GasLog Ltd.
Q1 2013 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 15 May 2013

[Operator:]

Good morning. My name is Sola, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to GasLog's First Quarter 2013 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Today's speakers are Paul Wogan, Chief Executive Officer; Simon Crowe, Chief Financial Officer; and to commence the call, Thor Knappe, Senior Vice President of GasLog. Mr. Knappe, you may begin your conference.

[Thor Knappe:]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and good morning to those of you in the Americas. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2013 results conference call. As a reminder, this conference call, webcast and the presentation we are using this afternoon are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, gaslog.ltd.com. A replay of this call will be available until May 21 at 11

[Paul Wogan:]

Good afternoon, and good morning. Thank you, all, very much for joining us today. On today's call, I'll provide you with an overview of our first quarter 2013 highlights and performance. Simon will then review the first quarter 2013 financial results and provide a summary of our forward committed revenue. I will follow this with a brief update on some of the significant announcements in the LNG market in quarter 1, followed by an overview of our fleet and charter coverage. We'll end the prepared comments with a strategic update and summary. Please turn to Slide 4 of the presentation, the highlights. The first quarter of 2013, so GasLog's start to execute on its growth plan, as highlighted at the time of our IPO. The GasLog Shanghai and GasLog Santiago, 2 Samsung-built 155,000 cubic meter vessels, were delivered ahead of schedule and concurrently commenced their multi-year charters to a subsidiary of BG. We are scheduled to take delivery of 3 more LNG carriers in 2013 that will commence multiyear charters to entities of BG and Shell. The next of our vessels is due to deliver on schedule later this month. We now have 4 ships on water and 8 LNG carriers on order. This includes the 2 newbuildings that we announced in February that are scheduled to deliver in 2016 and which are 10-year charters to a subsidiary of BG. The newly delivered ships have performed well and like the first 2 ships in our fleet, the GasLog Savannah and GasLog Singapore, they have performed with 100% utilization under our charters. The high utilization of the existing vessels, along with the delivery of the 2 newbuildings during the quarter, contributed to what was a pleasing set of results. We're also pleased to announce today the payment of our third successive quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share. This dividend will be payable on June 11 to stockholders of record as of May 28. I will now hand over to Simon, who will take you through the first quarter financial results in more detail. Simon?

[Simon Crowe:]

Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, and good morning. As Paul has indicated in his opening remarks, we have delivered a very solid quarter and continue to execute the plan. I'm very pleased with our progress. I'd now like to take you through the financial highlights, so if you'd kindly turn to Slide 5 of the presentation. Revenues for the quarter increased by over $5 million to $21.8 million compared with the same period in 2012. The increase is mainly attributable to the delivery of the GasLog Shanghai and GasLog Santiago during the first quarter and the immediate commencement of their charters. It's worth remembering that given our delivery dates, the contribution of the Shanghai was for approximately 62 days and only a few days at the GasLog Santiago. Clearly, we would expect the contribution of these 2 recent deliveries to be even greater in the next quarter. The solid revenue figure is underpinned by the 100% utilization of all 4 ships in our fleet. EBITDA was $13.9 million for the quarter compared to $8.4 million for the same period last year. Profit for the quarter was $5.9 million, an increase of $3.7 million on the same period in Q1 2012. This can be explained by the following main reasons

[Paul Wogan:]

Thank you, Simon. In Q1, there was continued strong demand for LNG, as evidenced by the high product crisis paved in both the Far East and South America. However, outages and low production in LNG plants, such as in Norway, Nigeria, Egypt and the Yemen, limited the amount of cargo available to be traded and shipped. As a consequence, spot rates for shipping declined during the quarter, but still remain high on a historical basis. However, the long-term fundamental drivers of LNG shipping continue to look positive based upon recent forward-looking reports. Exxon Mobil predicts 1.7% per annum growth for global natural gas through to 2040, while BP predicts growth at 2% per annum out to 2030. BP also predicts the LNG as a subset for the natural gas market will grow by 4.3% per annum out to 2030. The growth of LNG production should translate into an increasing demand for LNG carriers. And also, during Q1, we saw several interesting developments that also bode well for long-term shipping demand. Centrica of the U.K. announced a 20-year agreement with Cheniere to buy 1.75 million tons per annum of LNG for 20 years. The LNG is scheduled to be provided by fifth production train at the Sabine Pass facility. Separately, Cheniere announced that the completion of production trains 1 and 2 at Sabine is expected to be ahead of schedule, with first LNG now predicted to be produced in 2015. The growing importance of the BRIC nations in LNG was highlighted by the completion of an agreement in which India's Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation agreed to acquire 2.5 million tons per annum of LNG for up to 20 years from BG. And there was also some positive news from Australia. Well, one of the new export projects, Australia Pacific LNG, was said to be ahead of schedule on the construction of its production trains, with both now due to commence production in 2015. These positive developments support the forecast of a growing global trade for LNG and the increased -- and increased future demand for LNG ships. We believe that GasLog, with its long track record in the industry, strong operational platform and its partnerships with customers and suppliers is particularly well-placed to take advantage of these growth opportunities. Let's now turn to Slide 12 of the presentation where we take a look at the GasLog fleet. I think most of you will recognize this slide, which illustrates our portfolio of ships and charters. The slide shows the build-out of our modern fleet with multi-year charters to well-known LNG industry developers. We have in-built growth in our existing portfolio, and continue to be optimistic that we will be able to take advantage of a favorable LNG market conditions to further grow our fleet. We continue to hold priced options for LNG carriers at Samsung Heavy Industries, and we continue to see interesting opportunities in the market for these vessels. Please now turn to Slide 13 of the presentation. In summary, we are pleased to announce the payment of our third quarterly dividend in a few weeks' time. Our first quarter 2013 performance illustrates that we're executing on our business plan in what is an important year for us. The delivery of 2 of the 5 newbuildings that are due to enter our fleet this year and the concurrent commencement of their charters marks an important step in GasLog's growth. We are similarly focused on ensuring that we execute on the on-time and on-budget delivery of the remaining aged ships in our order book and the commencement to their charters. The solid growth forecast for the LNG industry, combined with GasLog's experience, technical platform, proven track record of project execution and strong industry relationships mean that we are confident that we will continue to see attractive growth opportunities. That brings us to the end of the presentation. Operator, could you please open the call for questions?

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Christian Wetherbee of Citi.

[Seth Lowry:]

This is Seth Lowry, in for Chris. If I could start off, do you expect the weakness in the spot market to continue into the second half of the year? And if so, does that have any bearing, whatsoever, on maybe your negotiations with your 2 uncharted vessels in your order book?

[Paul Wogan:]

As I outlined, Larry, in the presentation, there were a few factors, I think, which held back LNG production in the first quarter, which I think a lot of those we're seeing are now being removed, and we're also potentially seeing Angola coming on stream. So I think maybe we don't necessarily see that there would be further weakening in the spot market. I think in terms of where the spot market is, it's still at historical highs, but for GasLog, we are not really in that spot market. We have our ships contracted on forward cover. We follow what happens in the spot market, obviously. But as we look forward to where our 2 open ships are coming, we feel very comfortable with those 2 vessels. We think the advantages that I outlined in the presentation are going to be very advantageous for us, and we're very confident that we're going to do well with those ships.

[Seth Lowry:]

Okay, fair enough. And then can you share with us, within the quarter, you've announced some longer-term dated contracts near the 10-year mark, but the rest of your fleet is typically chartered in the 5- or 6-year range. Do you have a sense of where those 2 uncharted vessels may shake out either towards the 10-year mark or closer to the 5 to 6-year mark?

[Paul Wogan:]

Yes, I think we touched on this little bit on the last call. I think the great thing about doing a 2 10-year deals was it further strengthened our underlying portfolio of contracted days and revenue. And I think we have -- we can be very a flexible and opportunistic with those ships. And I think we'll look along the whole range of duration for those vessels and see where we can best add value to the fleet overall. So from that point of view, we don't have a target. We can be opportunistic and flexible, and I think in that way, get the best returns for GasLog.

[Seth Lowry:]

Okay. And then lastly, I'll follow-up. You have 4 options out there that you can potentially exercise, and you mentioned that there may be some M&A opportunities out there. I guess, first off, can you foresee a scenario where you're potentially able to leverage both M&A and exercise the options? Or is that a bit mutually exclusive? And then the second part of that too is for the M&A opportunities you're seeing, is that in the newer tonnage market where your fleet is really geared? Or is it potentially coming on vessels that are a little bit older, less technically specked that are out there idling maybe subject more to the spot market weakness where you may be able to jump in to the older tonnage and still make use of them somewhere?

[Paul Wogan:]

Look, I think we're really seeing a market which plays into the strengths of GasLog. I think there is some weakness in the market. I think some of the new entrants into the market will find it difficult to get contracts in this market. I think the opportunities that we see in existing ships could come from a number of different sources. So I don't think we sort of see one particular type of ship as being more advantageous, but I do think that we'll see those opportunities coming. I think this is the market in which existing players with good reputations is -- GasLog can really do quite well. In terms of the opportunities, I think one of the things that we've been working on here, Simon and the rest of the team, is on creating, if you like, the dry powder to -- for us to be able to do transactions going forward. We see -- we are seeing a lot of growth opportunities for GasLog, and so we are very focused on making sure that we are able to take advantage of those opportunities. And I think we -- as we're looking at this, we feel that we would be able to look at certainly more than one transaction going forward. We feel there's a number of things that we can do.

[Operator:]

We will now take our next question from Omar Nokta of Global Hunter.

[Omar M. Nokta:]

I wanted to get a sense from you, as you've just been talking about a strong amount of built-in growth, you're looking at enhancing your capital structure and you've been talking about the potential for further growth. What do you see right now is most important or what's most relevant for you currently? Is it enhancing the cap structure or looking for more opportunities to grow?

[Paul Wogan:]

I think those 2 things go very much hand-in-hand, Omar. I think we are very focused on enhancing the capital structure because we're so excited by the opportunities that we see coming up in the market, both in the immediate term and in the longer term. The structural growth that we've been talking about in LNG, I think, is very exciting. So those 2 things definitely go hand-in-hand as far as we're concerned.

[Simon Crowe:]

Yes, if I could just add, I mean, I think, the growth we see is very interesting and it's -- Paul and I work very closely in ensuring that we do have this, what we call, dry powder and have the optionality, if you like, to be able to move quickly and we will consider a range of different alternatives and we're evaluating those. So we're looking at accretive transactions for our shareholders. We're looking at adding value, creating value and taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in the market.

[Omar M. Nokta:]

Okay. And I figure this will be -- you may not be able to comment too much on, but let's say you do go the route of an MLP over the next few quarters, I noticed in your release or maybe in the filing portion of it, the mention of exercising the Samsung options would not necessarily require, but would likely be funded partially with an equity raise, and I'm wondering if that equity would come via, say, that MLP, whether once that's formed, the proceeds coming from that would be the equity? Or would you think just fresh equity at the GasLog level?

[Simon Crowe:]

I mean, listen, we're looking at all the alternatives to finance the growth, to finance the options, and where we start is the sort of cheapest form of capital, the least diluted. We start there and start building up our story. So we've got very good relationships with our banks in terms of adding additional mortgage debt to our newbuild and our fleet. We then start to look at things like increasing the headroom there slightly to give us a bit more headroom to maybe issue some sort of debt instrument. Again, nothing for sure, but that just gives us that optionality. And then we look at other things like there are some preferred equity instruments that have been done recently, I think, by some of our competitors so we study those. We've got very tail-heavy payments in the -- on the Samsung shipyard payments so we've got many years to consider that in terms of the new options. And then of course, there's the MLP, which we absolutely are taking a good hard look at. As you know, they're not simple things to study. We're evaluating the pros and cons of that, and we're making sure that we understand fully. But the key is to have the dry powder ready and to other key is to be very, very sensitive to the dilution of existing shareholders. That is really forefront of our minds, that we can come up with solutions to fund this, but avoid that. That's where we start from, and we want to be cost effective and start with the cheapest and best forms of funding.

[Omar M. Nokta:]

Okay. No, that's very good and very helpful. And just one more follow-up on just a previous question regarding the 2 open newbuild. You mentioned chartering and opportunistically, perhaps. Would that include actually deploying them on the spot market? Or would you opportunistically mean short-term, say, 2- to 3-year charters?

[Paul Wogan:]

Yes, I mean, I think, when we look at it, we've -- we started to trade our ships on contract. I think when we're looking at the shorter end of the market, we're thinking more in terms of shorter duration contracts rather than trading them spot at this point.

[Simon Crowe:]

Yes, I think the platform, we've got a coverage. We've got $1.8 billion of backlog. So as Paul said earlier, we look for value along the spectrum. Clearly, if we see some shorter term contracts with good rates open to us, we'll study those very closely and try and set those into the construct of how we see the supply and demand of the industry going forward. But I think it's the platform that we have that gives us that edge, if you like.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Nicolay Dyvik of DNB Markets.

[Nicolay Dyvik:]

With the options expiring in July and share price below IPO price also reflects the dividend payments, could you walk -- or are you looking to walk away from the options or how can you finance it? And what's the flexibility with regards to postponing the option declaration dates?

[Paul Wogan:]

Well, first of all, Nicolay, I think we're just talking very much about how we see potential funding for vessels. We think we've got a number of options that we can do. I mean, we have fairly conservative leverage in the company so I think we can do that without having to do dilutive equity at this point in the cycle certainly. The other thing I would say is we do have very good relationships with Samsung. In the past, we've pushed options back with Samsung. And I'm sure as one of their big customers, they'd be happy to have that discussion with us going forward. So I think in both cases, we're in fairly good shape at the moment.

[Nicolay Dyvik:]

So on the current platform, you think you're going then -- or you are looking then to declare some of the options and you will have flexibility within the current platform or the instruments you talked about within the next few months to declare those options?

[Paul Wogan:]

The great thing about options, Nicolay, is we don't have to do anything until they come up so we keep the option value open. So that's what we're doing at the moment. As I said in the presentation, though, we are seeing opportunities for those vessels, and so we're working hard to see how we can fit those into the growth of the company.

[Nicolay Dyvik:]

Would you print shares below IPO price? Would that be an alternative just...

[Simon Crowe:]

We are very sensitive to dilution, and we're very sensitive to the IPO price, so we don't need to do that. We've got the Samsung, the 2 new 11 and 12. The payments are very, very tail-heavy. We don't have to do that on the current business plan. So that's not in our minds.

[Paul Wogan:]

And as we said, we do have a number of funding options for these, Nicolay, which I think means that any kind of dilutive equity issuance at the moment is the last thing on our minds.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our next question from Christopher Combe of JPMorgan.

[Christopher G. Combe:]

Just 2 follow-ups. On the same topic of the options, I recall over the last year, on more than one occasion it was referenced to how favorable the payment terms, the tail-heavy terms were for the existing order book. Could comparable terms be negotiated if these options are exercised? Or will they be significantly less favorable, let's say?

[Paul Wogan:]

Yes, I think the thing right now is it depends on who that person is going to the shipyard. I think for the right end user, such as GasLog, those payment terms, very favorable payment terms are available. And one of the things we've talked about in the presentation was the strong relationships that we have in the industry, and that's with both customers and suppliers. And I think, as I keep talking about, this is where this sort of market, I think, starts playing into the strengths of GasLog, that we do have those strong relationships. And we do have the ability to put options in place with good payment terms.

[Christopher G. Combe:]

Okay. And the second question, just going back to your prepared remarks, you mentioned capital structure and potentially paying back or returning excess. How should we think about the way that you frame excess? Or perhaps you could put some parameters around total ambitions with respect to absolute growth. We have the 4 options. You've mentioned numerous other opportunities. If we thought about the sort of best case scenario in terms of growth, where would you put that number with respect to the fleet size?

[Simon Crowe:]

Well, listen, the growth -- we see a huge amount of growth ahead of us. We've been doing our strategy recently with the board. We've taken a really deep dive into the LNG supply and demand dynamics. We've looked at the shipping market in a lot of detail, but we see -- we just see -- I mean we have a tremendous appetite for growth. Clearly, we need to balance liquidity needs to our existing plans. We need to balance that off with growth. And if they're not accretive to our shareholders, we don't -- that's not something we want to consider. We want be very sensitive to dilution, but clearly, our appetite is enormous. We see this market over the next 10, 20 years as being very, very exciting and very interesting. It's huge, the development of the gas market, the fact that the U.S. trains are coming on, the fact that Obama, the Department of Energy has approved the demands from the different countries around in Asia and Latin America increasingly, as Paul mentioned. So when I think about excess, clearly, we will look at the opportunities ahead of us. We will make a decision based on their risk-reward profiles, and I think we would -- we think we can invest that capital to be accretive for shareholders, so it's a dynamic equation.

[Paul Wogan:]

I think as well, as we look into that market and we see that -- what we feel is going to be exciting growth, I think it's interesting to see there are a few key players in this LNG shipping market, I think, who are well-placed to be able to take that growth and I think GasLog's one of them. So it's a growing market, in which we feel because of the platform that we've built over the last 10, 12 years, we're really well-placed be able to take advantage of that.

[Christopher G. Combe:]

Okay. And one last one, I think you've, on a number of occasions, referenced the order book owners who are perhaps less experienced, and would have a tougher time securing long-term charters. Has there been any noticeable sort of turnover with that respect from where you sit? Or do you see that pressure mounting on those owners to take action? Just curious to see if there's any change.

[Simon Crowe:]

Well, we haven't seen any of those owners fixing. So I think there is pressure on them going forward. It's one of things that we look at and why we feel we're well-placed with our own ships. I think the other interesting thing is we haven't seen -- after that first floating, we haven't seen more inexperienced people going out and placing orders, which plays back into this thing where we see the growth coming is going to be a few key people who have really got the experience who are able to take advantage of that.

[Operator:]

At this time, I would like -- as there are no further questions at this time, I would like to hand the call back to Mr. Paul Wogan for any additional or closing remarks.

[Simon Crowe:]

Thank you.

[Paul Wogan:]

Thank you very much for your questions. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions. Thank you also for your time, and thank you very much for your interest in GasLog. Goodbye.

[Operator:]

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.