Kevin Mackay
Analyst · Seaport Global
Thank you, Lee. Hello, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us today. With me here in Vancouver, I have Stewart Andrade, Teekay Tankers' newly appointed Chief Financial Officer. Stewart joined Teekay in 2002 and he's worked in a variety of increasingly senior roles across the organization. Most recently, Stewart was Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, for Teekay Tankers. Vince Lok, whom Stewart is taking over from as CFO, continues in his role as CFO of Teekay Corporation. I'm also joined today by Christian Waldegrave, Head of Strategic Research at Teekay Corporation, and Brian Fortier, Group Controller of Teekay Corporation. During today's call, I'll be taking you through Teekay Tankers' fourth quarter 2017 earnings results presentation, which can be found on our website. Beginning with the recent highlights on Slide 3 of the presentation, Teekay Tankers reported an adjusted net loss of $5.9 million or $0.03 per share in the fourth quarter of 2017 compared to an adjusted net loss of $14 million or $0.08 per share in the third quarter. We generated cash flow from vessel operations of $32.1 million during the quarter compared to $20.6 million in the previous quarter. While crude tanker spot rates increased in the fourth quarter of 2017, they did not experience the typical winter seasonal spike, which I will touch on in more detail later in the presentation. Teekay Tankers declared a dividend of $0.03 per share for the fourth quarter of 2017. And at the end of November, we completed our strategic merger with Tanker Investments Ltd., or TIL, increasing our fleet by 18 vessels to 58 conventional tankers. In addition to strengthening our balance sheet, the transaction also positions us to capitalize on a potential market turnaround through expanded scale and market presence, helping drive fleet utilization and improved earnings for the company. The integration of TIL has been seamless as we were previously responsible for both the commercial and technical managements of this fleet. We concluded the planned refinancing of two of TIL's debt facilities, which was oversubscribed and, which I will touch on in more detail on the next slide. So turning to Slide 4. I will highlight the proactive steps we are taking to further strengthen our balance sheet. In December, we refinanced two TIL debt facilities covering 14 vessels with a new five year $270 million facility, which aligns the covenants with Teekay Tankers' more favorable covenant package, lowers the cost of this refinancing by 50 basis points, while also significantly improving our debt profile through lower principal payments, lower revolver reductions and the extension of maturities from 2019 and 2020 out to the end of 2022. The graph at the top of this slide shows our debt repayment profile before and after the refinancing, and as can be seen, our schedule repayments and revolver amortization has been reduced by approximately $43 million over the next two years with the majority of our debt maturities now occurring in 2021 or later. After this refinancing, we only have one near-term maturity of $64 million. We are actively working with lenders to refinance the three vessels within this facility, which matures in August 2018. We expect to finalize the term sheet in the coming weeks and complete the transaction over the next few months. Our liquidity position as of December 31 was $162 million and our current liquidity balance is approximately $155 million. We continue to monitor our liquidity position and should the tanker market remain under pressure, we have several options available to further strengthen our balance sheet, including further sale leasebacks, select asset sales, obtaining financing on our services business and an evaluation of our minimum quarterly dividend. Turning to Slide 5, We look at recent developments in the tanker spot market. 2017 proved to be a difficult year for the tanker market with rates sinking to cyclical lows, as shown by the chart on the top left of the slide. The two main factors that drove rates lower were higher fleet growth and OPEC supply cuts. The tanker fleet grew by almost 5% in 2017, following net growth of 6% in 2016. In addition, the number of ships returned to the trading fleet from floating storage as accrued futures curve moved into backwardation, further adding to fleet supply. On the demand side, OPEC was able to achieve 95% compliance with their 1.2 million barrel per day production cut implemented in January of last year. This led to reduced demand for tankers and forced VLCCs into the Atlantic market to compete with Suezmaxes for cargoes, thus putting pressure on midsized tanker rates. An increase in U.S. exports to a record high of 2 million barrels per day by October 2017 gave some support to crude tanker demand. However, this was not enough to offset the negative impact of OPEC supply cuts. We were particularly disappointed by a lack of a strong winter spot market this year with rates falling through the course of the fourth quarter. Lower OPEC production, supply outages and a lack of significant winter weather delays were the main reasons behind this decline and crude tanker rates have remained relatively weak into the early part of 2018. Turning to Slide 6. We look at tanker supply and demand fundamentals and why we believe in a tightening market starting later in 2018. Beginning on the supply side, tanker fleet growth is set to fall just over 3% net this year and around 2% in 2019 as the order book starts to roll off. Shipyards are now mostly full for 2019 delivery due to a pickup in ordering from other ship types. The order book for the two next years is almost set. Scrapping in 2017 was the highest in five years at around 11.5 million deadweight tonnes. And importantly, it has remained strong since the start of 2018 with five VLCCs and six Aframaxes scrapped already this year. In a low freight environment and with scrap prices at relatively firm levels, we expect scrapping to remain strong in the coming months. On the demand side, global oil markets are rebalancing. Global oil demand remained strong with estimated growth of around 1.5 million barrels per day this year and oil inventories are rapidly falling back to five year average levels. With oil inventories declining and prices finding support, we believe that OPEC may revisit their supply agreement during the second half of this year in order to keep oil markets relatively balanced. In addition, we expect U.S. crude exports to continue to rise as U.S. production reaches new record highs. This should provide additional tanker tonne-mile demand throughout the year. In summary, we remain encouraged by both supply and demand developments and believe that these tightening fundamentals will drive an eventual tanker market recovery later in the year and into 2019. Turning to Slide 7. We'll briefly look at tanker asset values, which appear to have found a floor. As shown by the charts in the slide, tanker newbuild and secondhand prices have bottomed out. Newbuild prices are increasing as shipyards get more comfortable with their forward order books, while secondhand prices are showing resistance despite a weak spot market. Secondhand tanker values are currently around 35% below long-term average levels, which means there is significant upside potential for asset prices as the market recovers. Turning to Slide 8. We believe Teekay Tankers is well positioned to capitalize on the potential market recovery, and our current share price represents a compelling value proposition to investors. At the current share price, Teekay Tankers' shares trade at a discount to net asset value, or NAV, reflecting the challenges affecting the overall tanker market. Given the high degree of operating leverage through Teekay Tankers' position as the world's largest publicly listed midsized tanker company, the benefits of a recovery are very attractive. Based on our 2018 operating leverage, a $5,000 per day movement in time charter equivalent Aframax rates equates to approximately $0.32 in free cash flow per share. A return to mid-cycle tanker rates would increase our free cash flow to approximately $1.05 per share, which is extremely attractive relative to our current share price of $1.10 per share. Similarly, an increase in vessel values to mid-cycle levels would increase our NAV by over 140%. With a combined fleet of 58 tankers operating in key global markets, Teekay Tankers is well positioned to capitalize on a potential market turnaround through both scale and market presence. Turning to Slide 9. I’ll provide an update on spot tanker rates for the first to date. Based on approximately 63% and 60% of spot revenue days booked, Teekay Tankers' first quarter to date Suezmax and Aframax bookings have averaged approximately $13,400 and $12,700 per day, respectively. For our LR2 segment, with approximately 50% spot revenue days booked, first quarter to date bookings have averaged approximately $13,900 per day. With that operator we are now available to take questions.