Okeanis Eco Tankers Corp.

Welcome to OET's second quarter, 2024 financial results presentation. We will begin shortly. Aris Tedis Alifouzos, CEO, and Herakles Barounis, CFO of Okeanis EcoTankers, will take you through the presentation. They will be pleased to address any questions raised at the end of the call. I would like to advise you that this session is being recorded. Herakles will begin the presentation now.

Thank you. Welcome to the presentation of Cayenne East EcoTankers results for the second quarter of 2024. We'll discuss matters of the forward-looking nature and actual results may differ from the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements. Please read through the relevant disclaimer on slide two. So starting on slide four and the executive summary. I'm pleased to present the highlights of the second quarter of 2024. We continue on the track of strong commercial and financial results. Since the beginning of the year, we are effectively fully spot-exposed. We achieved fleet-wide time-chartered equivalent of about $65,000 per vessel per day. Our VFCCs were at $73,000, and our sewage maxes at $55,000. We report adjusted EBITDA of $63.9 million, adjusted net profit of $39.7 million, and adjusted EBS of $1.23. Fully committed to our strategy of delivering value to our shareholders, our board declared a ninth consecutive capital distribution of $1.10 per share, which is about 90% of our EPS. On a four-quarters rolling basis, we have distributed $3.46, or 93% of our adjusted net income. During the quarter, we have successfully completed our five-year drive-thru for the Nisos Keros and the Nisos Despoticol, with four more of our VFCCs expected to complete their dry docs in the next couple of months. Furthermore, during the quarter, we announced three new financing transactions, further optimizing our capital structure. I'll go into further details on these in a couple of slides. On slide five, we show the detail of our income statement for the quarter and the half-year. TCE revenue for the six-month period stood at over $160 million. EBITDA was close to $130 million. and net income was approximately $8 million, or $2.5 per share. Moving on to slide 6 and our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $98 million of cash. Our balance sheet debt stood at $669 million, translating to book leverage of 57%, while market-adjusted net LPV, based on our most recent broker values, has continued to decrease, now standing at approximately 38%. On slide seven, we have our usual slide summarizing our corporate and capital structure. Since our last update in May, we have executed three new transactions and have also fully repaid our sponsor debt when that became due. In May, we refinanced our VFCC MISOS Kithnos with pricing at SOFR plus 140 basis points. And we also amended our existing facility on the MISOS Donoussa, reducing the price down to SOFR plus 165 basis points. Finally, we executed on the highly anticipated purchase option of the Polyethos. We closed this transaction on the first day of July, opening up a new financing market and improving significantly the pricing, now standing at software plus 160 basis points. These transactions marked the completion of the full refinancing of our fleet, except for the two VLCCs, Nisos Vini and Nisos Despotikos, whose purchase options kick in the first half of 2026. This is a good segue into the next couple of slides as we want to demonstrate the value accretion achieved by all these transactions. So slide eight. We only have to look back a year to have things stood in June of 2023 prior to any of these transactions and prior to the transition from LIBOR into SOFR. On the left, during the LIBOR era, our banking cost of debt on a weighted average basis stood at 3.22% over LIBOR. Assuming the application of a credit adjustment spread of 26 bps across our facilities, to compare apples with apples, causes software transition, our overall implied cost stood at 3.48% over software. All our refinancings and amendments, of course, eliminated the credit adjustment spread. And along with the new margins negotiated with our financiers, we reduced the effective weighted pricing to 2.39% above software. This takes into account our legacy expensive leases that still remain outstanding and which offer a great opportunity for further optimization in 2026. All that translates to an improvement of 110 basis points across the entire fleet, or 130 basis points against the 12 refinance vessels. Assuming our current outstanding bank debt of $675 million, we achieve a direct deduction on our break-even of $1,700 per day on each of the 12 vessels. That's $7.4 million in a year. On top of the call shift action exercise, moving on to slide nine, we have also added flexibility in optimizing our structure. We have full-staffed all balloons previously scheduled between 2024 and 26. Other than the opportunity to refinance the ring and the despotic call, we have no matured this before 2028. All of them are staggered between 2028 and 2032. providing for both a significant runway, but also a balanced and extended timeframe to pursue further extensions or refinancings in an optimal way. Overall, we're very pleased with the effect of these transactions, with improvement on the cost side, the extended maturities, and the flexibility added. We will continue to be on the lookout for accretive deals, but the benchmark is not set at a very different level. And we very much look forward to bringing the outliers, Renia and Despotico, back along with the rest of our vessels at competitive terms. I'm now passing over the presentation to Aristides for the commercial ethics.

Thank you, Rekli. Q2 2024 was the second quarter of our fleet having 100% spot exposure. The main objective of this quarter, as we had alluded to in Q1, was to favorably position our VLCCs that required special surveys and complete the company's dry dock requirements during the weaker summer months. This was planned and organized well in advance which required close coordination between the commercial department and the technical manager to time the vessels to have staggered deliveries at the shipyard and avoid delays. We also brought some dry docks forward to have off-hire during the week or several months instead of during the winter. Given OET's preference to trade our VLCs in the west, which outperforms the east market, we were able to fix many long, high-earning front-haul voyages for our dry dock positioning. We also took advantage of the strong spring market to fix front-haul business on RVs that did not require a dry-off to cover for the weaker expected summer as well. The West-East fixtures we concluded loaded from the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and South America. A number of these fixtures only occurred because of the Red Sea avoidance and voyage economics, which made more sense to parcel the cargo up on a VLCC and sail via the Cape around Africa in comparison to fixing two Suez Maxes also via the Cape and around Africa. The destruction due to the Ukrainian war and Houthis in the Red Sea created many triangulation opportunities that allows you to tram trade the ship of the LCC much more like a Suez Max. Seeking these opportunities and being comfortable to trade the VLCCs outside the usual TD3 or west-east round voyages produces significant outperformance for us and we're happy we took these risks. An unexpected highlight of the quarter was progressively turning our dirty trading VLCCs into LR4s. I will go into more depth about the idea and process later in the call. There was a huge spread between crude oil and product trade rates, though, which made the cleanup trade profitable for the trader when he incorporated the cost and time of cleaning up the crutches and the cost and time of the inefficiencies of lightering to load and discharge the vessels. Clean terminals at the load and discharge ports were not all designed to fully load VLCCs with diesel. We successfully cleaned up three VLCCs on a spot basis. Why did we do this? It generated premium time charter equivalent rates relative to the crude trade. It extended voyage duration during the seasonal week or summer months, covering us for a longer period of the summer than a crude voyage would have done, and simultaneously positioned our vessels in the west. We have the added bonus of a future clean trading optionality, but this is not our base case scenario. To date, we have cleaned up four shifts, of which one has reentered the dirty trade already. We are now experiencing the process and trusted by our counterparties. We spend a lot of time and effort commercially and technically to get these deals concluded. Two out of the six VLCCs planned for this year to dry dock, completed their dry docks during the second quarter, being the Despotipo and Keros, with the latter sailing in early July. The remaining three are planned for Q3 and one in early Q4, aiming to have the ships ready for a strong Q4. Given we do not transit the Red Sea and the decrease in Suezmax stems from the AEG that are sold to the West, we have found it more challenging to trade our Suezmaxes east of Suez. Before the Red Sea situation developed, it was very easy to find backhaul cargos, repositioning the vessels from the AEG to Europe. Now this is more challenging and there are fewer cargos. We could not risk having multiple Suez Maxis open in the east and compete against each other and the market for backhauls. Therefore, we had to calculate earnings on the Suez Max front haul voyages from west to east with a long ballot repositioned back to a location where we were comfortable finding cargos. like West Africa. This deteriorated the time chart equivalent earnings significantly, and in most cases would not outperform trading the ships locally in the West. For this reason, we strongly focused on keeping them in the West, with only one vessel being fixed east, where we found a lucrative opportunity in comparison to the Western market earnings. Despite the seasonal weakness prevailing in both segments, towards the end of the quarter, we achieved a fleet-wide TC rate of $64,900 per day. Our VLCCs generated $73,200 per day in the spot market, a 39% outperformance relative to our tanker peers that had reported future earnings. Our sewage maxes generated $54,600 per spot day, a 17.5% outperformance relative to our tanker peers. who have recorded Q2 earnings. These numbers reflect our actual book TCE revenue within the quarter as per our accounting standards. Moving on to slide 11 for guidance on Q3. Q2 was a relatively strong quarter which mitigated some of the Q3 seasonal weakness which we had done by fixing long haul front haul voyages to dry dock and cleaning up the three This positive trend continued into Q3, where we cleaned up an additional VLCC for product trading with one more ship in the works. As mentioned previously, this move generated a premium time trial equivalent and extended the trading duration compared to a crude backhaul trade. Additionally, as again mentioned previously, we positioned ourselves back in our beloved West Market for Q4. We hope to find market outperforming opportunities to continue trading clean following discharge, of the first clean cargo, but this is not a given. In Q3, we continue our focus on positioning the remaining four VLCCs that are due for dry dock with long-haul voyages east and discharging in proximity to the yard. For our Suez Maxis, we focused again in the west and on voyage optimization by limiting waiting times and ballot days. Given the seasonally weaker summer in both segments, our focus and strategy now is to conclude the remaining dry docks. Already one vessel, the Nisus Rhenia, has completed dry dock, while the remaining two schedule for the latter part of the quarter and one will enter in the beginning of Q4. Meanwhile, we maintain a west positioning on the trading fleet to capitalize on seasonality changes. Once we complete the dry docks on the VLCCs, we will likely return to minimizing ballast and focus on trading our VLCCs in the west. Current Q3 rates have weakened significantly with VLCC round voyages trading around $25,000 per day for AGEs and $30,000 for U.S. Gulf TA, while Suez maxes are earning in the low 20s on a round voyage basis. So far in Q3, we have 56% of our fleet-wide spot days at $51,300 per day, 58% of our VLCC spot days at $46,100 per day, dollars per day, a 24% outperformance. 53% of our sewage max spot days is 58,000 days, a 39% outperformance relative to our tanker peers that have reported Q3 earnings. On slide 13, we demonstrate how our ability to adapt and capitalize on the market opportunity is proven with consistent outperformance relative to our tanker peers in almost every turn of the market. We are very focused on maintaining this consistency going forward. I would like to note that the outlook for the next years is great, and our outperformance grows in firm market environments. Significant softening has been seen into the summer, mainly driven by weaker Chinese crude exports, weak refining margins in ARBs, and ongoing OPEC Plus cuts. The outlook and conditions remain firm in the crude tanker market for the winter, and seasonality provides for meaningful upside. Rates in both segments are at quite healthy levels and way above the 2019-2023 average, while expectations for seasonality boost should start appearing on the horizon soon. Global oil demand is expected to continue its upward trend, with the IEA forecasting an increase of 1.1 million barrels per day in 2024. This growth is bolstered by increased production in the Americas, particularly USA, Canada, Brazil, and Guyana. However, OPEX production is expected to remain relatively stable, which may limit some of the supply increases from this group. In addition to the above, ongoing geopolitical instability is forcing tankers to take longer routes to avoid high-risk areas. This rerouting is expected to continue increasing 10-mile demand significantly, contributing to higher shipping volumes and sustaining higher freight rates. In recent years, we have seen the winter market arrive later in Q4, but also extend deeper into Q1. We are confident in seeing a strong winter market and are perfectly positioned to capture this with our 100% spot fleet and no planned dry zones. Moving on to the following slide, I want to explain in greater detail about our decision to put so much focus into our cleaning up of the VLCCs into LR4s in Q2 and Q3. The summer is always the most challenging period of the year in terms of freight, and we look for ways to protect ourselves from this. Other than the vessels requiring dry dock, we also fixed two VLCCs from west to east. We had a large eastern presence with a strategy to reposition them in the west for the winter. In addition to this, a vessel sailing from dry dock will always have to fix at a discount to a vessel that's not in dry dock for the first voyage. We saw in the market that traders like Mercuri and Chafaguro were fixing dirty trading suez maxis on time charter and proceeding to clean them up and trade them in the clean market. A similar voyage for crude cargo on a large dirty ship was cheaper freight than a clean cargo on a smaller clean ship. A VLCC for the same freight could carry three to three and a half times the cargo of a product carrier. As our Suezmax were trading the West and these opportunities develop in the East, it was not an option for our Suezmax fleet. Also at the time, the spread between the clean and dirty Suezmax market was not large enough to make sense for us. The VLCC dirty market though was comparatively weaker and the freight we believe we could earn if we cleaned up the vessels was significantly higher. This is where we had to start taking some commercial risks. We did not market the VLCCs we had for crude business. Instead, working with a specialist, we started cleaning up the VLCCs on spec while trying to develop cargos. A vessel that is trading dirty will have her cargo tanks covered in crude oil, a thick, waxy substance. Each tank on a VLCC is about 28 meters tall, and there are 17 of them. Every surface needs to be cleaned until it was pure bare metal. This involved hot water washing, sludge removals, chemical washings, and at times having over 120 people on board scraping, cleaning, and removing all the crude residue. On each ship, we removed an average of around 150 tons of sludges in sludge disposal and also in garbage-sized bags. This was a huge feat. The total cleaning process took about 20 days, which is factored into our TC, and the total cost is amortized in the single-spot voyage. We assured our charters of the quality of the work we've done and secured the business. Instead of fixing the traders, we aim to work with the refiners who own the cargoes and do not have to develop the trade as extensively, thereby reducing our risk of the voyage not materializing. There is not an independent owner that was able to clean up over 50% of their VLCC fleet on a spot basis. And Chris and the team did an excellent job executing this plan. If we had fixed on a time charter basis instead of a spot basis, we would have given up optionality and extended duration to the charter. Now let's discuss why we did it, which we mentioned earlier as well. The market was weak and the dry dock shifts would need to be discounted. So the CPP opportunities allowed us to outperform in earnings all the different crude voyages, whether a backhaul or a round voyage. Incorporating the time to clean and the slower discharge and loading due to multiple SPS lengthened the voyage to take us into the seasonally firmer Q4. The demurrage rate was much higher than the crew, so inefficiencies in discharge would only improve the voyage economics. The voyages were all for discharge in the west, which is exactly what we wanted to do to reposition our ships for Q4. And we have the future clean trading optionality without any cleaning costs or time. As already discussed, we've cleaned up four vessels so far and hopefully one more soon, showcasing our operational flexibility and adaptability to market conditions for the benefit of our shareholders. Lastly, on slide 16, we look at the setup that, as we discussed in the previous quarter, seems still too good to be true. An aging fleet with minimal order book, especially for the VLCCs, and no yard capacity in Tier 1 yards until at least before 2028. creates the perfect supply scenario, especially for Ocanis' superecho modern fleet. For 2025 onwards, we observe a significant increase in scrap candidates, especially for vessels over 20 years old in both segments, which can easily absorb the incoming deliveries. Handing you back to the operator. Thank you.

We'll now open the lines for questions. You can register your question by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Liam Burke with B Reilly. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. And good afternoon. Hi, Liam. Good morning. The conversion of, if I heard you right, you converted your 4Vs from dirty to clean on spec. went out and you've got excellent economics on it, justifying the time to clean it and the time and capital to invest in there. So as we look into next year into another slow quarter, seasonally slow quarter, you have the experience of actually doing this. Would you anticipate not only doing it again, but deploying more VLCCs in the clean trade?

Hi, and thank you for your question. Yeah, we're willing and always going to evaluate every commercial opportunity we get. It really depends on the strength in the clean market. So if an LR2 is as firm as it was this year, sometime next year, and there's a seasonal weakness again on the VLCCs, for sure we'll consider doing it again.

And do you have to have a newer vessel to be able to do this, or could it be done with any type of ELCC?

Well, I mean, the older vessels, they may have more residue stuck inside. I mean, on the private side, we have a 13-year-old ship that we cleaned up, and we did it successfully as well.

Great. And just on the macro... You highlighted weakness in the Vs on the China trade and the OPEC Plus cuts, production cuts. Is there anything else out in the market that is creating any pressure on the VLCC rates?

I mean, obviously the OPEC cuts and the reduced cargoes from the AEG play a large role. The ARBs, nothing open. as much, especially to the east, have reduced the amount of available, you know, the amount of cargo that are going long-haul business from the Atlantic as well. And there's a general impact just from OPEC Plus reducing exports. You know, Russia has been overcompliant as well, and that's been affecting the Afromax and Suezmax as well.

Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

As another reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. We now turn to Peter Hagen with ABG. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, Peter.

Peter, your line is open.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That was my mistake. I was muted. So good afternoon. And congratulations on those clean pictures. It's something I never heard about before, to be honest. And while you answered many of my questions in your detailed walkthrough, there is a couple of those reminding. So just in terms of what type of products did you actually transport? Is this sort of the very clean jet fuels of the world, or is it the condensate type of qualities?

No, I don't think that we'd be able to carry jet fuel unless it was used for blending purposes. All the ships that we've done have carried diesel, except for one that also carried some NAFTA. But if you have a diesel car, you may be burning OETs cargo this winter in Europe.

Okay, so if I'm stuck somewhere between home and my office, I'll blame you guys for contaminating the diesel cars. That's my second question really. First of all, are all the clean voyages now discharged and the cargo owner is happy with the quality on the other side?

None of the cargoes are discharged, but the way we have structured the contracts is that the responsibility for any cargo contamination is with the charter. Okay. Together with the charter and our specialist, the ship is inspected prior loading. It's deemed acceptable. And then within the contract, there's the liability of any future damages or discoloration or contamination of the cargo. It's not our responsibility. So you would have to pick up any issues with your car with the charter.

Okay, I'll do that then. Does that mean that it's easier if you were to try to do another clean cargo now? If you now discharge and this is okay, wouldn't it be likely that you could repeat it with the same ship?

Yeah, you could. I just want to understand geographically, let's say Singapore, where the previous voyage ended to the AG as a ballast is much shorter than the vessel opening up in, let's say, Rotterdam, ballasting all the way back around Africa to the AG, loading a cargo and going back. So we won't have that benefit of a shorter ballast, which we did. It'll be around voids. But even more importantly, clean freight has come off very significantly since then. So I think that the rate that we could fix has fallen materially as well. So at the moment, the clean cargoes are not as easy because of the weakness or the relative weakness compared to two months ago in the clean market.

Understood, understood. And that also brings me to my other question. Could you share your sort of round voyage equivalent TCEs for these clean pictures?

um i mean yeah the first one was in the mid 50s that but that was like timing very good timing and the following two were in the mid high 30s and low 40s which is uh yeah it's probably one of the reasons why we had um well we were at least surprised both of your acute or partly of the q2 earnings but also for the q3

the Q3 guidance given.

What's good about... Sorry for interrupting you. The benefit of these voyages is that if there is any inefficiencies in the discharge, because a VLCC cannot go and discharge into some small port in Europe that would usually receive, you know, 30 or 40,000 tons of diesel. We're going to have to go in lighter in Malta or off Rotterdam. And if there's any weather delays or vessel, you know, inability to source vessels for lightering, we can easily rack up demerge. And the demerge is quite a bit higher than the time chart equivalent rate. So as the voyage is prolonged due to inefficient discharge, we will improve in our time chart equivalent of the voyage.

And this is going directly actually to what I was coming to. Any guidance for the remaining 40% plus of the days for Q3? Because my understanding from your earlier comments as well was precisely that it could be better than at least the current spot and FFA market for the latter part of Q3 is suggesting today.

I mean, I mentioned that on a round voyage basis today, Vs are somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000, and Sue's maxes are in the low 20s. Now, we'll do everything we can to outperform this, like we try to always do, but if we were just fixing round voyages, that's where the rates would be for the balance of the

Right, understood. But if instead you're sort of slow moving outside Malta, you would have two to three times those $25,000 per day, if I understand you right. Yeah, that's correct. Okay, this was very interesting. Have you seen any other ship owners doing it at the same scale as yourselves?

I think the only other companies managing to be so active have been the traders like Trafiguria and Mercuria. There are other owners that have done one or two ships, but I'm not aware of anyone else doing more than that.

Understood. Do you think that this crude tanker is coming into the product trade as a reason for what you just, well, also referred to, the declining product tanker rates?

It definitely affected product tanker rates in the East because, you know, you've had, I think now there's 10 to 12 VLCCs and even more Suez Maxis competing for LR2 business and LR1 business. So it definitely impacted that.

Understood. Well, so, but I think that was all from me. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Have a nice afternoon.

We now turn to Bendec 19s with clocks and securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Congratulations on another strong quarter. I just have some questions on the pictures for 3Q. Last quarter, you had quite a large portion of your wheels covered, and now that portion seems quite a bit smaller. I mean, besides the slightly earlier reporting date, are there any fundamentals driving that decrease in coverage?

In terms of time charter coverage? Yes. Or percentage of the spot fixed?

Yeah, percentage of the spot fixed.

I think definitely one impact is that we have two ships going to dry dock, so instead of being able to be commercially chartered, they're in the process of being dry docked. The Suezmax, as I mentioned earlier, they're staying local in the West, so they're doing shorter voyages overall, so they're coming open quicker. If we had fixed something, US Gulf China or Brazil-China in the Suezmax, rather than Turkey to Europe, It shows you the difference. And we're also reporting slightly earlier as well. So those three factors.

Yeah, that makes sense. And another question. Previously, you've been really good at finding routes that are sort of niche and higher earning. And recently we've seen, I guess, the tension in the Middle East increasing. Are you experiencing any change in competition for those sort of more niche routes as the tension in the MEG increases?

I mean, I think like most Western owners, especially listed owners, the Red Sea has been an area that we stopped trading through and It's been a while now that we've transited the Red Sea. So there are some niche businesses that go through the Red Sea, like fuel oil that gets delivered into the Red Sea or AG to Red Sea business that we can't do. And there's even some European charters who still like to transit via the Red Sea, their cargoes. So I would say The impact of the tension in the Middle East and the Houthis closing the Red Sea for a large part of the fleet has impacted everyone. And opportunities have formed because of this. So one of these niche markets that we had found was that while Europe had become accustomed to importing Iraqi crude on Suez Maxis via the Suez, while they were transitioning finding alternatives to this crude. Instead of taking one Suezmax, they were parceling up two Suezmax cargoes onto BLCC. So in Q1 and Q2, we were quite quick to fix a couple of those voyages, taking two Suezmax cargoes onto BLCC from Basra to Europe around Africa. In addition to that, there were also cargoes from Europe that were going to Korea or to China on Suezmaxes. And again, it became inefficient to go around the Africa and we were quick to grasp opportunities to parcel up to Sue's Max cargos and go around the Cape on the LCC. So we look for opportunities and for sure all these conflicts create them.

Thank you, that's a good call.

This concludes our Q&A. I'll now hand back to Herakles for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for dialing in. I wish you the best for the remainder of the summer and look forward to speaking again in November. Bye, everyone. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.