Gaztransport & Technigaz S.A.

and thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's GTG First Quarter 2020 Activity Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. I would like now to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Mark Astier, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Carol, and good evening to all of you. I hope you are all safe and in good health. We are pleased to host this call in our new configuration, which is everybody at home, but I hope technically everything will be okay and you can hear me properly. So I'll start off with the key highlights for this first quarter on page four of the presentation. So first of all, the consolidated revenues are at 102.5 million, which is an increase of 74% compared to the first quarter of last year, which is obviously a consequence of the buildup of our order book in the last couple of years. We received in the first three months four orders for LNG carriers and we have signed two new service contracts, services contracts. One with CMA CGM for in relation to the large, the ultra large container ships which are on order for LNG as a fuel. So we will be providing a full range of services to CMA, CGM for these ships. We've also signed a five-year service agreement with Accelerate Energy, a ship owner, for the maintenance and operation of nine FSRUs equipped with our NO96 technology. And this will include on-site technical assistance, inspection, maintenance, repairs, et cetera. As a reminder, we announced that already for our full year announcement, we acquired Marocca, a company in Iceland, which is an expert in smart shipping. Turning to page five, let's take a look at the order book at the end of March, which is still quite strong. It is now composed of 130 units for the core business. There have been four new orders which have been added to the order book, the four LNG carriers I just mentioned, and there have been seven deliveries in the quarter, five LNG carriers, one FLNG, and one FSRU. So the order book now is composed principally, of course, of LNG carriers, 112, six e-sane carriers, eight FSRUs, one FLNG, three onshore storage tanks, and three gravity-based systems, GBS. On the LNG as a fuel front, there has been no change in the order book, still 19 units with no new orders in the first quarter nor any deliveries. Now, perhaps I'll give you an update on the situation in relation with the epidemic, the coronavirus epidemic, which, as you know, started first in Asia, where GTT generates most of its revenues with the shipyards in Korea, principally, but also in China. And then the epidemic propagated in Western countries. the state of pandemic was announced on the 12th of March 2020. And clearly the risk, the main risk here is potential delays to the timetable or the milestones for the construction of vessels, which could lead to a shift of revenues from one period to the next, as we had already explained on the occasion of our four-year results. I guess, as of today, we have seen absolutely no delays in construction milestones. And clearly, the strengths of our revenues for the first quarter are also a reflection of that. Now, if you take a slightly kind of a longer-term view, of course, it's still a bit early to have a full view on the extent of the risks of this epidemic on the global economy. But there are pluses and minuses, I guess. Of course, there could be an impact on the overall demand for LNG, for liquefaction projects, and also for ship owners. And this could potentially result in delay, cancellation, or suspension of orders although again, as of today, we are not seeing any of that. I guess mitigating factors here are the fact that the energy market is mainly based on long-term prospects, long-term financing, long-term contracts. And the other, I guess, positive is that the situation is already improving in the Asian countries, which represent more than 60% of the imports of energy In particular, China has resumed now LNG imports. As far as the GTT is concerned, the company, we have 456 people, 60 of whom are based at the shipyards in South Korea and in China. And 39 employees are in our subsidiaries in Asia, Athens principally, and our sales office in Singapore and China. Of course, priority, it goes to the health and safety of our people and their families. And we have obviously followed this very closely from the beginning. We have made recommendations to employees abroad and also at head office, of course, in close correlation with the guidelines given by the French and local authorities. Currently, a large proportion of our workforce is working from home, as I indicated. This has been quite a success. Our emergency plan has operated very well. We have been able to move projects pretty much everybody within 24 to 48 hours, and everybody is working now from home, and the business is operating normally. Now, a look at the revenue numbers on page seven. So, as I mentioned, In my opening comments, revenues stand now at 102.5 million for the first quarter, up 74% from 58.9%. Now, if we look at the new bills, core business, you see that a lot of the growth, of course, the growth comes from this part of the business, in particular LNG carriers and ethane carriers with an increase of 88%. FSRUs, 80%. FLNG, these are one single, I'd say, single project, so they're coming towards the end. And you will recall we had the delivery this quarter. The rest is relatively less significant, although we can see that we are already beginning to accrue some revenues from the GBS, Gravity-Based Systems, which were ordered Last year, services on the other side, I suppose, makes not as good a performance. Of course, services are more impacted by short-term issues and in particular the epidemic. And what has been one part of the business in services which has suffered a bit is the inspection of tanks on ships in operation. And this is clearly linked to, of course, the difficulty for people to travel and to get to the ships. So that is the main reason for the decrease in services activities. Having said that, and as a conclusion, on page eight, we are confirming our 2020 outlook for revenues. so with a range between 375 and 405 million euros. On EBITDA, with a range between 235 million to 255 million, and also we are confirming our dividend policy, and we will be paying as expected, of course subject to the approval by the AGM, the balance of our dividend in June. So that's it for the formal presentation. I'll be, of course, happy to answer your questions. And I hand over to Carol for the modus operandi.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, it's star one to ask a question. And the first question comes from the line of Jean-Luc Romain from CIC Market. Please ask your question.