Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd (GESHIP) Q3 FY23 Earnings Concall Transcript

Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd (NSE: GESHIP) Q3 FY23 Earnings Concall dated Feb. 01, 2023

Corporate Participants:

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Analysts:

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Roshan Nair — B&K Securities — Analyst

Vaibhav Badjatya — Honesty and Integrity Investment — Analyst

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GE Shipping Earnings Call on declaration of its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. [Operator Instructions]

I now hand over the conference to Mr. G. Shivakumar, ED and CFO at the Great Eastern Shipping Company Limited to start the proceedings. Over to you, Mr. Shivakumar.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for this conference call. Let me quickly first take you through the presentation. Mr. Bharat Sheth, our Deputy Chairman and Managing Director is here to take questions. We’re very happy to take your questions on the company and what’s been happening in the markets. So let’s go into the presentation.

Again, we might make forward-looking statements. It is not our intention to give any predictions or forecast on profitability.

So, highlights, for the first time ever, our profits have crossed INR1,500 crores, our previous highest was in the super cycle where we were just short of INR1,400 crores. So in the nine months, we have a consolidated profit of INR1,800-plus crores. Our consolidated net asset value has moved up and crossed INR1,000 per share. A year ago, this was about INR600 per share. And that just shows you what can happen in our business. Also, we have declared three interim dividends in this financial year, totaling to INR19.80 per share, again, the highest dividend in our history.

These are the reported highlights. You would have seen this. I’m not going to go much into the numbers unless you have the specific questions. We also have the normalized financials as usual, they’re not too different from the reported numbers. The effect of the currency has not been very dramatic on our results because the business results have outweighed everything else by so much — by such a great margin.

Yeah, so, we have the net asset value per share and I mentioned on a consolidated basis we are in excess of INR1,000. Here on a standalone basis, a year ago, that was in December ’21, we were at INR576 per share. Now, we are at INR890 per share. A lot of this — and we’ll come to how it’s gone up — how the NAVs have gone up, what has caused them to go up in this period. And remember that this growth of INR300-plus in net asset value is after taking into account — after having paid out dividends. So — and we paid out — between May and November, we paid out about INR16, INR17 in dividends.

These are the key ratios and we’ll leave these aside. These are the EPS, etc.

Broad management commentary from Mr. Sheth. So we have our highest — also we have our highest ever quarterly profit. In nominal terms, the previous quarter was higher but there we had the advantage of significant profit on sales, which was about INR115 crores. If you take out that impact, this quarter’s results are higher because the rates have been higher and we look at that as well. The consolidated net asset value per share, as we mentioned earlier, has crossed INR1,000 because in offshore we get a range of values for the assets. It’s between INR1,012 and INR1,080 per share.

So the markets are well-poised or interestingly-poised. Tankers had a very good run in the last three quarters or so. Crude tankers, even more so in the last quarter. The one thing that we’ve been pointing out for a few quarters now is that the order book is dwindling and therefore at least one side of the equation that you have to worry about has been taken out. There is not much new capacity coming in and we’ll look at the order book statistics. So from here on, it will depend on what happens to demand picking up and what happens when China comes back because China is a significant demand driver both for oil and for dry bulk commodities.

On the offshore market, again, this is something that we’ve pointed out for a couple of quarters now. The market is recovering with oil prices continuing to stay at decent levels, where oil exploration production companies can make a profit and can afford to invest at least in production, if not in new exploration. The market has shown signs of significant strength. The effective utilization rates for Jack Up Rigs, if you take out the rigs which have been cold-stacked for quite some time, now we are getting close to 90% for the first time since 2014 when the oil prices collapsed.

On the balance sheet front, these cash flows have been exceptionally strong and we’ve used the cash flows to pay some dividends, we’ve also prepaid debt where possible.

Just looking at differences between last quarter, that’s Q2 and Q3, you see what’s happened to crude tankers, $33,000 [Phonetic] gone up to $60,000. Product tankers and LPG have been more or less the same. Dry bulk has dropped off in Q3 versus Q2. But the crude tankers outperformance was so high that it more than compensated for the drop in dry bulk earnings.

This is how and why our NAV changed, this we’re comparing versus March. So this is the nine month change in net asset value standalone. We had a change of little under INR300 per share where we’ve got equal contributions from the cash profit — the cash flows which have been produced by the business and the increase in fleet value. Again, the reason why we put this here is that this is different from the NAV — from other NAVs that you may look at. So you should not look at it like the NAV of, say, a mutual fund, which if the stock prices fall, you lose what is there in the NAV. Here we are actually — when earnings are strong, a part of that high asset value is converted into cash flows on a daily or a quarterly basis, and that’s what we wanted to show here. It’s not just an increase in asset values, it is actual real cash that has come in here. Again, asset value, you never know what happens to them, they could go up further, they could come down, but the INR147 rupees per share is actual cash which is accrued to us.

This is the five year movement in standalone net asset value. In March 2017, we were at INR337 per share. Now we are at just shy of INR900 per share. Again, just to remind you, we have been paying significant dividends through this period. On a consolidated basis, the story is somewhat similar. We had an increase of about INR350 per share in the net asset value, which has contributed about 50-50 between the cash accruals and the fleet value.

Looking at what happened in the shipping markets. Again, we have gone through this many times in the past, we’ve had very strong product tanker markets, exceptionally strong product tanker markets since early in the year so that outperformed for a significant period. The Suezmaxes took some time to catch up, but they had a very good Q4 of calendar 2022.

So this is the commentary and we can rather than read this commentary or go through it, we can discuss it in the Q&A. And the main cause, of course, for the tanker markets going up was the war in Europe, the Russia-Ukraine war, which resulted in trade dislocation, which came on top of a fairly tight-ish market and that’s what really took the markets up in a big way. And it illustrates what happens in our business, which we have said in the past, which is that it takes these events to suddenly take the markets up or down. And basically, you need to be positioned with your fleet to be able to take advantage when the markets go up. And that’s why we have a significant spot market exposure most of the time.

Looking at dry bulk. The dry bulk was a different story. We had a very strong period in FY ’22, especially for the smaller vessels, which is the Supramaxes and Kamsarmaxes. This year has been quite poor. The Capesizes have suffered a lot versus the previous year and now we have seen, over the last few months, that even the Supramaxes and Kamsarmaxes earnings have come off very significantly, which is the black dotted.

Again, steel production, which is the main driver of demand for — the biggest driver of demand for bulk carriers, was down, had negative growth. We look forward to it coming back in Cal ’23. Unless you have a very significant global recession, you should have positive steel production growth, which means that you should have some dry bulk trade demand growth.

LPG earnings have been strong. Again, we don’t get much affected by the spot market, because we are on-time charters. So we don’t get affected on a day to day basis. Of course, if the spot market is strong when our ships come up for repricing, that comes into the pricing that we receive.

Looking at fleet supply. The current order book is at exceptionally low level. So we are talking of below 5% for both crude and product tankers. We are looking at about 7% for bulk carriers, all of which are historically very low numbers. And as I said, this gives us at least one comfort that the supply side is not challenging. You can see that in 2008, ’09 these order books went up in excess of 50%, 60%, 70%. And that was a really worrisome market. At single digits like this, this is a positive for the market going forward. As I said, you still need demand to help in the overall equation, but at least one side is taken care of. The LPG order book is significantly higher than this. LPG carriers, the order book is about 21%. Still — so not as comfortable as this, but still we have significant trade growth there, which hopefully should take out some of the issues.

Looking at asset prices. Obviously, asset prices have moved and we saw the impact on the net asset value. Asset prices have moved significantly over the last couple of years especially for the tankers. Dry bulk asset prices have come down by about 20% — within 20% and 30% from the peak earlier this year.

Scrapping has been very poor. Again, all of this is creating an overhang of scrapping, which is a little bit of a safety net for us. If the markets are very weak, you have a chance that there will be significant scrapping, which takes out some of the fleet and therefore brings demand-supply back into balance.

Looking at the offshore business. The Middle East has been a big driver of incremental demand and there are lot of rigs which have been going in there. There’s a lot of demand for Jack Up Rigs there. So Saudi Arabia and UAE have taken in a lot of rigs. They have publicized their targets for increasing production capacity. And they are taking in rigs in order to try to meet those targets. So rig utilization is now close to 90% on an effective basis and when I say effective, I mean, if you take out the rigs which are cold-stacked and you take into account the rigs which have already received contracts and are waiting to going into contract.

For instance, today you have 358 rigs under contract, you have another 35 rigs or so, which are waiting to go into contract, they’ve already received contracts and they are — they will go into contract within 2023. So that’s a little about 390 rigs. Of the 490 rigs that you have in the fleet, about 60 have been — are cold-stacked, 45 cold-stacked for more than three years and therefore will not be really in a position to compete actively in the market, unless the market moves up a lot. And therefore we say that the effective utilization has now come close to 90%. It’s sort of similar though not exactly so for the vessels. It’s not at 90%, but you’ve seen on term contracts that you moved up from the low-40% to somewhere around 54%, 55%. If you take into account, again, cold-stacked vessels, you’re probably up to 70% or more, and we have seen significant pricing improvements for vessels and for rigs recently.

This is just a depiction of the utilization on the chart. We have two rigs coming up for repricing but that’s only in next year. So our repricing, we had the Greatdrill Chaaru coming off contract. In this year, she has received a three-year contract in India. She has been awarded a three-year contract in India, and she will go on to that contract sometime in — probably in the middle of FY ’24. Vessels, we have quite a few coming up for repricing, which is a positive in this market because repricings will — when they come, our contracts will be at better than the previous rates.

What’s happening here? Okay, I thing there’s some problem with the presentation, but we are more or less done with it. We continue to trade so, our — in the last quarter itself, we had come down to net cash on a standalone basis and also just about net cash on a consolidated basis. Now, we are significantly net cash. Here we are. So, on a standalone basis, we have about $80 million more cash than we have debt. On a consolidated basis, this is probably somewhere around $50 million of net cash.

While the stock price has moved up, you will see that the net asset value has moved up a lot as well over the last nine months. So we still continue to trade at a very significant discount to the net asset value.

These are the initiatives on environment and you can go into them and then go into the websites so.

So that brings me to the end of the presentation. We are happy to take questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Amit Khetan from Laburnum Capital. Please go ahead.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Hi, good evening. I had a couple of questions regarding the offshore business just to get a better understanding. So I think there was a recent news about our rig getting — on contracted something like $80,000 a day. How does this compare with the previous pricing on the same rig and on the average of the remainder of the three rigs that we have?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Shiv, you want me to answer that?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

No, I’ll take that. I’ll just take that.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Okay.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

So the — yes, we have received a contract, we don’t comment on the rates, but the contract has been done at a rate which is about 75% higher than the current contract running on that rig. So the recently awarded rate is twice the rate which is — more than twice the rate at which the other three rigs are working. The average of the other three rigs.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Got it, got it. And how should we think about the earnings in the offshore segment between, say, the rigs and the vessels? I’m sure the rigs are earning a lot more, but is there — could you give a rough sense of the split between the two?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Okay. I don’t…

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, I don’t think — there is no correlation on that.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, that’s right, yeah.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So all that happens is, when the rig market moves up, the boat market also goes up. As the CFO has just mentioned that the rig that we have just repriced at 75% higher, we’ve also repriced certain boats and those are being repriced, depending on the region they’re in, between 30% to 60% improvement from their previous numbers.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Got it, that’s helpful.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

But albeit on a lower base, yeah.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, that’s it from my side and all the best.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Nigam from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Yeah, hi, this is Abhishek. So first question, on the dry bulk side, rates have corrected very sharply. So do you think now it has bottomed or at least there is not significant downside from hereon?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So, obviously, there can’t be much more of a downside, because now you’re at operating costs across two sectors, one is the Capesize sector and one is the Supramax sector. So — and some of this is seasonal. So it’s not as if it was unexpected, very much in line with what was expected. It’s typically the time of the year when you have a lot of disruption due to bad weather, both in Brazil as well as in Australia, which are the two main dominant exporting areas. Having said that, if you look at what the forward paper is showing, it’s in significant contango and therefore what the market is clearly saying is, let the bad — let the disruptive season get over and we should see an improvement. The extent of the improvement, obviously, is going to depend on when China really settles down post these lunar holidays of theirs and how much of that improvement is going to be seen through the manufacturing sector as opposed purely to consumption sector.

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Fair enough. And on the dry bulk fleet expansion, so where are the asset values now and do you think now they are at a range where you would want to consider buying a few of those?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So as the CFO said, we’ve now seen somewhere between a 20% and a 30% drop, since, let’s call it, the last nine months, which was the peak of this last cycle. It’s still a little away from where we would feel comfortable. Now what if, let’s say that there is a little longer duration in Chinese recovery, then maybe asset prices may fall off a little further. So it’s something we are closely tracking. We have — we are looking at a couple of ships, but nothing I could say very honestly, that there’s nothing that we’ve got our teeth into yet.

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Fair enough. And just last question from me. When are the LPG ships up for renewal and is it true that the contract you have currently with the current customer, so the current customer has the option to renew the LPG ships at the old rate?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah, at the current rate.

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

At the current rate, yes.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah. We have one vessel that comes off, I think it’s between April and May, in which there are no further options left. So that’s all done and dusted. So that I think will get repriced sometime in the month of March. The other three will run, because there are options, at the similar rate. They will run through for another 12 months.

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Upadhyay from O3 Capital. Please go ahead.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Hello, Good evening.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Hi, good evening.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Am I audible?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah, we can hear you.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

So my first question is, we bought a AHTSV recently. Can you help us understand the rationale for it? Was there some one-off opportunity to deploy it at very lucrative rate or the price itself was very cheap?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah. So basically, Himanshu, what happened was that there was ongoing tender in front of us. We saw that there was likely to be a slight shortage in the number of assets that were going to offer under the tender and we got this opportunity to pick up this asset. I won’t say — it’s cheap, but it wasn’t as cheap as it would have been, let us say, six or nine months ago, right, or one year ago. But we were pretty confident that we’ll get through in the tender, and effectively pays back the asset [Technical Issues]

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

It’s in product tankers, the order book is the lowest. And in crude, we have very old fleet also, some of them are — three are, 18, 19 years old. And are we getting opportunity to get good rates for one or two-year charter or we will like to be in spot only even if whatever time we have with these ships? So any thoughts on that?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So on the older assets, it’s very difficult to place it out for long periods of time simply because of the age. On the relatively younger two tankers — four tankers that we have, two Afra’s and two Suezmaxes, we could. But what we have seen again from previous experience that whenever markets are tight, a sudden surge in demand, some cargoes tends to exaggerate the earnings and obviously keeping the vessels — not that we expected the market to do as well as it has done, but really, we have significantly benefited from our overall policy that run everything spot or as much as you can, spot. And I think I’ve mentioned this in the past, that since we have a very conservatively leveraged balance sheet and now, indeed, we are net debt, we may as well take risk through the operating leverage. Because think — just think about it that, you could have fixed these assets six months ago or one year-ago at very [Technical Issues].

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Hello?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah, you’re there?

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

The connection got disconnected, I think.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, we lost you for a moment, sir.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, so, the point I was making — Himanshu, can you hear me?

Abhishek Nigam — B&K Securities — Analyst

Yeah, now I can hear you.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Okay, so the point I was making, I’ll just quickly repeat it that we could have fixed some of these tankers, let’s say, because a year-ago, let’s say, our 2004 built vessel in the start of ’22 were still 18 years old. And could have fixed it at a remunerative level, but the average that, that asset has earned compared to what we would have got for 12 months, is almost 2 times. Right? And that’s the thing about shipping that you really want to keep as much of your operating capacity open and balance that out by running a very conservative balance sheet, so that you’re never under pressure to take sub-optimal decisions on operating — on fixing the ships out. So I think that strategy has paid us very well and I think we will continue to hold on to that.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

I have a question on policy decision at the company level. I think this is the first time in last 20 years we have a net cash balance sheet. And what would be the policy or process of how much cash you want to have on the balance sheet? And what would be the determinants of what percentage of balance sheet should be on cash and because one of the things is eventually this business is a 13%, 14% ROCE in longer term what we state. And if we want to have a higher thing, we’ll have some amount of leverage but how all these things are playing in your mind? And how is that philosophy or a process of cash on balance sheet, you will decide or what’s the thought process there?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So first of all, when you say this is a 13%, 14% ROCE business, it’s not. It only is if you invest wisely. Because if it was, then you would not have so many shipping companies getting wiped out. And there are very very few shipping companies that have been around 75 years as Great Eastern is. So that’s the first point. Right? It’s not as simple as you’re making it sound. The second point is how much cash would we be comfortable with. I mean if our cash reserves were to double and therefore they would be a larger part of the balance sheet, we would have no qualms about it, because the important thing is to deploy the capital wisely. Right? So we look at — for us, growth will come — can you hear me? There’s a lot of disturbance.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.

Operator

I’m sorry to interrupt Mr. Himanshu Upadhyay, can you please self-mute your line when the management is answering the question, because there’s a lot of disturbance from your line, sir. Thank you, management you may please proceed ahead.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah, so basically the way we look at capital is, we only want to deploy it as and when we think we have a reasonable probability of providing, we’ve said this in the past, a dollarized return, and of course, subject to interest rates, but we must be able to, on a high probability, significantly outperform the cost of debt. Today, the cost of debt, let’s say, is around 6% in dollars. So unless we see a chance of making 10% to 15% dollar returns, we’d just rather sit on that cash. So we’re not shy on how much cash we sit down and, remember, you got to take this capital into three buckets. One is just the risk capital, which the company always will keep as cash. One is replacement capital, because obviously, there are ships that are getting old and they need replacement and then you are just standing still, although you may be modernizing the fleet to an extent. And then the third bucket is the growth capital, which hopefully will take us from 40-plus ships today to 50, 60, 70 ships, as and when the time is right. So until we think the time is right and if in the meantime we have to build up cash, so be it.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Okay, one last question from my side. See in offshore, was this a one-off for dry docking experience — dry docking and hence the EBIT turned negative? And secondly, can you give an idea of how is the average rates for vessels and rigs be for us today versus two years back in the same quarter, something like what we gave in the average price of ships, how they have — on a base of 100, how they have moved something? Just to understand where are we…

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So basic — no, so what happens is — it’s not right to comparing with shipping because shipping averages are spot averages. Right? In offshore, the averages are typically one-year average or three years. So you take the rig business, right? You might have priced it — every time you price the rig it’s been for three to five years, correct, unlike shipping, which is spot. Every day, you’re doing some fixture or the other. So, that’s more representative of averages than offshore. Having said that, if your question is compared to two years ago, if you had a rig that you were pricing two years ago versus pricing today, it’s fair to say that it will probably be about 2.5 time to 3 times higher if you were pricing. If you were pricing a boat as well — and again, the boat is not as commoditized as ships are because they have different features, they operate in different jurisdictions and they are expected to perform different tasks. So there again, I would say, compared to two years ago, maybe the improvement is 2 times, 2.5 times.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

And this quarter’s EBIT turning negative, any thoughts?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, so basically all that has happened was we had a rig that had to prepare itself for a new contract. So there were two hits that you take. One is the rig obviously is not earning and that happened for most of October, November and December, and you’re also spending money to redeploy her in a new contract. So that’s why, you take a double hit between contracts.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Okay, thank you from my side.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

But all that happened is you have deferred it because obviously you will have a start date and then you are now commit ted for the next three years.

Himanshu Upadhyay — O3 Capital — Analyst

Thank you so much.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So, I don’t think too much and I would recommend to all listeners in, not to place too much emphasis to all these quarterly things.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Roshan Nair from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.

Roshan Nair — B&K Securities — Analyst

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So my question was like the VLGC trade miles, is it expected to remain elevated for the coming years like tankers?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So on VLGC, the trade miles will broadly be where it has settled in Cal22. I think the difference of course on the VLGC is that, that’s one sector where the supply side is a little ahead of the — in relation to where the conventional tankers are and where the conventional dry bulk business is.

Roshan Nair — B&K Securities — Analyst

Okay, and is Russia a big propane exporter?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

I’m not sure. Shiv, do you have an answer to that?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Only LNG.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

LNG.

Roshan Nair — B&K Securities — Analyst

Okay. And my next question is, would you like to give any guidance on offshore breaking even, given that it is decidedly in a much more positive environment right now?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So it’s very difficult to give forward guidance. I think there was a caveat at the start of today’s conference where we are reluctant to give a lot on forward guidance. All we can say is that every asset that we are repricing be it the boat or be it the rig are being repriced at higher levels than, let us say, six months ago. And obviously much higher levels than one and two years ago. So logically, obviously with some lag, the business will move into a profitable position.

Roshan Nair — B&K Securities — Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot. That’s it from my side.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Okay.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vaibhav Badjatya from Honesty and Integrity Investment. Please go ahead.

Vaibhav Badjatya — Honesty and Integrity Investment — Analyst

Yeah, thanks for providing the opportunity. So you have explained the fundamentals of the business in the presentation. But are you seeing any changes, obviously, apart from the demand — apart — any changes which can really affect the product in tankers market apart from the seasonality? Because I think recently there has been quite a lot decline in both the clean tanker and the dirty tanker index. So anything fundamentally that you’re seeing any changes or it’s just seasonal and just one-time?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So we think it is a little more seasonal. Although this season, it’s got a little more exaggerated. But traditionally, if you see, Jan and Feb tend to be weaker than November and December, right, because with all the pre-stocking for the winter and all that has already happened. And then — and also people then also do a lot of refinery maintenance in different parts of the world typically in Jan and Feb and then the refiners get back into action for the summer season. So if you just look at averages over the last many, many years, Jan, Feb are always a little weaker. Now sometimes they are 15% weaker, sometimes they may be 20% weaker, sometimes they may be 10%, 30%, it’s all over the place. I think the — and therefore I just said it to one of the previous participants, that you should ignore these daily and weekly and monthly volatility. I think the important thing is that you’ve got a very tight market as the CFO has just shown and highlighted on the supply side, and therefore any improvement in demand can lead to very quick tightening of these markets because 50% of the equation is resolved.

Vaibhav Badjatya — Honesty and Integrity Investment — Analyst

Got it. Yeah. That’s it from my side. Thank you.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anurag Jain from Green Lantern Capital LLP. Please go ahead.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity. Am I audible?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yes.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Yeah, thank you so much. Just wanted to understand Slide 18 in our presentation, which talks about revenue coverage for quarter. So are we starting to go slightly long on the rates as in covering our ships for slightly longer than what we used to do earlier? Is that how it should be read?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

[Speech Overlap] uploading version of the presentation, but Q4 is basically just these three months, so it’s logical that you will have much more coverage when you only have three months left. The base itself is less.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Okay, okay. And also maybe the fact that…

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

So when we talk of coverage, basically what we are talking about, if we’re telling you in July, we are talking about the remaining nine months of the FY. If we’re telling you in October, we are telling you about the six months. If we’re telling you in January, we’re telling you for the last three months and therefore, by definition, same number of days on only 90 days per ship. So it will show a higher number.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Okay, so, I mean, does that mean that — I mean Jan, Feb we’ve seen rates come off. But these would have slightly — I mean, higher rates will be fixed then for the quarter, something like that?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Some part of it would have got fixed. Normally you would have — even if you’re on voyages, you fix a 45-day voyage, you’re covered for 50% of the quarter. That is your 50% coverage.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Got that. Got that. Thank you so much. The other question was on [Technical Issues].

Operator

Mr. Jain, I’m sorry to interrupt, your voice is breaking, sir.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Sorry. Is it better now?

Operator

Yes, please go ahead.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Yeah, so just wanted to understand the other thing in terms of deployment of capital, are we finding opportunities in any segment at all? I mean, for example, containers are down, dry bulk is down. Are there any opportunities at all there for deployment of capital or these are sitting tight right now?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So, I think the — we are getting closer to our targets than we were obviously six months ago as container prices, whilst they’re down 70% [Phonetic], they are still significantly above where they were pre-COVID. Right? Dry bulk from the peak of this last cycle is down somewhere between 20% and 30%, but they’re still at elevated — because it’s 20% 30% from an elevated level. But as you can see from both these examples I’ve given, we are moving closer to our target. Obviously, we don’t want to define exactly when we are likely to come in and buy.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Understood, understood. So is it that for maybe next few quarters or for some period in time, our peak numbers are already there, in the sense unless rates go up substantially higher from here, our peak in terms of profitability is already here. Is that a fair assessment?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Well, if rates don’t go higher, obviously profits can’t go higher.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, because the capacity is still the same.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

The capacity is not likely to change, right, at the moment. So on the same capacity, unless the per day earnings go up, how will — of course, what can happen is like, let’s say, offshore, will hopefully provide improvement in there on outlook as the repricing picks in. So — but other than that, unless you expand the Q, the P into Q can’t improve, right?

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Absolutely, absolutely. Sure. That’s all from my side. Thank you so much and congratulations on excellent set of numbers.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. So we have a question from — in the text box, I’ll just read out the question from Mr Rajesh Khattar [Phonetic], individual investor. First question is, how much of the profit is contributed by crude carriers.

Mr. Khattar, we don’t talk about individual sectors, the profitability. We give the TCYs, what we have earned, the day rates that we have earned for each of the types of ships and you can work that out from there, but we don’t disclose that.

The next question is, how should we interpret the operating days coverage mentioned on Page 19?

I’ve already answered that question just now. It’s for the remaining days of this financial year.

Next is, maximum fleet is in product carriers, what are the triggers for product carriers?

Mr. Sheth, if you want to take that.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So the basic thing is, products is arbitrage-driven business. And it’s unlike crude, which is not that much driven by arbitrage. So the trade depends on what the margins — the refining margins are, where the refineries are, where are the shortages. And therefore, it’s a much more trader-dominated business as compared to crude oil. And so the real demand for products, both absolute demand and ton-mile demand is driven by where we see the best abs going forward and because the abs are so very uncertain, typically traders have multiple options when they quote for the business. So it’s very difficult to really say what else will drive demand other than abs and of course, the fact that, how is the economy doing because a lot of the products are — the demand for products like gasoline, gasoil is dependent on transportation demand, it’s dependent on manufacturing demand. Jet oil, jet fuel is dependent on people wanting and willing to travel again. Post COVID, particularly we are seeing there is a lot of vengeance traveling that the Chinese are talking about. They haven’t been able to travel for the last two years and we believe that’s going to lead to a lot more demand for jet fuel. So it’s different products demand is driven by different factors.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and the last question is, how has January been? I assume what the spot markets are doing in January?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So January, typically — you mean for products? Crude? What is the question?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

No, this is in general.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So for January, again, every season, January typically tends to be weaker than — as I’ve just said to one of the earlier participants, Jan, Feb are typically weaker than November, December. We are seeing a similar trend of that, both in tankers as well as in dry bulk. There is no reason to believe that, that trend will change and then we start seeing improvement from the month of March. Obviously, we are one and half months away — I mean one full month away from March. But there is no reason to believe that, that trend will not continue.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Okay. I think we can go back to the voice questions queue.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Samraj N [Phonetic] from Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited. Please go ahead.

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Yes, can you hear me?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yes.

Operator

Yes.

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Okay. Thanks for taking my question. Since Mr. Shiv said that we are very close to opex on the bulker side. I just wanted to ask you, sir, if you take the — I mean what’s the — basically what’s the all-in breakeven, if you take the G&A and the finance expenses? So can we presume that on the bulker side, we were negative on the net if you take the — on the net side?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

No, we’re talking about currently, not last quarter.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, no, even if you just take currently, you see you’ve got to have a vessel that is in the spot market. So if you take an — you have to take average earnings. So there are some vessels which you might have fixed 40 days ago, some vessels you have fixed six months ago, some you have fixed one week ago, like that. So if your question is, is the dry bulk division EBITDA positive. The answer is yes. Its EBITDA positive even today.

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Okay, and currently, the VLGCs are under pressure to take the AG West Coast route. So is that — is this also rubbing off on the Aframaxes and Suezmaxes rates?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Not to the same extent as I’ve just explained to somebody else that January, February, as an average earnings, typically tend to be lower than November, December. So, each of these sectors’ average earnings today are lower than what they were in the previous two months though they are still at incredibly profitable levels.

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Incredibly profitable, okay. So — and my last thing just on the sideline of the conference since you have such a wide knowledge on shipping industry, sir, don’t you think Shipping Corporation of India is the cheapest shipping stock going on now, especially if you take the cover of its real estate which is 1.5 times more than the current price and if you take the entire fleet NAV is coming free of cost, what’s your comments, sir? If you could just give a general view on that?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Honestly, I have not studied it, so I can’t give you a comment on Shipping Corporation. I haven’t done any homework on it.

Samraj N — Dwarka Share Brokers Private Limited — Analyst

Okay sir. Thanks, all. That’s all from our side, sir.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajesh Khattar, an Individual Investor. Please go ahead.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Hello? Am I audible?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yes.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Yeah, hi. You have already taken some of my questions from the chat and I have already written the next set of questions on the chat, but I’ll just read them out. So, one question is on the dividend payout. You have given excellent dividend in this year, which works out to be the highest dividend ever in the history of the company, but the dividend payout ratio works out to 15%. So, as a policy, how much payout ratio does the company want to maintain?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

I think broadly speaking, our payout ratio will be somewhere between 15% and 20%, give and take. That’s the current thinking. These things can change. But I think that’s where we are at the moment, somewhere in that range. It’s always a function also, obviously, you won’t do a 15% payout ratio if your profit is, just for argument sake, say, INR10 crores. Right?

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Yeah, okay.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

I mean then you’ll draw on your reserves and so on and so forth, so.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Yeah, okay. My next question is like on the gas carriers. You have the fleet with the highest average age. So when do you plan to sell the older ones?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, we still have plenty of life on the gas carriers. So there is no immediate plan to sell anything. As you know, gas carriers tend to have a longer life than conventional tankers. So there is no plan whatsoever at this stage to sell any of the gas carriers.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

So, how much longer life they typically have, like, is it like easily close to 22, 23 years?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Oh, much more.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

27 years.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So, yeah, if you see the company’s depreciation policy, it’s 27 years.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

But they go up to 30 years also. We have seen ships stayed up to 30 years.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Yes, yes.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

So you are nowhere close to selling of your ships due to aging in any of your segments, right? Or is any of the segment approaching the use-by date and you will have to look at selling some of them?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So we don’t have to look at selling anything at this stage, but obviously, as time progresses, let’s say, 12, 24 months, then some of the vessels will be hitting, not necessarily the end of their life, but what we are now seeing is private terminals and certain ports and customers are reluctant to take very old ships. Of course, in a tight market like today, they all make concessions. But in a more normalized market, then the utilization levels of some of these older vessels come off. But what you should never forget is that these older vessels sometimes give you the best return on capital or on book value, let’s put it that way.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay. I have just last two questions. One is, can you share the email ID for investor queries? If we want to reach out between the quarterly con-calls, how can we reach out, what is the email ID?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

You can find it on our website, it’s corp_comm@greatship.com but it’s on our website if you go to the Contact Us page.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay, just can you repeat that? corp_?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Comm@greatship.com. And if any doubts on it, just go to the Contact Us page, you will find it there.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay. Then you have already explained about the coverage of operating days, twice you have explained. But I’m still not clear on how to interpret, let’s say, if you can give an example, you have mentioned crude carriers coverage is 50%.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, that’s right. So, there are 90 days. So let’s say that you only have one ship. Okay? And your fixed it for — and let’s say that you keep fixing it for 45-day voyages. Okay? If you look at it on 1 April, 2022, and you’re looking for FY ’23, your coverage is 45 divided by 365, which is 12.5%. If you look at it on 1 July, 2022, it is 45 upon 270, which is 16% or whatever that number is, yeah?

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay, understood, understood.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Okay? Now you’re looking at it as 45 on 90, which is 50%.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay. So that means our LPG carriers are all booked out for the whole quarter.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

They’re all on time charter.

Rajesh Khattar — Private Investor — Analyst

Okay, so this does not indicate whether this is on spot?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

No, no. This is weather [Phonetic] spot. So if you’ve done a 45-day voyage, that counts as a coverage.

Operator

Mr. Khattar. Does that answer the question?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

I think we may have lost…

Operator

As there is no response, we’ll move to the next question which is from the line of Amit Khetan from Laburnum Capital. Please go ahead.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Hi, thanks for the follow-up. Just had a clarification on the offshore segment. So the rig that we have repriced, is my understanding correct that it’s currently off-contract and not earning anything and this goes into contract…

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, no, no. It is on contract, right? But it is on the older rate contract. Now, there was a tender, which allowed us to participate in it. So when the old contract terminates, which is in the second half of calendar — of this year, this calendar year ’23, the new rate will apply when it renews its contract.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Okay, okay, understood.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

It’s earning money.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Okay, so basically all our rigs are currently earning money, it’s just that one of the rigs is on the older contract which will get repriced in mid of…

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

It has already been repriced, but that earning — the repriced improved earnings will kick in when she enters the new contract, but all the four rigs are earning now.

Amit Khetan — Laburnum Capital. — Analyst

Got it, got it. Perfectly understood. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anurag Jain from Green Lantern Capital. Please go ahead.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity again. Just wanted a quick thought — your thoughts on this. So somebody did ask about SCI as a company. Would SCI be a good asset? And it’s on the divestment list, so would that be an asset you would evaluate for a buyout or something?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, we’re not in contention. So we didn’t put in that expression of interest, so, we’re not…

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Is this something of an asset that you don’t like. Is that why? Is that so or?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, we had multiple reasons, which we don’t obviously want to discuss on the call, but it was a decision that was collectively taken that we’d rather grow on our own.

Anurag Jain — Green Lantern Capital LLP, — Analyst

Perfect, that’s all. Thank you so much.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

We have a text question from Nikhil Jain of Zontro. He says, why do you think product rates have fallen so much? The next question is what would be the impact of the ban on Russian clean products on ton-miles? And third question, is China buying a lot of Russian crude thereby reducing ton-miles? The first question is why do you think rates have fallen so much?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So typically, again I’ve I’ve said this before, January just is always weaker than December. It’s typically the time of the year when there is a lot of refinery maintenance going on. And a lot of the [Indecipherable] gets filled up between November and December in anticipation of the winter season. So then there is a less immediate requirement for requiring that product, especially the heating end of the product and it’s just a few less cargoes that then determine what happens with the markets. Markets tend to exaggerate and I think we have seen in the past, we’ve seen data which tend to support that every incremental cargo increases the rate by between 10% and 20% and every one less cargo reduces by then. So you just have a few less cargoes and then ships quickly build- p and so on and so forth. But these things turn on a dime and we have seen this happen in October of ’22, where between October and November, on average, the average of October and the average of November, the market went up 3 times in just 30 days. So again, I think I shared with one of the other participants, seriously ignore these daily, weekly, monthly earnings.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

The next question was on what could be the impact on the ban on Russian clean products?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

So the ban the that kicks in on the 5th of February, we’ve got to see whether there is a market for the Russian products. Obviously, unlike crude oil, where India and China were the big beneficiaries and were the big purchasers of Russian crude, that’s not going to be the case for products. But there is talk in the marketplace that the product would find itself to Africa where there is a product shortage, it could find its way to Latin America, where there is a product shortage, but we don’t know yet, because the absolute date hasn’t kicked in. Obviously, if the Russians fail to find a market for its products, it means they will almost certainly get compelled to reduce their refining runs and once they reduce their runs, then obviously there is less product to move. So that too can happen. So we just have to wait and watch.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. The last question was, is China buying a lot of Russian crude thereby reducing ton-miles? Probably referring to either pipeline or Eastern?

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

No, so basically China has been buying a lot of Russian crude throughout. It’s not as if they’re buying more now, and they were buying less earlier. And in spite of China buying Russian crude, we’ve seen close to a 9% year-on-year improvement in ton-mile demand for crude oil. And this is in spite of China buying Russian crude. So, I won’t say that is a — obviously, they were not buying the Russian crude through pipelines, then the 9% would have gone up even further.

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I think that’s all the questions in text. Yeah.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Are there any further questions on audio?

Operator

We don’t have any more questions in the queue, sir.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Great.

Operator

Would you like to give any closing remarks, Mr. Shivakumar?

G. Shivakumar — Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, everyone. The transcript and the audio of this call will be uploaded on our website in the next couple of days. As always, we are available for your queries. Contact details are on our website. So please contact us if you have any requirements.

Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth — Deputy Chairman and Managing Director

Thank you all. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]