Costamare (CMRE) 1 Nov 242024 Q3 Earnings call transcript

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Costamare Inc. Conference Call on the Third Quarter 2024 financial results.

We have with us today Mr. Gregory Zikos, Chief Financial Officer 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. Friday, November 1, 2024. We would like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to read Slide #2 of the presentation, which contains the forward-looking statements. And I will now pass the floor to your speaker today, Mr. Zikos. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

During the third quarter of the year, the company generated net income of about $80 million.

As of quarter end, liquidity was above $1 billion. In the containership sector, we have vessel diversions of 1%. The fleet can still be considered as fully employed. The market is split between the larger sizes, which do remain in limited supply as smaller vessels where the availability of tonnage is greater.

As the pool of bigger tonnage is unable to meet demand, charter rates continue to evolve at same levels.

During the quarter, we chartered certain containerships at healthy levels. The new charter agreements are expected to generate incremental contracted revenues of about $165 million. The containership fleet employment stands at 100% and 94% for 2024 and '25, respectively. Total contracted revenues amount to $2.3 billion, with the remaining time charter duration of 3.3 years.

On the dry bulk side, we are now progressing with our strategy to renew the owned fleet and decrease its average size. In the quarter, we agreed to acquire 2 2014 and 2015 built Ultramax vessels and 2011-built Capesize ship while at the same time progressing with the disposal of smaller tonnage. CBI manage a fleet of 56 ships, the majority of which are on index-linked chartering agreements.

We have a long-term commitment to the sector, and we view the vessel owning at the trading platform as highly complementary activities.

Finally, with regards to Neptune Maritime leasing, the platform continues to grow with committed funding for 32 shipping assets, reflecting total funding commitments of about $410 million on the back of a healthy pipeline.

Moving now to the slide presentation. On Slide 3, you can see our third quarter results. Net income for the quarter was $75.5 million or $0.63 per share. Adjusted net income was $81 million or $0.68 per share.

Our liquidity stands at over $1 billion.

Turning to Slide 4.

Regarding our S&P activity, we have agreed to acquire One Capesize and 2 Ultramax dry bulk ships. In parallel, we have concluded the sale of 2 Supramax vessels and agreed to sell 1 Handysize ship. Slide 5, on the chartering side, we have chartered 7 containerships with incremental contracted revenues of above $165 million.

Our revenue days are fixed 100% for '24 and 94% for '25 while our contracted revenues are $2.3 billion with a TEU-weighted remaining duration of 3.3 years. In parallel, we continue to target all our dry bulk batches in the spot market, having entered into more than 30 chartering agreements since our last earnings release. Slide 6.

Regarding our financing arrangements, we will fully prepay with cash on hand at $100 million unsecured bonds issued by Costamare participation.

In addition, we have agreed to refinance our dry bulk fleet without an increase in leverage. This deal is coupled with improvement of funding costs and extension of maturities.

Finally, we have roughly available $94 million for financing of vessel acquisitions.

Slide 7.

Regarding CBI, we have chartered 56 period vessels with the majority of the fleet being on index-linked agreements. On our leasing platform, we have already invested around $123 million. NML continues to grow with committed funding for 32 ships and has a very healthy pipeline.

On Slide 8. On this slide, you can see our liquidity exceeding $1 billion. This gives us the ability to look for opportunities to grow the company on a healthy basis. Slide 9, charter rates in the containership market continue to evolve at very firm levels, especially in the larger segments, despite the recent decrease in box rates. The continued injection of newbuilding capacity though remains the principal threat of the market. The idle fleet remains at low levels of 0.8%.

Moving to the final Slide 10.

You can see the recent dry bulk market trends in the spot and forward markets. The dry bulk order book stands at 10.3% of the total fleet. With that, we can conclude our presentation, and we can now take questions. Thank you. Megan, we can take questions now.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Omar Nokta with Jefferies.

Greg, thanks for the update.

Just a couple of questions from -- yes, just a couple of questions from my side.

Just first on the Greek bond, I think it's the Greek bonds, the EUR 100 million that you redeemed early.

Just wondering, I know those were relatively much lower interest cost.

And so I just want to get a sense of what drove the early redemption of those bonds.

Yes, yes.

You're right. Yes, this is a bond which was originally maturing next year. And we are like preparing a year earlier, this was on an unsecured basis, relatively competitive terms at like 2.7% cost. The reason being that there are some tax implications which have to do with Pillar 2 and for that reason, because this bond was issued by Costamare participation, a [ separate ] meaning European Union subsidiary of ours.

For tax reasons and for some legal implications, we had to redeem it elder.

However, we did use those funds for close to 4 years. And as you rightly said, it was -- in terms of pricing, I think it was competitively priced.

Okay. Got it. And then just -- we've talked about this in the past, but just on the dry bulk business with CBI, and there's been reports and shipping circles of changes happening there at the personnel level.

Just in general, I wanted to ask how are you thinking about that platform? And clearly, you've been investing in the actual dry bulk ownership platform with the Cape acquisitions. But just in general, about the trading business, how are you thinking about that going forward? Is it still a main piece of the pie? Or are you looking to scale that back?

No, no, no.

First of all, thank you for that question because you're right, there were like reports in Lloyd's recent trade wins. And rightfully so a lot of people asked the same question you are asking. A couple of points. We do support CBI. This is a long-term business for us.

As I mentioned in my commentary, we consider the dry bulk owning side together with the trading platform of CBI as highly complementary activities. And there is absolutely no thought to scale it back quite the opposite. The personnel changes, they were affected for various reasons, but they have absolutely nothing to do with our intention to continue investing in the dry bulk business, including the trading platform.

So today, CBI commercially manage close to 56 vessels plus 37 ships owned by the dry bulk business.

So we're going to be getting close to 100 ships and this is quite a substantial business of operation, which I think we should consider this internally as 1 business, as 1 entity.

So going forward, our goal is to stay there and to continue investing.

Okay. All right. That's it for me. I'll turn it over.

The next question comes from the line of Ben Nolan with Stifel.

This is Pernille on for Ben, I wanted to ask with the announced time charters giving some better cash flow visibility and the strengthening balance sheet, any thoughts on moving the dividend higher from the $0.115 per quarter?

Okay.

Now the dividend is like, yes, as rightly said, $0.115 and $0.46 like per year. A couple of points.

First of all, this is a Board decision, and I'm not authorized now to sort of speak on behalf of the Board.

We have a dividend policy which is flexible and can be revised.

Of course, I cannot exclude the possibility of like one-off dividend payments or of increasing the dividend steadily per quarter. In the past, we have done both. And also in the past, we used share buybacks. But I'm afraid that at this moment, I cannot give any color on that. This is something which is not for me to say right now. But definitely, in the past, we have done a one-off dividend payments.

We have sort of increased the dividend, and we have also done buybacks and also prefer stock buybacks. Probably this is not the case now for the preferred stock, but this is something for the Board to decide.

The next question comes from the line of Climent Molins with Value Investor's Edge.

Most has already been covered, but I wanted to touch upon your sale and purchase activity.

Over the past year, you've acquired some Capes while also shedding some older tonnage. And I was wondering what's your view on current asset pricing on the dry side? And secondly, going forward, do you have a preference to continue building your CapEx exposure? Or are you comfortable as is?

Yes. I mean what we have been traditionally doing all like over the last year or 1.5 years.

We have been buying Capes opportunistically and disposing of smaller tonnage.

Now we have been quite careful on how much we buy and how much we sell and where like asset prices are today for Capes, for example, let's take the newbuildings.

I think they are at levels which we would consider high in order to put a newbuilding order for Cape. Also I'm not sure today whether asset bases for the Capes represent today's chartering capacity of those vessels and the FFA curve going forward.

So they may be a bit overpriced.

So I mean, we don't have a reason to buy, if something we feel it is expensive. We can sit and wait.

Our fleet is big enough, so there is no need to grow it further.

So asset prices are today, we have more opportunity rather than buying and block vessels where especially considering Q4 for the Capes, it hasn't been a great market as of now.

So I mean, we're going to be more careful and take it as we go.

That's very helpful. And on the containership side, you've taken a fairly conservative approach to fleet renewal, basically focusing on generating cash flow from existing assets. Is there maybe any appetite to going forward, acquire some modern tonnage? Or is asset pricing still too high?

Look, we haven't -- we don't have any newbuildings, and newbuilding commitments today because had we newbuildings delivered today or like next year, I think asset prices for the containership newbuildings have been extremely high from a historical perspective.

So either newbuildings are like 3-, 5-year old tonnage containers today, I think the prices are high, irrespective of the chartering market.

So I think we would be assuming excessive residual value risk. And this is the reason that we haven't done it.

Now of course, there may be opportunities. We look at the market, but we are extremely cautious.

Makes sense. And congratulations for the quarter.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call to turn the conference back over to Mr. Zikos for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much for your interest in Costamare and for dialing in today.

We are looking forward to speaking with you again during the next quarterly results call. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating.

You may now disconnect.