Thomas Lister
Analyst · B. Riley
Thanks, Ian. Let's turn to Slide 8. Now trying to call the shape and timing of the world's recovery from COVID-19 is challenging to say the least, especially when overlaid with the rumbling geopolitical and trade tensions. However, to at least provide a framework, in this slide, we present MSI's forecasts, which are heavily caveated and will change as conditions continue to evolve. So on this basis, we're looking potentially at cargo volumes shrinking by between 7% and 8% in 2020, which is more or less in line with what we saw in 2009 during the Global Financial Crisis, followed by a rebound of more than 10% in 2021. At top right, you can see that MSI reckons all trades will suffer in 2020, but the main lanes, that is the transpacific and Asia-Europe trades are likely to be hardest hit. At bottom right, you can see the anticipated demand impact in aggregate, set against a much higher conviction estimate of cellular capacity growth of only 2% or so, both this year and next. Turning to Slide 9. This slide shows what's happening in the freight and charter markets. Let's take the left-hand chart first, which provides freight rate indices for containerized cargo out of China. You can see that freight rates came under pressure as COVID-19 first hit China and then became a worldwide phenomenon. So there's nothing particularly surprising there. Much more interesting, however, is that, a, even when the impact of the virus was at its worst in the second quarter, freight rates were still up year-on-year. And b, rates are trending up. This is a testament to the capacity and pricing discipline exercised by the container shipping lines, which are expected to translate into positive financial results, further buoyed by low fuel prices. We've been looking forward to seeing liner companies' 2Q results, and we're encouraged by those we've seen to date. Turning to the right-hand chart, you can see how charter rates, so our industry, are behaving in the short-term charter market. Again, charter rates came under significant pressure as COVID began to take its toll on the global economy. Rates bottomed out in June and then as economy started to reopen, began to firm again, led, as was the case during the strong market of 2019, by Post-Panamax ships. Slide 10 puts current charter rates and asset values in a broader context. Charter rates, the red line, even during 2019 were below the historic average for the last 21 years. So that implies there may be further upside. They're now more or less where they were at the beginning of 2019, but still above where they were during the Global Financial Crisis. On the other hand, asset values, the dark blue line, have remained at or below levels seen during the depths of the Global Financial Crisis, suggesting that although there is somewhat some downward pressure on values, especially for older ships, there is no asset value bubble to burst this time around. It's worth remembering, and I'll come back to this later, but the orderbook to fleet ratio immediately before the Global Financial Crisis was about 6x higher on a percentage basis than it is today. The significantly lower orderbook we see today is a product of disciplined ordering in recent years, partly driven by constrained access to capital, partly by a more coordinated approach to capacity ordering and management by the line of mega-alliances, partly by yard consolidation and partly by the retrenchment of the tax-advantaged German KG scheme, which has incentivized speculative ordering of ships in the years running up to 2008. Slide 11 emphasizes the operational and commercial flexibility of the midsize and smaller container ships we focus on at GSL, explaining why they form the backbone of global container trade. The deployment maps at the top of the slide contrast where sub-10,000 TEU ships are operated, which is everywhere, versus where the big ships are deployed, which tends to be on the mainlane East-West arterial trades, namely the transpacific and Asia-Europe. Meantime, the pie chart at bottom left shows the composition of global containerized trade, roughly 70% of which by TEU volume, is in the non-mainlane, intermediate and regional trades typically served by midsized and small ships like ours. Slide 12 wraps up this section by focusing, as promised earlier, on the supply side of the picture. As you can see at top left, idle capacity in the market reached north of 10%, highest level, in fact, seen since the Global Financial Crisis. However, and this is an important however, the chart only runs through to the end of the second quarter of 2020. And during the course of July, idle capacity has come down and is now around 6.6%. This has been helped not only by improving demand, but also by gradual reopening of the big ship recycling facilities, allowing for the deletion of marginal tonnage from the global fleet, and we expect this recycling activity to continue to accelerate. So while we fully acknowledge that the market remains fragile and unpredictable, there are also some encouraging signs. And as we've said before, we believe that the supply side fundamentals laid out at the bottom half of this slide, namely negligible or negative net fleet growth, combined with a minimal orderbook pipeline, provide the foundation for an earnings rebound for midsized and smaller container ships when the recovery takes hold. And on that note, I'll hand the call over to Tassos to talk you through our financials.