KNOT Offshore Partners LP Common Units representing Limited Partner Interests

good morning and thank you all for joining i would like to welcome you all to the nut offshore partners third quarter 2024 earnings call my name is brika and i will be your moderator for today all lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with opportunity for questions and answers at the end i would now like to pass the conference over to your host derek low chief executive officer and chief financial officer At Knot Offshore Partners. Thank you. You may proceed, Derek.

Thank you, Brieke, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Derek Lowe. I'm the Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer of Knot Offshore Partners. Welcome to the Partnerships Earnings Call for the third quarter of 2024. Our website is knotoffshorepartners.com, and you can find the earnings release there along with this presentation. On slide two, you will find guidance on the inclusion of forward-looking statements in today's presentation. These are made in good faith and reflect management's current views, known and unknown risks, and are based on assumptions and estimates that are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in forward-looking statements, and the partnership does not have or undertake a duty to update any such forward-looking statements made as of the date of this presentation. For further information, please consult our SEC filings, especially in relation to our annual and quarterly results. Today's presentation also includes certain non-US GAAP measures, and our earnings release includes a reconciliation of these to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. On slide three, we have the financial and operational headlines for Q3. Revenues were $76.3 million, operating income $17.2 million, and there was a net loss of 3.8. Adjusted EBITDA was $45.1 million. We closed Q3 with $77 million in available liquidity, made up of $67 million in cash and cash equivalents, plus $10 million in undrawn capacity on our credit facilities. We operated with 98.8% utilization, and the vessel time available for scheduled operations was not impacted by any planned dry docking. Following the end of Q3, we declared a cash distribution of 2.6 US cents per common unit, which was paid in early November. Onto slide four, our outlook remains positive on both industry dynamics and the partnerships positioning to participate fruitfully in our markets. Significant growth is anticipated in production in fields which rely on service by Shell tankers. We see around 11 new builds on order, including for our sponsor Knutson MYK. and we expect to see further new build orders placed in order to service the large new production volumes coming online in the years ahead. A measured amount of new Shuttle tanker ordering is unavoidable and in fact necessary as a shortage of Shuttle tanker capacity remains projected in the coming years. The partnership remains financially resilient with a strong contracted revenue position of $980 million at the end of Q3 on fixed contracts, which averaged 2.8 years in duration. Charter as options are additional to this and average a further 2.4 years. Our pattern of cash generation and liquidity balance is sufficient for our operations and the significant paid out rate for our debt, which is in the region of $90 million per year for installment payments. And our near-term chartering exposure has reduced to Dan Sabia, where we are maintaining our marketing focus. She has secured some conventional cargoes and so is operating commercially while we seek a shuttle tanker deployment. On slide five, a number of developments in Q3 were announced already on the previous earnings call, including charter extensions for Tordes Knudsen and Lehner Knudsen. The most important development in Q3 is on slide six, showing the swap of Dan Cisner for Tuva Knudsen. Tuva brought seven years of fixed or guaranteed future charter revenue and was a significant step in fleet and pipeline growth without the need for new funding. On slide seven, Our most recent developments include the Ingrid Knutson beginning her charter with E&I in October for two years plus two options each of one year. Signature of a charter for the Hilda Knutson for one year fixed commencing March 2025. Commencement of the Toril Knutson's time charter with E&I for three years fixed plus three options each of one year. Exercise by Repsol of their one year option on Carmen Knutson commencing Q1 2025. and some short-term deployments for the Dan Sabia on conventional tanker work. On to slide eight, you can see the consistency of our revenues over the quarters and years. This consistency applies also to our operating income when the effects of vessel impairments is removed. Slide nine similarly reflects the consistency of our adjusted EBITDA, and you can find the definition of this non-GAAP measure in the appendix. On slide 10, there are two notable changes in the balance sheet over the first nine months of 2024. The first is a slight increase in overall liabilities. While we continue contractual debt repayments in the area of $90 million per year, liabilities increased with completion of the TUVA acquisition on the 3rd of September. The second is that two of our debt facilities have moved up from long term to current liabilities because of their upcoming maturities. These can be seen on slide 11, which sets out the maturity profile of our debt facilities. On line one, the first of our revolving credit facilities is due to mature in August 2025, and on line two, around half of the loan secured by Tover Knutson and Sinova Knutson matures in September 2025. The remainder of that facility matures in October 2025, and the second revolving matures in November 2025. The highlighted column shows how the outstanding balances of each facility have been reducing because of the repayments we've been making in line with scheduled repayment terms. The current installments are the amounts of capital repayment due over the next year, which do not include interest or the final balloon payments due on the maturity dates. Of note, $96 million in current installments is due to be paid over the 12 months following 30th of September. Our typical pattern is for our vessels to provide security for our debt facilities, and that applies to 17 out of 18 vessels in the fleet as of 30th of September. At present, Dan Sabia is the only vessel free of debt, and we do not have any plans to incur additional borrowing secured by Dan Sabia until we have better visibility on her future employment. $907 million out of $947 million in debt facilities are secured by vessels, while the two revolving credit facilities totaling $50 million of capacity are unsecured. Slide 12 shows the contracted pipeline in chart format, reflecting the developments I set out earlier. Similarly, slide 13 highlights the focus of our commercial efforts on adding near-term contracts for Dansabia. We've made good progress in increasing our fixed charter coverage, and we intend to remain active in that regard. On slide 14, we see our sponsor's inventory of vessels which are eligible for purchase by the partnership. This applies to any vessel owned by or on order for our sponsor. where the vessel has a firm contract period at least five years in length. At present, five existing vessels and five under construction fall into this category. There is no assurance that any further acquisitions will be made by the partnership, and any transaction will be subject to the Board approval of both parties, which includes the partnership's independent conflicts committee. As we have said, our top priorities remain securing additional contract coverage for our existing fleet and fostering our liquidity positions. On slides 15 and 16, we provided some useful illustrations of the strong demand dynamics in the Brazilian market as published by Petrobras. We encourage you to review Petrobras materials directly. The web page is shown there. Primary takeaway from each of these slides is consistent. There's very significant committed demand growth coming in the Brazilian market in the form of new FPSOs that will require regular service from shuttle tankers. We believe that reports earlier this year of additional vessel construction contracts are an endorsement of the strong anticipated market conditions in the medium and longer term. Five outstanding new build contracts are for our sponsor Knutson MYK and are due for delivery over 2026 and 2027. We would expect to see further new build orders placed in order to service the large new production volumes coming online in the years ahead, and a material shortage of shuffle tanker capacity remains projected in the coming years. In a trend that also applies to oil production globally, you'll see that even in the years ahead where aggregate production growth slows, deep offshore production, in this case Brazilian pre-salt, continues to outpace the overall market and take market share. On slide 17, we provide information relevant to our US unit holders, in particular those seeking a Form 1099. Those holding units via their custodians or brokers should approach those parties directly. Those with directly registered holdings should contact our transfer agent, Equinity Trust Company, whose details are shown there. On slide 18, we include some reminders of the strong fundamentals of our business. In the market we serve, our assets, competitive landscape, robust contractual footprint, and resilient finances. And I'll finish with slide 19, recapping our financial and operational performance in Q3 2024 and the subsequent time, and our current outlook. We're glad to have delivered high and safe utilization, which have generated consistent financial performance. We're pleased with the new contracts and extensions we've secured during the quarter and since, along with our ability to navigate our refinancing needs and periodic capital expenditure. We're delighted to have taken the growth step of swapping down system for Tuva Connection. And our continued commercial focus remains on filling up third party utilization for the coming months, while looking further forward to longer term charter visibility and liquidity generation. In total, though, we're making good progress and are pleased to have established positive momentum against an improving market backdrop. Thank you for listening. And with that, I'll hand the call back to Brika for any questions.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star and two. And as a reminder, when speaking, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. We will pause here briefly whilst questions are registered. We have the first question on the line from Liam Burke with B Reilly. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi Derek, how are you?

Hi Liam, good thank you and you?

I'm fine, thank you. Your OPEX jumped about $2 million sequentially. How much of that was related to the Toral repair, or if any?

Pretty limited amount. Well under half of that amount off the top of my head. Okay. Probably a quarter of it at most.

There was some expense baked into that number related to the repair.

That's right, we are due to receive the insurance claim proceeds during this quarter, and until we receive it, we don't recognize it. So you don't have the offsetting income to correspond with that and reduce the effect of the net cost to us.

Great. You announced four charters or extensions beginning this quarter, which included the TORL. Can you give us a sense? I know you don't give specifics on the contracts, but do you have some color generally, how they look vis-a-vis, you know, where you've been sitting on the charter levels?

The new ones, the new news, as it were, for this quarter, you mean? or the toll specifically?

No, all of them, or just the census.

Okay. Well, the rates reflect the market conditions at the time they were contracted. So on Ingrid, I don't have – I'm just looking at them in order here on page 7. On Ingrid, I don't have the signature date in front of me, but it would reflect that. Hilda, the signature date, was October this year. So that will reflect a current market. Toril is close to current because that signature was in July this year. And then Carmen will go back to the timing of the original contract, which was, I think, some years ago. So Ingrid and Carmen will be older and Hilda and Toril will be close to current.

Great. Thank you, Derek.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Jim. Hello, Jim. The line should be open.

Hello. Hello, Jim. I can hear you. Robert Marlayson, Okay, go ahead, good afternoon. Robert Marlayson, Thanks for taking the call a couple of things, first of all, in response to the response to previous question we're talking about how a couple of the new. Robert Marlayson, charters are made it current market condition does that mean that the rate is the rate. Robert Marlayson, market conditions are somewhat lower than they would have been a couple of years ago, am I correct in thinking that.

It's the other way around. Oh. So it's fair to say that market conditions have been strengthening reasonably steadily over that time. So we don't have particular numbers to give you on those contracts, but it's more recent would typically imply better rates or higher rates.

Oh, good. With regard to the operating expenses, because you can, again, in your answer to the previous question, you said that part of it relates to this repair and you're expecting to get at least some of that back from the insurance company. But what are some of the other factors that have increased operating expenses year on year?

It's general operating costs level. So we see increased costs of accruing, particularly relating to travel and increased cost of supplies as well. It's a generally inflationary environment, unfortunately, for our work. Understood. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks, Jim.

We now have Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Derek. I was just wondering, hey, can you just ensure that the presentation is up on the website? I mean, I've been trying the whole call to access it, and it's just not up there yet. So if you're getting the same feedback from other investors, I think you should be aware. Okay, thank you.

I'm sorry about that. It was approved for publication, so yeah.

No, I know. And you were referring to it the whole, you know, the whole call. So I assumed that you thought it was up there, but I haven't been able to access it. Maybe it's just maybe it's just technology. But when you talked about the higher op backs, so there was a little bit of repair from in the third quarter, you know, very what, 15 days or so. Is the run rate that we saw in the third quarter, would that, maybe another way to ask it, would that be an appropriate run rate for the fourth quarter or will there be any other changes in OPEX when you look at the fourth quarter and into 2025?

It's probably a good guide or somewhere between the second and third. I don't have a sort of a fine-tuned comment for you on that, but it's not a bad guide.

Okay. And then I'm not sure if I heard it, but have you quantified the amount that you expect to recover in insurance in the fourth quarter?

We haven't done that. Well, in our discussion with the insurance company, we are close to that, but we haven't disclosed that in our release. That's a matter for a fourth quarter report, or a report in the quarter when we receive it, and we expect that to be the fourth quarter.

But essentially, it's the differential between what the time charter contracted rate was when it was impaired operationally. It was still operating, but it wasn't at full capacity. So it's just the differential for that I think it was the six-day period.

It's the difference for a number of days less the deductible that applies to that policy as well. But because she was able to operate on, as you say, an impaired basis rather than not able to operate at all, there's a discussion around how many days should be recognized. But that discussion is substantially complete.

OK. And then you sort of mentioned the revolvers. Can you just talk about how the discussion on the revolvers, do you expect them to get renewed? What sort of timeframe we should also be expecting those to be, if they will be renewed, renewed within?

We certainly expect to seek to renew them. That discussion with our lenders would normally be over the course of the first half next year. And we would typically, at least in the earlier one, expect to be complete with that discussion by the end of the first half. The second one is due that little bit later, November. So that might get into Q3 for that conclusion. And of course, you're aware of our pattern of results and news flow. So it's likely that you'd hear about it on the earnings release date that followed any conclusion to those.

Understood, so maybe possibly in late May or even as late as August, September of next year.

Yeah, those are the likely dates of our earnings releases, so we'd expect to include news within that. Renewals of those would not be material enough to warrant a separate announcement, I expect.

Understood. And then just to clarify, you talked about the Carmen, the exercise of the option. That original contract was done in an environment where rates were lower and now rates have improved. You've been talking about that, especially in Brazil, the tone of the market improving. Can you

quantify or give us sort of a range percentage range on how much rates have improved you know vis-a-vis like the carmen option is it 10 yeah i don't think we can do that when we um as you're aware we generally don't give too specific guidance on uh rates that the vessels are earning you've got you've obviously got an average rate that uh can be found from our revenues for the quarter

And then to talk about that, how many actual down days were there during the quarter, Derek? In other words, your operating, what was your operating, you know, days, X days, idle days or the repair days?

Yeah, we don't have that specific number available. It's quite complex because partial earnings were possible. And we're looking at the difference between rates and not just... So it's too complex to go into on the call for putting into a model, I'm afraid.

Okay. And to clarify, the Dan Sabia did come off the bare boat and go into the conventional market. Hopefully it'll get into what its higher use potentially is. But that was, I think I heard you say about three quarters of the increase in the OpEx in the third quarter?

That will be part of the increase in the OpEx.

Okay, great. Thanks for your help.

Great. Thanks, Bo.

We now have Pavel Avila with Rock Hill Global.

Hi, good afternoon, Derek. Great quarter. I just wanted to really thank you for all this hard work that you and your chartering department have done, you know, securing great charters and getting great coverage. So I have a few questions, some more specific and some sort of bigger picture. On the more specific side, Dan Sabia, if you look on the map, they're going to Panama on a conventional voyage. Is there a thought still to do a swap uh, with the, um, you know, similar, similar to the Dan Cisner, um, uh, to, uh, do a dropdown or, you know, Panama is halfway to Brazil or there is, uh, opportunities in Brazil and just, you know, as a color, you know, speaking to some of the clients, um, in Brazil, the, uh, day rates now are, you know, hovering around 65,000. So, um, you know, even a smaller ship may be able to earn some, uh, uh, very good, uh, daily rates. Can you maybe, uh, walk us through your thinking on the then savvy?

Yes. So, uh, we are marketing, uh, where in. Any market that she's capable of operating and obviously that includes, um, Brazil and with some modifications. would include the North Sea for shuttle work as well. So yes, we continue to market her directly. She is, as you say, rather smaller than is preferred in Brazil. So despite the high current day rates, it's still difficult to get her deployed. And in fact, that's the reason she left Brazil in the first place once that charter had come to an end last summer. In terms of the potential for a swap similar to the system of Tuva swap a few months ago. Yes, that's absolutely a potential outcome for her. It obviously relies on the discussion and negotiation between us and Knutson MYK. It needs to be commercially fitting for both parties. It would be reviewed by our independent conflicts committee. So the potential is there. I guess the commercial thing to be aware of a little bit is that by her sister vessel, Dan Cisner, going to what's effectively the North Sea pool. That's used up, that's provided some supply into that market. So that market position, the ability for Sabia to be deployed there, is somewhat impaired by the fact that the Cisner's there. So the concept of a drop-down absolutely is there. It's got the usual governance process to follow, but the market commercial background to it is a little different from what we had with CISNA last summer.

Understood. That makes a lot of sense because the legal work should be pretty similar to the CISNA. You can even Xerox the or copy the papers and uh you know as long as the independent committee is fine with it that's um uh that should be helpful uh maybe uh on the hilda you know the one year is um you know there's tightening in the north sea obviously the production is going up johan casper is uh should be starting any day now um you know, what's your projection or expectation on the North Sea side, and especially since there are no new builds?

Yeah, well, we'll continue to market HILDA for the period beyond the charter that we've just signed. So that will be from Q1 2026 onwards. And we're certainly very optimistic about market conditions in the North Sea. But as we saw during the course of this year, to actually get from our view on the market to signature took rather longer than really anybody anticipated. And what we don't see yet is whether that will change, so whether charters will be signing further in advance than they chose to this year. Understood. Okay.

Can I ask a sort of broader and bigger picture question? And that is, you know, I have... I've been in investing for a long time, but I probably never seen a bigger disconnect between the cost of debt and cost of equity, uh, than in your company. Um, you know, the cost of debt is so for plus 220, you guys are free finance, everything, uh, immediately zero problems with any refinancing or anything like that. Um, knock on wood, but you have a very stable through the ownership as well as track record in financing. Your funding costs are very low, yet the cost of equity is I would call it infinite. With the NAV or the replacement costs to the ships and mix to high teams, there's an incredible value gap between what the fleet is worth and how you have improved the performance with the share price. there has been a good pickup in the cash available and the free cash flow even with the repayments. Can you give us a color a little bit on the thoughts on dividend and especially buyback, restarting the dividend gradually? Because as shareholders, we have not been remunerated almost at all. And for the board members that are listening, it would be good to hear that they're also, because they're getting their board fees, if we could get the dividend restarted.

Yes, I do understand all of what you've said out there, and I do appreciate it. The experience that we've had over the last, well, it's at least the last couple of years, has been that we really needed to rebuild the visible charter pipeline. You may remember two quarters ago, we said that four vessels concerned us. The last quarter, we said that two vessels concerned us, and now we're saying effectively that it's one plus wanting to renew on the Hilda. So Dan Sarby is the one that concerns us at the moment. that's um progress that we're very pleased with and um we're pleased also that's been uh noted and recognized as well uh among our uh unit holders the um the issue is that the sabia still needs to be uh uh deployed whether on charter or sold or swapped um whichever the best uh option is that uh that arises um and uh we need to continue reviewing the what's visible as our forward pipeline and the the partnership has always grown through drop downs uh and i appreciate that the swaps are are very efficient and strategically very useful way of doing it well there's only one further opportunity for a drop down for a for swaps um uh for a swap coming up um and uh but as i say growth in the past has always been through uh the drop down schedule of which there are five candidates available on the water at the moment. And so we would, what the directors are going to be doing is looking at their own capital allocation, considering which is the better route to be taking, whether it's or distribution increase or combination of the two.

Well, you know, one, just pointing out that this is the smallest ship where, you know, one out of 18 now, And, you know, we have been waiting for a long time. It would be helpful if the, you know, board of directors and the sponsor, which also owns 30%, you know, would recognize what an incredible opportunity this is to, for example, buy back stock at, you know, 30, 40% of replacement costs. And, you know, not a big amount, but just it would be helpful to have the board and the sponsor sort of acknowledge that they also have shareholders that, you know, should reap some of the rewards as the operations have improved. And you have an opportunity with the declaration of dividend in January to kind of send a signal that you care about shareholders as well.

Yes, thank you. I do understand that. And the directors are aware of that too. Thanks. Thanks, Pavel.

Thank you, guys. And great quarter. And you guys have done an incredible job on all different all the fronts except one. And I think, you know, I would urge the board to really reevaluate, you know, given the amount of cash flow that you are bringing in every quarter to send a signal to shareholders that, you know, you're there for them as well. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Thank you. We now have Molins with Value Investors Edge on the line.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Most has already been covered, but could you talk a bit about your current hedging strategy? You increased the average maturity on your swaps quarter over quarter, and I was wondering, looking ahead, do you expect to maintain the ratio of hedge versus unhedged debt more or less constant, or are you willing to lower it a bit given the higher interest rate environment?

Thank you for the question. We certainly expect to have in mind the current interest rate levels at the time we enter into any future interest rate swaps, so it's not simply a matter of maintaining the percentage of our debt that is fixed or effectively fixed. We have quite a wide range of hedging policy available to us. So it's between half and three quarters of our outstanding debt. And as I say, that includes debt that's effectively fixed or actually fixed. At the moment, we are on the higher side of that, but we expect that to reduce quite significantly during the course of 2025, which you'll see just from the average maturity of our interest rate swaps that we have disclosed. But we aren't going to be swapping where we think that the rates are too high to do that. There's no point economically in doing that, so we don't expect it. But we have capacity within our hedging policy to allow existing swaps to mature without putting new ones on at rates that we don't like.

Right, that's helpful. Thank you for taking my questions. Thanks.

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Jim Axel with Advocation advisory service. Please go ahead.

This isn't really a this. This isn't really a question. It's more of a comment. I'm just following up on what the next next to previous comment about the rewarding the shareholders. Obviously we don't like the same increase in both giving in from the stock price, but I don't have any specific numbers in mind, but I would urge you to continue from the I grew up in the airline industry, and this is a different tale of fish, but no pun intended. I look at all the airlines that went bankrupt after buying back stock, even though they were heavily leveraged, much more heavily leveraged than you are. But part of shareholder value is preserving the value for the long term. So although I'd certainly like to see the dividends go back to where they were, I also want this company to survive and be strong for the long term.

Thank you, Jim. Thanks for your input.

Thank you. I can confirm we currently have no further questions, but it's staff followed by one if you do wish to ask any further questions. I can confirm we now have a question from Frederick De Boord with Plano Securities.

Hey, Derek. Congratulations, doing a great job with the, you know, the backlog of the company. You know, just then, Dan Xavier left. He did the option extension with Kyderman. And then you have an upcoming firm period on Raquel, which expires closer to the summer. Could you give more details caller on timing and timing-wise when you expect an option extension to be caught?

On the Raquel? Yes. We generally find that extensions get chosen pretty late. So there is the chance that it's as late as within the month before commencement of the option period. Ideally, it's longer than that, but because it's a transfer option and we generally don't have much influence over the timing.

Okay, thanks. And now with Hilda getting a contract from March, it will exit the Klutzen pool. Won't that make it more attractive to sell down Sebia up to sponsor and call it in the pool replacing Hilda with Sebia?

Yes, that certainly helps the demand supply dynamics. Yeah. Cool. Thanks, Frederick. Thanks.

Thank you. I would now like to hand it back to Derek for some final closing comments.

Well, thank you all again for joining this earnings call for Knotts Offshore Partners third quarter in 2024. And apologies to those who couldn't get into the presentation on the website. It certainly was uploaded and approved for public viewing. So and I'll be looking into that. Otherwise, I look forward to speaking with you again following the fourth quarter results.

Thank you all for joining. I can confirm that that concludes today's call. Please enjoy the rest of your day and you may now disconnect.