Ole Hjertaker
Analyst · Randy Giveans from Jefferies. Please ask your question
Thank you and welcome all to SFL’s third quarter conference call. I will start the call by briefly going through the highlights of the quarter. And following that our CFO, Aksel Olesen will take us through the financials and the call will be concluded by opening up for questions. Before we begin our presentation, I would like to note that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, anticipates, intends, estimates or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. These statements are based on our current plans and expectations and are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to conditions in the shipping offshore and credit markets. You should therefore not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more detailed discussions of our risks and uncertainties which may have a direct bearing on our operating results and our financial condition. The announced dividend of $0.15 per share represents a dividend yield of around 8% based on closing price yesterday and this is our 67th consecutive quarter with dividends. In light of the continued uncertainty surrounding Seadrill and outcome of their pending financial restructuring, the Board decided to adjust the dividend down to $0.15 and thereby effectively exclude all contribution from offshore rigs for the time being. We believe that the market has already discounted this in the SFL share price as prior to this dividend adjustment we are trading at more than 13% yield based on the prior dividend, which is a very high number in the current low interest rate environment. When the Seadrill situation is resolved, the Board will reassess the situation and possibly reinstate contribution from the rigs and the dividend again. And our focus will be on building the portfolio with accretive transactions in order to build the distribution capacity also by adding new assets going forward. Over the years, we have paid more than $27 per share in dividends or $2.3 billion in total, and we have a significant fixed rate charter backlog, supporting continued dividend capacity in the future. The total charter revenues of $157 million in the quarter was in line with the previous quarter with more than 90% of this from vessels on long-term charters and less than 10% from vessels employed on short-term charters and in the spot market. The EBITDA equivalent cash flow in the quarter was approximately $117 million; and last 12 months, the EBITDA equivalent has been approximately $481 million, similar to the situation the last 12 months in the prior quarter. Excluding cash in the rig owning subsidiaries, the consolidated cash position at quarter end was more than $200 million, up from around $150 million at the end of the second quarter. In addition, we had $33 million in marketable securities at quarter end. And after quarter end, we have used some of the cash to take out the financing of the drilling rig, West Taurus, but we still have a strong cash position with more than $100 million remaining. Our fixed rate backlog stands at approximately $3.2 billion after recent charter extensions and vessel sales, providing significant cash flow visibility going forward. Of this, $2.4 billion relates to shipping assets alone and excludes revenues from 16 vessels trading in the short-term market and also excludes future profit share optionality. The profit share contribution, which I mentioned, adds optionality value, was around $6 million in the third quarter. This was primarily from the 2 VLCCs on charter to Frontline, but also from fuel savings from container vessels with scrubbers and a small contribution from bulkers. Following the immediate impact of COVID-19, some trades, including the car market came to a virtual halt. We have 2 vessels in this market, and they were due to come off charters in May and in August this year. And consequently, we put them in lay-up in order to save costs as we believed at the time that it would take some quarters before the market would recover again. We are very happy to see that it happened much quicker than anyone anticipated, and both vessels are not trading out – chartered out again one on 100-day charter and one for 11 months. And the charter rates are essentially back to pre-COVID-19 levels already. While the Seadrill restructuring is pending, we have already addressed the bank structures in 2 other rigs. We have repurchased all the debt on the idle rig West Taurus at the discount, essentially limited to the $83 million corporate guarantee, the cash in the rig owning subsidiary, which was already pledged to the banks anyway for some margin. We have also agreed to guarantee the financing on West Linus in exchange for more flexible financing terms. And with a large fleet of assets, there will always be acquisitions and disposals, and the remaining vessel on charter to the Hunter Group has been repurchased by them and delivered earlier this quarter – sorry, this month. The Hunter deal was designed to give us a very high return on a low risk profile in exchange for flexibility on Hunter’s part. This is a good example of cost of capital arbitrage, where we could utilize our premium access to low cost funding, and at the same time give flexibility that Hunter was willing to pay for it. The delivery took place yesterday and that cash to us is more than $10 million after repayment of the associated financing, and the proceeds are expected to be reinvested in new accretive transactions. Excluding the drilling rigs, which I will cover on the next page, the backlog from the shipping assets was $2.4 billion at the end of the quarter. Over the years, we have changed both fleet composition and structure, and we now have 81 shipping assets in our portfolio and no vessels remaining from the initial fleet in 2004. We have gone from a single asset class charter to one single customer to a diversified fleet and multiple counterparties. And over time, the mix of the charter backlog has varied from 100% tankers to nearly 60% offshore at one stage to container market being the largest right now. In addition, we have 16 vessels traded in the short-term market, which we define as up to 12-month charters and also from time-to-time, as I mentioned earlier, significant contributions from profit shares on assets. We do not have a set mix in the portfolio. Focus is on evaluating deal opportunities across the segments and try to do the right transactions from a risk reward perspective. Over time, we believe this will balance itself out. But we try to be careful and conservative in our investments and not invest just because money is burning in our pocket. Our strategy has been to maintain a strong technical and commercial operating platform in cooperation with our sister companies in the Seatankers Group. This gives us the ability to offer a wider range of services to our customers from structured financings to full-service time charters, which is the bigger part of our portfolio. But more importantly, we also believe it gives us unique access to deal flow in our core segments. And with full control over vessel maintenance and performance, including energy efficiency and emission minimizing efforts, we can impact improvements to our vessels through the life of the assets and not only be passively owning vessels employed on bareboats where the customers may not always have an incentive to make such improvements. So, unlike most of the companies with a financing profile in the maritime world, more than three quarters of our shipping charters revenues comes from vessels on time charter and a smaller proportion from bareboat chartered assets. And even if we include the drilling rigs which are all on bareboat charters, the time charter portion is still more than two-thirds. SFL owns 3 drilling rigs chartered to subsidiaries of Seadrill. All 3 rigs were employed on bareboat charters of Seadrill and generated approximately $24 million in charter hire in the third quarter. Net of interest and amortization, the contribution was approximately $8 million or around $0.07 per share. The harsh environment jack-up rig West Linus has been sub-chartered to ConocoPhillips until the end of 2028. While the harsh environment semi-submersible rig West Hercules is employed on consecutive sub-charters to Equinor in the North Sea. Semi-submersible rig West Taurus has been stacked since 2015. Seadrill has disclosed that it is currently engaged in discussions with its financial stakeholders, with regard to a comprehensive restructuring of its balance sheet and that such a restructuring may involve the use of a court supervised process similar to the 2017 restructuring. At that time, the loan balance on the rigs was much higher and we have reduced leverage by more than 50% in this 3-year period as we illustrate on this slide. At the end of the second quarter, Seadrill reported a cash position of $1 billion. And while Seadrill did pay full charter hire in the third quarter, no charter hire has been received so far in the fourth quarter. Seadrill has also not paid interest on its bank debt recently and announced the forbearance agreement with its financial banks and some other stakeholders in mid-September, which was subsequently extended through October. The non-payment of charter hire by Seabrill does constitute an event of default under the leases and in certain of the corresponding financing agreements. Unless carried away, this could result in enforcement of such default provisions. From the start of the transaction with Seadrill all the way back from 2008, all the revenues from the sub-charters of these assets and in this instance, more importantly here now from the 2 drilling rigs that are working, the West Linus and West Hercules, the revenues from the sub-charter have been paid into accounts pledged to SFL’s rig owning entities and/or financing banks. As a result of the current event of default situation caused by Seadrill, Seadrill will need prior approval to access these funds to pay for operating expenses and other expenses and will have to source this from their cost cash position until the situation is resolved. The gross hire is significantly higher than the bareboat hire to us and keep accumulating on the pledged account for now. We can unfortunately not make any further comments relating to the rigs or the pending restructuring. But our objective is as always to maximize long-term value for our shareholders. In the meantime, we have adjusted the quarterly distribution to exclude all distribution from these offshore assets. And when the Seadrill situation is resolved, the Board will reassess the situation and possibly reinstate contribution from the rigs in the future. And with that, I will give the word over to our CFO, Aksel Olesen, who will take us through the financial highlights of the quarter.