Earnings Labs

Dorian LPG Ltd. (LPG)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 14, 2017

$38.54

+1.53%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Dorian LPG Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Additionally, a live audio webcast of today's conference call is available on Dorian LPG's website, which is www.dorianlpg.com. I would like to turn the conference over to Ted Young, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. Mr. Young, please go ahead.

Ted Young

Analyst

Thank you, operator, good morning. Thank you all for joining us for our fourth quarter 2017 results conference call. With me today are John Hadjipateras, Chairman, President and CEO of Dorian LPG Limited; and John Lycouris, Chief Executive Officer of Dorian LPG USA. As a reminder this conference call webcast and a replay of this call will be available through June 21, 2017. Many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These statements may often be identified with words such as expect, anticipate, believe or similar indications of future expectations. Although we believe that such forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot assure you that any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors as well as general economic conditions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should underlying assumptions or estimates prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those we express today. Additionally, let me refer you to our unaudited fiscal fourth quarter 2017 results contained in today's earnings release and our audited full year 2017 results filed this morning with the SEC on Form 10-K, where you'll find the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn over the call to John Hadjipateras.

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Good afternoon and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. After my intro, Ted will review our financials and John Lycouris will update you on the broader market and our operating environment and finally we will take questions. Dorian is the largest owner of ECO VLGC, owning 22 all built through higher specifications and at the world's best shipyards. We commercially manage our spot ships through the Helios Pool which we founded and jointly own with Phoenix Tankers a subsidiary of Mitsui O.S.K. At the end of this month the Helios Pool will comprise 29 VLGCs, including 18 owned by Dorian, five owned by Phoenix tankers the subsidiary of Mitsui O.S.K. and three controlled by Oriental Energy, one of the largest PDH plant operators and LPG Importers in China and three chartered in VLGCs. Four of our VLGCs are on time charters outside the pool. The technical management of our ships is performed by our fully owned company located in Athens. For the quarter ended March 31, 2017 our overall VLGC utilization rate was 96.3%. As a reminder, we calculate fleet utilization as defined in our filings by dividing our total operating days in a period by the total of available days in that period. The average TCE for our fleet including time charter chips was $24,677 per day and for our spot ships $22,448 per day. We've been in the shipping industry for over 40 years and in the LPG market since 2002 and we see many market ups and downs. The past 12 month have been characterized by weakness in our segment, which has absorbed an extraordinary number of newbuildings. Against that backdrop global demand for LPG continues its robust growth and LPG supply and export capacity are following positive trends. As fleet supply growth abates and minimal new ordering has taken place we believe the market will soon begin to rebalance. Following the end of the quarter we took important steps to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our financial flexibility by entering an amendment to our 2015 bank debt facility and refinancing our facility with RBS. These steps which Ted will describe we believe will strengthen our position to participate in the continuing favorable development in the LPG market and our ability to manage through the current period of market weakness and our ability to take advantage of potentially interesting market opportunities. We continue to focus on customer service, on our chartering strategy, and on managing our cost as the pillars of our strategy and of our aim to be best positioned to create value for our shareholders. Let me hand over to Ted who will discuss the financial results and other matters for the quarter.

Ted Young

Analyst

Thanks John. The quarter's results reflect the improvement of the LPG market has experienced due to the improved outlook for LPG shipping and more favorable commodity prices. Before I move on to discuss the results for the quarter, I wish to remind you that we look at our business from a long-term perspective. The main developments for us recently have been the completion of the amendment of our $758 million debt facility and the refinancing of our facility with RBS through a bridge loan with DNB. The former resulted in the release of $26.8 million of cash of which $24.8 million was used to pay down principal under that facility. Since the banks agreed to apply those amounts to the next two payments our next full principal payment under that facility is not until December 23, 2017. The listing [ph] of the covenants is also a positive development. The new DNB facility does not have any scheduled amortization compared to the $4.8 million that we would have amortized on average under the RBS facility over the next six months, thus the effect of these two financing changes and the elimination of $29.6 million of principal payments over the next six months. In addition, the DNB facility has the same margin 250 basis points over LIBOR is the RBS facility it replaced for the next six months. Thus we have succeeded in significantly lowering our cash breakeven for virtually the entire remainder of calendar 2017. As of today we have $742 million of debt outstanding under both facilities and our compliance with all covenants which now are virtually identical between the two facilities. During the coming months we evaluate different alternatives to replace the bridge loan with longer-term capital. I'd like to turn now to our quarterly performance. For the quarter…

John Lycouris

Analyst

Thank you, Ted. U.S. LPG exports hit new records in the first four months of 2017 offsetting declines in Middle East in volumes and increasing ton mile demand. Despite challenging arbitrage economics more U.S. cargoes are being lifted in June than originally expected and we have seen the freight rates stabilize in the past two weeks. We believe that the overall trend for U.S. exports remains positive and LPG volumes will grow well above that of last year. Crude oil production and the drilling oil rig count have been steadily increasing since the middle of last year with crude oil inventories above five year highs. In contrast, propane inventories have falling since the end of last year and only in recent weeks have found a flow and started to built. The low U.S. propane inventories have likely been one of the main reasons prices have remained firm relative to West Texas Intermediate crude prices. With the current excess in crude stocks and the prospects of weakening crude prices margins on natural gas liquids are expected to improve and the production of NGLs will show growth increasing propane stocks in the process. The NX [ph] department has revised their 2017 and 2018 propane production forecast numbers upward again in their June short-term energy forecast and simultaneously revised the consumption forecast down. India LPG imports registered a 17% year-on-year growth during calendar 2017. This is a testament to the Indian Government’s commitment to replacing kerosene in households with LPG. Recent data provided by the Indian Oil Ministry reported that a record 32.5 million new LPG connections were added during the fiscal year 2016/2017. This is a 20% increase over last year and raises the total LPG connections to 200 million. Plans are to add a further 70 million connections in the next…

John Lycouris - Chief Executive Officer, Dorian LPG USA

Analyst

Thank you, Ted. U.S. LPG exports hit new records in the first four months of 2017 offsetting declines in Middle East and (indiscernible) and increasing ton mile demand. Despite challenging arbitrary economics more U.S. cargoes are being lifted in June than originally expected and we have seen credit rates stabilized in the past two weeks. We believe that the overall trend for U.S. exports remains positive and LPG volumes will grow well above that of last year. Crude oil production and drilling oil rig count have been steadily increasing since the middle of last year with crude oil inventories above five year high. In contrast propane inventories have falling since the end of last year and only in recent weeks have found a flow and started to built. The low U.S. propane inventories have likely been one of the main reasons prices have remained firm relative to West (indiscernible) crude price. With the current access in crude stocks and the prospects of weakening crude prices margins on natural gas liquids are expected to improve and the production of NGLs will show growth increasing propane stocks in the process. The NX department has revised the 2017 and 2018 propane production for GAAP numbers upward again in their June short-term energy forecast and simultaneously revised the consumption forecast down. India LPG imports registered a 17% year-on-year growth during calendar 2017 this is testament to the Indian government’s commitment to replacing kerosene in households with LPG. Recent data provided by the Indian Oil Ministry reported that a record 32.5 million new LPG connections were added during the fiscal year 2016/2017. This is a 20% increase over last year and raises the total LPG connections to 200 million. Plans are to add a further 70 million connections in the next two years. The ministry…

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Thank you and operator, we’ll open up for questions now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Noah Parquette from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Noah Parquette

Analyst

Hey, I just wanted to ask what drove the strength in the rates that you accomplished this quarter, it looks like it's well above what the market was even including some sort of fuel efficiency premium?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

I think the simple answer is, our chartering team did it. We’re very proud of them and it was a good quarter and the results speaks for itself. I can’t point to any specifics for the benefit of our competitors, but I can just say that it is what you see and we hope we can continue. And also we hope the market just improves overall. I mean, we’re not just looking at our delta – we’re happy to see a continuing improvement in the market which we’re looking forward to as the fleet deliveries sort of taper off.

Noah Parquette

Analyst

Okay. And then I – just also want to ask on the Panama Canal the change in the toll, how do you view that? Is that simply canal is already trying to extract a little more from your segment or is it more like there are plenty of container vessels going through ,so that’s their bread and butter. How likely do you think you go back the long way so much of account?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Yes, I really don’t know, but I think it is because they have enough volume and they could to do it, it's simply demand and supply frankly. There was perhaps a greater percentage of LPG ships going through than they had anticipated so they see that they can up the ante a bit and we’ll see how it goes.

Noah Parquette

Analyst

Okay and have you changed any of your ships routes yet because of this or is it still the same?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

No every call, every voyage is a different decision. Our chartering guys look at it and they will decide whether – which way to route. We have slots both of them we have – we made sure that when we want to use the canal that we can.

Noah Parquette

Analyst

Okay, that’s all I have thank you.

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Thank you, Noah.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Mike Webber from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good afternoon gentlemen, this is Donald Barden stepping in for Mike, how are you?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Good Donald, how are you doing?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Doing well, thanks. I mean, I just wanted to get your sort of forward expectations for the market, obviously you don’t have a crystal ball, but as you think of sort of [indiscernible] coming on this summer as some of the other positive demand fundamentals that you have in your call, I mean what’s your outlook on rates, so are you going to move seasonally softer or do think there is a clear sense from the sort of your commercial team that the market start and then you are optimistic about the second half of the year?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

We can't, it is impossible to tell you what is going to happen in the market. All we see is that the supply of product is there, improving like John Lycouris said. The demand is there and the number of ships entering the fleet is waning. So we would like to say that we are positively inclined and we are optimistic, cautiously optimistic but optimistic nevertheless.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Got you, thank you for that color and then just a followup on asset values and sort of S&P liquidity obviously some other peers in this space has sort of consolidated the market over the last call at six to twelve months. What is your sense on where VLGC resale values are, do you see sort of upward pressure their or things are sort of holding near that $65 million level?

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

We don’t see any resale available actually and we hope not because we hope not to see any more orders for the time being, but such as they are if they would be an resale they would be Chinese and then I expect that if they - if there was – if you have to put a price on it which you know I can't, I mean the ship brokers will do that, but I would say we somewhere between the 65 and the 70 level as a resale.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thank you for that color, that's it from me gentlemen. Congratulations on these strong rates and the encouraging news around your covenants and debts.

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing comments.

John Hadjipateras

Analyst

Thank you very much for attending and look forward to next time. Bye-bye everybody, have a good summer in the meantime.