Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp conference call on the fourth quarter and year-ended December 31, 2024 financial results. We have with us Mr. Stamatis Tsantanis, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Stavros Gyftakis, Chief Financial Officer of Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad, and you will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. Please be advised that this conference call is being recorded today, Thursday, March 6, 2025. The archived webcast of the conference call will soon be made available on the Seanergy website, www.seanergymaritime.com.

To access today's presentation and listen to the archived audio file, visit the Seanergy website following the webcast and presentation section under the Investor Relations page. Please now turn to slide two of the presentation. Many of the remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ materially from the results projected from those forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that can cause the actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the fourth quarter and year-ended December 31, 2024 earnings release, which is available on the Seanergy website again, www.SeanergyMaritime.com. I would now like to turn the conference over to one of your speakers today, the Chairman and CEO of the company, Mr. Stamatis Tsantanis. Please go ahead, sir.

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone. Today, we're pleased to present our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024, along with key corporate updates. We will discuss our record profitability, strategic fleet expansion, and capital return initiatives, as well as our outlook on the cape-sized market and the factors positioning Seanergy for the long-term success. We're pleased to report another strong and profitable quarter, marking our fourth consecutive year of profitability. Seanergy's consistent financial performance underscores the strength of our cape-sized focus strategy. Our effective hedging approach once again allowed us to outperform the Baltic Capesize Index, BCI, and our diversified dry bulk peers, many of whom remain exposed to weaker performance of smaller vessel classes. 2024 was a record year for Seanergy, with net income reaching $43.5 million compared to just $2.3 million in 2023.

It is important to note that our Q4 and full year results include one-off legal expenses related to our AGM and litigation, which had temporary impact to our bottom line. Stavros will provide further details on this later in the call. Our strategic focus remains on balancing capital returns, fleet growth, and financial discipline, ensuring maximum shareholder value as we continue to operate in a fundamentally strong cape-sized market. Reflecting on our solid Q4 performance, we have declared a cash quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share, bringing our total 2024 dividends to $0.76 per share, or $15.6 million in total distributions. Additionally, we repurchased 226,000 shares at an average price of $9.44 during Q4, reinforcing our commitment to shareholder value.

As part of our capital allocation strategy, we continuously assess the balance between dividends and buybacks, and given the recent pressure on dry bulk equities, we acted decisively to maximize value for our shareholders. On the fleet expansion front, we recently took delivery of two high-quality Japanese-built vessels, the Meship and the Blueship. With these additions, our total fleet has grown to 21 vessels, representing a carrying capacity of 3.8 million deadweight tons, pure play cape-sized and Newcastlemaxes. In 2024 and early 2025, we have invested $138 million in four premium vessels, further strengthening our fleet's cash flow generation potential. Given the positive cape-sized fundamentals, we firmly believe that acquiring high-quality vessels at attractive valuations enhances our ability to deliver strong returns throughout the cycle.

Since the beginning of 2024, we have successfully completed $174 million in financing scenario financings, reinforcing our ability to support fleet expansion while maintaining financial flexibility. Stavros will provide additional insights into these transactions, but I would like to highlight that we ended the year with a fleet loan-to-value of 45% while expanding our fleet and delivering significant capital returns to our shareholders. The cape-sized market remains well-positioned to continue strength underpinned by robust demand for iron ore, bauxite, and coal, with trade volumes increasing in 2024, limited fleet expansion with net cape-sized fleet growth at just 1.7% in 2024, and projected decline further to 1.4% in 2025. 2024 and 2025 represent the lowest cape-sized delivery years since 2003, reinforcing a favorable supply-demand balance. Despite short-term volatility, we expect the market setup for 2025 and beyond to remain highly supportive.

During Q4 2024, we generated revenues of $41.7 million, daily TCE time charter equivalent rate of $23,200 a day, net income of $6.6 million. Slide three: Prioritizing shareholder returns. Turning to slide three, our clear and disciplined capital return strategy continues to maximize value for shareholders through consistent dividends and strategic buybacks. Over the past three years, we have distributed more than $40 million in dividends, equating to $2.21 per share. When including share repurchases and convertible note buybacks, our total capital returns amount to $87 million, representing approximately 60% of our current equity market capitalization. This reflects our strong commitment to shareholder value, while at the same time allowing us to strategically expand our fleet in a capital-efficient manner. Our ability to simultaneously grow the fleet and reward shareholders with significant capital returns underscores Seanergy's financial strength and confidence in the cape-sized market's long-term fundamentals.

As the market remains strong in the years ahead, we remain committed to maintaining a balanced approach to growth and shareholder distributions. Slide four: Commercial highlights and fleet updates. Moving to slide four, Seanergy once again delivered industry-leading time charter equivalent performance in both Q4 and full year 2024. Our Q4 daily TCE was $23,200, while the full year TCE reached $25,100 per day, outperforming the Baltic Cape-size Index by 27% and 11%, respectively. This outperformance validates our strategic focus on the Capesize segment, setting us apart from other diversified dry bulk peers who remain exposed to smaller vessel classes with weaker returns. Even amid the weaker Q4 market, we maximized earnings by strategically locking in FFA-based fixed rates for a portion of our fleet days, ensuring greater revenue stability and enhanced profitability.

Looking ahead to 2025, we have already secured 22% of our operating days at an average gross rate exceeding $22,100 a day. For Q1 2025, we expect an indicative time charter equivalent of approximately $13,400 per day. Our focus remains on strategically fixing vessels at profitable rates, ensuring cash flow visibility and maximizing shareholder returns. Our fleet expansion continued in Q4 2024, reinforcing our position as a leading pure play cape-sized operator. In October 2024, we took delivery of the 2012-built Kaizenship, completing another year of targeted fleet expansion. Combined investment in Iconship, delivered June 2024, and Kaizenship totaled $69.3 million, representing an excellent value relative to their estimated market prices. Both vessels are on index-linked charters with a premium over the BCI, providing strong cash flow visibility into 2025 and beyond.

In addition, we exercised a highly attractive purchase option for the 2011-built Newcastlemax, the Titanship, at $20.25 million. At year-end 2024, Titanship's market value exceeded $35 million, highlighting our ability to secure high-quality assets at compelling prices. The vessel operates on an index-linked charter with a fixed floor and significant profit-sharing upside, ensuring strong earnings potential. Recent additions to our fleet: two additional Japanese-built vessels acquired since last quarterly update, the MV Meship, a 2013-built Newcastlemax, and the MV Blueship, a 2011-built cape-sized. Total investment of $69 million, further expanding our high-quality, efficient fleet. The Blueship is expected to enter an index-linked time charter, while the Meship will operate under a structured fixed floor time charter with profit-sharing similar to the Titanship's charter.

With 3.8 million deadweight tons of pure play, 21 cape-sizes and Newcastlemaxes now in operation, Seanergy has achieved significant fleet scale but will remain committed to disciplined growth. We continue to evaluate strategic fleet opportunities, leveraging our deep industry relationships and access to high-quality assets to enhance shareholder value. I will now pass the call to Stavros, who will fill you in on our financial information for the quarter and the full year, as well as discussing our balance sheet and debt refinancings. Stavros, please go ahead.

Thank you, Stamatis, and welcome to everyone joining us for today's earning call. Let's begin with slide five, where we'll review the key highlights of our financial performance for the fourth quarter and the full year ending December 31, 2024. Our net revenue for the quarter was $41.7 million, based on a daily time charter equivalent of about $23,200. At the same time, our adjusted EBITDA and net income reached $20.4 million and $6.6 million, respectively. Despite the softening cape-sized market, we delivered a solid performance, underscoring our resilience and ability to navigate market fluctuations effectively. On a full year basis, we achieved record profitability, reflecting both the cape-sized market and the successful execution of our strategy. Our net revenue surged to $167.5 million, up 50% year over year, with our time charter equivalent ascending to approximately $25,100.

Adjusted EBITDA grew to $98.4 million, and our net income rose significantly to $43.5 million, compared to $53 million and $2.3 million, respectively, in 2023. Earnings per share reached $2.12, posting an impressive increase from $0.12 last year. Moving on to our balance sheet, our cash position strengthened further in 2024, closing the year at $34.9 million, equivalent to approximately $1.8 million per vessel. This strong cash position was achieved despite returning $20.5 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. More importantly, we maintained leverage at moderate levels despite the fleet expansion that took place during the year, keeping the total debt at $261.5 million for a book value debt to capital ratio of less than 50% once again. This financial strength provides valuable flexibility, particularly in the current environment with a temporary softening of the cape-sized market, ensuring we can effectively manage liquidity and seize strategic opportunities.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Our total assets reached $545.8 million, while our stockholder equity stood at $262.2 million. Notably, we delivered a robust ROE of 17% for the full year, demonstrating our ability to drive shareholders' value through operational efficiency and strategic capital allocation. Moving on to slide six, we can see that we once again delivered robust core profitability with our adjusted EBITDA nearly doubling year over year. As Stamatis highlighted earlier, our time charter equivalent outperformed the BCI on both a quarterly and annual basis. Our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 57.6% this year, reflecting our ongoing efforts on improving operational efficiency and cost management. This improvement underscores our commitment to maintaining strong financial health and delivering value to our stakeholders, even in a challenging market environment. In fact, based on the current FFA rates, we anticipate our EBITDA to reach close to $80 million for the full year 2025.

Additionally, our operating cash flow margin ratio improved significantly compared to last year, reaching 44%, indicating our ongoing efforts to enhance our ability to generate cash from our core operations. On the expense side, we successfully maintained daily OPEX per vessel at $7,000, effectively at the same level with our previous year despite the inflationary pressure and the aging factor of our vessels. In addition, it is important to note that this record profitability was achieved despite incurring significant one-off expenses in 2024, having to do with our proxy fight and related litigation. This cost totaled $4.1 million for the year, with about 60% of these expenses impacting the G&As and net income of the fourth quarter. Turning to slide seven, we will discuss our debt optimization initiatives. From the start of 2024 up to date, we successfully completed $174.4 million in financing and refinancing transactions.

Despite these financings, we have managed to maintain our leverage at moderate levels, with our debt per vessel currently standing at $13.8 million, slightly higher than the average scrap value of the vessels. Regarding cash interest expenses, we reduced daily cash interest expense to approximately $2,700 per vessel. Through our financing and refinancing transactions, we successfully lowered our weighted average margin in 2024 and expect this to decrease further through our recent agreements. Should this margin tightening get combined with rate cuts from the Fed, it would lead to a significant reduction of our daily interest expense. Now, before we move on, let me highlight some details on our latest transactions. In February, we finalized another sustainability loan to refinance existing debt of WorldShip and Honorship under significantly improved terms and partially financed the acquisition of our latest Newcastlemax, the Meship.

The total amount of the transaction is $53.6 million, with a term of five years and an interest rate of 2.05% plus term SOFR per annum, 55 basis points lower than the rate of the refinanced agreement. This is a sustainability-linked loan, as I said before, so the rate can be further reduced based on the achievement of certain emission reduction targets. Through this refinancing, we minimized the equity outlay for the acquisition of the Meship, safeguarding our liquidity position in a seasonally weak market. Additionally, we recently signed a term sheet with a reputable Chinese lessor for two sale and leaseback agreements totaling approximately $34.5 million, which remains currently subject to documentation. These agreements will be utilized to refinance the only balloon payments pending this year, shaping a clear path for 2025.

They are also expected to add further liquidity to the company and will significantly improve the interest rate compared to the existing indebtedness of the two ships. Now, moving to slide eight, I would like to highlight once again our resilient operating leverage and our strategic positioning to capitalize on any upward movement in the cape-sized market. At the same time, our risk management strategy is in place to safeguard our revenue and cash flows against market volatility. As Stamatis mentioned earlier, we have already hedged 22% of our days for the year, effectively leveraging freight market spikes. As you can see in the graph, if cape-sized rates in 2025 align with the current FFA curve, we anticipate our EBITDA for 2025 to be approximately $78 million. In a more favorable scenario, EBITDA could exceed $100 million.

To summarize, we are well prepared to navigate market fluctuations and seize opportunities, ultimately driving sustainable growth and enhancing shareholder value. That concludes my review of our financial results and updates. I will now pass the call back to Stamatis, who will provide insights into the cape-sized market and industry fundamentals. Stamatis.

Thank you, Stavros. Slide nine. Overall, 2024 was a strong year for the cape-sized market, with the BCI averaging $22,400 a day, a significant increase from the $16,600 a day in 2023. The combination of historically low fleet growth and rising ton-mile demand from Atlantic basin cargos continues to support a positive long-term trajectory. While short-term volatility remains driven by factors such as weather disruptions, inventory restocking cycles, and seasonality, we believe that structural fundamentals remain strong, supporting sustained vessel earnings in the years ahead. In Q4 2024, the cape-sized market experienced a correction, with the BCI averaging $18,300 a day compared to $24,900 in Q3 and $28,100 in Q4 2023. This decline was mainly due to reduced Brazilian iron ore exports, lower cape-sized coal cargos from Eastern Australia, and weaker Panamax rates, which increased downward pressure on cape-sized vessels, as similar ships absorbed part of the coal trade.

For the full year, cape-sized ton-mile demand grew by approximately 4%, fueled by higher seaborne iron ore shipments, as well in Brazil, which achieved its highest production since 2019. China's bauxite imports reached 159 million tons, up 18 million tons from 2023, with over three quarters transported on cape-sized vessels. Fleet growth remained limited at around 2%, insufficient to match demand growth, resulting in a tighter market for most of the year. Regarding the 2025 market outlook, looking ahead, cape-sized demand is expected to be increasingly driven by rising Atlantic to Asia cargo flows, leading to longer voyage distances and higher ton-mile requirements. West African bauxite exports are expected to increase by about 20 million tons in 2025, supported by rising global aluminum demand and improved export logistics. Iron ore trade growth.

Brazil's Vale exports are expected to remain very strong, and in addition, we expect to see the Simandou mining project in West Africa set to finally commence seaborne iron ore shipments in late 2025. Coal demand. China's coal imports surged 14.4% in 2024 as domestic production struggled to meet demand. While short-term fluctuations may occur due to inventory cycles, long-term demand remains solid, particularly for industrial and energy needs. These factors set the stage for a potential demand upturn in the second half of 2025, supporting a stronger market environment and higher cape-sized charter rates in the coming years. Slide ten. On the supply side, vessel additions remain highly constrained, with effective cape-sized fleet growth projected at just 1.5% in both 2025 and 2026. The current order book is at the lowest levels in 20 years, and upcoming environmental regulations are set to further restrict new vessel deliveries.

Factoring in the extensive dry dock schedule in 2025 of the global fleet, net fleet growth could drop to as low as 1%, reinforcing a tight supply environment. Additional port congestion remains at historically low levels, meaning any potential disruptions could only significantly impact vessel availability and push up charter rates. Looking at new building activity, there have been zero new orders placed this year, and given the pricing gap between new builds and second-hand ships, we do not expect this trend to change in the near future. With only 40 cape-sized vessels scheduled for delivery in 2025, the combined deliveries for 2024 and 2025 represent the lowest level since 2003, a highly favorable dynamic for supply of the vessels. Given this tight supply backdrop, environmental regulations continue to reinforce the need for fleet replacement while reducing vessel speeds and limiting overall capacity growth.

This structural slowdown in fleet expansion and operational efficiency supports a strong long-term outlook for the cape-sized fundamentals. Conclusion. Seanergy's pure-play cape-sized strategy is now a proven model, positioning us to capitalize on long-term industry tailwinds with three clear objectives: capital returns. We remain committed to maximizing shareholder value through dividends and share buybacks. Fleet growth. We focus on strategic high-return fleet expansion, ensuring sustainable value creation. Financial strength. We continue to balance growth with financial discipline, maintaining a flexible balance sheet that allows us to navigate market volatility while enhancing returns. Seanergy is successfully delivering on these priorities, as reflected in our strong financial performance and share price growth. With a favorable cape-sized market outlook and a disciplined strategy, we remain well positioned to drive sustained value for our shareholders.

On this note, I would like to turn the call back to the operator and answer any questions you may have. Operator, please take the call.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B Riley Financial. Please go ahead.

Liam Burke (Managing Director)

Thank you. Hi, Stamatis. How are you doing, Stavros?

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Hi. Good morning, Liam. Nice to hear from you.

Liam Burke (Managing Director)

Thank you. You too. Stamatis, we are all familiar with the supply-demand dynamics long-term of the cape-sized fleet, but the rates were understandably very low in the first quarter for a number of reasons, including seasonality. They took a fairly precipitous bounce into the end of the quarter and into the second quarter. Can you give us a sense as to what's created this pretty steep short-term rebound?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

That's a great question, Liam. The short answer to that is it is not the cape-sized segment's fault. It is actually the reason why we have seen very limited congestion on the Kamsarmaxes. We have assessed that the previous, let's say, six months from September onwards, congestion of the Kamsarmaxes went down to almost zero. I will discuss for a few seconds about the Kamsarmaxes to let you know what I mean. Kamsarmaxes, at any given point, there were 100-200 ships waiting at Paraná River in South America. There were 100-200 ships waiting to pass the Panama Canal due to the previous periods of the drought. You had another 100-200 Kamsarmaxes in the Black Sea for the grain corridor. Nothing of that exists today.

Since the second half of last year, all of these approximately 600 ships are out and about looking for cargoes, and the Kamsarmax market collapsed down to $5,000. We had this paradox back in September, October, where you had the cape-sized market at $25,000 and the Kamsarmax market at $5,000. Unavoidably, the charter started to split the cargoes. A lot of Kamsarmax ships started to pick up coal cargoes from the cape-sizing, cannibalizing the cape-sized sector. That is the main driver. Low congestion of the Kamsarmaxes is what led to this sharp decline in the cape-sized rates as well. Because since the beginning of the year, the volumes are super high. You had the closure of the Red Sea, which also has helped the market. At the same time, you had the very low speed of the fleet.

We have the lowest fleet speed on the cape for the last five years. All these factors combined, and of course, the supply of ships is very limited. All of these factors combined would have implied a market at $25,000 or $30,000 a day. That did not happen because, unfortunately, the smaller segment cannibalized the cape-sized and the new Kamsarmax. Now we have seen that starting to reverse, and that is why we have the futures at these higher rates for the remainder of the year with an average of $22,000 a day. That makes us feel a little bit more optimistic about the prospects of the year. Unfortunately, it was not driven by the fundamentals of the cape-sized segment. It was due to the fact that we had more effective supply on the Kamsarmaxes into the market.

That's our initial assessment, internal assessment from our research department and speaking to a lot of market participants.

Liam Burke (Managing Director)

That's great. Thank you. Stavros, these are nitpicky questions, but I mean, on both OPEX and SG&A, you had on the OPEX, you had delivery expenses on the new vessels, and on the SG&A, you had legal related to the proxy fight. Going into next year, are those one-timers behind you, or do you have some excess costs coming into the first quarter?

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Hi, Liam. Hello from my side. No, going forward, we expect OPEX to remain pretty much at the same level, at around $7,000 per ship per day. On G&A, a good proxy would be 2023. I mean, taking out all the expenses that we incurred for the litigation, which were around $4 million for the full year, around $2.4 million of which hit the bottom line of the fourth quarter, we expect this to range about $1,500-$2,000 per vessel per day.

Liam Burke (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you very much.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Thank you, Liam.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mark Reichman from Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

Thank you and good morning.

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Hi, good morning.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

The next question I have is just I wanted to focus on the first quarter of 2025. You've already given the operational days at 1,766, which is actually a little higher than what we had in there. Does that include both the Blue Ship and the Meship as of their February delivery dates?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Yes, that includes the ships that were delivered to us earlier than what we had initially anticipated. Thanks to our good contacts with the sellers and good relationships, we managed to take delivery of these two great assets ahead of time, and that is going to help us put them into work immediately, and especially starting in Q2 that we see the market going up a lot compared to Q1. That is the short answer to that.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

Is Q1, is that 19 vessels, or is it 21 vessels? I mean, will they go, will they start earning money beginning in the second quarter, or will they be in service in the first quarter?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

I think that you can count in 21 ships from Q2. For Q1, I would say an average of, I don't know, 19.3 quarters, something like that.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Now, the other question is the off-hire days. I know you'd plan to do three dry dockings in the first quarter and then one dry docking each quarter after that. Could you just maybe talk a little bit about your expectations there in terms of off-hire days?

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Yeah. You should expect around, hi Mark, this is Stavros. You should expect around 20-25 off-hire days per vessel during the dry docking, although as Stamatis noted previously, this is a peak dry docking year for the cape-sizes. The majority of the fleet was built around 2009, 2010, 2011. In some cases, we expect unforeseen delays. We expect dry docking days to move a bit forward due to the congestion, so to say, in the Chinese shipyards right now. On average, I would factor in 20-25 off-hire days for each dry docking.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

Okay. Great. And then just lastly, just looking at the cape-sized vessel rates, I mean, obviously, kind of in the low 20s, the first quarter expectations are quite low. Just looking ahead, I mean, do you expect that they might hold at these levels or increase, or do you think some of the worries surrounding Trump's tariffs moves might have an impact, or do you just think the fundamentals of the cape-sized market kind of rise above it all?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

That's the billion-dollar question, I guess. We are generally very optimistic because the fundamentals of the cape-sizes appear to be very strong. Also, contrary to most, if not all of our peers, we have zero Chinese-built ships with the exception of one. We do not anticipate to be affected by any levies for port calls in the United States. Not that we do, but we do not expect to be affected with that. All these tariffs and trade wars that are being discussed can be either very bad news for the global trade, not just dry bulks and capes, but the global trade, but also can be excellent news once the market normalizes into new trade patterns. At the same time, we may have some positive news about the war, wars ending, reconstructions, things like that that are fundamental for the cape-sized trade.

Nevertheless, cape-sized demand for raw materials like iron ore, coal, and bauxite has been very, very strong. All these fluctuations about the freight rates are not driven by the demand that we find to be very strong, but from effective supply of things not so much related to capes.

Mark Reichman (Managing Director)

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

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Very welcome.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Thank you, Mark.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Please go ahead.

Tate Sullivan (Maxim Group)

Hi. Thank you. Good day. It's great to see the purchases, dividend, and insider purchases. I mean, any impacts from less coal demand in Russia in Europe? Maybe if there's less conflicts with Russia going forward, or you're seeing higher demand in general from Asia for coal?

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Good morning, Tate. Thank you. About coal trade, we're generally very optimistic about coal trade altogether. President Trump has many times mentioned that coal is expected to drive a lot of the increased energy needs for data centers and all other things associated to energy in the near future. We are very optimistic about coal. There is a lot of new building capacity of coal-fired power plants globally, more than 100 gigawatts of new energy production driven by coal. Overall, we do not see coal demand subsiding anytime soon, but we feel that coal will continue to rise in the near future a lot.

Tate Sullivan (Maxim Group)

Just fine, to confirm, no new builds reported yet here to date. Are there any indications of Chinese companies building or private companies exploring bids, or just very low activity?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Sorry, can you please repeat the question, Tate, because you're breaking up?

Tate Sullivan (Maxim Group)

Oh, just new build activity. Did you say zero orders year to date for new builds in the cape?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

Yes. It's very limited. There's a lot of factors leading to that. There is uncertainty about Chinese-built ships. Also, all the slots that could otherwise build cape-sizes are pretty much taken until mid-end of 2028. We don't really see any immediate threat for new buildings coming into the market for many, many quarters looking forward.

Tate Sullivan (Maxim Group)

Okay. Thank you.

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

You're very welcome, Tate. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Lars Eide from Arctic Securities. Please go ahead.

Lars Eide (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you for taking my question.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Good morning. It's a pleasure. Good afternoon.

Lars Eide (Equity Research Analyst)

I have a question regarding the market outlook. As you all know, there's a lot of stuff going on in the scene of geopolitics nowadays with China committing to a GDP growth target of 5% earlier this week. And Trump, of course, what kind of developments are you monitoring the closest? What do you think to have the most, what do you expect to have the most impact moving forward in the near and the medium near term?

Stamatis Tsantanis (Chairman and CEO)

It is a combination of events. As I mentioned in the previous questions, we do not really see any problems with demand, and we have not really seen any problems with demand for the last two, three years. Since 2023, 2024, and 2025, it appears that demand for raw materials will continue to be very strong. Even though you had bankruptcies in China from the real estate developers and all these things, they still imported 4-5% more raw materials in the previous year. Demand is not an issue. At the same time, supply appears to be quite contained. We were not expecting the big price differential between Kamsarmaxes and this immediate drop of the Kamsarmaxes in the second half of last year. I do not think that anybody did, given where the futures and the estimates were in May and June last year.

The second half was extremely weak, and that is what pulled down the cape-sizes by splitting the cargoes of the cape-sizes into Kamsarmaxes. It's always about the supply. When you have increases of effective supply, this is what makes the market appear to be weaker. Also, if we come to a full-blown trade war globally, which we give it a very small percentage as a probability, if we come to that, then we may see a temporary reduction of overall global trade. This is not going to affect cape-sizes. It is going to be affecting all segments of shipping altogether in global trade. I hope we will not come to that, and I believe that the inertia of the global increase of the GDP is unstoppable, and I certainly hope that we will see strong demand for raw materials going forward.

Lars Eide (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back for closing remarks.

Stavros Gyftakis (CFO)

Thanks once again, everyone, for participating in our call. Looking forward to be updating you soon with further developments, and we look forward to a better market for the remaining of the year. Thank you very much, and have a great day, great afternoon, wherever you are. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.