StealthGas Inc.
Q3 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 25 Nov 2020

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the StealthGas Third Quarter 2020 Nine Months Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode . I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. And I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Harry Vafias. Please go ahead.

[Harry Vafias:]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter nine months 2020 earnings conference call. This is Harry Vafias, the CEO of StealthGas and with me on the call is Fenia Sakellaris, our Finance Officer. Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you that we'll be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance.

[Fenia Sakellaris:]

Thank you, Harry and good morning to everyone. I will continue the presentation focusing on our financial performance for the third quarter of 2020. As mentioned earlier in our call, even in these uncertain market conditions and even with the heavy drydocking schedule we had to undergo in the third quarter, we managed to preserve our revenues at quite high level to produce satisfactory profitability. For this, we relied on the solid revenues produced by our vessels under previous contract, the low oil price cost at moderate levels and our declining finance costs due to the lowering of our debt at very low LIBOR rate. Let us move on to Slide 8 where we see the income statement for the third quarter of 2020 against the same period of the previous years. Voyage revenues came in at $37.1 million, marking $0.5 million increase compared to the same period of last year. This increase is attributed to rise of our time charter revenue stemming from our small LPGs our 22,000 semi vessels and our Aframax tanker. From the fourth quarter of '19 and up to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, we managed to lock time charter contracts at better rates than previously, thus, boosting our revenue stream and offsetting the lower revenue certainly in the spot market. Voyage costs amounted to $3.8 million, marking a 24% decrease compared to Q3 '19 in spite of our higher exposure in the spot market due to the decline of bunker cost by almost 20%. Based on all of the above, our net revenue for the period were $33.3 million corresponding to a net revenue margin of 90%. Running costs at $13.8 million marked about 12% decrease compared to Q3 '19, mostly attributed to two of our vessels, a small LPG and our Aframax tanker coming off bare boat, as well as increased crew costs faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, compared to the second quarter of 2020, our crew expenses related to crew changes in conjunction with port restrictions and safety travel requirements increased in the third quarter by approximately $500,000. Drydocking costs at $2.3 million correspond to the drydocking of our Aframax tanker and four small LPG vessels. We had communicated that within 2020, we had to undergo the completion of nine drydockings. The remaining four will take place at the fourth quarter of this year.

[Harry Vafias:]

Let's proceed with Slide 11. As the market uncertainty brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic prevails it’s very difficult to assess our market’s future. We can, however provide a summary commented how to LPG trade is now across key regions. Commencing with Europe, the market show a slight periodical improvement compared to the second quarter but overall it remained weak. Terminals continue to go offline for maintenance, as I mentioned, to offset the broader decline in markets. In Asia, we noticed a decline of residential demand for LPG but going forward, this could potentially be reversed by the requirements of new PDH plants at commenced operations around the middle of this year and two additional PDH plants scheduled to commence operations by the end of this year.

[Michael Jolliffe:]

Thank you, Harry. In the third quarter of 2020, StealthGas marked a quite satisfactory performance given that we operated a rather difficult market. With the COVID-19 pandemic still persisting, our market is being heavily affected. Due to imposed lockdowns, we witnessed a decline in demand for LPG and charterers sentiment has been affected, thus, making them reluctant to take forward positions on period contracts. Adding to this, regulations pertaining to crew safety and crew changes have added to our costs and will continue to do so up until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Nevertheless, our company not only achieved strong revenues managed within the quarter with profitable results. We feel confident that we have successfully navigated our market even during testing times. In addition, we further acknowledge and had our market not been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems we would have had a far better run this year. We have now reached the end of our presentation, and we would like to open the floor for your questions. So operator, please open the floor. Thank you.

[Harry Vafias:]

We'd like to thank you for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest in trusting your company, and we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving and look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for our fourth quarter results in February 21. Thank you very much.