ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Zim Integrated Shipping Services' fourth quarter and full year 2024 Financial Results Conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the speaker's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Ilana Holtzman, Head of Investor Relations. You may now begin.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to Zim's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call. Joining me on the call today are Eli Glickman, Zim's president and CEO, and Xavier Destriot, 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, or 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 maturity. You are kindly referred to consider the risk factors and cautionary language described in the documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our 2024 annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC today, March 12th. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Zim's CEO, Eli Glickman. Eli?

Thank you, Ilana, and welcome, everyone. 2024 marked an exceptional year for Zim, both financially and operationally. Today, we are reporting our best results ever outside the extraordinary earning generating during the covet period operationally consistent with our strategic objective to grow our volume we achieve in q4 a third consecutive quarter of record carry teus and deliver double digit volume goals for the year This is in line with our original guidance provided this time last year. This achievement helped drive our outstanding financial performance, highlighted by 2024 net income of $2.2 billion and revenue of $8.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.7 billion and adjusted EBIT was $2.5 billion with adjusted EBITDA margin of 44% and adjusted EBIT margin of 30%. We ended the year with total liquidity of $3.14 billion. Slide number five. Excuse me. As we continue to generate strong cash flows, we are also delivering on our commitment to return significant capital to shareholders. Today, our board of directors declared a dividend of 3.7 3.17 dollar per share repeat 3.17 dollar per share or a total of 382 million dollar this bring Our total dividend payout on account of 2024 results, including the special dividend paid in December 24 to $7.98 per share, or $961 million, representing approximately 45% of 24 annual net incomes. We are proud of this track record and pleased to share our success with shareholders, consistently paying dividends based on our strong earnings. Turning to slide six. Looking forward to 2025, we are confident in our strategy and competitive position in the industry. Our guidance regions for the full year of 2025 are adjusted EBITDA between $1.6 billion and $2.2 billion and adjusted EBIT between $350 million and $950 million. Our business environment has always been impacted by external factors such as geopolitics, international and U.S. domestic political dynamics, as well as economic, monetary and fiscal policies. As such, it has always been characterized by a high level of uncertainty. Yet today, The degree of uncertainty is more pronounced than ever, and the range of factors, some interlinked, which could potentially impact both supply and demand, are greater and more diverse than usual. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the recent proposal from the Office of the US Trade Representative to impose a new port charge of up to $1.5 million for each port call on Chinese-made vessels. A trade war between the US and several of its trading partners resulting in tariffs imposed on imports from Mexico, Canada and China and uncertainty around the timing of the potential return to the Suez Canal. I would also note that in the recent weeks we have seen a steep decline in freight rates. It is still unknown whether this is due to typical seasonality or whether this price movement will continue in the months ahead as the threat of overcapacity persists. Xavier, our CFO, will provide additional contents and underline assumptions for our 25 guidance later on the call. Slide number seven. Before I turn to our 25 strategic priorities, I would like to highlight the important progress we made in 24, upscaling our capacity and enhancing our cost structure. We received the last four of our 46 new-built container ships that we secured, which include 28 LNG-powered vessels. After re-delivering all more expensive capacity as planned, we entered 2025 with 50% of our capacity as new builds resulting in a more fuel-efficient and cost-efficient fleet overall. It is again important to highlight that 40% of our capacity is now LNG powered. ZIM was an early adapter for LNG and we currently remain the only carrier deploying LNG capacity from Asia to the US East Coast. We operate two services on this trade, a key commercial differentiator for us, enabling Zil to grow market share as we expanded our capacity. Complementing our investment in the fleet, our foresight related to ZIM commercial strategy contributed to strong 24 results, namely our decision to increase our spot exposures in the Trans-Pacific trade to about 65% paid off. This allowed ZIM to more directly capitalize on the strong spot rate environment that dominates during most of the year in this trade. Our strategic investment in Zimfleet has also contributed to our ability to serve as an attractive partner in collaboration agreements. Our operational cooperation with MSC on the Asia to US East Coast trade, announced last September, has just launched and is working as planned. This collaboration, along with others we have with MSC and other carriers, illustrates our commitment to providing a broader offering to our customers and enhancing our efficiency in our network. From a volume growth perspective, Zim's 14% growth far exceeded the overall market growth of less than 6%. This accomplishment was driven primarily by share gains thanks to the new capacity deployed on Asia to the US East Coast, the successful expedited services to the US West Coast, and our expanded presence in Latin America. Speaking broadly, the benefits of our fleet transformation were evident throughout 24 and are reflected in our strong performance. With larger vessels and fleet better suited to the trade in which we operate, together with the improved unit cost, we achieve our target double-digit volume growth and deliver strong margins. Slide number eight. As we enter 2025, our focus is on continuing to advance ZIM's strategic position as an agile container shipping player with a competitive cost and fuel efficient modern fleet. We see our commercial strategy coupled with continued prudent investment in our fleet, equipment and technology driving increasing resilience in ZIM business moving forward. We entered 25 with a highly competitive fleet, newer, greener, and better suited to our commercial strategy. The transformative step forward we undertook is behind us. With the most critical capacity, namely the 28 LNG vessels, secure on long-term charters, now we will remain diligent in maintaining and further enhancing this competitive position while capitalizing our attractive opportunities to continue to modernize our fleet. The market realities of today may be different than the realities of tomorrow, and ZIM is prepared to take a long-term approach as we consider the future of our fleet. We also intend to preserve the flexibility with respect to our operated capacity, which we regain in 2025. we have approximately 94 000 tu and 80 000 tu which we could re-deliver to vessel owner in 25 and 26 respectively if we choose to do so due to the market conditions or shift in our commercial strategy commercially our present in the trans-pacific trade is strong and growing We've also been successful in ensuring that ZIM is involved in trade from China to diverse end markets, not just the US. In that context of uncertainty around the tariff and the impact on global trade, we've expanded ZIM presence in other growth markets in Asia, such as Vietnam, Thailand and India, as well as Asia to South America. We believe these are trades that will see further growth in future years and from which ZIM stands to benefit. Our customer-centric approach remains a core element of our strategy. We are committed to providing best-in-class customer experience and continuously look for new ways to address customer evolving needs. We are pleased that our recent annual customer survey has underscored our success in meeting this objective. The survey results highlight the consistently high level of service provided across all customer interactions. The survey also reaffirms improvements related to customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and ZIM offering versus competitors. As part of this customer-centric approach, Zim continues to invest in technology and digital tools to differentiate our offering and enhance our operational excellence. For example, we recently accelerated the rollout of advanced trackers on our dry containers, making them smart containers. Zim is the leader in this area with the most technological advanced dry container tracker from Hoopoff, giving customers access to critical real-time data, enabling tracking visibility while their cargo is in transit, and supporting better decision-making across the supply chains. On our refit fleets, we offer ZMonitor, a best-in-class monetized solution to secure, sensitive, and high-value cargo. We also continue to believe there is significant value investing in growth engines. Our approach is to selectively invest in companies developing disruptive technologies related to our core shipping activities or broader logistics ecosystem, as well as sustainability-related technology. Most recently, Zee made an investment in Zootaco, which falls in the latter category. Zutaco develops a unique, more sustainable alternative to conventional air and water cooling of data centers. Their waterless direct-to-chip liquid cooling solution can help data centers cut their carbon footprint and drive the development of more energy efficient and environmentally friendly AI data centers. On this note, I will turn the call over to Xavier, our CFO, for more detailed discussion of our financial results, update 25 guidance, as well as additional comments on the market environment. Xavier, please.