Ted Young
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your questions
Thank you, John. The quarter’s results reflected a strong freight market, high vessel utilization, and a full quarter’s contribution of the seven newbuildings delivered in the prior quarter in addition to partial contribution of the Caravelle and good management of our costs. Before I move on to discuss the results for the year and the quarter, I would like to remind you that our business should be viewed from a long-term perspective. For the quarter ended March 31, 2016, we reported total revenues of $85.3 million, representing net pool revenues from the Helios LPG Pool, charter hire and voyage freight revenue earned for our VLGCs and our one pressurized vessel, which was sold in the middle of the quarter. As we previously described, we reported results for the Helios LPG Pool, which commenced its operation on April 1, 2015, as part of our total revenues. We report our share of the Helios results as net pool revenues on our income statements, which represent our percentage participation in the pool revenues, less pool voyage expenses and pool G&A expenses. For the quarter, that amount was $72.2 million. Time charter equivalent revenues per day across all of our VLGCs including those in the Helios Pool amounted to $46,735, while our spot VLGCs alone earned $150,142 per day during the quarter. Voyage expenses during the quarter were $700,000, a 91% reduction from the three months ended March 31, 2015. The decrease was due to the increase in the number of our vessels operating the Helios LPG Pool or our voyage expenses are netted against revenues. With the sale of the Grendon, my comments on our vessel operating expenses will relate solely to our VLGC fleet. In addition, we have completed our program of training new officers, which had the effect of increasing our reported daily operating costs. So in the basis of our VLGCs-only, and excluding the effect of the training costs, vessel operating expenses for the quarter were approximately $16.3 million or $8,326 per vessel per calendar day, which is calculated by dividing the vessel operating expenses by calendar days for our VLGCs for the relevant time period. For the comparable three-month period in 2015 and again stripping out the effects of the training program, our OpEx per day was $9,785 per day. Our daily operating expenses have continued to perform at or exceed our originally budgeted level. And we are confident that these OpEx levels will remain competitive going forward, particularly given the young age of our fleet and our commitment to high maintenance standards. General and administrative expenses of approximately $9.8 million for the quarter included a $3 million cash bonus expense. We do not accrue our cash bonus expense over the course of the fiscal year unless recognized 100% of the expense in the quarter. It’s worth pointing out that while the number of vessels in our fleet increased by over 250% year over year, our G&A increased by only 40% over the same time period. This is a clear indication of the benefits of economies of scale in our business. Depreciation and amortization for the quarter totaled roughly $15.9 million. This figure related primarily to depreciation of our operating vessels. Our reported interest and finance costs for the quarter was $7.1 million, which was comprised of interest expense on our debt, amortization of financing costs and other financing expenses of $7.2 million, offset by capitalized interest of $100,000. The other fees of our cash interest expenses, booked as a realized loss on derivatives, amounted to $2.4 million. The other fees portion of the $15 million loss on derivatives will be unrealized loss of $12.6 million, resulting from changes in the fair value of our interest rate swaps. The unrealized loss on derivatives amounted to $0.23 per share for the quarter. The unrealized loss was principally result of unfavorable interest rate movement during the quarter. We currently have approximately 67.5% of our existing debt facilities hedged. We continue to consider entering into additional interest rate hedging transaction. Overall for the quarter, we reported adjusted net income of $33.8 million or $0.60 in adjusted earnings per share, and net income of $20.2 million or $0.36 per share. Adjusted net income for the three months ended March 31, 2016, stripped off the effects of the unrealized losses on derivatives of $12.6 million and $1 million of loss related to the sale of the Grendon. Our EBITDA as defined in our filings for the quarter was $59.1 million. During the quarter, we also repaid $19.9 million of bank debt under of our two bank facilities. For the fiscal year, we reported revenues of $289.2 million; our vessels on a daily time charter equivalent rate of $55,087 a day; our vessel OpEx was $47.1 million or $8,581 per calendar day. As I noted before, this amount included $2.4 million of cost incurred to train new officers for our newbuildings. That program again has been fully completed. Considering only the results for our VLGCs, we had a total TCE of $57,377 per day for the year and the Spot vessels generated a TCE of nearly $64,800 a day. Our OpEx per day for the VLGCs only for the year just ended, again excluding the doubling up cost for the year, amounted to $8,254 a day. For the 12 months ended March 31, 2016, we reported adjusted net income of $139.6 million or $2.46 a share in adjusted earnings. And net income of $129.7 million or $2.29 per share. Adjusted net income contains the adjustments mentioned earlier for unrealized losses on swaps and a loss on sale of the Grendon. We reported adjusted EBITDA for the year, again as we use that our term in our filings, of $204.9 million. From a cash flow and liquidity perspective, we generated [$151 million] [ph] of cash flow from operation, an increase of roughly $125 million from the prior year. This increase is primarily attributable to higher earnings, driven by an increase in the size of our fleet from seven vessels as of last year to 22 vessels as of March 31, 2016. As of March 31, 2016, we had total outstanding indebtedness of $836.4 million including $726.9 million drawn under our 2015 debt facility and $109.5 million under the RBS facility. The RBS facility amortizes $9.6 million per year in principal, while the 2015 facility was now fully drawn, amortizes approximately $56.4 million per year. We finished the year with $46.4 million in unrestricted cash and equivalents, and $50.8 million of restricted cash. We are comfortably in compliance with all financial covenants out of the two loan facilities. We continue to have cash breakeven cost per calendar day of $23,000 to $24,000 a day, which includes vessel OpEx, cash G&A, cash interest expense and principal amortization. Since January 1, 2016, the company repurchased 1.6 million shares or $15.9 million worth of stock, bringing our total repurchases under the stock buyback plan to $25.9 million. We continue to see good value in our stock relative to the value we see in our fleet. We remain focused on conservatively managing our balance sheet to allow us to operate our business in all economic climates. Our modern fleet and efficient operations should allow us to continue to generate strong earnings and cash flows. With that, I will turn it over to John Lycouris.