Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited (TEN) Q3 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Tsakos Energy Navigation Conference Call on the Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results. We have with us Mr. Takis Arapoglou, Chairman of the Board; Dr. Nikolas Tsakos, Founder and CEO; Mr. George Saroglou, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Harrys Kosmatos, Co-CFO of the company. [Operator Instructions] I must advise that this conference is being recorded today. And now I pass the floor to Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President of Capital Link and Investor Relations Adviser to Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning to all of our participants. As you mentioned, I'm Nicolas Bornozis, President of Capital Link and Investor Relations Adviser to Tsakos Energy Navigation. This morning, the company publicly released its financial results for the 9 months and third quarter ended September 30, 2025. In case you do not have a copy of today's earnings release, please call us at (212) 661-7566 or e-mail us at ten@capitalink.com, and we will have a copy for you e-mailed right away. Please note that prior to today's conference call, there is also a live audio and slide webcast which can be accessed on the company's website on the front page at www.tenn.gr. The conference call will follow the presentation slides, so please, we urge you to access the presentation slides on the company's website. Please note that the slides of the webcast presentation will be available and archived on the website of the company after the conference call. Also, please note that the slides of the webcast presentation are user controlled, and that means that by clicking on the proper button, you can move to the next or to the previous slides on your own. At this time, I would like to read the safe harbor statement. This conference call and slide presentation of the webcast contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may affect TEN's business prospects and results of operations. And before turning the call over to Mr. Arapoglou, let me take the opportunity to congratulate Dr. Tsakos for your recent recognition in New York by the Philoptochos Society of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, paying tribute to your personnel and the group's contribution to the Global Maritime Industry to Philanthropy, Education and Community Welfare. Congratulations. And at this moment, I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Arapoglou, the Chairman of Tsakos Energy Navigation. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Nicolas. Good morning, and good afternoon to all. Thank you for joining us today for the announcement of the 9 months and third quarter results of 2025. No surprises. Our business model continues producing sustainable profits, beating estimates, as you saw, while at the same time, building up a solid stream of $4 billion of accretive future contracted revenue. This provides stability and more predictability in our results going forward, as we explained many times in the past and mitigate volatility in our stock price while maintaining a very solid cash position of nearly $300 million. These results are a product of high fleet utilization, best-in-class operating efficiency by now a trademark for TEN. We're reminding the market of our record 20 Vessel Newbuilding Program with deliveries starting Q1 2026 until Q4 2028, 10 of which the shuttle tankers with long-term accretive employment. The program includes, of course, 3 VLCCs, materially growing our presence in the sector -- in this sector of the market. At the same time, and as mentioned earlier, in earlier communications, we are focusing on selling our older tonnage in order to continue maintaining a young and very modern fleet. Lastly, as mentioned in our press release, after the $0.60 per share interim dividend in July, we declared payment of an additional $1 per share dividend. This will be paid in 2 equal tranches of $0.50 each, one in December 19, 2025, and one in February 19, 2026, in order to, going forward, gradually align dividend date to the timing of audited results as Nikos Tsakos will explain later. At today's stock price, the total dividend of $1.60 per share for the year represents a very attractive yield of over 4%. So congratulations once again to Nikos Tsakos and his team. Their proven track record and business model in a market with stronger tanker fundamentals and turbulent geopolitics. This ensures continued success. Thank you very much, and over to you, Nikos.

Chairman, thank you, and welcome, everybody, to our 32nd year 9 month call. First of all, I would like to congratulate Clio Hatzimichalis for becoming a full -- she is our lawyer keep us out of trouble for all this year. So we're very happy for her to join the main Board of the company and looking to spend much more time, productive time. Well, in September, when we reported our 6-month results, I think we were all satisfied. They were good results. We did not expect the market to take -- to become even better, even stronger. And that's where we are today. I think we're perhaps more than 50% higher on the spot market than we were back in September, which we were very satisfied having gone through the typical seasonal period and being with a lot of profitability. We had a couple of months of lull waiting for the developments of the IMO saga, I would say. I think rightly so, the postponement has been achieved, and that allows the shipowners and the related parties to this industry to be able to put more input and find solutions going for the -- going forward. So I think we welcome this development. Since that development has put the world in -- at peace, the end of too much tariffing each other has also been achieved and the market has gone from strength to strength. We are seeing a market which has limited supply of tonnage. And all our vessels right now are in very high demand. I was glad that we, of course, were way ahead of -- or beat the estimates, and we're looking forward because I think the quarter we're going through now is also going to be a very strong quarter. We just concluded our fourth long-term profit sharing almost arrangement today on our VLCCs with a very accretive minimum rates, minimum rates that we would be happy to have as fixed rates many years before, and that would be a minimum rate and then with unlimited upside for the company. And with this part of good news, I will ask George Saroglou, our President, to give us a quick update of what has happened in the last 9 months.

Thank you, Nikos. We are pleased to report today on another profitable quarter. Tanker markets have remained healthy during the course of the year. And as Nikos mentioned, energy majors continue to approach our company for time charter business. Since the start of the year, we have 40 new time charter fixtures and extension of time charters. And today, we have a backlog of approximately $4 billion as minimum fleet contracted revenue. We have a 32-year history as a public company. From 4 vessels in 1993, we have turned every crisis the world and shipping has faced through the years into a growth opportunity. And we have faced many crisis since the start of the new decades, a lot of which we did not actually expect. We faced a global COVID crisis in 2020 with lockdowns and unprecedented collapse in global oil demand. Then as the world was exiting COVID and we were trying to go back to normal, we've had the war in Ukraine in 2022 and a major -- which resulted in major disruption in energy trading. Then in late 2023, we had the attack of Hamas in Israel and the ensuing war and the continuous attacks of merchant vessels in the Red Sea until most of the shipping people decided not to cross the Red Sea anymore. The turmoil in the whole of Middle East, the unwinding of globalization, the introduction of tariffs in 2025, trade wars between the United States and China and the rest of the world and the decarbonization efforts of many global industries, including shipping, which, as you know, has the lowest carbon footprint when we compare while at the same time, it's the most efficient way to transport different land-scale cargoes around the world. So a lot to do in such a short time. So far, we have managed to navigate the TEN ship safely through these challenges, thanks to the company's crisis-resistant model. Let's hope we go back to more peaceful and normal times for all very soon. Today, TEN is one of the largest energy transporters in the world with a young, diversified, versatile fleet of 82 vessels, a pro forma fleet of 82 vessels. So in Slide 4, we list this pro forma fleet, and we start with the conventional tankers, both crude and product tankers. The red color shows the vessels that trade in the spot market, and we have 7 as we speak, and our new buildings under construction. With light blue, we have the vessels that are on time charter with profit sharing, 16 vessels and with dark blue, the vessels that are on fixed rate time charters, 39 vessels. In the next slide, we list the pro forma diversified fleet, which consists of our 2 LNG vessels and our 16 vessel shuttle tanker fleet. We are one of the largest shuttle tanker operators in the world with very young and technologically advanced vessels following the tender we won earlier in the year in Brazil, building the Samsung shipyard in South Korea, 9 shuttle tankers for Transpetro. We have 6 shuttle tankers in full operation after recently taking delivery of both Athens 04 and Paris 24, which commenced long time charters to an energy major. If we combine the 2 slides and account only for the current operating fleet of 62 vessels, 23 vessels or 37% of the operating fleet has market exposure, spot and time charter with profit sharing, while 55 vessels or 89% of the fleet is in secured revenue contracts, that is time charters and time charters with profit sharing. Our clients with whom we do repeat business through the years are the blue chip list of our world. ExxonMobil is the largest revenue client, followed by Equinor, Shell, Chevron, Total and BP. We believe that over the years, we have become the carrier of choice to energy majors, thanks to the fleet that we built, the operational and safety record, the disciplined financial approach and the strong balance sheet and financial performance. The left side of Slide 7 presents the all-in breakeven cost for the various vessel types we operate in TEN. Our operating model is simple. We try to have our time charter vessels generate revenue to cover the company's cash expenses, paying for the vessel operating and finance expenses, for overheads, chartering costs and commissions and let the revenue from the spot and profit-sharing trading vessels contribute to the profitability of the company. And thanks to the profit-sharing element for every $1,000 per day increase in spot rates, we have a positive $0.09 impact on the annual EPS based on the number of TEN vessels that we currently operate in -- have exposure to spot rates, and that is 23 vessels. We have a solid balance sheet with strong cash reserves. The fair market value of the operating fleet is approximately $4 billion against $1.9 billion debt, and the net debt to cap is around 47%. Fleet renewal and investing in eco-friendly greener tankers has been key to our operating model. Since January 1, 2023, we have further upgraded the quality of the fleet by divesting from our first-generation conventional tanker, replacing them with more energy-efficient newbuildings and modern secondhand tankers, including dual fuel vessels. In summary, we have sold 17 vessels with an average age of 17.3 years and capacity of 1.4 million deadweight tons and replaced them with 33 contracted and modern acquired tankers with an average age of 0.6 years and 3.4x the deadweight capacity of the vessels we sold. We continue to transition our fleet to greener and dual fuel vessels. We are currently one of the largest owners of dual fuel LNG-powered Aframax tankers with 6 vessels in the water. Global oil demand continues to grow year after every year. OPEC+ accelerated their voluntary production cuts, wars, economic sanctions, sanctions listed tankers and geopolitical events positively affect the tanker market and tanker freight rates. While the tanker order book remains at very healthy levels as a big part of the global tanker fleet is over 20 years. As we speak, almost 50% of the fleet is over 15 years and needs to be replaced soon. And with that, I will pass the floor to Harrys Kosmatos, who will walk us through the financial performance for the third quarter. Harrys?

Thank you. Thank you, George, and welcome, everyone, to our call. So I'll start with the 9-month highlights. So as the tanker markets continued their upward trajectory propelled by the crude sector and VLCCs in particular, available term rates for crude vessels merited a shift towards fixed employment in order to provide earnings visibility and further safeguard the cash generating ability of the fleet. To this effect and in line with the company's tried and tested employment model, bar some occasional aberrations for opportunistically capturing short-term fix reverted to the norm and operated most of the fleet during the first 9 months of the year in secured revenue contracts. In particular, with a fleet of almost 62 vessels in the water, similar to the corresponding 2024 9-month period, days under secured employment, that is vessels on fixed time charters and time charters for 47 provisions increased by 12%, while days on pure spot experienced a 32% decline. Of interest, days on profit sharing contracts alone increased by 18%, signifying TEN's commitment to maintaining a meaningful presence in the still lucrative spot market. Today, 23 vessels in the fleet, 7 on spot and 16 on profit shares do provide TEN with such operational latitude. As a result of this employment recalibration for the 9 months of 2025, TEN generated $577 million in gross revenues and operating income of $171 million, which incorporated $4.5 million of capital gains from the sale of 4 older vessels. Capital gains during the equivalent 2024 period were at $49 million from the sale of 5 vessels, highlighting TEN's policy to continue the strategic recycling of the fleet with newer, more eco-friendly vessels, new builders in the majority. In line with the above employment pattern and fewer vessels on dry dock compared to the 2024 9 months, 9 now from 11 last year, fleet utilization increased from 92.2% to 96.2% during the 2025 9 months. The fleet's Time Charter Equivalent rate for the first 9 months of 2025 settled at a healthy $30,703. During the 9-month period and in line with the reduction of the fleet's spot exposure explained above, Voyage expenses declined from $118 million in the 2024 9 months to $95 million now, a $23 million betterment. Charter hire expenses also decreased by $4.6 million, whilst vessel operating expenses increased by just over $7 million from the 2024 same period to settle at $155 million. As a result, operating expenses per ship per day for the 2025 9 months averaged still competitive $9,797, just 1/3 of the Time Charter Equivalent rate mentioned above. Depreciation and amortization came in at $126 million for the 9 months of 2025 from $118 million in the 2024 9 months, reflecting the introduction of 3 newbuilding vessels and the new depreciation calculation on the 2 vessels repurchased from lease structures. General and administrative expenses were at $32 million, reflecting the amortization of stock compensation awarded in July 2024, and scheduled to fully vest by July 2026. On the other hand, significant improvements were made in our interest costs as a result of declining global interest rates and despite $126 million increase in the company's debt obligations from the 2024 9 months due to new loans for TEN's Newbuilding Program. $72.7 million of interest costs now compared to $87.4 million in the 2024 9 months, a near $50 million saving. At the end of the 2025 9-month period with 61.2 vessels on average in the quarter and the 20 Vessel Newbuilding Program, our total debt obligations were at $1.9 billion, while net debt to cap stood at a comfortable 47.3%. TEN's loan-to-value for the 2025 9-month period was at a conservative 50%. Interest income came in at $7.7 million, a meaningful contribution. As a result of the above, the company during the first 9 months of 2025 generated a healthy net income of $103 million, which translates to $2.75 in earnings per share. Adjusted EBITDA for the 2025 9 months was at about $290 million, while cash at hand as of the end of September 2025, stood at a healthy $264 million after having paid $135 million in scheduled principal payments, $178 million in yard predelivery installments and capitalized costs and $20.3 million in preferred share coupons. And now let's move to the quarter 3 highlights. The third quarter of 2025 experienced similar movement in fleet employment patterns, which led to fleet utilization increasing from 92.8% in last year's third quarter to 94.8% during this year's third quarter, despite 4 vessels undergoing scheduled dry dockings during the period compared to 3 vessels in the 2024 third quarter. With vessels in the water slightly under the level of the 2024 third quarter, the fleet generated $186 million of gross revenues and $60.5 million in operating income, which included $8.9 million, call it $9 million of capital gains from the sale of 3 older vessels and not the similar performance from last year's third quarter, which did not incorporate any gains or losses from vessel sales. The resulting Time Charter Equivalent per ship per day was at $30,601, in line with the focus of diminishing our presence in the spot markets. Naturally, voyage expenses during the year's third quarter were lower compared to last year's third quarter, experiencing a $7.7 million decline to settle at $27.4 million. Operating expenses, on the other hand, increased in line with the introduction of 3 larger vessels and settled at $52 million. The resulting operating expenses per ship per day for the third quarter of 2025 came in at $9,904, again, ahead of the fleet average TCE and still competitive, thanks to the efficient and proactive management performed by TEN's technical managers. Depreciation and amortization were a touch higher from the 2024 third quarter levels at $42.4 million, again, reflecting the new vessel introductions and the 2 suezmax repurchased from sale and leaseback agreements. General and administrative expenses were $5 million lower from last year's third quarter at $9.2 million. Interest costs, again, following the downward trend in interest rates came in at $23.7 million from $32.2 million during last year's third quarter. In other words, savings of $8.5 million. On top of that, another $2.1 million in cash gains was realized through the interest income generated during the 2025 third quarter. As a result of all the above, TEN during the third quarter of 2025 reported $38.3 million of net income or $1.05 in earnings per share. The adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter of 2025 settled at about $96 million, reflecting the shift towards longer-term secured revenue contracts to meet our clients' increasing long-term demand. And with this, I pass it back to Nikos. Thank you.

Good. Thank you, Harrys. Since the figures are good, we didn't talk about them a lot. But as I said, I think we had good results in the first 6 months. The market had a long period, really expecting the developments of the net zero discussions at the IMO. And after the extension of the discussions, the market has taken off again, and we are looking at the business coming very strong in the spot market and a lot of employment. As we said today on our VLCCs has been extended for another 2 years and there's a huge appetite for business out there. There's an increasing presence of the gray fleet, a lot of breakdowns on those ships. And of course, we are going through, again, more than expected geopolitical challenges with hijacking of vessels like the recent one from Iran and the Somalia piracy on both on Greek vessels outside -- quite outside 500 miles away from the Somalia growth. So there's a lot of interference. And in the meantime, this has created a nervousness in the market going forward, which we are able to take advantage with our chartering strategy I described with 40 new ships totaling $4 billion of extended business over the next 5 years. And with that, we would like to open the floor to any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Climent Molins with Value Investor's Edge.

I wanted to start by asking about the 12 VLCCs coming open throughout this month. You mentioned in the press release that the employment on the DS1 has been extended for 2 years. Could you clarify at what terms? And secondly, based on your data kit, the Ulysses should also come open this month. How do you plan to employ this vessel? Is there any appetite to trade on spot?

Yes. Thank you for your questions. We are trying right now to protect our ships from being actually hijacked by the major oil companies. So it's -- but joking apart, I think we are seeing a significant increase, a 20% increase from our profit-sharing arrangements of the past from our minimum profit sharing arrangements. So there is a significant appetite for the vessels out there. I cannot -- perhaps if you -- next week when you see Harrys in the states, he can give you more details on that. But of course, it's quite a positive situation.

Makes sense. I'll reach out. I also wanted to ask about the Maria Energy. It is fixed until February of next year, but the long-term contract you signed a while ago doesn't start until May, if I remember correctly. Do you plan to trade the vessel on spot once it comes off its current contract and before it starts the next one?

The vessel is actually fixed back to back to a 15-year employment. So there won't be any downtime between that other than the survey that she will have the scheduled survey, which will have to go before the delivery of this in April. So the vessel has been chartered back to back until she goes to her new charter. So there won't be any downtime.

Perfect. And final question for me. You have a couple of MR newbuilds delivering in early '26. Should we expect those to be fixed on long-term contracts before delivery? And should that be the case, what kind of duration are you looking at?

We're contemplating. As I said, there's a big appetite. We're here with our chartering team. They have, I think, 5 or 6 major oil companies looking for those ships. As you know, we're a big participant in the Cargill-Maersk pool. We're very happy with that performance of that pool. And I've been saying that for us, the best method or the only method of consolidation in our industry is through commercial pooling because whoever has a fleet of our size or smaller or around or bigger does not really -- you do not gain any economies of scale of just ordering more and more and more ships and running more ships because the ships are always there. So we are supporting the pool, and we're -- the pool has performed quite well. And we might be considering also pooling. Pooling gives you the upside of -- gives you full utilization and the upside of a spot market.

Our next question comes from the line of Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners.

Some of the questions were covered already, but when I look at your newbuild program, close to 20 major commitment. What are you looking at as far as the fleet renewal side? You've been active selling assets. Asset values are fairly firm in my mind. So what should we anticipate over the next, call it, year or so as far as on the asset sales side?

Our -- I say we are close to negotiating 5 of our first-generation vessels. And so if you put it in a 12 month -- if you put it -- if you take a 12 months forward, I think it would be perhaps double that, 10 vessels. We're looking to the transactions we have in mind would release close to $250 million of net cash, which is more than enough of what we need for our newbuilding program.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Dr. Tsakos for any final comments.

Thank you. Well, I hope, first of all, thank you for listening in. The market looks getting firmer and firmer. And from what I understand from my kids that are studying on the East Coast, the weather is [indiscernible] yet. So we're looking for further call. We're looking forward to continue with this positive market. Right now, we're taking advantage as much as possible with the team. And I would like to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving next week. And don't forget that the TEN's share price is right now on Black Friday prices. So before next Black Friday, you buy some more of that. And I will ask our Chairman to have a final word. Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving for me, too. I think that we're looking forward to beating all estimates next time around, touch wood. And again, congratulations to Nikos Tsakos team for excellent performance.

Thank you all. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.