Mpc Container Ships As

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MPC Containership's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 11 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Alternatively, you can submit your question via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Konstantin Bark, CEO of the company. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, good morning, everyone. This is Konstantin Bark, CEO of MPC Containerships, and I'm joined by our CFO, Mots Forman. I would like to welcome you to our second quarter 2023 earnings call. Thank you for joining us to discuss MPC Containerships' second quarter earnings. This morning we have issued a stock market announcement covering MPCC's second quarter results for the period ending June 30th, 2023. The press release as well as the accompanying presentation for this conference call are available on the investor section of our website. Please be advised that the material provided and our discussion today contain certain forward-looking statements and indicative figures. X results may differ materially from those stated or implied by forward-looking statements due to the risk and uncertainties associated with our business. Before we start with today's presentation, a few words from my side reflecting on the second quarter of the year. We are pleased to present another solid performance and a strong second quarter financial results. Our consistent positive performance, despite a gradual decline in the container market, is a testament to our robust backlog, successful chartering activity, and sustained good operational performance, owing to the unwavering dedication and great efforts from our entire team onshore, as well as the crews on board of our vessels. We continue to distribute dividends to our shareholders in line with our distribution policy. For the second quarter, the board declared a dividend of US dollar 15 cents per share, totaling roughly $66.6 million. This brings dividends paid year-to-date to $231 million, reflecting a dividend yield of 34% for the year so far. Our flexible balance sheet in agile operations and portfolio management has also enabled us to capitalize on attractive market opportunities. We will elaborate on that in the presentation. Given the prevailing uncertainty in the container market outlook, our focus remains on maintaining prudent capital allocation and enhancing long-term shareholder value as we remain in what we think ideal position to balance strategic and selective optimization efforts with continued accretive shareholder returns. We will now guide you through a more detailed review of the second quarter, provide a market update, as well as a company outlook during today's presentation. On this note, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Moritz Fuhrmann, to run us through the first agenda point.

Thank you, Konstantin. Now moving to some of the highlights in the quarter two of 23. We're very happy to deliver yet another strong financial quarter characterized by high utilization of our fleet. The net profit came in at $101.5 million, and the Board, as just mentioned, has declared another recurring dividend of $15 cents. While we continue to deliver on our operational excellence, we have been quite busy on executing on a number of transactions, driving further our fleet optimization, while at the same time, retaining a low leverage on head issues. As part of the fleet optimization, we have sold a number of older ships in the fleet, while being able to acquire a smaller fleet of five modern echo vessels for what we believe is an attractive price. And in addition, we will continue to invest into the existing fleet to retrofit, to enhance the commercial profile of our vessel. Looking at the market for the moment, the global macro picture remains somewhat unclear going forward. However, and despite the negative sentiments, box freight rates have seen an upward trend as of recently, whereas time charge rates have been more or less moving sideways since the last quarter and moving around above historical levels for the time being. Going forward, our revenue backlog stands at 1.2 billion US dollars as of 30th of June with 94% of open days fixed for 2023. Based on the most recent portfolio optimization, and we will get to it later, we intend to revise our financial guidance for the full year. to 675 to 690 million US dollars in terms of revenue and from an EBITDA perspective to 490 to 510 million US dollars. Moving to the next slide, I'm looking at some of our KPIs. Again, gross revenues up from last quarter and year on year, reflecting the commercial settlement of Ars Nadia that has been recognized in the second quarter in the amount of $32.4 million. The net profit is also reflecting a book loss of $18.4 million that is associated with the recent sale of the Ars Emma. which will be delivered to the buyers and the new owners in November of this year. The adjusted net profit, which is also the basis for our recurring dividends, comes in at 87.7 million and is in line with last quarter. And again, the basis for declaring a dividend recurring of $15. Looking at the balance sheet, total assets are from last quarter primarily driven by new building installments paid in relation to our four vessels on order in Korea and China. while at the same time leverage ratio continues to go down and now stands at 13.3 percent as we continue to repay under our relatively steep claimant profile. On the operational side of things, OPEX has slightly increased relative to the last quarter which is essentially a function of shifting effects from from the first quarter but also some startup costs in relation to the acquisition of the five vessels the modern vessels that we announced over the summer and obviously also happy to report that utilization is trending up upwards since our fleet and q2 has been commercially fully utilized Looking at the commercial activities in a bit more detail on the sharpening side of things, we continue to fix our vessels at rates above historical levels as well as decent durations. Just one example to mention is the Ars Claudia that we could fix for 16,000 US dollars for close to 12 months with a re-delivery window of three months. Notably, since our Q1 reporting, we have conducted two commercial settlements with the respective charterer of AS Nadia, as just mentioned, but also, most recently, on the just acquired AS Anne. Both vessels will continue trading on their subchargers with MSC and CMA, and since the AS Anne settlement has always been conducted in July, it will be reflected in the Q1 figures. One additional comment to be made on the most recent picture on the list, as you can see, Ars Robata is one of our smallest vessels in our portfolio, which has just been fixed on a very decent rate with, however, a relatively short duration. However, this was done in order to keep maximum commercial flexibility on this particular vessel. On the S&P side, moving to the next slide, We have continued on our portfolio optimization path as we acquired five modern ecovessels at excessive prices, of which four vessels have already been phased into our fleet. The remaining five or the remainder of the five vessels is expected to join our fleet in August 23. The acquired vessels, including RS Nina and RS Claudia, which have been phased into our fleet earlier this year, have an average age of seven and a half years, and hence enhancing the overall And at the same time, we will continue to invest into our existing fleet through rate of fit measures that will improve the carbon footprint of those respective ships. On the flip side, we have divested five vessels in total. These were either owned in our joint venture structure or are considered non-strategic from an MPCC perspective. And the average age on those ships is actually more than 18 years. So, consequently, we have achieved the net fleet growth from a TE perspective while adding significantly younger vessels to the fleet. Looking at the cash flow bridge, as you can see, quarter on quarter, our cash has gone down, now standing at a healthy level of 93 million, main driver for the cash reduction was the takeover of RS Anna, the first LOMA ship that we have taken into our fleet on the 30th of June, which we acquired for a total consideration of the 41.75 million, which was initially, I should say, initially fully funded all equity. The respective tranche and the acquisition financing was only drawn after quarter end. And as earlier mentioned, The settlement of the ASNA in the amount of the 20-plus million was also only recognized after the quarter end. Looking at the next slide, especially our dividends, we continue on our path to return substantial capital to our shareholders, as the Board has declared yet another recurring dividend of $15 cents, or, talking in nominal numbers, $66.6 million. That brings us to a total number since Q4 21 of 670 million in a combination of recurring dividends, but also event-driven dividends. As we are entering a market phase, which is probably characterized by somewhat uncertainty for the time being, the board has decided not to distribute further event-driven dividends. However, this is obviously not affecting our recurring dividends, which are driven by operational performance. And if we look on a year-to-date basis in terms of capital distributed and assuming you were acquiring the stock in January 23, you would have already achieved a compelling dividend yield of 34 percent. And the same for investing into stock in early 22, you would have achieved a very compelling dividend yield of 60 percent. I mean, needless to say, going forward, we will continue and it's our clear intention to continue with the return of capital from shareholders. And on that note, I'm handing over to Konstantin, who is giving a little update on the markets.