Earnings Labs

Star Bulk Carriers Corp. (SBLK)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Mar 20, 2015

$24.77

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Star Bulk Carriers Conference Call on the Fourth Quarter 2014 Financial Results. We have with us Mr. Petros Pappas, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Hamish Norton, President; Mr. Simos Spyrou and Mr. Christos Begleris, Co-Chief Financial Officers of the company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. We now pass the floor to one of your speakers today Mr. Pappas. Please go ahead sir.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Thank you, operator. I'm Petros Pappas, the Chief Executive Officer of Star Bulk Carriers and I would like to welcome you to the Star Bulk Carriers’ conference call discussing our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2014. Before, we begin, I kindly ask you to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement on Slide number 2 of our presentation. This past year has been a transformational one for the company. After the merger with Oceanbulk and the acquisition of 34 vessels from Excel Maritime making Star Bulk, the largest U.S. listed dry bulk company with a fleet of 98 vessels on a fully delivered basis. Looking ahead to challenging 2015, we remain fully committed to take measures to protect our shareholders equity value and enhance our ability to weather what has proved as one of the most challenging dry bulk markets in the last 40 years. If you can now please turn to Slide number 3, I will walk you through the results of Q4 2014, full year 2014, and the current state of the company. Against a backdrop of weakening market conditions in the fourth quarter of 2014, the company recorded an adjusted net loss of $5.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $16.6 million on net revenues of $45.6 million. For the full year 2014, the company recorded an adjusted net loss of $3.2 million and adjusted EBITDA of $43.6 million and net revenues of $111.2 million. Our fleet currently consists of 66 vessels on the water. We have taken delivery of 33 out of the total 34 vessels we acquired from Excel Maritime and expect to have the last vessels delivered to us by the end of this month. We continued taking delivery of our eco newbuilding vessels in the first quarter of…

Christos Begleris

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Thank you, Petros. Let us now turn to Slide number 5 of the presentation for a summary of our fourth quarter 2014 financial highlights in comparison to last years. In the three months ended December 31, 2014, net revenues amounted to $45.6 million more than doubled $17.3 million for the same period in 2013. Net revenues represent our total revenues adjusted for non-cash items less voyage expenses. The reason we refer to our net revenues is because this figure nets out any difference in revenue recognition between voyage charter and time charters, and therefore it's directly comparable to other periods. This increase is mostly attributed to a significant increase of the average number of vessels to 50.8 in the fourth quarter of 2014 from 13.2 vessels in the fourth quarter of 2013. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2014 was $16.6 million, an increase of 124% versus last year's figure of $7.4 million. Net loss for the fourth quarter 2014 was $8.1 million or $8.03 per basic and diluted share versus $0.054 million net income or $0.02 per basic and diluted share in the respective period of 2013. Excluding non-cash items and one-off expenses, our adjusted net loss for the fourth quarter amounted to 5.5 million or $0.06 loss per basic and diluted share versus 2.1 million of adjusted net income or $0.07 gain per basic and diluted share during the respective period of 2013. Our Time Charter Equivalent rate during this quarter was $11,384 per day compared to $14,467 last year. This is an illustration of the weaker than expected fourth quarter compared to last year's rally during the same period. Our average daily OpEx were $4,704 per vessel compared to $5,392 during the same period last year, representing a reduction of 12.8%. You can clearly see the…

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Thank you, Christos. Moving now to Slide 9, we are happy to report that we have now committed financing in place for 30 out of our 32 remaining newbuilding vessels of which we are scheduled to take delivery by the third quarter of 2016. This illustrates the excellent relationship we have with both existing and new financial institutions and our ability to source debt financing even in this difficult market environment. We have committed financing for 30 out of our 32 newbuilding vessels. We have used bilateral loans, club deals and ECI backed financing to tap various sources of credit with European and Asian financial institutions. Note that the Export-Import Bank of China has provided total commitment of close to $200 million against Chinese built newbuildings. We continue to see the banks prefer financing large and established companies that have access to various sources of financing and can withstand the market turbulence over smaller entities that might face increased headwinds during the downturn. We are currently in negotiations with two major financial institutions to finalize $65 million of financing for our remaining two newbuilding vessels and fully finance the debt portion of the newbuilding fleet. We expect this negotiations to turn into committed financing in the next one or two months. Regarding the underwater vessels, during the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015, we were able to finalize and [close] [ph] one facility with DNB and Citigroup worth combined of $212 million that helped us refinance the Oaktree and Angelo Gordon bridge loan facility that was provided for the acquisition of the Excel vessels. As of today, this bridge facility has been repaid in its entirety. We are currently also have three 2004 built Panamaxes from the Excel fleet which have no leverage. We have received…

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Thank you, Simos. So 2014 has been another challenging year on the chartering side, but we have managed outperform the relevant Baltic Indices for the fourth year in a row on an adjusted basis. Turning to Slide 11, you can see that for 2014, the vessels in our fleet were able to achieve 127% of the adjusted Baltic Capesize Index, 144% of the adjusted Baltic Panamax Index and 110% of the adjusted Baltic Supramax Index. On the graph, on the bottom of the slide, you can see that we have managed to beat these indices consistently over the years as we continue to perform well in the volatile dry bulk market. Moving on Slide 12, we discuss our current chartering strategy where we remain flexible and are exploring all available options as we go through the seasonally low part of the year. As you can see from the graph on this slide, the one-year time charter rates for Capesize and Panamax vessels are at historically low levels at the moment. From a commercial standpoint, we are exploring opportunities for direct long-term cooperation's with dry bulk majors, which we are hopeful; provide us with steady flows of cargos and business. An example of such as cooperation was the announced strategic partnership with a leading mining company for the employment of three of our Newcastlemax vessels for a period of five years. This agreement allows us to ensure constant employment for those vessels for a long period, while also being paid on the prevailing spot dollars per ton rate, which will enable us to keep the benefit of all the fuel savings from this latest technology eco-vessel. Moreover, as you already know Star Bulk in cooperation with four of the largest Capesize vessel owners have founded Capesize Chartering Limited, an information sharing platform that will improve the efficiency of our Capesize vessels trading on the spot market. We are seeking to create similar arrangements another vessel category as well in order to be able to provide competitive bids to a wider customer audience. We continue to explore all available options to better employ our vessels. Now, in Slide number 13, you can see how our fleet will evolve over the next year and a half, by number of ships and by deadweight tons. On December 31, 2014, our fleet was comprised of 62 vessels while currently we have 66 vessels on the water and one more vessel from Excel expected to be delivered by the end of the month. By the fourth quarter of 2015 when we will have taken delivery of the majority of our eco newbuild orders, we will own and operate 90 vessels followed by our fully delivered fleet of 98 ships which will be attained in September of 2016. Having said that let me now pass the floor back to Petros Pappas for a market update and his closing remarks.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Thank you, Hamish. Following a disappointing fourth quarter in terms of ton mile generation and freight rate behavior, we anticipated that we would experience a difficult first quarter during 2015. The first quarter is the seasonally high-point of the year in terms of vessel supply due to high January vessel deliveries and the low-point in terms of demand or cargo availability as a result of poor weather conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. The Chinese New Year and maintenance taking place in major port and steel mills. The first quarter of 2015 has become even more challenging in terms of supply and demand fundamentals as the continuing fall of commodity prices affected buying activity. Let's now turn to Slide 15 for a brief update of supply. Ship owners have been very proactive when responding to negative demand developments. This year we are experiencing an encouraging strong response that has come in the form of vessel scrapping, converting, canceling and curtailing of the order. During the first two and a half months of 2015, we have identified almost 10 million deadweight that has already been scrapped and/or committed for demolition. This compares with 16.2 million deadweight demolished throughout 2014 and 3 million deadweight demolished during the first quarter of 2014. Even more importantly reported new dry bulk orders for 2015 year-to-date currently stand at around 600,000 deadweight. This marks the 20-year historical low for dry bulk orders placing of new orders is the most important future indicator and onus discipline during the next year will be key for a sustainable recovery to take place. An important development as we are experiencing during 2015 is that of newbuilding conversions a significant number of Capesize vessels is reported during the first months of 2015 that have been converted to crude and product tankers. The…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Ben Nolan of Stifel. Your line is now open.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you. And I have several questions, the first has to do with the financing, obviously, you guys have been very active lately in terms of lining up the new financing. And it looks like just sort of doing my back of the envelope math, that it was a really good loan to value ratio is anywhere from 60% to 70%, which seems like based on current asset prices and especially given this market is pretty good. First of all, I mean is that right, is my math right? And then secondly, is that the market or do you think you guys have some sort of an enhanced stability to line up that sort of financing?

Christos Begleris

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Hi. Ben, this is Christos. Your math is correct. Basically, the latest facility that we closed with China EXIM, DNB and SEB were 60%. The other big facility that we closed and we have already drawn down part of it with Sinosure, Deutsche Bank and HSBC had a 68% fair market value clause.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Yes. That's pretty good. So and I guess just associated with that when I look at little over $900 million in committed financing that you guys have in place, is that, should I think of that as real dollars or is there a certain degree of flexibility in that as it relates to the fair value of the assets, I mean, could it potentially go lower, could it potentially go higher, depending on where where the market is for the asset?

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Okay. That financing for the most part has fair market value clauses and based on today's broker valuations we would anticipate getting basically the full amount that you see in our slides.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Okay.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Obviously, if values drop then it might be a lower dollar amount, but, at the moment –

Christos Begleris

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Just the good things with these date figures is that 11 out of the effectively 32 vessels are variable hires, which means that financing is fixed because of the percentage of the contract cost. So for the remaining 21, as Hamish said based on today's value, we will probably draw the whole amount and in fact we are drawing the whole amount for a vessel that's delivering in the next few weeks.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Okay. That's very helpful. And to the extent that number is accurate as of today, I think it's hard to imagine that assets values can go up a whole lot, [currently] [ph] the linearity have gone down. Switching gears a bit, the OpEx, with the reduction in OpEx was pretty substantial certainly relatively what I was thinking, but just even sort of on an year-over-year basis a pretty meaningful reduction in daily OpEx. How much of that can you attribute to just the economies of scale having a larger fleet versus, is this something that’s a little bit more proactive in over and above economies of scale and kind of along with that the levels that you guys have been able to attain is that a pretty good run rate or should we – was it exceptionally low this particular quarter.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Ben, a lot of it has to do with the size. And we can see that in our latest discussions with suppliers we’ll get major concessions from them. And of course, I mean it’s normal, when the market is tougher then we get tougher as well. Plus, I think that in a way the euro going down helps as well. So we are getting assistance from everywhere and we think we will do much better this year as well.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Okay. That's helpful. And then, I would ask about sort of where the CapEx program falls out on a timeframe basis, but I know that you guys said that you were bound by some confidentiality agreement, so my last question I guess relates to the turn in the market – the potential turn in the market that we have seen in the last few weeks certainly for the smaller assets and then within last week or so in the Capesize vessel, it seems as though maybe rates have the found floor and they are starting to slowly creep back up. Is that a correct read on my part from your perspective or are we just sort of coasting along the bottom here without really a clear sign of an improvement rate?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Well, usually there is two periods where the market is stronger, one is between mid-March and end of May and the other one is between mid-October and mid-December. This part of the year usually the market gets stronger because people are back from vacation and there is also the grain trade that increases. And therefore, I don't think we are coasting down the bottom. I think we might see a more meaningful upturn. But, I think it's going to be cyclical potentially this summer will be a bit challenging as again.

Ben Nolan

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks a lot. That does it for my questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you. Good afternoon guys. I just had a handful of follow ups as well. And my first question is related to the market. And Petros, I know that you guys are very involved because of your size, your scale and relationships with some of the industrial end users of some of these ships. So when you are having conversations with those guys, can you relate to us maybe their tone, their mood, their expectations of the market because as you said in your prepared comments because of how bad the market is right now, the order book is really getting decimated and ships are getting scrapped left and right. And so the outlook just doesn't seem that bad, not as bad as the current environment is, but is that maybe our shipping market views and is that shared with some of the industrial end users, so can you just share with us what – kind of what their views of the market might be.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

One thing I have found out in my 37-year career is that you cannot really foresee the market a lot of the time. And that doesn't happen just for ship owners, it also happens for charters.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Right.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

I think, however, that as of late and due to the supply side forces on the one-hand and on the other hand, on the macro economic things that are happening worldwide like cheaper raw materials oil and interest rates. There is more hope, but also I think there is a realization that to be able to get there, we need to act and looking at 600,000 deadweight ordering for the first three months of this year is amazing, I have not seen this since 1990 happen. So it shows – this is a very important development. And on the other hand I and – I think most players in the market think the demand will continue to be okay. For this year, 3.5% is not great, but we believe it's going to be potentially even as bit above supply. And don't forget that it will probably come from no one because the first three months of this year were very challenging and we haven't been able to calculate what the demand increase was. But, it might have been zero or even less than zero.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Right. Because it seems as though, yes, obviously, the latter part of last year, as you correctly point out, the couple of one-off events that occurred and then, you had this normal seasonality and people are extrapolating this is going to be the demand environment forever, but, what this actually maybe good because it is having a positive effect on the order book, so it is getting worked through. So whenever, we look at maybe asset values, some of the brokers of markdown assets 10%, 20% year-to-date, my question is how deep is that market right here, I mean, are assets really come-off that much, or is that just a handful of assets that are being done at these levels?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Well, there is a point where the dip-in asset prices is theoretical.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Right.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Like you might have a vessel that you would be willing to sell it, let's say $50 million, and somebody comes in and offers you $10 million. You are not selling. And he is not buying. So actually that's not the market. We are – it's in between, but what I see mostly that owners of vessels actually are speaking to some – to their prices, except if, there is somebody who has lost on whole or is going bankrupt, I don't know, I haven't seen much of that yet. And also I have seen that the newbuildings actually have lost less value than the second hand vessels. At least since last year and we are in the relatively fortunate position to have ordered in 2012. Therefore, the fall out is very small comparatively I would say.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Got you. I got you guys are perfect. And then just a final question before turning it over. If you had the ability to say, if one thing happens in this market it's going to turn on a dime or start getting better. All the things that we know could be – could help the market improve. In your view, what's the most important factor that if it takes place then we should be in for better days in the not too distant future?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

I think clearly it's on the supply side, not ordering and scrapping. I think that's the most important part. And if I had the second choice, I would add that China actually does some infrastructure work which we are looking at. And therefore, needs iron ore and we expect that it's going to be more iron ore from Brazil, so China not slowing down on the iron ore front and taking part of it from Brazil.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

I would say personally Brazilian iron ore.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Brazilian iron ore is a good thing.

Doug Mavrinac

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Great. Thank you so much.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Doug Mavrinac of Jefferies. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Petros, Hamish, Christos and Simos. My first question is with respect to the comments on delays of deliveries, I mean I understand what you can tell is limited, but, if I'm not mistaken, the original plan was to take delivery of 25 newbuilding this year and Slide 13 sort of imply that the company is still taking delivery of the most, if not all of that by year-end. So could you just reconcile those two or maybe correct me if I'm mistaken.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Amit, we have unfortunately some confidentiality restrictions with the yards that we are discussing and we cannot give any information on the deferrals. So basically what we have done is, we moved some vessel deliveries from 2015 into the second and third quarter of 2016. But, at this stage, we cannot give any more information on that, of course, the payment of relative CapEx.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay. So Slide 13, when you have the pro forma number of ships that is not stated for the deliveries?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Correct. It's not updated. It's the original deliveries.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay, great. That's helpful. And then, with respect to just the delays of CapEx payments and listen, I can really understand the limitations but maybe you can just confirm what the original payment plan was, so if I'm correct, I think it was like somewhere around $950 million of newbuilding CapEx this year. And I assume that number will be reduced as a result of the push out to 2016. Can you at all, just help us with the magnitude of that reduction, I mean are we talking about $50 million or something maybe more meaningful, just so that we get the understanding when the company already as a very good cash cushion. I'm just trying to get an understanding of how much more that maybe enhance as a result of some of the proactive moves that you guys have done.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Amit, unfortunately the number is meaningful, but we could not give any further information on that. We will try going forward at some stage, if we get the agreement by the yards to give some guidance during the first quarter result or even later. But, at this stage we cannot give anything more than that.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay. I understand. I just thought that I would ask anyways. Let me just ask one more follow-up, if I may on scrappage. Because clearly everyone is sort of speaking about this as maybe a potential prelude to recovery in the market, and I totally agree that it's a good thing. But, Petros or Hamish, I love to get sort of your thoughts on what level of scrappage do you think we need to see to sort of drive a meaningful impact because historically, if you look scrappage peak in 1986 at 6.3% of the fleet, it peaked again in 2012 on the tonnage basis 33 million tons. But at the same time, we will also sort of add these historical increases imply from 2008 to 2012. So where do you think scrappage needs to be and how long does that take to get through the system because I assume that there is some level of scrappage capacity as well on the system. So maybe some thoughts on that would be helpful.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Amit, let reverse this a little bit and do a quick calculation for you. What's on order for this year is about 75 million tons. What is expected to be – what is the expected slippage which has been the same for the last three years is about 30%; 30% of 75 is 22.5. So we have, let's say we will remain at the same slippage although I think we will have bigger slippage this year for obvious reasons. Let's say we will stay at 22 million that leaves us with 53 million for this year. Now, we have 10 million tons of scrap for the first quarter. That would indicate 40 million for the year. We don't calculate that. We calculate around 25 to 35. Let's take the 25, the low-end. 53 less 25 is 28 million tons, which is about 3.7% of the existing fleet. So with conservative estimates of previous year's slippage and scrapping on the low end, because 25 million would mean – it's going to be 15 million only for the next three quarters. We still get only 3.7%. We have a secret hope that we will go even below 3% on supply but for now we are calculating around 3.5% following the calculations I just went through with you.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay. That's great. And then one last housekeeping question, Christos or Simos, can you just provide me with the share count at the end of the year.

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

So Amit, the share count with the delivery of the latest Excel later this month is going to be 162.6 million shares.

Amit Mehrotra

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Okay, great. Okay. Thank you all so much. Have a great weekend. Thank you.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Amit Mehrotra of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open

Thank you, Amit.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open.

Spiro Dounis

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Good morning, gentlemen and congrats on getting all that financing locked up seeing some much positive developments today. Just wondering if you can give us a sense, just kind of following up on one of Ben's questions, what potential covenant issues might pop-up on maybe some of the existing vessels, if there is any sort of coverage ratios, we need to be thinking about. It sounds like the market is going to hit a bottom here, so maybe things should get better. But, just want to know if there should be anything on our radar?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

I think Spiro on the basis of today's values, we don't have any breaches on the covenants even that the majority of our vessels were basically acquired in the last 2 years and we are finance conservative – conservatively because high level financing was thus non-existent. Therefore, we don't expect any major issues with LTV covenants in our facilities, which range from 70% to 80%, 82.5% loan to value days.

Spiro Dounis

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Perfect. And then with respect to the Capesize Chartering co-op that you formed with the -- other owners, have you seen any clear benefit so far from this structure and maybe could you give us a few examples of other tools at your disposal that might give you an edge in this market.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Well, this has only been a three-week arrangement. And we haven't seen any tangible benefits right now expect from the fact that we have much more information than we used to have in the past. But, going forward, I think that this corporation will strengthen and in reality where it's going to assist a lot is when there is more demand of iron ore cargos. When there is no – when there is very few cargos, obviously, there is not very much you can do about it. But, the minute there is a few more cargos, we will be able to perceive it much quicker than it will wear on their own. And that is extremely important as this is actually not a pool. It's a very loose relationship. Now, what else can we do, what else can we do, I think size is important in charters we think to talk to you instead of talking to ship owner with a very few vessels because he can probably get what he needs from just one source. And if we are considered to be good operators, which I think we are then a charter would be very happy to just not have to shop around but basically deal with one company.

Spiro Dounis

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Got it. That makes sense. And then just one follow-up on Capesize Chartering as well, it sounds like something so even on a good market, you will be open to kind of keeping that cooperation going, would you be open to new members at one point or expanding it even further?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Yes. This is a decision that has been taken by the corporation.

Spiro Dounis

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Great. Wish you all. Thank you.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Spiro Dounis of UBS. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley.

Fotis Giannakoulis

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

Yes. Hi, guys. Most of my questions have been answered, but something very quick, if you can give us, I think your estimate for cost breakeven during 2015 and what is going to be your cost breakeven after vessels have been delivered any other reason flexibility with your banks, this breakeven at least for the near term to be reduced even further.

Christos Begleris

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

Fotis, we are estimating that breakeven for the 57 vessels that are spot today to be a little bit above [103,000] [ph] per day this including the figure that of the revenue that you have for the nine vessels that are already long-term time charters. Now, going forward, this includes operating expenses G&A expenses debt principle and debt interest repayment. And going forward with the delivery of the newbuilding vessels of our fleet and basically with our projections and estimations that we are going to achieve further synergies and economies of scale from managing large fleet, we believe that we will be able to reduce this figure even further. Now, on your final point about discussion and flexibility from the bank side to reduce this figure right now, obviously, we do not have any discussions yet on these issues with the banks. But, we believe that in case needed in the future we have the track record and the flexibility to discuss this and bring it even further down.

Fotis Giannakoulis

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

Thank you, Christos. And one last question to Petros. Petros, you have been in this industry for quite a long time and if I'm not mistaken actually you started through a very similar crisis back in the 80s. What are the differences and whether the similarities between this two different periods and are the lessons that you learned through the 80s that can be useful for investors right now?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

First of all, there is a point where I should start hiding my age. Okay, similarities over supply, what happened in 1981-1982 was that there was a big congestion in Nigeria and that congestion actually was skipping 100s of vessels at their road for months. And that was misperceived as – and that might have went up a consequence and that was perceived as strong demand. It wasn't strong demand. It was just a lot of congestion. And therefore, people ordered. People ordered again two years ago. But, we adjusted well along with them, I mean I'm not going to do that – have to deny that. So the main – usually the main problem in situations like that is oversupply, because most of the time it hasn't been that demand was the culprit except for example in 2008 where we had other issues, the second part of 2008. Now, the solution to that is first of all, you have to have a low cost structure and that's what we did then and that's basically what we are doing now. And you have to be decisive when the time comes. So when there are things you have to do, you have to do them. I'm not going to get into detail about that. But, we did then and at that time it was like 2 out of 3 ship owners went bunker. And we are doing no. And of course, one thing that happened then it's not going to happen again I think is that banks panicked. And they started selling vessels without regards to price. And that actually made prices of vessels go down – got down the drain. This however is never happened again after 1985. The banks always kept their cool and this is what's happening now as well. So I think that this being frugal and looking forwards and doing things early enough. I mean we saw the problem in the first week of January and we raised $245 million. That was a good move and we did it first.

Fotis Giannakoulis

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

Thank you very much Petros. I appreciate it. Good answers.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Fotis Giannakoulis of Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Good afternoon gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. Christos or Spyrou, I don't remember which of you provided some of that detail earlier. Can you give a sense for how much you can borrow on your unencumbered vessels at this point? I think you mentioned that earlier.

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Hi, Sal. We have three vessels effectively that are debt-free in our fleet. And these are three 2004 built [indiscernible] Panamaxes. Debt potentially on these vessels is the region of $20 million.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

$20 million per ship, right?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

No, no, no. For all three.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

In aggregate?

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Yes. Your wish. Yes.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Right. There are still four vessels, got it. Okay, so that's $20 million of potential liquidity you can get there and then the liquidity covenant you have, I think its $500,000 per vessel is that correct?

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

That's correct.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

That's per underwater vessel, correct?

Simos Spyrou

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Correct.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

And then the last question really is, I think in the past you provided a real-time cash balance debt and payments you made on your newbuildings, is that something that you can provide today?

HamishNorton

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Basically we haven't put in the slide deck, I think given that it's not in the slide deck; we probably don't want to be talking about it.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

That's fair. I just thought I would ask, its fine.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Yes.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

And the last question really, I think you answered this and I understand you can't be specific in terms of what deferrals you are expecting on your newbuildings, but can you give a sense like in aggregate how many maybe how many months of deferral you expect on average for the 15 vessels that will now be delivered in 2016.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

So Sal, let me add a point to your previous question. We are going to try to update our presentation and maybe include some of those numbers you wanted on the Web perhaps next week.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

That would be great. That would be great.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

And in terms of the deferrals at the yards, unfortunately we have really kind of gone to the edge of what we are able to say given the confidentiality agreement we have. We would love to be able to say more and we will try to get permission to say more. But –

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Okay. That's fine. Maybe just a last question is, so you talked about maybe borrowing some capital on – when it come to vessels, what else are you looking at in terms of options. You have recently done a share offering. Would you consider doing any sale lease backs I think you said in the past that's not one of your preferred options? What else are you looking at in terms of liquidity enhancing measures in the event that you don't see any significant recovery in the market near-term?

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

We are looking at pretty much every reasonable measure that I'm sure you are aware off. And I think it's probably not appropriate to discuss what we are actually doing. But, you will see as we take steps that we are taking aggressive steps to make sure we are in good shape.

Sal Vitale

Analyst · Sal Vitale of Sterne Agee. Your line is now open

Okay. Thank you. I look forward to the additional data next week. Thank you for your time.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Omar Nokta of Clarksons Capital. Your line is now open.

Omar Nokta

Analyst · Omar Nokta of Clarksons Capital. Your line is now open

Hi. Guys actually my questions have pretty much all been answered, I forgot to press star 2. Thanks guys.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Omar Nokta of Clarksons Capital. Your line is now open

Thanks Omar.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Good afternoon everyone and thank you for really good insights on the industry. I appreciate it. I just have one question. Most of my questions have been answered. But, I just wanted to give your take on the issue of lay ups recently, we heard off some warm lay ups and some fleets being idle. And also some potentially cold lay ups, could you tell me what you are thinking about how that might affect the dynamic near-term and if we see a rate increase how quickly vessels might come back in the market or how or your take on the fact that some of them might not come back in the market, anything on that would be great. Thanks.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Hi, Charles.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Hello.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Well, first of all, lay up, you need – laying up $1,500 per day, let's say you laid up for a year, it would cost you $1500 per day to that lay up, the cost during lay up and then starting the vessel again. So what that means is that if your OpEx for example is $5000, you should start considering lay up, its $3500. So lay up for a year from now, you would need to think that you will be making $3500 per day for the next 12 months.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Yes. I think your question also refer to how quickly some of these ships that are in warm lay up?

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Yes. I'm curious how quickly they might come back in the marketplace, so in other words…

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Warm-up lay up is 10 to 15 days. Cold lay up would be up to a month perhaps, if anything because when you are in cold lay up and for a year your – the bottom of the vessel gets very dirty and you would probably need to do a dry dock.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Yes.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Warm lay up is going to cost you more because you have to keep a certain number of crew members on the ship.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Right.

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

So –

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

$1,500 you mentioned that's for cold lay up, is that correct?

Hamish Norton

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Yes.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Okay. And so warm lay up would be that plus crew.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Warm lay up would be, I haven't calculated by seeing the visual, probably be like $2,500 to $3,000 plus about 1 ton of fuel oil, another $500. So it would be between $3,000 and $3,500.

Charles Rupinski

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Okay. It's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Charles Rupinski of Global Hunter. Your line is now open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. As there are no more questions, we now pass the floor back to Mr. Pappas for closing remarks.

Petros Pappas

Analyst · Stifel. Your line is now open

Thank you, operator. Just three very quick ones, on the supply side, I think that ship owners making the right moves by scrapping, converting, canceling and not ordering and that's very important. On the demand side, I think that low material – low oil and raw material prices and interest rates will boost the world economy as a whole and demand in consequence. And on the Star Bulk side, we are making sure we are extending our runway to be able to enjoy the good days that will ultimately follow this present tough times. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude our conference for today. Thanks for participating. You may all disconnect.