DMCOF (DMCOF) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the d'Amico International Shipping First Quarter 2026 Results Web Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Federico Rosen, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our earnings call. So jumping, as usual, to our Slide #7, nexus of our fleet. At the end of March '26, we had 29 vessels on the water, which that's 27 towing and 2 that were charter. We actually, as you know, sold one of the ships and we delivered her to buyers on the 24th of April, so now the ships on the water are 28. On top of that we have 10 vessels under construction. 4 LR1s with expected delivery in 2027, 4 MRs with expected delivery in 2029 and 2 Handys with expected delivery in 2029 as well. Average age of our fleet at the end of our period was 9.8 years. 93% of the fleet was eco-designed at the period end. And our percentage rose to 96% after the stage of the high price. And moving to the next slide, on the net debt front we kept on executing our strategy of gradually repaying some of our most expensive debt and refinancing a portion of that with a new facility at a much lower cost of debt. So, between that and Q1 '26, we began to continue repaying that for $32.2 million in 2 vessels. We drew down new facilities for $42 million in 3 ships. I consider the lower margin over the U.S. dollar is tougher. On top of that, our strategy was also based on reusing or remediating our debt during 2027, which is also a year in which we will get the delivery, as I mentioned before, 4 LR1 vessels. So now, as you can see, we are expecting to be active again with finances front in the remaining part of 2026, and we're basically getting to 2027 with no debt to mature. Also, looking now on the right-hand side, you can see [indiscernible] daily bank loan repayment of our own vessels, which was historically, in 2019, at $6,150 a day, and it's now $2,049 a day. Here in Slide 9 we provide, as usual, our estimated earnings for the second quarter of the year, which has been so far much stronger than what we achieved in the first quarter of '26. As you can see, we have already fixed 21% of our days at $59,733 a day on the spot market. At the same time, we covered 50% of our Q2 days at $23,560 a day. So overall, as we speak, we're talking about 81% of our total days in Q2 '26, fixed at a blended average TCE of over $33,000 a day. So we are expecting an extremely profitable quarter at the end of June. Next slide. And here you see the evolution. So based on the --considering also the vessels that we recently sold, we expect to have, right now, an average peak of 28.3 vessels in 2026, rising in the delivery, the expected delivery, of our 10 new building vessels to 34.7 by 2029. On the right, you see also our potential [indiscernible], our sensitivity to the spot market, the spot trade. So, as we speak, for every $1,000 a day of a higher spot rate, we -- that will translate to $3 million more on our bottom line. And, of course, we see the increases for '27 and '28 since our coverage is lower, as we speak, for those years. And right now, we have a sensitivity of approximately $8 million for '27 and $11 million for '28. On at the bottom of the slide, interesting graph on the left. So based on everything that we have fixed so far, both in terms of time charter and spot market, we [indiscernible] the rest of the year at a breakeven level. We would make a net result at the end of the year of almost $83 million. And the same goes for [indiscernible] '27, and the figure would be $16.5 million already. Then on the right, we also show a sensitivity compared to the figure that I just mentioned. So should we run the remaining free days of '26 at an average of $20,000 a day, then our net result for the year would be of almost $98 million. Should we run it at $22,500 a day, the net result would be $105 million. Should we make $25,000 a day on the remaining free days of the year, then our net result would be even higher, to $112.5 million. On the cost front, it's always not particularly meaningful to look at the OpEx costs on a quarterly basis. Anyway, we saw a slight increase in Q1 '26 relative to the same period of last year. So we had daily OpEx on our fleet of $8,600 a day. The reason for this more increase relative to the same quarter of '25 was driven mostly by higher crew expenses and insurance costs. On the G&A front, we actually had a total cost of $5.3 million in the first quarter of the year compared to $6 million in Q1 '25. So a slight increase of approximately $700,000. Again, here is the increase. And as we mentioned, this is the main time to increase. As you can see here, compared to the previous years, it was due to the higher personnel compensation, which is directly linked to the strong financial performance that has been achieved in recent years. Net financial position. So, very strong net financial position at the end of the quarter. We had a cash equivalent of $189.6 million. Net financial position of $25.8 million. This includes a small tax arising from the application of IFRS16. Our net financial position was of $23.8 million. And that compares to a fleet market value assessed by one of the top shooting brokers of the ability of $1.2 billion. So, the ratio between our net financial position and our fleet market value at the end of March '26 was only 2%. I'd like to remind you that this ratio was almost 73% at the end of [ 2008 ] when we started executing our deleveraging plan over the last few years. Opening slide. On the income statement side, we generated in the first 3 months of the year a net profit of $27.5 million compared to $18.9 million in the same quarter of the previous year. Very strong. These are almost $41 million, which entails an income margin of 50.5%. It's pretty strong. Excluding some small nonreported items, we achieved an adjusted net profit of $26.8 million in this quarter of the year compared to $19.2 million in 2025. Key operating measures. We achieved a daily spot rate of $32,264 a day in the first quarter of the year. This year it was actually 90% higher than the last quarter of '25, which was already the best quarter of 2025. And 53% higher than the first quarter of 2025. At the same time, we covered 62.2% of our total days of the first 3 months of the year, averaging $23,000 a day. So our total [indiscernible] was $26,500 a day for the first quarter of the year. All I'll pass it on to Carlos.

Good afternoon. So as usual, we now continue with our CapEx commitment, which in relation to our investment plan comprising 10 vessels amounts to $512 million and with outstanding commitments of around $137 million, most of these are made -- planned for '27 and '29, coinciding with the deliveries of the vessels. In '27, we will be receiving 4 LR1s and then in '29 2 LR1s, 4 MR2s, all ordered at first class Chinese ships. In relation to the options on the lease vessels, well, the recent movement in forward interest rates makes it less likely that these options will be exercised this year. Both of them can be exercised at any point in time with 3 months' notice. We continue monitoring the situation. And when a window opens up for us to exercise them, generating value for the company, we will do so. Here we show the difference between the market value and the exercise price at the exercise date of the options we exercise on the 6 vessels, which were previously time-chartered in. And we also showed today the difference at the end of March, the difference between the market value and the book value, which is even higher than this difference was at the time of exercise. So far, the exercise of these options has generated substantial value for the company. In terms of contract coverage, we now have 55% coverage for 2026 at an average rate of $23,400, slightly higher rate of $23,500 for 2027 with, however, a much lower coverage of 23%. The fleet is increasing the eco, as mentioned by Federico, we only have 1 non-eco vessel in our fleet which we plan to sell by the end of the year. In terms of freight rates, well, as already highlighted by Federico, the fixtures in Q2 has been extremely strong, reflecting the very strong spot market as seen from the graph on the left-hand side of the yellow line, which is -- which depicts [indiscernible] clean earnings, which is at record levels. And of course, also the short-term TCs or new TCs have reached record levels. Asset values have moved also up older vessels by a higher percentage, new buildings, not that much, but there was also an uptick in new building prices. And here, well, this is the major contributor to the exceptional market. But of course, this is -- the Iran conflict is being layered upon other geopolitical factors, which were already supporting the market as well as strong underlying fundamentals of the sector. So it added more fuel to this rally, and you see refining margins, which at very high levels, especially for certain products like jet fuel and diesel. And creating arbitrage opportunities that are not always open on all routes. They open and close, but they are there. This is creating quite a lot of volatility also on rates, on spot rates in different regions. As the conflict started, we saw a very strong market West of Suez and weaker -- much weaker market East of Suez, things moved west today. There's not that much difference between the average rates that can be achieved in both basins. The disruption because of the war is very significant. There were around 20 million barrels per day transiting the straight last year on average of oil, crude and refined products. And the beginning of the first 2 months of this year, the figure was even slightly higher, around 21. During the conflict, there were moments where there was quite a lot of volatility in the amount of oil that transited. There were some brief moments where more vessels were able to transit. But on average, just under 2 million barrels per day were able to transit through Hormuz during the period. And 4 million barrels per day were redirected with pipelines to Yanbu or to Fujairah or Ceyhan, therefore creating a net disruption of around 14 million barrels per day of lost flows. This was then compensated by the -- partly by releases by the EIA of the announced release of 100 million barrels, which, however, is being injected into the market at a rhythm of around 2 million barrels per day. And also by a drop in demand, of course, which is starting to become quite pronounced and is linked both to the high prices affecting demand for the more -- for the products where there is a bit more elasticity of price, elasticity of demand. Generally, they are quite elastic, but also measures taken by certain governments in particular in Asia to reduce consumption. And of course, the delta is being met through reduction in stocks, which were quite abundant in particular in certain countries before the conflict started. So this, as we will see later, has helped the market so far, but it is dangerous. And as the stocks start reaching critical levels, there is a risk that oil prices could rise much faster than what we have seen so far, and that economic activity could be more -- much more severely impacted than what we have seen so far. So -- and I like to highlight that, I mean, from our perspective, the reopening of the Strait would be a positive because we are more concerned about the closure of the Strait for too long because of the negative associated economic consequences. But the reopening then should create some pent-up demand for our vessels at least in the beginning to rebuild stocks which were depleted during the conflict at a very rapid pace. Well, these are factors which have supported the market throughout last year and which explains the strengthening market that we saw throughout last year and beginning of this year before the conflict started. So there was a lot of oil being pushed into the market, but also a lot of inefficiencies because of the tougher sanctions that were being imposed on vessels trading Russian and Iranian and Venezuelan barrels. And therefore, we saw this sharp increase in sanctioned oil and water last year and a huge increase in the number of vessels sanctioned, which reached over 1,000 vessels, representing 19% of the overall tanker fleet in [indiscernible]. So we are now starting to see this unwinding. So we see that sanctioned oil on water has been falling also because there were temporary waivers provided for the sanctioned oil to be discharged because of the war in Iran. So initially, these waivers were provided to Russian oil, but then also to Iranian oil. And the Red Sea disruptions was very supportive in the first 9 months of '24, but as mentioned, this became actually a headwind for the market afterwards because the higher cost of the longer routes through Cape of Good Hope and the products were traded more regionally and ton miles actually declined thereafter because of this disruption. Venezuela, this is a positive for the market. This oil used to be transported on sanctioned vessels. So now it's being transported on compliant vessels. It is very beneficial, in particular, for the Aframax sector, which are the most suited type of vessels to transport these cargoes out of Venezuela. But it directly benefits also the product tankers transporting PCP through the well-known transmission mechanism that we will see later, whereby we have seen a lot of LR2s transiting into dirty trades. And here, this was -- this is the forecast that we -- by the U.S. Energy Information Administration of the production of Venezuela for '26 of 1 million barrels per day. Actually, I have seen a report recently where it indicates that the production has already reached 1.2 million barrels per day, so surpassing these estimates. The returning to the production levels of the late 1990s will take time, most likely, but this initial ramp-up was faster than anticipated. So Russia's refined product exports continue declining, although seeing at quite high levels, both as a result of the tougher sanctions that were imposed and larger number of sanctioned vessels, but also as a result of attacks by the Ukrainians with drones to export facilities, Russian export facilities. So it creates usually not very significant damage, but it does hamper their ability to export products. And we have seen these attacks occurring on a quite frequent basis and it's creating a further obstacle to Russian exports. Here, well, these are the estimates of the EIA in terms of demand and throughputs, refinery throughputs, sharp drop in demand as what we expected and in Q2, and a very sharp drop in refining volumes in particular in April with a recovery thereafter. Of course, it's very difficult to make such forecast in this environment. A lot will depend on how the conflict with Iran evolves in the coming weeks. Also in terms of oil supply, very difficult to make forecast. I mean this was a market which was very well supplied. It was expected to move into contango during the course of this year. And now we are faced with the opposite situation with a very undersupplied market as just mentioned. Inventories were at good levels before the war started, and we are already seeing this drawdown here in the floating oil and total oil at sea, which has been declining over the last 2 months at quite a fast clip. And here we see this previously mentioned transmission mechanism between the dirty and clean markets with an increasing number of LR2s trading dirty as depicted by the yellow line on the graph on the left and rapidly declining number of LR2s trading clean despite the quite fast deliveries of LR2s last year and in the beginning of this year. And this is because, of course, of the very strong markets, the dirty markets, the Aframax rates, which are still at very high levels. And in terms of refinery landscape, there's not much new here. There were important closures of refineries in the Americas and in Europe over the last few years and with new refinery capacity coming online in China, the Middle East and other Asian countries, in particular in India. So this increase in ton miles as Europe and the Americas to import more from these more distant locations. The fleet on the supply side continues aging rapidly and the order book on the MR and LR1 sectors, which are those we operate in after peaking at the end of '24 has started declining despite there being orders continuing to come in, but at a lower rate, at a lower rate relative to the delivery of new vessels. So at the end of March, this order book had declined to 13.5% relative to almost 21% of this fleet, which has already more than 20 years of age. So important to note that by the end of '27, the portion of the fleet, which is more than 20 years of age will have risen to almost 25%. So a very sharp increase which bodes well for the market also next year. This is not surprising this percentage, which is rising of the fleet, which is crossing the 20-year threshold because it is aligned with the graph at the bottom where we show the vessels reaching 25 years of age. So the vessels which will reach 20 years of age in '27 are those that will be reaching 25 years of age in 2032. And we see here by this graph that this represents 7.7% of the fleet, around 10 million deadweight. So a very big number and portion of the fleet reaching 20 years of age already next year and starting to trade in more marginal trades. The picture is not as favorable if we look at across all tankers, including also crude tankers because there has been quite a lot of orders coming in for crude tankers over the last few months. So here, the order book rose to 20% and is now pretty much aligned with the portion of the fleet, which has more than 20 years of age. We can have a strong product tanker market even without a strong crude tanker market. But the opposite is not true. I mean, a strong crude tanker market will eventually generate strong product tanker market. That is because the crude tanker market is much bigger than the product tanker market as you see looking at the left-hand axis when we include also the crude tankers that the fleet size is much, much bigger than if we look only at product [indiscernible]. We look here at the deliveries, which has been accelerated. The positive thing to highlight here is that most of the deliveries, the quarter with the largest number of vessels to be delivered was Q1, and that is already behind us. And we are still in an extremely strong market despite this huge number -- quite large number of vessels, I would say, delivered in Q1. And if you look at deliveries in the coming quarters, they're actually not too dissimilar from what we saw in the last 2 quarters of the last year. In particular, if you look at Q4 '26, there are 75 tankers being delivered relative to 71 in Q4 '25. So very, very similar number of vessels. And here, you look at the vessels that were ordered in the first 4 months of this year, 28, which annualized puts it pretty much on par with just over 80 vessels ordered in '25, which is quite a low number compared to the over 200 vessels ordered in '25 and over 150 in '23. And also -- and especially relative to the over 200 vessels, for example, ordered in 2013 when the fleet was much smaller. So these 225 vessels ordered in '13 represented a much bigger portion of the fleet than, for example, the 200 vessels ordered in 2014. And the fleet growth is accelerating. But as I mentioned, the sub-20 fleet growth even in '26 across all factors is actually less than 1%. So this is supportive for the market this year and will be supportive also next year because next year there are even more vessels turning 20 years of age. Our NAV has been rising. NAV per share at the end of March was at around $10. And our discount at the end of the quarter was 14%. And today, it's even lower than that. So below 10%. Of course, this relative to the 31st of March NAV, but this is a moving target. We know, for example, that some of our vessels that were valued at the 31st of March at a certain level today would be valued more because there were some transactions that happened afterwards for vessels which are very similar at higher levels than the valuations we received from the broker at 31st of March, not much higher, but still higher. And of course, we also generated a lot of cash in April this year. And finally, here in terms of our payout ratio, it has been rising throughout the last few years in quite a regular fashion with the 55% payout ratio out of the 2025 net results, which is the highest payout ratio we have had. And of course, the balance sheet also which strengthened significantly as previously mentioned by Federico. So that's it, and we pass it over to the Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Massimo Bonisoli of Equita.

2 questions. One on the Strait of Hormuz reopening. Could you elaborate on the minimum safety and operational conditions required for d'Amico to resume transit through the Strait of Hormuz in the sense that there are plenty of situation to be cleared and we still don't know when the Strait will open for commercial traffic. And the second question is on the spot rate evolution, referring to your Slide 9 of the presentation. Spot fixed for in April were running close to $60,000 per day. Could you provide some color on the trends seen so far in May? And on the current environment. Based on the latest contract concluded or under negotiation, do you expect the average realized spot rate in Q2 to remain around these levels? Improve further, maybe normalize somewhat versus free peaks?

Two good questions. So in terms of the transit through Hormuz, we are not going to be the first one venturing in that. I mean we have to make sure that our main priority will be the safety of our crew. So an assessment will have to be made that the passage is safe. And of course, we will need to be able to ensure the risk, which will be reimbursed to us by the charter. But there are situations like this, also exclusions to the policy, which can mean that you are still exposed to quite a lot of risk. So we will assess this very carefully. And there's also the risk of mines still. So there has been some demining happening. But we don't know to what extent this has been -- this has progressed and it's near to completion. So we will take a prudent approach in that respect and try to employ our vessels in other regions initially. One port which we could consider calling initially could be the Port of Duqm, which is close, but outside the Strait of Hormuz, for example, and which is also where are -- there's also an important refinery which exports significant amounts. And so that could be something we could consider. But we would be very prudent in that respect. In terms of the rates, achieved the almost $60,000 that we have shown for Q2 so far includes also some fixtures that run into May. The latest fixtures, I would say, are at slightly lower levels than that on average. But they are still at very good levels. I mean today, the spot market is still above $30,000 in both basins in both East and West. There was more of a correction west recently. But I believe it is a temporary correction. This market in the U.S. Gulf has always been very volatile. For example, the arbitrage for exporting naphtha out of the U.S. Gulf closed momentarily a few weeks ago. It had -- as we have shown in the presentation when we approved our year-end results, it has risen to record highs. And thereafter, it collapsed to levels which were lower than those we had before the conflict started. And now it's starting to move up again. And analysts believe that it could in the coming weeks rise further and possibly return to those very high levels we saw because there's going to be an important need to import petrochemicals into Asia if Hormuz doesn't open up in an important way soon. So very hard to forecast what will happen. Of course, if there is a reopening, then we expect a big surge in freight rates east of Suez because we will be seeing more exports out of Hormuz, transiting Hormuz. But not only, I think also China will then, of course, be exporting much more. China initially after the conflict started stopped exports of refined products. As a result, its stocks rose and are very abundant right now. And it recently declared that it will already even without the Hormuz reopening start exporting again in a more limited way to certain countries. It's going to be -- it's more of a political move also to support some friendly countries which are suffering in this moment. But that in itself already should help the market in the North Asia region in the coming weeks. But with the reopening of Hormuz then we should see a normalization of Chinese exports. So even bigger volumes coming to market as well as, of course, a lot of volumes coming out of Hormuz. Potentially if the reopening -- if the passage of the straight is being saved by all, very large flows coming out of almost because bank storage in that area is full. So they have a very strong incentive to push out product very fast, out of that region. So -- and we don't have a lot of vessels there because we have all these vessels that move into the Atlantic Basin. So we expect that basin to strengthen a lot. So again, this dislocation, which on a net basis will be positive for the market. The market should come down in the U.S. Gulf, but net-net, I think it will be positive for the market. So I'm quite positive, but it's very difficult to make forecast at this moment. I think that's it in terms of answers...

If I may squeeze in another question, Carlos. Just to understand how your fleet is positioned between east and west of Hormuz right now?

We want to -- it's very difficult to read and to make calls. So we are trying to keep quite a balanced allocation of the fleet, a few vessels in the Americas, some trading in West Africa and then a similar number in Asia trading out of mostly Southeast Asia and the North Asia out of Korea and out of Singapore. We have done some Australia runs recently. There was an increase in demand into Australia of refined products. There was a fire in an important refinery in Australia. So there's also a seasonal uptick in demand now before the winter season there, which was then also associated with an additional demand because of this fire in this refinery there. So yes, so I mean, whatever happens, we should do quite well.

The next question is from Climent Molins, Value Investor's Edge. The next question is from Matteo Bonizzoni, Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have a quick question with regard to your capital allocation flexibility, let's say. So I would like to know if the current market environment, which is probably above what you had -- what everybody had in mind in terms of rates and profitability and cash flow could have implication on dividend policy or buyback or also on the feasibility to further expand the fleet after the recent, I mean, decision which you have communicated on the new buildings. But I mean, you have clearly more room to go potentially. So I would like to know what are your current thoughts as regards future capital allocation choices?

Thank you, Matteo. No, look, I think that at this moment, there isn't -- the very strong market should not affect our policies in this respect. We will, of course, look very carefully when we are closer to the end of the year what could be the dividend policy out of the '26 results. If the market is as strong as it looks it will be this year, then it is then that we will be able to confirm a similar payout ratio that we had in 2025. Also in terms of buyback, we will only do it very opportunistically if we see some very substantial unjustified weakness on the share price. And the fleet-wise, we don't expect to make other investments at this stage. We are quite happy with the 10 vessels we have ordered. But if opportunities were to arise, more because of an unexpected correction, which creates an attractive entry point, then we might decide to take advantage of that. But with the 10 vessels we have ordered today, we have 28 vessels on the water. That represents quite a big percentage of our fleet, over $500 million in investments. So we don't feel we need to do more, but we will look at opportunities if they arise.

The next question is from Climent Molins, Value Investor's Edge.

Most has already been covered, but has the recent increase in asset prices changed your view on potentially exercising the purchase options on the high fidelity and high discovery before than previously expected?

Yes. The purchase options on the fidelity discovery is -- the decision is more linked to the interest rate environment from our perspective because these are fixed rate financing transactions which were done at the time where interest rates were very low. So of course, the implicit margin in these deals is high relative to what we can achieve today, but the implicit swap rate is set very low. So the all-in cost of financing on these deals is actually quite competitive still today. And we would need interest rates to move down more for the forward interest rate curve to make the exercise of these options attractive. Otherwise, for us, it is probably more convenient to reimburse some floating rate debt that we have, which is costing us more than these facilities here. So that is our thinking today. I mean, of course, we have the necessary liquidity to exercise these options, but there are also other things we can do with the liquidity that is potentially more attractive for us. So we will only exercise them if we see this decrease in forward rates.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for participating in our call today and look forward to seeing you soon when we approve our Q2 results, and good afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your devices. Thank you.