the energy shipping supply and demand balance projection. The approach on this chart is realistic, aiming to consider all parameters that affect both the supply and the demand side. The basic premise under this analysis is that only projects that have reached FIP are considered on the demand side, and only vessels that are on order are considered for the supply side. With relatively conservative assumptions around vessel scrapping and online demand, both in terms of east-west arbitrage and transiting through Suez, we can see that towards the end of 2026 and the very beginning of 2027, the market is balancing. From Q1 2028, the market becomes significantly short, more than tonnage, with a deficit reaching approximately 100 vessels by 2029, once we add the recent FID on Woodside, Louisiana and New Jersey. This next tip could be widened even further by 2029 to 2030 if we consider the circa 80 million tons per annum of 3FID projects and the fact that there is limited yard capacity available especially until 2030. As we all know, this analysis is multivariate and can be affected by many parameters. However, it is a strong view that there is significant upside from this base case. As an example for this, if the proportion of US LNG delivered to Asia instead of Europe increases by just 10%, everything else in the analysis being equal, then the market would rebalance more than a year earlier in Q1 2026.

Thank you everybody and I will now turn it back to Jared for the summary. Thank you, Nikos. Moving to slide 19.

I firmly believe that the progress made during the reported quarter in solidifying our existing structure will can place us in the medium term starting with a new high-quality customer, further includes the company outlook and visibility for our shareholders. On the remaining energy carriers, we have an order we will continue to be opportunistic about fixing long-term employment as they are increasingly fewer and committed to maintain new buildings available at this time when we see growing activity in the M&G industry with both new SDAs dictated and FIDs dictated, as Nico described earlier. We are also engaged in constructive discussions on the rest of our gas vessels, recognizing, however, that these will be employed into a more structured market and it is more likely than not that we will be able to provide deployment updates that will be closer to their delivery. The three remaining container vessels are well underpinned on long-term contracts, potentially out at the end of the next decade, but provide optionality for CPC going forward. Now, turning to the last slide on the deck, Captain Clean Energy Carriers has continued delivering the objectives we set out, and the scale of the delivery has been strong for this quarter. Our LNG target group has increased revenue, we risk a third of our LNG order book by securing employment for two of our vessels while we retain optionality with three containers on fleets and with a strong balance sheet which includes over 420 million dollars of cash. Importantly, this company has and will continue to have going forward a very young fleet delivering the lowest unit rate cost possible today to our customer with the lowest environmental footprint, both critical aspects to success given the commercial requirements of our customers and the emerging regulatory environment when it comes to carbon and methane emissions. Looking forward, CCAC is expected to control the largest LNG to store carrier feed available to investors upon delivery, in addition to the other 10 multi-gas vessels. The company has considerable contract coverage of over 7 years already and strong visibility on cash flows, while we believe that we have an advantage over many of our peers in only being invested in the latest cash technology vessels with zero-zero suitabilities. However, we are not satisfied or tempted to rest. We need to address the deployment of our LPT and liquid CO2 portfolio that we will start delivering early next year. We need to continue to raise the profile and recognition of the company in capital markets and gain traction with investors. So, plenty more to do, but the first quarter shows that the company is capable of on our growth trajectory. With that, I will now pass it back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. So, for your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now go to our first question. One moment, please. And your first question comes from the line of John Chapo from Evercore. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Jerry. Hi, John. So, for questions on the CapEx schedule, it looks like about $486 million that was pegged for 1Q26 has been shifted about half to 3Q26 and half to 1Q27. Is that your choice, you know, based on kind of charging opportunities, or was that something from the shipyard or maybe even the financing side?

We have been able, with our partners, to adjust some of our CapEx and operational scheduling, which we have reflected in the CapEx schedule we provide every quarter. and it was some functionality that we had arranged with our partners, the shipbuilder at a minimum cost and this together with the chapter opportunities we see in the market and the flexibility that we have in deploying these assets has been a very valuable tool. So we decided to sweep some of the deliveries by headquarters.

Okay, great. And then on the gas fairs, I understand that we're going to have to wait to get closer to delivery to have a better idea, but maybe you can just help us understand how the discussion is going at this point. Some of the potential liquids that could be carried are relatively new markets, unestablished. What are these conversations that you've had so far, and is there a rough kind of target at this point, understanding we're still maybe 12 months away? to kind of think about from an either duration or a type of rate perspective.

So, as we discussed a couple of quarters ago when we went through the... I'll start with the liquid CO2 carriers, the handy, the handy that is, right? So, as we discussed a couple of quarters ago, there is a lot of activity on the front of the movement of liquid CO2 and the number of projects. Some of them have taken up ID. And we have already an operational project, Northern Lights, but the timeline of most of these projects is from 2028-2029 onwards. So, our current discussions around the four literature two carriers, which are effectively SMES, hand-sized, multi-gas vessels that can carry LPG, as well as ammonium and other cargoes. and in addition of course we would say too is have been around either um large companies that have different types of gas volumes including um gray as well as low carbon ammonia lpc and are also involved in the liquid to supply chains so some of these guys they are interested in taking methods like this for three to five years and be able to deploy them across their needs But I think also you have the more, if you want, normal LPG and Ammonia business that would be very much interested in investors like that. The order book for hand-to-ties, the semi-reliance is extremely important. control a very big part of it. And we see a good interest also for these vessels in the, let's say, both calls and calls, right, because this is more a SOTC market. So one to three year type of chargers. Usually this type of demand where you see most of the beef will become more active much closer to delivery. So multiple lines of inquiries, but I think the default would be to trade them as effectively hand-decided LPG ammonia carriers.

Got it. Thanks very much, Jerry.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from BUI Disputes. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, Jerry. Hi, Liam. How are you? Fine, thank you. I hope you're doing well. Your analysis between production coming online in 2027 and an aging fleet would not only imply a stabilization of supply-demand, but capacity constraint beyond the 2027-2028 timeframe. Are your potential charters of the four unchartered LNG vessels recognizing this, and are you seeing that in your negotiations?

Liam, and let Nikos take this one.

Thank you.

Hi, Liam, and thank you for this question. It's actually a very good one. And I think that's exactly what our recent deals reflect, i.e., you know, the front of the curve can be very low and the sports market can be weak, the one-year market can be weak. But when it comes to the supply and demand fundamentals in terms of serious starters that are looking for multiple vessels, efficient vessels, then the weakness dissipates and we revisit, you know, rates and periods around the 90,000 per day mark. So, I don't know if that answers your question, but charters, yes, understand this deficit coming in the market from 27, 28 onwards and pay rates that reflect that.

Great, thanks. Jerry, on the four handy size on order, Do you see the potential for them to operate in the LPG spot market for the time of their delivery until you can secure work for them?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are moving gas vessels, very attractive ships, and as I said earlier on, because the order book is very small and this is an amazing fleet in the water, we see quite a bit of interest from, let's say, kind of normal shuttering inquiries that infiltrate the grey ammonium and LCT business.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Ian.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Bidwell from Weber Research and Advisory. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the time.

So the three options exercised in the on-water vessels and the two charters for the new bills delivering in 2027 seems to point towards a very clear demand for tonnage 2027 onwards. Are you seeing any uptick in appetite for longer-term charters in the near term, so say late 2025 into 2026, or are charters expecting spots that

In terms of earlier delivery, 2025 and 2026, anybody that expected volumes for those periods has already secured shipping for them. And there's sort of a lag in terms of how the delay of some projects we expect in 2024, 2025 has affected the market, exactly because charters have been covered with their shipping positions for those periods. What we do see for deliveries in 2025 and 2026 are opportunistic charters that are trying to take advantage of the weakness in the front of the curve to basically buy some optionality for the years in which they anticipate the deficit of freight to kick in. For example, starting 2025, two years plus one plus one in terms of options. That is something very common recently, when we're discussing about the bids in the market for 2025 and 2026, but not for longer periods. There has been one discussion for 2026 delivery for seven years that concluded this year, but that has been the only one.

All right, thank you. Thank you to the caller there. I've been looking, I guess,

over at sort of global supply demand. So there's a significant amount of attention on these new liquid fraction volumes hitting the market. What sort of developments are you seeing on the redaff side? And what potential headwinds or tailwinds could we see in the carrier market stemming from an over or under supply of redaff capacity?

um it's a good question and what i can tell you in terms of region capacity both in europe and asia is that in the multiples in terms of liquid fashion capacity so we don't expect any issue when it comes to the classification capacity being able to cover the liquid fashion capacity uh china japan europe have multiples in terms of their demand for that capacity okay

Uh, and then just a quick follow-up, um, just looking at the seasonal basis, um, do you see any, uh, I guess, potential, uh, tailwinds from flooding storage opportunities as we, uh, we enter a period of oversupply of local fashion capacity?

If we're seeing any tailwinds, sorry, I didn't, uh, hear that.

So, um, do you, uh, foresee any tailwinds from, uh, floating storage opportunities as we enter a period of oversupply of liquefaction capacity, sort of in the back half of the decade?

It's an interesting question. Conditioning with floating flow and given energy has not worked the same way as it does in Norway, because obviously of the boil off, it comes at an extra cost. So if you need the contango between specific parts of the curve to be And what we're seeing right now with all the risks, the geopolitical risks around Europe and the prices of global markets, European prices and Asian prices, we do not see any floating stores being incentivized right now. Obviously, this can change and it depends a lot on seasonal patterns, you know, storage But as of now, we cannot really say that floating storage will be or is, you know, there are any indications that it will be a demand factor.

All right. Thank you, Gary. I'll turn it back over. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Omer Noxa from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, Jerry. Hi, Nikos. Good morning or good afternoon.

Just a couple of follow-ups on the two new building charters. Obviously, nice to see that. As you mentioned, it shows that the sector, the business is still operating or functioning appropriately. You didn't explicitly give a rate, but Nikos, you sort of mentioned in your comments that in 2027 rates are closer to 90,000. Should we establish that's kind of what the rate of change is on these charges? Yes. Okay. Good. And then what's the expected sort of, given the financing that you put on, what do you think the break-even is going to be on these new buildings?

We have not yet concluded on the financial disasters. We can provide a very even number potentially in a couple of quarters when we have more visibility.

Okay, thank you. And then just finally, just on those, the interesting kind of notes that you have on those charges is that you can swap you can swap to other later generation shifts at your choosing, it sounds like. So it gives you some flexibility. Can you just maybe just two questions on that? Can you just get the sense of what would you say is late generation? Is that all of your shifts or is it just the new builds? And then also, you know, what circumstances or conditions would you want to do that? we want to substitute. Thank you.

It's a very good question. Just to clarify what it means, it means that it is within our option to deliver any of the vessels we have for our new buildings to those three charters. And a situation whereby we would be incentivized to do something like that would be you know, let's say we would secure a very good short-term rate for one of the vessels delivering towards the end of 2026, let's say a six-month winter charger at a very high rate, and then we could deliver that vessel to the oil major charger. So it provides a lot of flexibility and optionality for us, which in a market like this is very valuable.

Yes. Great. Well, thank you. That's it for me.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone keypad. That is star 1 and 1 if you would like to ask a question. We will now go to the next question. And your next question comes from the line of Clement Mullins from Value Investors Edge. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions.

Most have already been covered, but I wanted to delve a bit into your U.S. port fees commentary. You mentioned U.S.-built LNG carriers by 2029 sounds optimistic, which is almost a given, but could you talk a bit further about your, let's say, theoretical cost expectations for a U.S.-built LNG carrier relative to the usual Korean build? And secondly, based on the current proposal,

Who will be responsible for complying with these regulations?

So, Clement, now this is the more esoteric stuff that we're going into and I don't think anybody has full clarity. What I can tell you from our previous experience is that the rule of thumb has been that the cost of a US-built ship of any type has been maybe three, four times the cost of building the same ship in Korea or China. In this particular case, when we're talking about LNG tires, where there are also additional challenges with containment systems, LNG a few of the engine cryogenics and other more complex machinery. I mean, there have been even failures at the beginning in a very large shipyard in Korea, you know, when the shipyard was, when the industry started So, I think it's going to be quite challenging for, you know, a nation if that exists at all, which many people say that there is no such secret capacity for another two or three years. Now, with regard to who exactly is going to be responsible to implement that, it looks to me, but again, I'm not 100% sure if there is clarity on that, that it's going to be the liquefaction operators, the exporters, that they will have to ensure that their volume is transported in U.S.

built energies. Excellent. Thank you for that, Cora, and thank you for taking my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will now hand the call back to Jerry for closing remarks.

Thank you, Karen, and thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.