ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Nikola, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the SIEM, Integrated Shipping Services Q4 and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchstone telephone. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Elana Holtzmann, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to ZIM's fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results conference call. Joining me on the call today are Eli Glickman, ZIM's President and CEO, and Xavier Destrio, ZIM's CFO. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding expectations, predictions, projections of future events or results. We believe that our expectations and assumptions are reasonable. We wish to caution you that such statements reflect only the company's current expectations and that actual events or results may differ, including materially. You are kindly referred to consider the risk factors in cautionary language describing the documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 2022 annual report filed on Form 20F today, March 13, 2023. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Zim CEO, Eli Glickman. Eli?

Thank you, Ilana. And welcome to everyone to today's call. Slide number three. 2022 was a record deal for Zim in terms of EBITDA and EBIT results. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $7.5 billion and adjusted EBIT of $6.1 billion, 14% and 6% higher than 2021, respectively. For the year, adjusted EBITDA margin reached 60% and adjusted EBIT margin reached 49%. The development of our quarterly results in 2022 reflect changing market dynamics throughout the year. Q1 2022 was our best quarter ever with respect to all financial and operational parameters. And since then, our quarterly results have declined sequentially with Q4 2022 results dramatically reflecting the negative impact of the declining freight rates. I'm incredibly proud to present these results today and of the ZIM team for their exceptional execution in delivering these record results and meeting our 2022 guidance, especially considering the evolving market conditions. Slide four. We haven't been idle for the past two years. As we benefit from highly lucrative market conditions, we took important steps to best position Zim to execute in a more normalized market environment, improve our cost structure to ensure that Zim is optimizing its performance for the benefit of our shareholders and creating sustainable value over the long term. Most important was our decision to adopt our vessel chartering strategy. We secured cost-competitive and fuel-efficient new build capacity in a series of chartering agreements to support our commercial strategy. These agreements include vessels ranging from our flagship 15,000 TU LNG-fueled vessels intended to our Asia to U.S. East Coast service to smaller, more versatile 5,000 and 7,000 fuel vessels. Notably, as we replace smaller vessels with large ones, our cost per TEU will decline, driving improvements to our cost structure throughout 2023 and beyond. This will allow ZIN to competitively operate in low freight rate markets and weaker demand environments and maintain our objective of maintaining positive EBIT. Our chartering strategy also underscores our ESG target. 28 of our 46 new-built vessels we secure are LNG powered, making us an industry leader in terms of low carbon intensity. The 15,000 TU vessels are ideally suited to serve on our core Asia to U.S. East Coast service, and we are the first liner to operate LNG vessels on this trade. This is a significant commercial differentiation, which enables us to immediately reduce the carbon footprint of ZIM and our customers. Next. Our global new strategy and customer-centric approach remain the foundation of our commercial strategy. Our customer relationships drive everything we do at Zim, and we continue to make progress in enhancing our customer experience. We continuously work to enhance our digital offering and employ strict KPIs to ensure we maintain the highest service quality while preserving our personal touch we focus on special cargo high value services we continue to invest and improve our sales tools sales tools to support our profitability objectives we also strengthen our local prison presence in important markets such as australia new zealand thailand and vietnam Our commercial presence today is more diversified as we focus on trades where we can establish a competitive position. We continuously review our services and strive to improve our network for the benefit of our customers. As market conditions evolve, we adapt our services, open new lines, modify rotation, and suspend loss-making services. Recent example of these changes include a new premium line from South America West Coast to US East Coast in which we redeploy vessels previously deployed in intra-Asia services. A new service covering major ports in Southeast Asia and Australia. Rotation changed to our Express Asia Baltimore ZXB service and suspensions suspension of zex our asia to la express service these changes are proof of our agile approach aimed at providing steering line services to our customers as well as responding swiftly to changing market dynamics we also recently established a joint venture with the largest domestic shipping company in Vietnam, high-end shipping services. We have discussed the potential we believe this market holds and this joint venture uniquely positions them to serve local importance and exporters and more effectively connect local services with our international network. This joint venture will allow us to better serve manufacturers shifting from China to Vietnam, as well as potentially target the expanding Cambodia and Laos international trade. We also identified a commercial opportunity in the car carrier market, in which strong demand and tight supply are resulting in positive market dynamics. We currently operate 11 car carriers with plans to expand to 16 vessels by mid-year, turning our growth engine complementary to our core shipping activities. We continue to explore opportunities in early-stage companies, introducing disruptive technologies in shipping and broader ecosystems. Most recently, We participated in equity and debt financing for the company Fortisys, an innovative fintech platform designed to modernize cross-border trade financing. By using AI tools, Fortisys streamlines the credit application process and can offer small and medium-sized importers and exporters faster and cheaper access to working capital financing needs than traditional financial institutions. Moreover, Fortisys represents a unique financing solution that we will very soon offer to our customers as well, primarily via our digital freight forwarder, Shift Forward. There are valuable synergies between Shift Forward and Fortisys, and we are pleased to be able to offer our SME customers a new and innovative digital financing solution designed to assist them to grow their business. A positive development, which may benefit Wave Bill of Leading, one of our early investments, is a recent decision by the Digital Container Shipping Association, the DCSA, that was established in 2019 by most of the largest shipping companies with the objective of establishing IT standards for our industry. Together, the founding members represent over 70% of the global container shipping trade. This year's SA members recently announced their commitment to reaching 15% electronics bill of lading within five years and 100% by the year 2030. As you may recall, ZIM first introduced electronic bill of lading to its customer through the WaveBL solution back in 2017. And today, other major shipping companies are also offering the Wave solution to their customers. We are active investors in all our portfolio companies as we leverage our expertise, know-hows, and network to support these companies. We believe our portfolio of companies holds significant potential in the future. Our goal is to build financial resilience in our business, stay focused on our strategy and leverage our core strengths and ensure Zim is best positioned for a more volatile and uncertain market. We intend to employ our significant cash resources cautiously to support our future profitable growth. The actions that I have outlined are aimed at advancing primary objective to use our strengths to grow profitably and maximize value to our shareholders. Going to slide number five. Despite the current rate environment and challenging macro and industry dynamics, we are confident in our strategy and expect positive results EBIT in 2023. As such, for the full year, we expect to generate a just EBITDA between $1.8 billion to $2.2 billion and a just EBIT between $100 million to $500 million. Our CFO Xavier will shortly discuss the underlying assumption of our guidance and current market environment in greater detail. Based on our strong full-year results and confidence in our strategy, our board declared a Q4 dividend of approximately $769 million, or $6.4 per share. This brings our total dividend per on account of 2022 results to $2.04 billion or 44% of total 22 net income. Returning substantial capital to shareholders remain a priority as we seek to create long-term value and enable shareholders to directly benefit from our results. On that note, I will turn the call over to Xavier, our CFO, for his remarks on our financial results and additional comments on the market. Xavier, please.