Tony Lauritzen
Analyst · Stifel. Please go ahead, sir
Thank you, Michael. Let’s move on to slide 10 to summarize the partnership’s profile. The partnership’s fleet currently accounts six high-specification and versatile LNG carriers with an average age of about 5.8 years in an industry, where expected useful economic lifetime is about 35 years. Our vessels have unique features that enable them to operate as conventional LNG carriers as well as operate in ice bound areas that are restricted for conventional vessels. We have a strong diversified customer base with leading energy companies, namely: BG Group, Gazprom and Statoil and Yamal Trade. Our contract backlog is about $1.6 billion and our average remaining charter period is about 10.3 years which compares well to our peers. Moving on to slide 11, five out of the six vessels in our fleet have ice class 1A notation. Our fleet is fully contracted in 2016 and 88% in 2017, a time we expect the LNG shipping market to be strong due to the current ongoing construction and ramping up of new LNG production plans, measured against a perceived relatively insufficient order book combined with an existing fleet that contains a large number of under-sized and aged vessels. Our fleet can handle conventional LNG shipping as well as operate in ice bound and sub-zero areas. This means we are able to and have been successful in pursuing business opportunities in two different markets, namely conventional shipping and the unique market for ice bound trade. As an extension of the ability to operate in ice bound areas, we are the only company in the world with a current capability and experience in transiting LNG carriers in the Northern Sea routes, which we deem an important advantage due to the ongoing development of LNG production along this route. Based on the three long term charters we conclude that this last quarter, it has again been demonstrated our fleet’s ice class features as well as our experience in harsh environments has proven to be a strong advantage. Our multi-year fleet employment profile, first-class customer base provide solid cash flow visibility going forward. Our charterers are performing very well on their obligations and the vessels are utilized. The contractual relationship between our customers and the vessels are on a time charter party basis. Time charter parties are very powerful contracts where the charterer pays a fixed day rates of hire to the owner regardless of the vessel is being used or not. And all major variable costs such as fuel costs are for the charterer’s account. Therefore, and coupled with our multi-year employment profile, the partnership enjoys visible and stable revenues that are not directly affected by oil or gas prices. Let’s move to slide 12. Our potential dropdown candidates count nine LNG carriers where all of the vessels have contracts in place, amounting to a multi-billion dollar contract backlog. All dropdown candidates are high specification, ice class and winterized. Four of the vessels are of Arc-4 type 162,000 cubic meters and delivered from the yard. The remaining five vessels are Arc-7 type, 172,000 cubic meters and currently under construction at DSME in Korea for delivery in 2017 and 2019. These last five vessels are 49% owned by our sponsor and 25.5% owned each by Sinotrans and China LNG Shipping. Let’s move to slide 14 for industry update. In a summary, the industry is in a place where the gas market is expected to grow significantly in the next decade, due to the environmentally friendly properties of natural gas. There are substantial volumes of additional LNG expected to be produced in the near term to medium term. The world's LNG carrier fleet is characterized by too few vessels to carry those incremental volumes in the long-term and there are too many old technology vessels. Also, no new orders have been placed recently. Let’s analyze the world’s LNG fleet in detail. The current existing LNG world fleet consists of about 432 vessels and the order book counts 128 vessels totaling 560 vessels, as shown on the bar to the left. The average cargo size today is about 143,000 cubic meters. If we add up all vessels in the existing world’s fleet, with sizes below about 140,000 cubic meters, meaning well below the average cargo size, we count about 144 vessels equivalent to about 33% of existing world fleet. The average age of these undersized vessels are about 18 years. When we compare these on average old and undersized vessels of 144 units with the order book of 128 units, we note that these aged and smaller units accounts a large number than the order book. Furthermore, 91% of the order book has already been committed to charterers. This means that there are very few new billings that may be available to facilitate the need to replace on average old and small tonnage and to carry expected incremental LNG production going forward. Moving on to slide 15, according to the order book, most new bills will be delivered during the period 2017 and 2018, which is also a period we expect significant additional LNG production, as seen later in this presentation. We have seen a slowdown in ordering activity of LNG carriers. To our knowledge there has not been any LNG carrier ordered since Q3, 2015. There only a very few yards in the world that has the experience and capability to build LNG carriers and if one were to order today, our guess is that the yards would be able to offer tonnage for delivery 2019 at the earliest. Let’s move to slide 16. World energy consumption has been steadily increasing over time. The largest sources of energy come from coal, oil and gas. Since decades, gas has been the fastest growing resource of those commodities. Going forward, we believe that coal and oil related consumption will be second rated to gas due to the environmentally friendly properties of gas. And therefore world’s gas production will continue to grow faster than coal and oil. It is anticipated that world energy production will increase by 10% within 2020 and by 30% within end 2035. From now until end 2035, gas with 39 production growth is by far expected to outperform growth in coal at 14% and oil at 13%. And we believe LNG will be the fastest growing large subsector of the gas industry. Let’s move to slide 17 for some details of an outlook on LNG supply and demand. Based on current construction of new LNG production terminals, the forward sale of new LNG as well as FID taken on new LNG terminals, the next years are expected to be dominated by strong LNG production growth. It is conservatively forecasted that 137 million tons of new annual incremental LNG will come to the market between now and 2020. This represents a total increase of 55% compared to 2015. We assume that the majority of new LNG is coming from terminals already under construction, meaning a high probability of project completion. The source of this new LNG is primarily from Australia, North America, Southeast Asia and Russia. We continue to believe that the Far East will remain large buyers going forward, and however growth may also come from European markets. We also believe we will continue to see new niche import markets such as South Asia, Middle East and South America. We believe that there are sufficient buyers for the new LNG to be absorbed. The majority of the new LNG export volumes have sale agreements or off take agreements in place. We also believe that the existing import markets will continue to increasingly rely on LNG as a competitive and clean energy resource. When we compare an LNG supply to LNG shipping capacity available from now and forward we remain confident that the market outlook for shipping looks favorable, in particular, from 2018 onwards. The growth in LNG production, set at 55% within 2020, is estimated to outpace increase in LNG shipping capacity set at 30% within the same period. The majority of the LNG will be delivered already within 2019 and as mentioned earlier yards can likely only deliver vessel from 2019 onwards, meaning we should expect the proceeding years to result in healthy shipping markets. Additionally, the partnership fleet is ice classed and winterized, enabling the flexibility to pursue the best of two different markets, which has proven to be a strong advantage so far and which has enabled the partnership to transform itself from a specialist small scale medium term supplier of tonnage to become a medium sized long-term preferred supplier of specialist tonnage with tremendous tangible growth opportunities. We have now reached the end of our presentation and I now open the floor for questions.