TORM - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the TORM Annual Report for 2023 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press the star one. Thank you. Mikael Larsen, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Mikael Bo Larsen (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to our webcast, and thank you for joining us. My name is Mikael Bo Larsen, and I have recently joined TORM as Head of Investor Relations, and I'm very much looking forward to getting up to full speed on this. Today we will present our results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023, but first we will walk you through a short presentation that we've prepared for you, and then, as usual, we will take your questions after that. The call will be recorded and available for replay later. Before we kick off, however, I would like to draw your attention to one important matter: the Safe Harbor Statement on our slide number two. Turning to slide three, as usual, our presentation will be done by our Executive Director and CEO, Jacob Meldgaard, and our CFO, Kim Balle. Without further ado, I will now hand over to you, Jacob, who will kick off on slide four.

Jacob Meldgaard (Executive Director and CEO)

Thank you very much, Mikael, and welcome here. Good afternoon and good morning to all. Thank you for connecting with us for our 2023 results presentation. We are pleased to present another quarter with healthy financial performance, thus enabling us to reach a new historical high for our full year results with TCE of $1,084 million and EBITDA of $848 million, both numbers in line with the expectations we presented back in November last year. 2023 has indeed been an extraordinary year for all of us, with both geopolitical tensions and climate changes adding to ton-mile demand. But personally, I would like to once again highlight how TORM has performed in this market environment. We pride ourselves on our One TORM platform and the tradability of our fleet, and based on this, we've been able to deliver strong performance as shown in the TCE per day numbers.

2023 has not only been about current year operations. It has, for TORM, also been a year where we have made important strategic decisions and actions to ensure that we have the right exposure to what we believe will be a strong product tanker market for some time to come. Therefore, we have been very active both in renewing and adding to our total fleet capacity and in gradually increasing our exposure to the long-haul segment. On a fully delivered basis, we now have 90 vessels compared to 78 vessels at the end of 2022. This is important for us as we see this strategic move as a vital step for our positioning to add future value. At the same time, we have returned more dividends to shareholders than ever before.

With the proposed final dividend for the year, we are very close to returning $500 million for 2023, and by this, I believe we have found the right balance between investing in growth and rewarding our shareholders. And now, please forward to slide five. In the past two years, the product tanker market has seen great volatility as a result of geopolitical tensions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and the introduction of sanctions against Russia have led to a step change in product tanker freight rates towards a higher average level. Renewed volatility was added to the market as a result of Houthi attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea that started at the end of last year, and which has led to a large-scale rerouting of vessels away from the Red Sea. And here, please turn to slide six.

In essence, the geopolitical tensions we have experienced now for almost two years have reshaped product tanker trade flows towards longer distances traveled. The sanctions against Russia that were officially introduced in early 2023 led to a trade rerouting towards long-haul trade, both for European imports but also for Russian exports, which, according to our calculations, added 7% to the product tanker ton-mile in 2023. This happened despite the fact that Europe imported 10% less products after the sanctions were introduced. So far this year, the product tanker market has been strongly affected by the Houthi attacks against commercial vessels at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The attacks have similarly led to trade being redirected towards longer trading distances, this time redirecting vessels away from the Red Sea to go around the Cape of Good Hope instead.

Depending on the trade route, this has added 30%-70% to the sailing distance on main trade routes. Assuming some volumes via the Suez Canal remain, some trade will be redirected towards other regions, and some trade volumes could be lost, we estimate that the Red Sea disruption is likely to add another 5% to product tanker ton-mile as long as it lasts. Here, I may note that the latest developments with loss of seafarers' lives are very tragic and highly concerning. Please turn to slide seven. Let's look at disruptions at the Red Sea. Prior to the disruption, around 12% of global clean petroleum product volumes transited the Suez Canal, while the importance of this sea route has increased with the trade recalibration related to sanctions against Russia.

For the LR2 vessel segment, the importance of this sea route is even more important, with 45% of the clean product volumes lifted on LR2s going via the Suez Canal. With the Houthi attacks, the product tanker capacity traveling through the Bab el-Mandeb has decreased by 46%. However, the capacity of product tankers transiting the Suez Canal has fallen a little less, by 42%, as exports from the Saudi refineries in Yanbu and the new Jazan refinery are not directly affected by the attacks, so export from these towards Europe and North Africa can continue. What is also important to mention here is that we've seen a number of new refineries coming online in the Middle East last year. However, because of several startup issues, the incremental production from these new refineries has been limited.

This means that the full impact of exports from these refineries on the product tanker market will first be seen in the coming months when these refineries reach full utilization and will further support the Middle East export capacity with the potential to push more volumes around the Cape of Good Hope. Now, kindly turn to slide eight. Along with geopolitics, also fundamental market drivers are supportive for the product tanker market. I already mentioned the new refining capacity ramping up in the Middle East. This is one part of the refinery dislocation story, with refining capacity being added to net exporting regions. The other part is refinery closures that we have seen in recent years, mostly taking place in net importing regions, leading to higher import volumes and higher demand for product tankers.

As an example of the impact of refinery closures we have seen is Australia and New Zealand, where recent refinery closures have led to a 60% increase in the region's clean oil product imports and hence higher ton-mile demand for product tankers. Even though we can say that we have seen the main effect of refinery closures in Australia and New Zealand already, imports have risen to a new higher level and continue to keep demand for tankers at an elevated level. Slide 9, please. Let's look at the supply-side drivers. After years of subdued newbuilding capacity activity, product tanker ordering at shipyards has picked up the last year, and currently the order book stands at 13% of the fleet, which is double the ratio seen at the beginning of 2023.

However, here, what is important to mention is that the current order book is spread across almost 4 years, translating into a 3% annual growth rate. This compares with an average growth of 4% per year for the past 10 years. Furthermore, if we compare the order book for product tankers with the share of fleet at above 20 years old, we see that the fleet growth will be relatively balanced. The aging product tanker fleet means that the net fleet growth could even turn negative in the second half of this decade, assuming all vessels at or above 25 years would be scrapped. Another aspect important to mention here is that the recent pickup in the new building activity has largely concentrated around the LR2 segment.

Given the versatility of the LR2 fleet, which can trade both clean and dirty products, the LR2 order book should be seen in connection with the dirty Aframax order book. The combined order book is currently at 13%, which compares with 15% of the combined fleet being candidates for recycling over the same period. Please turn to slide 10. To conclude my remarks here on the product tanker market, we expect the main demand and supply drivers on the product tanker market continue to be supportive. The global product tanker demand in terms of ton-mile increased last year by 8%, mainly driven by trade recalibration due to sanctions against Russia. As long as the Red Sea disruptions last, the ton-mile can potentially increase by a further 5% this year.

On the other hand, net fleet growth is much more limited, and we saw no fleet growth in 2023 as a large number of LR2 vessels moved into the dirty market. So far this year, we've seen an increasing number of LR2s cleaning up, but even in case of a potential large-scale net migration back to the clean trade, our calculations show that the product tanker demand-supply balance will remain at a much firmer footing than before the geopolitical tensions started. Now, with these comments, I will make my conclusion of my part of the presentation. I'll hand it over to my colleague, Kim, who will walk us through the financials.

Kim Balle (CFO)

Thank you, Jacob. Please turn to slide 11 for the financial highlights for the fourth quarter of 2023. Our earnings development during the fourth quarter once again shows strong performance driven by both market dynamics and operational execution in our business. TCE was $267 million, reflecting a combination of the increased underlying ton-mile demand seen for some quarters now and the current geopolitical tension that added further to this. TORM achieved TCE rates of $37,985 per day with LR2s at $44,048, LR1s at $40,498, and MRs at $36,122 a day in Q4. Our fleet had a total of 7,312 earning days, i.e., marginally lower than the 7,494 days we expected back in early November, as we made some changes in the dry docking schedule and changes in delivery schedules for vessels, so basically all due to period shifts.

During the quarter, we made profit from sale of vessels of $40 million. Our unadjusted EBITDA for the quarter amounted to $234 million, including unrealized losses on FFA agreements of around $11 million. Net profit amounted to a very satisfactory $185 million, corresponding to an EPS of $2.18. Based on our distribution policy, the board of directors will propose a final dividend for the quarter of $1.36 per share to be paid out subject to approval at the AGM in April. This corresponds to a payout ratio of 87% based on net profits adjusted for profit from sale of vessels in Q4. Please note that the increase in outstanding shares in the ratio is due to the share issuance expected during Q1 and Q2 2024. Please turn to slide 12 for the full-year financials.

TCE grew to a record high of $1.84 billion, i.e., adding 10% to the previous historical high in 2022. As previously mentioned, both geopolitical conflicts and climate-related factors, as the drought in Central America that has reduced traffic through the Panama Canal added to the ton-mile demand. This has enabled us to achieve TCE rates of $37,124 per day with LR2s at $44,048 per day, LR1s at $40,498 per day, and MRs at $36,122 per day. We believe these are strong numbers, and added together, they reflect a very satisfactory performance, where we've been able to increase the TCE rate per day by almost $3,000 while increasing OPEX only with $244 per day. All in all, we are very pleased with the numbers, which evidence strong execution throughout the year.

Based on our earnings and continued focus on disciplined capital allocation, we have achieved a return on invested capital of 30.4% for the full year. And further, by actively using our shares as part of the consideration when acquiring new vessels, we maintain a LTV ratio below 30%. Adding the proposed dividend for the last quarter to the dividend paid out over the previous three quarters, we get to a distribution of $5.78 per share, which corresponds to a payout ratio of 83% for the full year when adjusting for vessel sales. Please turn to slide 13. Our primary safety KPI is Lost Time Accident frequency and measures accidents per 1 million exposure hours. In 2023, TORM's safety performance was 0.32, and our target for 2030 is 0.3, while we believe it was a satisfactory result.

With respect to women in leadership positions onshore, TORM has been on a stable level for a number of years, and admittedly, we still have some way to go in order to reach our target. We believe that diverse teams led by diverse leaders deliver better business performance. Thus, TORM would focus even further on gender diversity in leadership to meet our 2030 target of 35% of women in leadership. And finally, TORM continues to work towards the 2030 carbon intensity reduction target of 45%. We are already close to meeting the accelerated 2025 target of 40% reduction in carbon intensity, having reached 39.6% reduction at the end of 2023. Looking ahead, we are committed to making further progress on this, and we will pursue an ambitious climate agenda whereby we'll have zero CO2 emissions from operating our fleet by 2050. Please turn to slide 14.

On this slide, we show the development of our vessel values reaching $3.1 billion by the end of the year and NAV amounting to $2.8 billion. Also, on this slide, you can see our net interest-bearing debt at the end of the year amounting to $774 million and a net loan to value of 27.6%, while we at the same time have both increased our fleet and returned significant cash to our shareholders. Early January, we issued a $200 million five-year senior unsecured bond in the Norwegian market, which was used to partly finance five of the vessels acquired in the fourth quarter of 2023, including full repayment of a bridge facility in connection with that acquisition. Slide 15, please. I've already touched upon the strong cash generation to our shareholders or cash return to our shareholders, so this slide details how we are thinking about dividend payout ratio.

Our net profits for the full year amount to $648 million, whereof $50 million stem from profit from sail of vessels, i.e., adjusted profit for the year amounts to $598 million. Based on our distribution policy that states our intention to pay out excess liquidity above a threshold cash level, the Board of Directors will approve a final dividend for Q4 2023 of an amount of approximately $126.3 million. Thus, we would expect total dividends for the full year 2023 to amount to $497 million, corresponding to the payout ratio mentioned at 83%. Going forward, TORM will amend the distribution policy slightly, where the built-in mechanism for the earmarked proceeds will no longer be part of the policy. Further, in addition to dividends, TORM will, as usual, consider share buybacks. Slide 16, please. Here, I will talk slightly about the outlook for 2024.

We guide TCE earnings to be in the range of $1 billion-$1.035 billion, i.e., guiding to a result marginally higher than what we realized in 2023. We have a range that is reflecting the volatility we have in trade rates due to the current geopolitical tensions. Further, EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $700 million-$1.05 billion against $884 million in 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, we expect to have 7,703 earning days, and for the full year, we would expect to have 31,504 earning days. You should note that in early January this year, we acquired one additional LR2 vessel, and the two LR1 vessels and one MR vessel we saw back in 2023 were delivered in the beginning of January.

Based on our rates and cover as of 4 March 2024, we had fixed a total of 82% of our earning days at $45,036 in the first quarter across the fleet. Likewise, based on our rates and cover as of 4 March 2024, we had fixed a total of 25% of our earning days at $44,089 for the full year across the fleet. Now, please turn to slide 17. 2023 was a year of strong execution, not only in terms of financial performance but also, we believe, in terms of strengthening our position in the product tanker market by adding exposure to the LR segment to further capitalize on the strong and changed market fundamentals. In total, we have acquired 23 vessels over the course of the last 14 months, i.e., from the start of 2023 until now.

For 16 of those, we have arranged for the consideration to be partly share-based. We see this as a unique strength of our share, and it gives us the opportunity to add additional flexibility to our financing of acquisitions. By doing this, we adhere to the conservative approach towards what we think is a comfortable capital structure, thus increasing the net interest-bearing debt only at an estimated $280 million and instead opting to issue new shares to fund our expansion endeavors. This strategy not only ensures a healthy balance sheet but also underscores our commitment to sustainable growth and long-term value creation for our shareholders. And with this, it concludes my part of the presentation, so I will now hand it back to the operator, who will take care of the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from a line of Jonathan Chappell from Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Jonathan Chappell (Senior Managing Director)

Thank you. Good afternoon. Kim, just a super quick update on the modest change to the dividend policy. Can you just walk us through the reasoning behind that?

Kim Balle (CFO)

Yeah. Thank you, John. I can do that. It's basically rather simple. Based on feedbacks and also our own experience, we found it to be slightly complex having the earmarked proceeds account, so we basically just deleted that. But else, we are committed to, as I said earlier, the shareholder return, of course, and it's basically just that, to remove that slightly complex part of the policy. Everything is in place. It is still based on the board's discretion, and we will maintain, as I said, the same focus on high dividend distribution going forward.

Jonathan Chappell (Senior Managing Director)

Okay. Thank you. Jacob, in the press release, as you talked through the fleet evolution over 2023, you noted the attractive returns that you saw from having a larger share of the bigger vessels. I understand that from a trade flow perspective, but maybe from a supply side or a capacity side, maybe the MRs are quite more constrained than the LR2/Aframax fleet. So as you think about the fleet going forward, do you think you'll continue to push towards more LR2, longer haul, bigger carrying capacity exposure? And is that strictly a demand-side environment, or is there more flexibility around how you view the total utilization balance between capacity additions as well?

Jacob Meldgaard (Executive Director and CEO)

Yeah. Thanks for that. Thank you, John. So I think as I look back, then we have for a number of years been believers in that the expansion of the refinery sector in the Middle East, with everything else being equal, commands longer haul trades. And when you have longer haul trades, then from a customer perspective, it's more efficient to have larger ships. So that has been a focus for us over the years to sort of maintain a presence in that segment because we believe here, going forward, that that will play a vital role. So when we had that opportunity - and now we've added one more of these - to sort of double up our exposure in that segment to now total around 20 ships, having sold some and added some, I think that simply, at that time, felt like fitting very well with our strategy.

The point where we sit now, I think we have a more balanced fleet composition between LRs and MRs. So I think going forward, we'll be quite open-minded around the opportunities that come our way. But I'm not sure that I think that MRs are sort of necessarily a much better place because, actually, you have an aging fleet that is more pertaining to LR2s than it is that's at risk than it is to MRs on a relative scale. And that predominantly goes to the at-risk orderbook without being reordered. I think just a final comment on that, John, is that I'm personally not of the opinion that all the LR2 orders that we now put sort of into the bracket of LR2s, that they will be operated as LR2s.

If you look sort of detailed into who has ordered these vessels, a lot of them are natural Aframax players who are just buying sort of an optionality to potentially of course trade in LR2s but who are renewing their fleet team from an Aframax perspective.

Jonathan Chappell (Senior Managing Director)

Yep. That's very helpful. Thank you. One more, if I may, just bigger picture market. It was noteworthy that you called out the 5% potential impact to ton-miles from the Red Sea. If we go back maybe a year ago, year and a half ago, you had identified a 7% impact from Russia-Ukraine sanctions. As you look back and have some more time to digest the impact of the first geopolitical event in Russia and Europe, has that 7% played out as you expected? Has it been greater, maybe more volatile, stickier, so to speak, as opposed to maybe the Red Sea, which may be a bit more fleeting? Just a little bit of a retrospect on how things have evolved over the last two years, just given the geopolitics that we know.

Jacob Meldgaard (Executive Director and CEO)

Yeah. So on ton-mile, on average, it's 8. So we were probably a bit careful in calling 7, but it's been volatile, as you point to. So I would expect that to continue at the same level that we've had, but of course, with the volatility. As I also stated, around the Red Sea disruption, we see this as something that is something that has now sort of been turned on, that you've got it. My hope is that it can disappear as quickly as it came, which is different than, I think, our interpretation of the European sanctions on import of Russian oil. I think that is very sticky for many reasons. Obviously, the Red Sea situation could potentially be resolved quickly. Now, it's been escalating, especially over the past 24 hours, with now, unfortunately, the loss of lives of innocent seafarers.

It's not going away right now as we are now on this call. But my point would, of course, be that that one is a temporary thing that hopefully can be solved quickly. I don't think that the conflict around Ukraine is temporary.

Jonathan Chappell (Senior Managing Director)

Right. Yep. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. Thank you, Jacob. Thanks, Kim.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.