Danaos Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Denao's Corporation conference call to discuss the financial results for the three months ended September 30th, 2022. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Hosting the call today is Dr. John Koustos, Chief Executive Officer of Denao's Corporation and Mr. Evangelos Hatzis, Chief Financial Officer of Denao's Corporation. Dr. Koustos and Mr. Hatzis will be making some introductory comments and then we'll open the call to a question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Evangelos Hatzis. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. Before we begin, I quickly want to remind everyone that management's remarks this morning may contain certain forward-looking statements and that actual results could differ materially from those projected to date. These forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. Factors that might affect future results are discussed in our filings with the SEC, and we encourage you to review these detailed safe harbor and risk factor disclosures. Please also note that where we feel appropriate, we will continue to refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income to evaluate our business. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and accompanying materials. With that, let me now turn the call over to Dr. John Koustas, who will provide the broad overview of the quarter.

John? Thank you, Evangelos. Good morning, everyone. This quarter marked the retreat of the container market from unsustainable stratospheric highs to more normalized levels, albeit well above 2019 levels. The liner market has experienced a combination of supply chain normalization and demand destruction due to various factors. These include, but not limited to, rampant inflation and declining GDP growth, The uncertainty is created by the war in Ukraine and an energy crisis. This has been compounded by high inventories in warehouses and delayed collection of containers, both in direct impacts of easing of supply chain disruptions. The drop in the market of containerized freight has also significantly reduced vessel demand from opportunistic market participants who were aggressively contracting smaller vessels or extra loaders, which were used during the peak of demand last year. This has led to a significant correction in the sub-3000TU segment, as charterers are on the sidelines waiting for the market to drop before they commute a vessel. Charter periods have also been reduced to as little as six months for smaller vessels, as charterers are waiting to see how the CII requirement will impact fleet scheduling and what additional slow steaming will be needed to meet the requirements. Danaos is well insulated from the current market environment and achieved record trading profit in the third quarter of 2022. Our commercial efforts earlier this year resulted in a number of new vessel fixtures for our vessels, and we got the quarter with a multi-year backlog of 2.3 billion contracted revenue. We have also continued to strengthen our balance sheet, and we have now fully liquidated our shareholding in ZEM. As we stated, we would. In addition, we have new commitments from our bank group to extend existing bank debt facilities until 2027. This means we have no significant capital requirements on financing until then, and we have the necessary flexibility to pursue our strategy of growth, share buybacks, and acquisitions. In fact, our net debt will be very close to zero by the end of the year, which protects Danaos from the recent dramatic increase in interest rates. With a Fortress balance sheet, we are looking at the future with great optimism and evaluating the steps with which we will keep Danaos at the forefront of the industry. The Danaos management team is fully aligned with our shareholders, and we will continue working to enhance long-term value of the company. Thank you, Evangelos.

Thank you, John, and good morning again to everyone. I will briefly review the results for the quarter and then open the call to Q&A. This quarter, we are reporting adjusted EPS of $8.71 per share or adjusted net income of $176.9 million compared to adjusted EPS of $5.32 per share or $109.5 million for the third quarter of 2021. This increase of 67.4 million in adjusted net income between the two quarters is a result of a 64.1 million increase in operating revenues and 11 million incremental net dividend books in relation to our ZIM equity holding and a two and a half million improvement in net finance expenses, partially upset by higher total operating expenses of 10.2 million mainly due to the increase in the average size of our fleet by five vessels between the two quarters and inflationary pressures that resulted in incrementally higher daily operating expenses. More specifically, operating revenues increased by 64.1 million to 160 million in the current quarter compared to 195.9 million in the third quarter of 2021. This increase is attributed to a 76.9 million increase in revenues as a result of higher charter rates, 11.1 million incremental revenues as a result of the vessel additions to our fleet between the two quarters, and the 4.5 million increase in recognition of assumed charter liabilities of recent vessel acquisitions. Finally, we also had a 20.8.4 million reduction in revenues due to lower non-cash revenue recognition in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Vessel operating expenses increased by $4.5 million to $39.2 million in the current quarter, from $34.7 million in the third quarter of 2021, mainly as a result of the increase in the average number of vessels in our fleet, while the average daily vessel operating cost increased to $6,173 per day for the current quarter, from $5,918 per day in the third quarter of 2021, mainly due to COVID-19 related increase in crew remuneration and increase in travel expenses, as well as increased insurance premiums between the two periods. However, our daily OPEX figure remains as one of the most competitive in the industry. G&A expenses decreased by $0.2 million to $7.1 million in the current quarter compared to $7.3 million in the third quarter of 2021. Interest expense, excluding finance costs amortization, decreased by $1.3 million to $13.1 million in the current quarter compared to $14.4 million in the third quarter of 2021. This decrease in interest expense is a combined result of a one and a half million decrease in interest expense because of lower average indebtedness by approximately 467 million between the two periods due to extensive deleveraging that we have done since then. And that was partially offset by an increase in cost of debt service by almost one and a half percent mainly as a result of rising floating interest rates. We also had a 1.3 million decrease in interest expense due to capitalized interest on vessels under construction. And we also have reduced positive recognition through our income statement of one and a half million of accumulated accrued interest in relation to our 2018 refinancing that has since been fully Adjusted EBITDA increased by 42.4%, or $63.5 million, to $213.1 million in the current quarter, from $149.6 million in the third quarter of 2021, for the reasons outlined earlier on this call. We also encourage you to review our updated investor presentation posted on our website, as well as subsequent event disclosures. A couple of highlights follow below. As of the end of the third quarter, our contracted cash revenue backlog stood at $2.3 billion with a three-and-a-half-year average charter duration, while contract coverage is at 100% for 2022, 88.4% for 2023, while even for 2024, it is already at 62%. Our investor deck has analytical disclosure on our contracted charter book. Finally, as reported in our earnings release, the company is working to conclude a $437.75 million refinancing within Q4 that would extend maturities of bank debt to not before than 2027 at improved pricing terms. while most of this amount, or $382.5 million, will be in the form of a revolving credit facility that will provide the company with increased flexibility in managing capital allocation. Finally, pro forma for this refinancing transaction, more than 60% or 45 vessels out of 71 vessels of the company's fleet will be debt-free and unencumbered. With that, I would like to thank you for listening to this first part of our call. Operator, we are now ready to open the call to Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Omar Nocta from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. I did have a couple questions. Hi, Omar. How are you? Hey, I'm good. I'm good. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up maybe, Evangelos, on your – you just touched on the new facility. You're going to have 45 unencumbered ships from the 15 currently. Just thinking about that, that 30-ship increase, right, in debt-free capacity, Is that simply because you're not needing to put up 30 vessels as collateral for this new facility, or is it simply that you're going to be paying down a big chunk of debt and not really draw on the revolver once it's completed?

No, thank you for this question, Omar. Well, these vessels that were previously securing the debt that is now being refinanced, this was a facility that was put together in 2021. It was for 815 million and at that point these vessels were part of the security package because they were required to be. Since then we have significantly reduced the facility down to 438 odd million. So these securities are no longer required. And part of this refinancing exercise was also to rationalize security allocation on that facility, which is being achieved. And also, of course, the evolving feature gives us way more flexibility than we previously had.

Okay. Yeah, thank you. And then just to the extent you can say, how much do you think of the revolving portion of the facility you'll draw down from the get-go?

I don't expect we will draw down from the get-go any of it. It will be fully committed with two or three business days notice to draw funds whenever we want. All the securities will be in place, but we're not going to draw it unless we need it. And I don't expect we're going to require it in the near term, at least this side of this year.

Wow, okay. All right. That's fascinating. That sounds great. So maybe just kind of taking a big step back, you know, clearly you've taken advantage of a pretty robust market here over the past two plus years. You strengthened your cash position. You've lowered your debt. You've got the backlog at 2.3 billion. You sold the final piece of them and your cash balance is now pushing close towards that 600 million. You know, in the past you've sold shifts, bought shifts, ordered shifts, paid down debt, bought stock, paid out dividends, you know, What do you think as we get into 2023 as the priorities for use of cash and generally strategically, how are you thinking about the companies you get into next year?

John, do you want to take that?

Yeah. Well, Omar, as I say, we will wait. We said that we will... you know, continue with, let's say, buybacks. And, you know, we'll have to really wait and see when the opportunities come. As you know, shipping is a cyclical business. And, you know, there is definitely you know, going to be a downturn with all what's happening. I don't believe we have already seen really the extent of the drought because all the increase of interest rates, et cetera, has been pretty, let's say, sudden. But I'm pretty sure that going forward we will see the effects of all this tightening and inflation. And... You know, we will be there, you know, to take advantage of all the opportunities that are going to arise. You know, we have, you know, six rebuilding vessels, which is, you know, in progress. And, you know, this is a very important step with these ships. We're the first to... kind of green vessels ordered by the company. And it's very important to be able to follow also that market. It is going to be important how really we are going to, the whole shipping industry is going to respond to decarbonization requirements. The good thing is that with interest rates also going up, as Angela said, we are totally insulated as we will be practically zero net debt by year end. And we will really hope to be able to make, let's say, accretive acquisitions. within the next, let's say, one to two years.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, definitely. It sounds like you guys have, you know, the liquidity both in terms of cash and really 400 million plus of revolver capacity. It'll be interesting to see. Thanks, John. Thanks, Evangelos. I'll turn it over.

The next question comes from... Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. The next question comes from Chris Weatherby from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, guys.

Hi, Chris. Hi. You know, I guess maybe first detailed question, can you give us a sense of what you expect for dry docking in the next couple of quarters?

I have to check my records, but to the best of my recollection, I think it's going to be uh, four ships. So yeah, something like five or 6 million.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then in terms of the vessels that you have rolling off charter in the next six months where there isn't a, another charter or options, um, I guess I'm curious about what your sense is in terms of shipper demand. Obviously, the market is in a significant period of flux right now with spot rates dropping fairly drastically over the last several months. But there has been some expressed interest by shippers to make sure there is capacity, and I'm chartered out as such. But what do you get the sense in terms of the real-time conversations you have with shippers today what their expectation is and sort of what their position is going into rate negotiations. How aggressive do you think shippers are beginning to get?

Well, you know, definitely there are great negotiations from the shippers towards the line of companies. There are no rate renegotiations between the line of companies and ourselves, you know. That has never been really the case. For the time being, the biggest difference we have, it's not that the number of ships is really high, the ships have increased dramatically. What we have is, on one hand, that utilization of the vessels has dropped. And this is exactly because utilization has dropped The pressure on container freight rates has also dropped. But for the time being, as I said, there are no idle ships. I mean, we had one ship that was opening towards year end. a small one around $2,200, the smallest we had. And, you know, we charted it in line with the market for six months for around $15,000 a day. I mean, we shipped, you know, prior to, let's say, prior to 2019. It was earning somewhere between, let's say, $8,000 and $10,000 a day. So, as I said, we are still above that. What is really, you know, for the time being, changed, apart from the rate drop, is that charterers are not willing to commit long-term. And this is... Basically, we're talking about six-month periods whereas before, I mean for the same ships, for example, some sister ships that we've charted, before we managed to get three years. That's no longer in the cards.

Okay, so the expectation would be maybe agreements would end up being shorter term in nature from the liners.

Yeah, it will be shorter term and, of course, considerably lower than the peaks that we have seen, which in any case, we always knew that that was never going to be forever. Yep.

And just to add, Chris, and I don't want to state the obvious here, but we're obviously insulated from such softening, right, because we have tremendous contract coverage. I just want to mention it.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then You guys have done a really good job in terms of Vessel OPEX. Can you give us a sense of whether or not you're seeing inflationary pressures on the Vessel OPEX as you move forward? Any sense of how we should be thinking about that for the next couple of quarters?

Well, go ahead, Evangelos.

I mean, obviously, there are such inflationary pressures. I believe that If you look at our OPEX, not just for our company, but broadly for the sector, it's been more or less a flat line for the past many years. I don't expect that this will continue to be the case over the next few quarters. We will see increases, but I don't consider them to be spectacular or like maybe 2%, 3%. Obviously, it will not be flat as before, but it will not be something that will materially affect earnings.

Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess just last question following up on the last one from Omar around the lines of sort of new investments. So you have six vessels coming in 2024. You know, Do you think that's sort of it for the time being? Would you be willing to put anything into the order book beyond 2024? Just kind of curious what your appetite is for new building vessels.

You know, with these new building vessels, we wanted, you know, of course, to be in the process also of renewing the fleet. It's very important also to show to our customers that we are minded about vessel quality going forward and also to experiment on new vessels. As you know, new ships are ordered to be mechano-ready, so at some stage it will do kind of a conversion. You know, for the time being, it's really, there is no clarity as to what's going to happen with alternative fuels. And also, as everything also is a factor of cost, you have seen, for example, that all the LNG vessels today the LNG-powered vessels today, due to the price of LNG, they are running on fuel oil. So, with this kind of energy crisis that we're going to have for a considerable amount of time, all the decarbonization, let's say, attempts will need to be revisited. What is extremely important is that with the upcoming CII regulations, we are going to see a lot of new efforts in order to reduce emissions by optimizing the vessels as much as we can, but also What is very important, our chart shows we need to adjust the speeds of the ships in order to reduce the carbon footprint.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks very much for the time. Appreciate it, guys.

Okay. Thank you, Chris.

The next question comes from Steven Mullitz from Value Investors. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Your cash balances have increased noticeably on a quarter-over-quarter basis, in line with very strong operating performance. Despite this strong cash generation, few repurchases have been conducted on top of the $25 million buyback you announced alongside Q2 earnings. Was there any reason that made you curtail buyback during the second half of the quarter? And looking ahead, you provided some high-level commentary on capital allocation, and I was wondering if you could provide some more insight on how do you plan balancing potential best-seller acquisitions with share purchases and dividends?

Well, as I said, you know, share purchases, you know, need to be timed accordingly. And, you know, we, for the time being, we are working towards, let's say, maximizing the operational performance and operational income of the company. And the buyback will be at a time that we believe it's opportune. We don't have a specific problem and say we're going to buy so many shares every month. The market is fluctuating quite a lot and we want really to optimize the share purchase for the benefit of our long-term shareholders.

All right, that's helpful. And looking at the new build, you had previously mentioned potentially taking delivery of those on an elaborate basis. Is that still the plan? and secondly after recent weakness in rates how should we think about associated charters are longer term contracts available or would we be looking at shorter times say two three years if you're talking about let's say the existing fleet for the time being

The contracts for the smaller vessels are up to six months. For the slightly larger ones, you could do maybe a year or so, maybe even a bit more. As far as the new buildings are concerned, whatever we are discussing, interest from various parties is, of course, from five years plus.

All right. That's helpful. That's all from me. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations for the quarter.

Thank you, Steve.

It appears we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Dr. Acoustos for any further comments or closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for your interest in our story. We will work and continue to deliver the best possible results for our shareholders. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. We would like to thank everyone for their participation. Have a wonderful afternoon.