Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to The Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd Q3 FY26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. G. Shiva kumar, Executive Director and CFO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Yashaswi. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call to go through Great Eastern Shipping's results for the third quarter and for the nine months of FY 2026. I have with me Rahul Sheth. We will go through a presentation quickly first, and then we'll be happy to take questions. I will run through the presentation quickly. I'm sure you all would have seen it. It was uploaded yesterday, so that we can have a maximum time for Q&A. You would have seen the financial highlights. We had a net profit of INR 813 crore on a consolidated basis, standalone INR 650 crore. The net asset value has gone up again, and this has mainly gone up because of the operating earnings.
There's been no significant change in values of ships between September end and December end. This is all operating cash flows, which have helped to improve the net asset value. We have yet again declared a dividend. This is the 16th consecutive quarterly dividend that we are declaring. I won't go too much into the P&L. You would have seen this. We can go through it later if you have any questions. On a normalized basis, it's not too different from the reported numbers. Just to remind you, this is to take out the effect of the exchange rates and the derivatives that we do, and the derivatives are basically for converting our rupee debt into dollar debt, so that we match our debt and our assets.
Look, return ratios continue to be good. As I mentioned, NAV has gone up in the quarter, and it has gone up in the nine and 12 months as well. This is the industry format. Basically, for shipping analysts, it helps to know what were the voyage expenses, and therefore what is the time charter equivalent rate. Because voyage expenses, or what are called direct operating expenses, are a pass-through, they're part of executing the voyage. We start our discussions from what is here, marked as A, which is time charter equivalent. So when we talk of dollars per day, that is at this level, that is the time charter equivalent level. Business overview, there are a lot of details here.
Basically, the headline news is OPEC opened the taps again, which meant that there was, there was more cargo to be carried around, more crude cargoes to be carried around, and this was known before because they had a schedule which was laid out. Apart from OPEC, which was a move which was known since the middle of last year, there was also South America, which produced a lot of oil, Guyana and Brazil, produced about 1 million barrels a day more than in the same period last year. I'm talking of Q3 FY 2026 versus Q3 FY 2025. This oil is not necessarily getting consumed, it's going into inventory. Some of it is in floating storage as well, while it buys, while it looks for a buyer.
But the net effect is that markets were strong. Crude tanker markets were strong, product tanker markets also recovered in the quarter from where they were the previous couple of quarters. Asset prices were about 5% up, but when you adjust for age, et cetera, it's not too different. The order book currently has been creeping up as the markets continue to be strong, and ship prices have been strong as well. So the order book for crude tankers is currently at about 17% for crude and 19% for product tankers. Coming to dry bulk, again, this is a sector which saw some strength in, especially in the Capesize sector. This sector has also continued to be strong in January.
We had a small dip, and then it's picked up steam again, which is unusual because seasonally this is the worst quarter of the year, but markets have been reasonably strong for the last week or two. Again, iron ore trade did see substantial growth in Q3, about 40 million more of imports into China. Again, there is a lot of it is going into inventory at ports in China, so there seems to be some stocking up. Also, grain trade grew in Q3, and so bulk carrier asset prices were marginally higher during the quarter, and the order book is at around 12.5%. LPG spot earnings were strong.
Trade volumes were down, however, ton miles helped a little bit because U.S. exports were going to Southeast Asia instead of going to China through the Panama Canal, which means more, more miles. So as earnings were pretty strong, asset prices were flat, but at very high levels. The order book continues to be very high at 29%. I've already spoken about the asset price movement. The order book also I've mentioned. Again, it's creeping up. It was very low in 2023, 2024 for the crude and product tanker sectors, it has now gone up significantly since then. Still at pretty low levels compared to what it has been in previous highs.
Just to compare the order book with the old fleet, you can see the orange bar is the, what we would define as the old fleet, which is 20+ for all categories except LPG, and LPG is 25+. So in LPG, only 11% of the fleet is old, but the order book is 29%. In dry bulk and product tankers, they are more or less even, the old fleet and the order book. In crude tankers, the order book is at 16%-17%, while the old fleet is 24% of the fleet. Scrapping has been very minimal for the last 10 years, so we are talking of only about between 8% and 12% of the fleet getting scrapped in an entire 10-year period, which is very low.
That is a scrapping overhang which is there in the market, which is why you have such a high proportion of old fleet. Coming to the jack up market, sorry, coming to the jack up market, this is the international market scenario. Markets are showing some recovery. Saudi Aramco has come back into the market. Two years ago, almost two years ago, they had off hired about 24 or 25 jack up rigs, or they had suspended contracts for those rigs. A lot of those are going back, are being called back by Saudi Aramco, and that again is starting to tighten the market a little bit. And this is a slide, of course, of how many old rigs are there in the market, old rigs and old vessels.
The order book is extremely low because very few assets have been ordered in the last 10 years. For Greatship, because that's predominantly a time charter business, these are the repricings. We have one rig which is on a on a short-term contract in India itself. As it stands, her contract gets over in end of February, so we will need to find work for her. We are in discussions and bidding for contracts. The second rig, which is also on a short-term contract, comes off contract sometime in May, June, and we will see what to do about the future business for her. The vessels, there's only one which is up for pricing in this quarter, and there are four which are up for pricing in the next quarter.
So we have a lot of coverage for the vessels. This is on the breakup on the revenue days and the TC wise, I won't go too much into it. The net asset value, the growth over the last five years, we've seen this going up with a CAGR of 20% +, on both a standalone and a consolidated basis. And just to look at what happened between December 2024 and December 2025, you will see that the net asset value has actually gone up, even though we have paid out a dividend. You can see the fleet value reduction is INR 44 per share, and we paid out INR 28 per share in this period. However, the NAV has gone up, and that's because of the green bar, which is a cash profit which has been produced.
I've mentioned in the past that the net asset value converts into cash, and that helps to cushion it from a fall in the asset prices. Similarly for the consolidated NAV as well. Again, the stock price to consolidated net asset value, we are trading at about a 25%-30% discount currently. Again, showing that, we focus on timing the market. Last time we levered up in 2000, FY 2017, 2018, and 2019, from 0 net leverage, in the shipping business, we went up to $360 million of net leverage. And we've been net cash ever since middle of FY 2023, and now we are more than $500 million+ net cash. I won't go through these details.
These are the governance details and what we are doing on CSR and ESG. So that brings me to the end of the presentation, and we are happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon tab available on your toolbar or on the QA tab available on your screen. Kindly turn on your microphone when the operator announces your name. In order to ensure that management is able to answer queries from all participants, kindly restrict your questions to three at a time. You may join back the queue for follow-up questions. We'll take our first question from Deven Sangoi from Tej Investment. Please go ahead. Deven, please unmute your microphone and go ahead with your question, please. Sorry, since there is no response, we'll move to the next question from Rahil Dasani from MAPL. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity. First of all, congratulations on a good set of numbers. My list of questions was more around our offshore vessel segment, particularly.... I wanted to understand if you can share more about the OSV charter rate cycle that we are in right now. The understanding that I am getting is that there is a demand-supply gap, and the shipbuilding is slow, as well as the age of vessels in use already is high, which is even deepening that gap. So if you can explain, where are we in this cycle currently?
Yeah. Okay, so we'll have to just-- I'll have to just give you a bit of background to this space.
Mm.
So if you look at the offshore vessel sector, there are a large number of ships. There are about 3,000 odd ships. There are 500-700 ships in what we call cold layup. They've not been operated for a long time because, as you know, the offshore space had gone through a downturn.
Mm.
These vessels, we don't count as part of the operational fleet because they will have, someone will have to spend a lot of money to get them back into operations. As of today, we've seen no movement on that.
Mm.
When you remove those ships from the fleet supply, we then calculate what is the utilization of the industry.
Mm.
The utilization of the ships currently are at about 65%-66%. It's called marketed utilization. Now, while that, in an absolute terms, may seem a bit low, for our industry, that's actually quite good. It doesn't mean that ships are not being used, but what happens is that offshore vessels are generally fixed for long-term contracts, and therefore, between contracts, there is a gap, right? While business is being negotiated or vessels are in dry dock being serviced.
Mm.
Also, in this business, there are many pockets of the market. So unlike mainline shipping, the ships don't necessarily always move from one market to the other all the time because there is a cost of positioning.
Mm.
65% is generally, you know, relatively healthy. The highest we have ever seen, and this goes back before 2015, probably 2012-2014, when the markets were the strongest-
Yes
... this utilization number would have been closer to maybe 70-72, something like that, right?
Mm.
If you look at it from where we have been at the peak levels, that's actually relatively on the higher side.
Mm.
Secondly, we have also seen. You know, we have seen some small amount of ordering that's taken place in the last couple of years, but on an-
Mm
... overall fleet, it's still very, small. There, you know, technically, you know, when you look at the order book, there is a published order book that has been... but it's been there for a very long period of time, and those ships have not really gotten delivered. So we assume that, you know, sometimes what happens is, you know, people had ordered ships, but then the market had turned. People probably could not afford to take delivery of those ships, so they're lying there somewhere. You know, many of these are orders sitting in China, so it's quite opaque to know what's happening to those ships, whether those ships really exist.
Mm.
As you can imagine, no shipowners are really going to touch a ship probably lying half-built somewhere five years later, right? Again, you need to be very confident in the market to spend that money to take for delivery. So even the order book is very, very low, and because the order book is very low and has been low for the last multiple years, even the-
Mm
... fleet age has, you know, crept up over the period of time. So from a supply perspective, it is relatively constrained. We don't know what will happen on those 500-odd ships which are in cold storage. Like I said, they're unlikely to come back.
Mm.
Also, they will be relatively old. As of now, the demand is holding, and so the utilization levels are quite strong, and that's reflected in the earnings.
Got it. And if I were to just get more specific on this, post-2021, 2022, we saw charter rates doubling. Is that sort of growth still continuing, or has it slowed down, or even we are seeing a dip in growth somewhat in the charter rates?
No. So see, firstly, just to clarify on that growth-
Mm
... the charter rates were, you know, very low for a long period of time, right?
Mm.
Generating, you would have seen it in the results of Greatship.
Yes.
So, you know, the doubling happens because the base was so low. Okay?
Mm.
Now, you know, from these levels, it's not like as if these rates we can keep, you know, saying that, okay, they've doubled over five years, so they'll double again and double again. That is not going to happen-
Mm
... unless the numbers would be astronomical.
Mm.
All I can tell you is that over the last calendar year, about a year, year and a half at least, since the rates have gone up a lot, they have broadly held up.
Okay
... at these levels, and we've seen no dip. Again, you know, pockets of the market reduce a bit, a little bit in utilization here and there, but broad story, they've held up.
Got it. That's very clear. So, last one question before I get back to the queue.
Yeah.
ONGC, Reliance, and Cairn have a lot of incoming projects. For example, ONGC has planned 10 development wells, as well as the PRP9 project. Reliance has the KG-D6 block, plus the general offshore wind and the port construction demand. So what sort of offshore vessels demand are we seeing across our set of vessels, like the PSV, MPV, OSV? If you can quantify it in number of vessels that we can expect from these few pockets of demand.
Firstly, offshore wind, there's not much activity here.
Mm.
Secondly, on all these other oil projects, you have to remember that it takes a lot of time to develop-
Mm
... all these projects out.
Mm.
Even we do not have any knowledge of how many more additional vessels will come up. All we can say is that the market is relatively well-balanced, and
Mm
... you know, how it pans out over the next few years, frankly, is anyone's guess. You have to remember, even when they start drilling and, you know, when they start looking at these fields, a lot of the oil companies have to see how those fields develop, what potentials they see.
Mm
... how much money they're willing to put in. I don't think those companies would also be in a position to give you a firm number of how many more additional ships will be required.
G ot it. Just to get a more general understanding, for example, the KG-D6 block of Reliance came in 2024. How long does it usually take for the demand for our sort of vessels to come in ?
We won't be able to comment on that. We won't have sufficient knowledge to comment on this.
Got it. Okay, sir. That was helpful. I have a few more questions. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rajakumar Vaidyanathan from RK Invest. Please go ahead. Rajakumar?
Hello.
Please unmute your mic. Yes, please go ahead.
Hello?
Rajakumar, are we unable to hear you?
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Ah, yes, we can.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, I have two questions. The first question is for Shiv.
Yeah.
Shiv, I'm looking at your slide seven, where you have given-
Yeah
... this return of equity, capital employed, and so on and so forth. Okay, so just allow me to give me two minutes to explain the question.
Yeah.
So, Shiv, if I look at your three drivers of your bottom line or the profitability, they are your core freight earnings, profit on sale of ships, and then your other income comprising of your interest income-
Yeah
... and, then the FX gains, right?
Yes.
So, for a moment, if I back out your profit on sale of ships and the other income as well as the FX gain-
Yeah
... so your PBT comes to approximately INR 520 crore for the quarter, as against whatever INR 840 crore you have reported.
Mm-hmm.
If I take that as the numerator and then, you know, I'm using your equity as your replacement cost, because you're giving the number based on the book value, which is whatever INR 1,000 approx.
Mm-hmm.
If you have to replace it with your NAV of 1,566, which is working out to almost INR 22,000 crore.
Yeah.
If I annualize, you guys are close to... You're making around 10% pre-tax return.
Yeah, see, the only thing is, in the INR 22,000 crore-
Yeah
... then you'll have to... Sorry, are you done with your question?
Sorry, let me just, just one more minute.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Please go ahead. Yeah, yeah.
This is one part, so I'm looking at this way. Second thing, I know all your segments are firing well, crude, dry bulk, gas, all the freight earnings are doing really well-
Yeah
... you know, based on what we have put out.
Yeah.
So even in this scenario, if you guys are making only 10% return on the, you know, whatever the replacement cost basis-
Mm-hmm
... you know, that is my thing. And my only worry is if all these tailwinds that you have in terms of a better, you know, asset market compared to your book values, then the rupee depreciation. Currently, it is a tailwind for you because you are holding more cash than loan.
Yeah.
So if that were to kind of negate, because rupee is already depreciated quite a bit, so you-
Yeah
... may not have this tailwind go forward.
Yeah.
So the question is, have we seen the best of earnings for Greatship, you know, as of now? Unless you guys really do something about the business, you know, in terms of acquiring more ships, and also you are dependent on your the freight market.
Yeah.
That's my question.
So, couple of things. So first of all, one adjustment I would make. Fundamentally, I don't have a disagreement with the way you have approached it. But I would make one adjustment there. If you have taken out the other income, then you have to take out what results in other income, right? What you're trying to find out is, how much-
Yeah, yeah. I, I did that also, Shiv. So basically, I removed the cash because I didn't have the cash number. Now that you told, it's about INR 500 million, so it's about INR 4,500 crore.
Mm-hmm.
So if I back that out, your denominator is about INR 18,000 crore. So even then-
Okay
... your pre-tax is about 11%. From 10%, it moves to probably 11%.
Sorry, on a consolidated basis, we have INR 7,000 crore of net cash, which has to be taken out of there, which is INR 500 on the NAV. So we're talking about INR 15,000 crore. Again, you know, here and there, we can have 1% or 2%.
Yeah.
We're talking of INR 15,000 crore, which is the market value of the sort of business, okay? Which is about where it is. It's about INR 14,000 crore if you just take-
Mm-hmm
... the fleet values of shipping and offshore. So what we are saying is that you are making, and the number you put, and let's just say that we annualize the INR 500 crore, which is about INR 2,000 crore.
Yeah.
You're somewhere... It's not 10%, it's maybe 12%-13%. Okay?
Yeah.
But yes, it is true, because the prices are so high, you're not going to make a current yield on those- on the current high prices, which is also the reason why we are not investing today. If you are making significantly more, current yield on the ships at today's prices, we would be looking at investing more. So-
Yeah
... the point you made is correct, and it's also showing why we are not really that keen to invest at today's prices. What can also happen, of course, is that INR 15,000 crore can drop off. If the market drops, that market value of that fleet can drop off. But-
Okay
... yes, cash is a drag on the returns. And now let's look at the whole thing, right, including the cash. So you look at INR 800 crore on the INR 22,000 crore number.
Correct.
That is now bringing you closer to a, you know, to something which is not a very great return, which is being dragged down by cash. Eventually, we hope that this cash will go from earning 3% in dollars, which is what we earn, to earning to a ship which earns more than 10% in dollars. And that's what we are waiting for. We're waiting for that opportunity. And yes, it is not a great situation to have so much of our balance sheet in cash, but it's, hopefully it's temporary.
Okay. So in terms of the drivers, so, I mean, I'm just laboring on the same question, Shiv, sorry about that.
No, problem.
So, I think, since the rupee depreciation is almost kind of close to its peak-
Mm-hmm
... so it would be kind of pertinent that you, you folks look at the cash, deploying the cash quickly so that the return ratios, don't, you know, fall further.
Right.
And again, you know, it again depends on your core earnings as well, if, because given the volatile markets, the shipping market is doing well today. So if the markets-
Yeah
... have to turn for some reason, you know, things stabilize, which, you know-
Mm
... everyone is hoping for, I mean, which everyone wants either way.
Yeah
... but what I'm saying is, you know, you will lose the, all the tailwinds that you have currently today, all the three levers that we, which is firing for you today, you know-
Yeah
... then, you know, if all of them have to turn down, then, you know, it will kind of suppress the earnings go forward. So that's my only, humble submission here.
Yeah, yeah. See, on a current yield, ships make a decent return. So if we buy a ship today and earn today's earning at today's freight rates, you would probably make a 10% return on that $1 invested. The worry is that five years ago, before this market went up, especially for the tankers, the ship, equivalent ship value was 40%-50% below where it is today. Now, the question is whether you risk that drop in the asset price in the hope of making this 10% in current yield. That's the approach, you know, that's the thing that we have decided that we'll not do. So in fact, we tend to buy when the current yield is very poor, because that is what gives you the capital appreciation later on. When the markets are weak, earnings are weak.
You will remember that in 2018, 2019, we actually declared a loss, and that was because we bought ships when the market was very low, and we went out and bought even more. We levered up and bought. So-
Okay
... while it is tempting to convert some cash into an asset which is earning 10%+ return, that's not something that we are looking to do currently.
Okay. Yeah, so Shiv, the question from-
Rajak umar, may I request you to join back the queue, please, as we have other participants waiting for their turn?
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Siddharth Chauhan from 360 ONE Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, Shiv, and thanks for the opportunity.
Hi.
I have two questions: firstly, now we have net cash of INR 7,000 crore.
Yeah.
At what levels of cash, and obviously at these prices that you, as you rightly mentioned, you're not going to buy an asset, you're just going to replace an older asset with a newer one.
Yeah.
My question is that, what levels of cash would you start increasing, increase your dividend distribution to investors? That is my first question.
Yeah. So we have increased our dividend distribution. Between last year and this year, we were at about 17%-18%. We are now little about 20%, probably closer to 25% for this year. So that's one. The second is, actually, we have also dropped off a little bit in cash since then, because you would have seen we've done several transactions in the recent past. We've done some of these modernization transactions. So we've actually dropped our net cash position in the last month or so from in December. We are deploying some cash. And now, you know, whether INR 7,000 is a threshold, or INR 8,000, or INR 5,000, it's a matter of opinion. We believe that we can deploy this cash well in the next market downturn, and that's why we are retaining it.
In the meantime, we are paying out what we think are, are very decent dividends.
Understood. Understood. So that means, in case if this cycle continues for, let's say, like for the next two years, then we'll actually build up our cash balances. This is what I understand. Is it right?
Yeah, build up our cash balances to the extent of what we are not able to invest in our modernization. You know, we've been modernizing our fleet while we have not done capacity expansion. We've been selling our older vessels and buying some more modern vessels. So yes-
Right
... cash balances will build up to, till such time we believe that we are not—we may not be able to deploy the money in a profitably at a future cycle. But we are not close to that, not anywhere close to that.
Okay, understood. And, secondly, any plans to invest in LNG fleet? Because you see a lot of LNG ships which are under shipbuilding and coming, and there's a huge supply which is going to come up in the next few years. What is your thought on that?
So see, the LNG business is very different. What happens is, a lot of these LNG ships, firstly, they're very expensive, you know, so you can't just buy one ship. They're right now currently for $250 million a piece. You can't buy in the secondhand market; you have to buy new building. If you go for a couple, you're going to spend a substantial amount of your investable surplus just to do this business, which will take away from other businesses, right? Secondly, in LNG, what we have seen is the contracts are longer duration. They don't have the spot market as our traditional businesses. So what happens is, when you buy such an expensive ship and you get 10-year contracts, generally they become project financing kind of returns.
so what at least as of now, we see that that building will provide sub-optimal returns from tanker, bulker, LPG. So as, at the moment at least, we are not going to even consider that business.
Understood. Very well. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Deven Sangoi from TEJ Investment. Please go ahead. Deven?
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yes, we can hear you.
Yeah. Congratulations on a good set of numbers.
Thank you.
I have one question, that there's been a lot of news of late on the dark fleet on the crude tanker side, and, you know, various, you know, Europe, Russia-Ukraine, America, all are seizing this dark fleet. What's the impact on the freight rates, when such... you know, this has been a problem for crude market for a long and large part of this crude, which was sanctioned, was moving through this fleet. So how does it change the outlook in near and medium term, sir?
Yeah. We can at least tell you what has happened up until now. Since the war, which has been about now almost four years, whenever the U.S. or Europe or the U.K. have sanctioned these ships, they've gone out of the international trading fleet.
Yeah.
But at the same time, a large amount of the Russian trade has gone out. So you've got something gone out from the demand side, you've got something gone out from the supply side. And so the sanctions, of course, has had, had an impact, but for us, you know, the denominator, numerator have more or less moved together. Of course, there is a disruption of the Russian trade, where the inefficiencies of the trade, which we've explained before, has been a very large reason for the rise in the market. Now, the difference that we have seen over the last six months is that the sanctions have become a lot tighter, and because these sanctions have gone off not only on the vessels, but have also gone on people, have gone on refineries, you've got Nayara, which has been affected.
You've got pressure coming from the U.S., even on India taking in more Russian oil. That has had a very big difference, and the main difference has been that earlier Russian crude was still moving. You know, they used to export 3.5-odd million barrels before the war. They were doing that even during the war. However, in the last six months, we have seen that maybe 500,000-750,000 barrels per day of Russian crude is not being able to find a destination, largely because India is not taking that much crude. And because of that, eventually, oil needs to be, the refineries need to be, their demand needs to be met.
So that 750,000-odd barrels has been met from the international trading fleet, and so there has been an increased demand from countries like Middle East, South America, which is largely Brazil and, you know, Guyana and those kind of countries, and that has lifted the market. So if you've seen the last quarter, which is this quarter, October to December, and even as of January, the crude market has significantly risen based on this tightness. Now, how this all pans out over the next six months, nine months, is anyone's guess.
Thanks for-
We saw somewhere in the news. Of course, we don't have data on that, but we saw somewhere in the news that even Reliance is going to take another 150,000 of Russian barrels. So how that's all working, you know, frankly, we are not aware.
And so, today, the VLCC new build and the second-hand price of less than five years, the difference is only 5% or less than 10%. And a lot of smart guys or smart operators globally are switching the second-hand or the older ship for the newer one. Do you plan to do anything as far as the crude is concerned?
You mean switching? So, you know, it just depends on what age you're switching from, right?
Right.
So if you're selling a 15-year-old tanker and you're buying a 10-year-old, 5-year-old, it's just based on the mathematics that we are doing. The view that we take also is that, you know, if you buy a ship today, I think... I'm not sure exactly how, the data point that you are referring to, but there are a lot of large owners that have done a lot of new building, right?
Right.
And that new building comes over across multiple years, right? Now, they may be getting a new building because some of the older ship is going out, or they may be net expanding.
Right.
Largely as an industry, there's not been a major expansion over the last few years, so one would assume a lot of the older ships were, you know, coming off. But you know, it's just a matter of choice, you know, whether you would like to... You know, like, say today, if you've got a ship that is old and we buy a new building ship, then that ship comes three years from now, right?
Right.
Now, if that ship is coming three years from now, what will the charter rates be three years from now? If the bull cycle is currently present, and we don't know whether it will last six months, one year, two years, or three years, but the expectation is that if the market is strong now, better to get the earnings now, and therefore, the second-hand prices tend to rise disproportionately to the new building prices in a strong market-
Oh
... and it tends to work the other way around in a weak market. Has that answered your question, or?
Yes, yes, I got it.
Yeah
... last question, why is the scrapping, despite of more than 18 years fleet, both on all the sides, you know, whether you take it dry bulk, wet bulk, or even, you know, crude, it's pretty high percentage what we have seen in last three decades, but the scrapping doesn't happen.
So basically-
What's your plan?
... what happens is, so see, you know, whenever shipowner is coming to a survey, which you know, at the older end, it's every three years. You have to put in a lot of money to do, pass the surveys. If you can make up the operating costs and the dry dock costs, and the markets are substantially stronger than that, then owners tend to pass the survey. There are certain protected trades, like, say, in the dry bulk trade, where you can sell. You know, maybe those trades are not available to people like us, but, you know, we can sell an old ship, you know, players like us, to another player who has a protected trade and run a very old ship.
Okay.
The dry bulk fleet is not as old as the tanker fleet. In the tanker fleet, we've seen a large number of tankers, you know, land up in the sanction trades.
Yes.
So if you see, you know, the vessels that are carrying the Russian oil, a large percentage of them are the older tankers, you know?
Yeah.
So the market has to be conducive to support it. You know, eventually, products have to move, right?
Right.
And typically-
Thank you very much.
People tend not to scrap.
Yeah.
That's the main thing. When rates, if rates drop, then you'll see ships getting taken out.
See, because scrapping can happen for two reasons, right? One is that, you know, ships do reach a particular life where, you know, beyond which it's difficult to trade. But, you know, we don't see 18-year-old ships really being scrapped. Now, between 21, 22, 23, you know, you can play on the margin a bit. You know, if the market is strong, the oil majors, the terminals, everyone will take the ship because no one wants a shortage of the ships.
Okay, sir. Thank you very much. All the best, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Kirtan Mehta, from Baroda BNP Paribas Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yeah. Hi.
Yes.
Yeah, we can hear you clearly. Yeah.
I just wanted to understand your perspective in terms of the crude price has sort of jumped to around $70 level, indicating a potential sort of the risk on the Iranian barrels, as well as some of the disruptions in the U.S. From the shipping side or ship-crude ship tanker rate, are you also seeing similar risk getting priced into the shipping tanker market?
Nothing has happened on freight rates, related to this, so this hasn't had an impact on freight rates. Obviously, it will be a big event for tanker markets but nothing has happened.
No, we've not seen really any correlation between the two.
Or Iran risk. If Iran risk is getting priced into freight rate.
No, no, not yet.
Sure. Another question was about the cash that we have been managing. Are we seeing any signs of some of the markets opening up during FY 2027? Any green shoots, early green shoots?
Honestly, it's very difficult. As of today, the prices are not at our levels. But to make a forecast in FY 2027, what those price levels will be is anyone's guess.
Right. The, probably the last question was about basically the way we show is that at a console level, our stock price is probably around 25% discount to the underlying NAV. But if we adjust the cash from the NAV, which you mentioned it, around INR 500 per share, then the-
Mm
... actually, the discount is much wider on the ship prices, which is a variable which could be probably of the order of 40%-50%. So is this more sort of reflecting the mid-cycle value of your shipping asset in your view? Or is it a discount to the, when the mid-cycle shipping value at this point?
If it is 40% below, is that number correct?
Yeah, it's below the mid-cycle value.
Yeah, it's-
It's probably mid-cycle.
Yeah, it's probably mid-cycle. If you take...
Yes.
If it is 40%, then yeah, then yeah.
Probably.
Sure, sir. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take a follow-up question from Rahil Dasani, from MAPL. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity again. I wanted to pick up one of the points from your introduction. If you can share more into what you said about Saudi Aramco?
Mm
... them giving back the rigs two years back, and now they are procuring it again. I, it wasn't really clear for me. If you can explain it more better, is it only rigs or all offshore procurement had stopped two years back and now it's coming back again? If you can share more into that.
Offshore procurement will be a very large topic. Calculating that entire data and as for share, that would be impossible. But-
No, of course, what I mean is our set of vessels, AHTS or PSV.
So I mentioned to you earlier, you know, on the offshore utilization, right? Vessel utilization.
Mm.
I can share with you a similar statistic on the jack up rigs, right?
Okay.
Again, on the market and without using the cold lay up jack up rigs, right? The utilization is about 85%, 84%, something like that, right?
Mm.
The peak that we've seen historically is about 90%.
Mm.
That 5%-6% is, you know, the gap between where we are today and the top of the market, in terms of the utilization.
Yeah.
Now, that 5%-6% on 440 rigs is only about 20-30 rigs, right? Thereabouts.
Okay.
So we saw that Saudi Aramco had taken a large number of rigs pre-2024, and then they... You know, there was some internal discussion, and they had a capacity, they had declared, that they would like to increase their max capacity of production from thir-
Mm
... from 12 million to 13 million barrels, which is why they have taken a large number of rigs.
Mm.
Then in January 2024, they said: "We are going to reduce this 13-12 million." That's why they released some of those rigs. I think they released about 30-35 rigs, something like that.
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
Now, what they have declared is that 12 million barrels and this, we have to remember, Saudi declares a max production capability.
Mm.
As of... But in history, they have generally not produced, for a sustained period of time, more than about 10, 10.5 million barrels per day, okay?
Okay.
As of today, they have still kept their target of 12 million barrels. They have not increased it to 13.... but the difference is that two years ago, they were physically producing 9 million barrels per day, okay?
Mm.
Today, they are producing 10.5 million barrels per day. One of the impacts of that has been on the crude tanker market because they're exporting a lot more oil.
Mm.
So if you see how much Saudi Aramco has actually produced and exported over the last, frankly, 15, 20 years, right?
Mm.
It is now close to its peak, which is $10 million-$10.5 million.
Okay.
Now, maybe they could increase it a little bit more for short periods of time, but not sustainably.
Mm.
So we are seeing the first green shoots in their change of policy, where they're-
Mm
... saying, "Let's take nine more additional jackup rigs," which are going to be taken across the calendar 2026. The exact timelines, as you can imagine, they don't declare it, but, you know-
Of course
... what happened to some of those rigs that they let off, you know, they have this clause where they can suspend the rigs, but they don't eventually, they're not redelivering it to you, you know, to the owner.
Right.
The rates may be zero, but, you know, they are, like, on standby. They're waiting there, and they've given some notices to those owners to come back. So nine of those rigs are coming back, which increases the utilization by 2%. So there are some green shoots in that market tightening further, but again, as you can imagine, you know, how Saudi Aramco decides how to change its CapEx plans, you know, that can change, you know... Those internal discussions, we can't be privy to.
Of course. But in line to the procurement of the rigs, are we also seeing a proportionate procurement of other sort of vessels excluding the rigs in the offshore segment from Aramco?
You know, we didn't see the utilization of the offshore vessels actually coming off in the last two years.
Mm.
That is mainly because, you know, the number of rigs you have, you need to have a proportionate number of vessels. That clearly is there. But even though the rig count came down, we didn't see the vessel count coming down, mainly because the vessels are also used for additional activities. You know, they are already used on producing wells. They're also used to lay construction cables, pipelines, et cetera. You know, there are a lot more activities happening in the sea. So because of that, we didn't actually see those utilizations come off.
Got it. And another thing is, how easy is it for a new incoming competitor or peer to buy these vessels and just start competing in tenders? Or is there some long approval process from the side of our customers, like ONGC or Reliance or Cairn, or some other complexities to enter this offshore segment and compete with us?
The private charters... See, firstly, we have to depend on how much liquidity is there in the market to actually buy these ships.
Mm.
You know, as we mentioned earlier, the order book has not been a lot.
Mm.
For the last seven, eight years, it's very difficult to get modern assets, right?
Mm.
So the liquidity would be relatively low if you wanted to buy a lot of second-hand ships. Maybe you have to pay up the price.
Mm.
And secondly, a lot of the private charters, yes, it's, you know, in tender-driven businesses, generally, more peer participants can participate.
Mm.
But with private charters, there is a level at which, you know, operators prefer to work with owners who they know about, and there are sufficient owners with a long history, where, you know, they don't have to maybe go to a new player because there's a, you know, shortage of supply, and the new owner has the vessels and so... You know, if that kind of situation arose, then it would be easier for the oil companies to say, okay, you know, I don't have the ship, l et me go to new incumbent players.
Mm.
Of course, new incumbent players can always come into the business. No one can stop them from that.
Yeah.
It's not like as if there's such a barrier that they could not bid for those contracts at all.
Of course. No, but from what I understand-
Rahil, I request you to join back the queue, please.
Oh, it's fine.
Sure.
Let him just finish this question. I think he just had a-
All right
... leading question.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Thank you. So the understanding that I got from the marine insurance industry is that usually to enter these sort of customers, like ONGC, like Cairn, like Reliance, the tender requirements, the tender requires a time limit or contract period of experience of a similar contract of maybe 3-4 years. Is that the right understanding, or is that-
That is right.
That is-
You need certain amount of experience. Correct. That is correct.
Or you need a partner who will-
Yeah
... provide that experience. If you are completely new, you need a partner who will-
Tie up with you to give you that experience.
Yeah.
But you know, even on the jack up rigs, right?
Mm.
Even if you're tendering into the ONGC contract or even if you're tendering into some other place in the world, it's not as simple because, you know, so what happens is, those rigs have to sit on the seabed, and there are a lot of additional equipment, you know, the design of the rig, et cetera, et cetera. Those adjustments need to be made. They can happen, but they happen at a cost and a time. So there is certain barriers, you know, to moving, and therefore, someone who's already in that region could be slightly more competitive than a new person who wants to enter. And if you go to countries like Malaysia, Kuwait, or these other countries, then they have local partner rules, so you have to look at those also aspects.
Nothing is impossible, but they all come up with its own risk, its own cost.
Got it. Perfect, sir, this helps me out a lot. Thank you.
Great. Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We'll take some text questions. There's a question from Harsh C, an individual investor: "What's the spot versus time charter breakdown for shipping segments? What were segment-wise TCE, and how do they compare to average benchmark segment earnings during the quarter? Based on last quarter's call, understand short-term contract for one rig was ending in Q4 FY 2026. Has a new contract been arranged for sea?
Typically on the shipping segments, we have about between 15%-20% of the capacity on time charter. This is a normal situation in each of the sectors, which is products and dry bulk. In crude, we are 100% on spot currently. In LPG, we are 100%. In the last quarter, we were 100% on time charter. The segment-wise TCE is compared well with the benchmarks. We are in line with what most of our peers in international markets are earning, because these are pretty transparent markets. Sometimes you get the advantage of good timing, and sometimes you're unlucky. But we are more or less in line with the international peers. And yes, the short-term contract of the Great drill Chetna is scheduled to get over in end February.
We are in discussions with customers and potential customers on the next contract, and but we have not yet tied up anything yet. So hopefully we will tie up something on that soon.
Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from Amit Khetan, from Laburnum Capital. The question is: The strength in the crude tanker markets is not yet reflected in the product tanker markets, going by our realized rates. If the crude segment continues to be strong, will there be increased switching of vessels from product to crude, thereby tightening the market for the former?
Yes. The answer is yes, there will be increased switching. We have already seen switching in LR2s, which are the most common vessels to move between crude and product trade. So there's been a significant amount of switching from LR2s to Aframax trade, which has now pushed up the LR2 rates as well, because then the LR2 market has tightened. The MRs don't switch so much, therefore they have not... That impact has not yet come on the MR tankers. But on the LR2, certainly the impact has come after the switching has happened.
Thank you. The next text question is from Rajakumar Vaidyanathan, from RK Invest. The question is to Mr. Rahul: As the financial year 2025, 2026 comes to an end, what are the areas which has actually done ahead of your expectations? What are the areas, strategies that have gone behind or below your expectations? What are the plans regarding foraying into container segment?
Okay. For FY 2026, clearly the outperformance has been in the crude sector. You know, LPG has also surprised us to the upside, but we've been fixed on contracts. The charter rates that we fixed out have been very good, but the spot market continues to remain strong. Dry bulk, on the other hand, you know, in the last quarter has been much stronger. We've been in the spot market, so we've been able to take advantage of that. Some of the data points, at least as of, you know, the beginning of the year, were pointing to a slightly weaker market, but the market has remained quite strong across the board for the Capes and the Sub-Capes. On the container space, so as of now, we have no plans.
The container markets, we can just share one interesting point, which we have not actually seen for a long period of time, is that the freight box rates, and that's the rate... So, you know, in the container business is slightly different from the traditional shipping businesses that we are in, where you've got liners, you know, you've got the companies like MSC, Maersk, et cetera, and then you've got potential players like us. We are called tonnage providers. We give our ships to people like MSC and Maersk, and Maersk, MSC sell the box rates to, you know, companies like Amazon, et cetera, that want to move goods all across the world. So we have seen those box rates come down substantially over the last year and the year before that.
But we have seen that the rates that they're willing to pay the tonnage providers staying unusually strong, and that difference is probably at the highest differential we have seen over a long period of time. Now, whether the box rates will come up or whether the charter rates will come down again is anyone's guess. The fleet supply on the container side is very strong going forward, so maybe, you know, maybe, the, the tonnage rates come down and maybe the asset values of the tonnage, sectors come down. But, yes, and... Yeah, I think that's-- Yeah. Okay.
Thank you. We have a live question from Vikram Suryavanshi, from Phillip Capital.
Yeah, sure.
Mr. Suryavanshi, please go ahead with your question.
Vikram?
Vikram, can you please unmute your line?
Okay. Sorry, there are some technical issues. So I think, I'm not sure whether you answered it, because my internet was on and off. So particularly on offshore support vessel, we have seen good improvement and utilization of MP, SSVs now I think is fully. Is that like a long-term contract we have got, and how is the outlook on this, I think, vessel, offshore vessel side, if you can give outlook?
Yeah. So the MP SSVs are both fixed on short-term contracts. These are six to nine-month contracts. So they've got that employment. The outlook, Rahul mentioned earlier, the rates have gone up significantly from where they were, say, three years ago, and they continue to stay at those levels. They are pretty profitable. Again, this is not like a homogeneous market where you can say, "This is the rate for a mid-sized PSV." It depends on the kind of business, which you are doing and the specific requirements of that job. So the same vessel in two different businesses could earn, as much as $3,000 a day more in earnings. But the market continues to be strong, and it continues to provide good profitability.
Got it. And how would be the renewals in, gas segment coming up?
We have one vessel. We have contracted to sell the Jag Vishnu. She's come off her contract-
Mm-hmm
... she's operating on, currently she's doing a spot voyage, and we'll deliver her in the next month or two to the buyers. We have purchased a modern LPG ship, which has come with a contract attached, which goes till about a year from now. We have two vessels, the Vasant and Virat, which come off contract within the next six months. We will see at that time whether we want to put them on time charters or whether we want to run them on the spot market.
Got it.
We haven't had any recent pricings, if that's what you're asking.
Got it, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Vikram.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Rahil Dasani from MAPL. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Sir, considering the supply-demand gap that we are seeing in the offshore segment, are we looking to aggressively expand in this segment? Or do you think that in the current market situation, it's not a good strategy to add offshore vessels?
Offshore vessels, you know, we will look at ships to buy. It does not necessarily mean we may go ahead with it, because in the offshore space, you have to be a bit careful of the type of ship. You know, one of the concerns, like I mentioned, that not many ships have really come and delivered between 2016 and today.
Mm.
So, you know, by definition, you're going to buy a 10-year-old ship. Now, offshore vessels have also an age limit, all across the world.
Sure.
You know, in certain places, 15 years, in certain places, 21 years, mainly because, you know, they do vary. You know, there may be smaller ships than mainline shipping, but they've got more equipment on board, because the kind of activities they perform are far more complex. And because of those complex activities, and, you know, in the sensitive areas in which they operate, you cannot have any issues going wrong.
Mm.
Because, you know, the impact of that, you know, from a safety angle, from a fire angle, from a damage angle, is very, very high. So when we are looking at ships, and like I told you, you know, the liquidity is not very high in this space. So if we do look for ships, you know, it has to be the correct price, it has to be the correct age, it has to be the correct specification, and it has to also be in the correct region. Because let's say someone is selling a ship in a region where the demand may be a bit lower-
Mm
... and I have to pay a lot of money to move it all the way to an area where the demand is better, that also adds up a lot to the costs. You know, and in this business, it's not necessarily, you know, you know, in mainline shipping, ships are naturally moving from one place to the other. They're actually moving-
Mm
... all across the world. In this business, in offshore, it is much less so. And so you need a lot of tick boxes to happen. But if we do see the opportunity, you know, of course, you know, we may look to buy a ship or two.
Got it.
A lot has to be, you know, signed off.
Makes sense. And just one last question from my side. I'm a bit new to this industry, but I know that the last cycle peaked out in 2015, 2016. So if I were to compare that cycle to our current cycle, where again, the rates have spiked, and I know the rates, the charter rates as of date are not close to what they were in 2014, 2015. But what led to that drop post 2015? Was it new ship building, or what was that reason, and how is the current timeline different to that, if at all it is?
So in 2014, offshore vessels are not too far off from those levels.
Mm.
But on the rigs, there is a bigger gap. Compared to that, you know, in those days, the rig rates were substantially higher.
Mm.
But you know, what exactly happened was that, you know, from. You know, just to give you a bit of history, right? You know, all the oil originally was onshore, and then over the years, onshore oil started plateauing.
Mm.
So everyone moved offshore, and that's why we saw in the beginning of the 2000s, you know, actually late 1990s, 2000s, a lot of activity started building up for the offshore space. Because all the incremental oil, to meet the incremental demand, had to come from the offshore fields. Then there was another development, which was shale oil, and shale oil.
Mm
... got produced in America. There was zero barrels, broadly zero barrels of oil being produced in America in 2000. And by 2014, there was 8 million barrels of oil being produced from those shale regions.
Wow!
Now, like I mentioned earlier, Saudi Aramco produces 10 million barrels.
Mm.
This was like a full Saudi Arabia coming up, all from onshore oil. Because they had so much more oil, the break-evens were lower, it was easier to produce-
Mm
... right? A large part of the incremental demand from 2014 till now came from onshore shale oil.
Mm.
Now what we are seeing is that a lot of shale oil is peaking out. There was a theory that all the shale oil can come up in other countries, you know, like U.K., which was a failure, China, which was largely a failure-
Mm
... Argentina is largely a failure. We are seeing some barrels coming from Argentina, but it's like 100,000-200,000 barrels, you know, nothing major.
Wow.
Over the last 10 years, they've not been able to produce that onshore oil. People have started realizing that you need now, you know, meaning oil demand. There was again, a worry that, you know, oil demand will peak, which has clearly not happened-
Mm
... and we don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. So therefore, to meet this gap, you need oil again, and that oil is again coming back to offshore.
Mm. Got it.
Yeah, is there a question or do you have one more?
Yeah. So are we worried... A very broad question, but are we worried about the cycle fizzling out in the next two, three years, or this is a much more stable place that we believe we are in right now?
Again, you know, difficult to say. You know, the way in 2014, Saudi Aramco changed its view, you know, it happened overnight.
Mm.
You know, so these kind of events do tend to happen. Our business is dependent on, you know, a few major players in the world and how they look at demand. But at least on the offshore vessel front, I can tell you in FY 2027, we are largely fixed out... at these rates, you know, at about 80% is our coverage. And most of our rigs also are covered for FY 2028.
Fair enough. Got it. That would be all for me.
The coverage is not as high as the offshore vessels, but we've got decent cover.
Got it. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. We have a text question from Rajakumar Vaidyanathan from RK Invest: With the recent developments in Venezuela, do you see any upside for the rigs market due to increased deployment or demand?
This will take very long to assess. You know, we don't know the condition of, you know, this... Venezuela used to produce 3.5 million barrels. They're now producing, like, under 1 million barrels. You know, all those wells, what conditions they are in, whether they're investable or not. Exxon actually made a statement saying that a lot of those fields are uninvestable. Because when you leave those kind of fields for long periods of time without taking care of them, you know, there is a change of, the geology below, where, you know, you could have more gas and therefore it is more difficult to extract, the oil out.
So, you know, you know, frankly, this, you know, people are have to go in the country, assess it, then see whether it's viable, and then only if they feel like it's viable, then only will they start asking for rigs. So this could be a very long time away.
Thank you. There's one more text question from Harsh C, an individual investor: With increased geopolitical uncertainties, does the management plan to move from current 100% Indian-flagged fleet to a mixture of Indian plus other flags? Same for largely Korean, Japanese-built vessels to more Chinese-built in the tanker segment.
Actually, it has nothing to do with geopolitical uncertainties. Sometimes for operational reasons, we have flown different flags. Our base fleet will continue to be Indian flag. So for operational reasons, we may do other flags for a small part of our fleet. When it comes to where the ships are built, if it's a good quality ship built in a good quality yard, we have no preference specifically for any country or of country of build of the ship. So what we are looking for is good quality ships at good quality prices, and we don't think of all of these other factors really.
Thank you. We have a live question from Shreyans Katani from SG Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. So I had a question on just trying to understand how you take a decision between going, you know, on time charter or doing a spot, you know, commercial rate on a ship, and like, do you like, is there a threshold IRR above which, you know, you just go time charter or? Just trying to understand the strategy.
You know, honestly, it's quite complex. From our historical understanding, we have seen that, you know, you are better off in the spot market than the time charter market. Because you know, what tends to happen is, you know, let's just take Suezmaxes, right? You know, you could fix out a vessel at $40,000 per day, and then the market does $60,000 even for a quarter, and it affects your breakevens for the charter rate for the entire period. And now, you know, in a market, you know, it's like the stock market, right? You don't know what the price is going to be tomorrow. You can take a view over a period of time, but, you know, on day-to-day fluctuations, you know, prices can be up 10%, down 10%. It's difficult to say.
But historically, it says that you're better off being spot, and that's the strategy we largely keep in mind. From a risk management perspective, and, you know, a bit of it is based on our own analysis, market view, et cetera, we do take time charter decisions, but we keep it on the margin. And as a business overall, you know, you can be, you know, you can take more time charter fixtures and be more financially leveraged, or you can be more spot market, you know, and then take the volatility of the freight rates and be financially, you know, be more conservative on the financial leverage, and that's the option we tend to prefer.
Got it. So, so I'm asking because, you know, as this cycle, you know, as maybe, you know, it's coming to a very long period of, you know, a super cycle, kind of, maybe not, not as big, but if there's certain prices that, you know, we can just lock in at good rates, is that something that you look at or no?
We do look at it, but remember, you know, if, let's say, the spot market on Suezmaxes could do $60,000 or $70,000 and you're fixing for a year, you have to take a much lower rate to get that. So, you know, the cover that you're getting is not coming free of risk, right? So it may look good on paper that I've taken a cover for a year, but I've given up a lot of upfront earnings. And the longer I go, the more steeper backwardation I need to take.
Got it.
Sometimes it's actually better not to take the cover, earn the earnings upfront, and take the volatility of the market when it comes.
Got it. Got it. That's helpful. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
That's all from my end.
Yeah.
Thank you. We'll take a follow-up question from Rahil Dasani, from MAPL.
Yeah.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity again. I really hope this is my last question. Yeah, I just wanted to get some understanding on the stimulation vessel. As of last year, the demand of these sort of vessels were very high, and what the customers of these vessels have been doing is they are procuring PSVs and OSVs and upgrading them to the stimulation vessels. So, how are we looking at this market? Because I believe India, as of date, has only five of these, and two are not in a functioning state, if I can say that.... So are we trying to focus on this segment? Because I believe the charter rates here are very healthy, and so is the demand.
We have got two vessels that are doing well stimulation work.
Mm.
But you remember, you know, the well stimulation, like, you know, like I said, the offshore market is very different from shipping.
Mm.
Because these vessels are very specific, you know, you have to get into negotiation with companies like Schlumberger, Halliburton-
Yeah
And those kind of companies. Then they work on a project. You know, sometimes the equipment for this well stimulation that they put on the ship, the equipment is theirs, it's not ours.
Mm.
But the equipment can cost more than the value of the ship, you know?
Mm.
You know, it takes like months for them to install it, you know, where your ship is being paid and they are not earning on that.
Mm.
So, you know, they have to have the project, then they will talk to players like us or others, you know, who they, you know, value to be partners with. And, you know, and then those projects come to fruition. It's not as simple to say, okay, you know, there are two ships less, so the demand is not being met, therefore we have to get them.
So we have-
These projects-
Sorry.
Yeah.
We have been operating one of our vessels as a well stimulation vessel for the last 10 years plus. So we've been in this market for quite some time. Another vessel went into this business last year. So we are very much there when... And because we are talking with these, you know, high-quality customers all the time, and of course, they are happy to deal with us as a high-quality service provider as well. When these opportunities come up, they are speaking with us as well.
All the... Yeah.
Got it. Yeah, that's helpful. And sir, like you said in the earlier response, that vessels with the age of more than 15 years are being less preferred due to several reasons. And based on our fleet age that we have shared in our presentation, I guess the anchor handling tugs as well as the PSVs, as well as the MPVs, are aged north of 15 years. So how is it affecting our ability to win contract from the likes of ONGC, Reliance, et cetera? Or is it not as much of an issue for us?
As of now, it's not an issue. We are able to, you've seen it from the earnings, we've been able to suitably employ them. Charters will also take a view, given that the market is aging, right?
Mm.
It's not like only we are aging and everyone else is not. If that was the case, then okay, fine, there could be a problem. But, you know, considering the whole industry is aging together, right, and we have very good relationships with, all, you know, ONGC, of course, government, but even some of the international private charters who can take any owner, we have very good relationships with them, even if our vessels are slightly on the older side.
Got it. So I guess it's more of a supply issue, and the preference would of course be more towards the younger vessels, if at all they are available.
That's right.
Got it. And on an average, considering the age of your offshore fleet, what's the optimum utilization you can achieve of the 365 days in a year? How many days does our fleet operate, and does it need more repairing or more docking time, or how does that work?
No, the amount of extra repair time that it requires to a newer ship is on the margin. We keep our ships very well maintained, and, you know, we spend a lot of time and effort to make sure that we limit the downtime. And, you know, whenever the statutory surveys are taken, are undertaken, from an older, newer ship, there's very marginal difference in time, but we do spend a lot of money to ensure they're kept in good nick, so that, you know, during the period where they're operating, we have very, very limited downtime.
Got it. Got it, yeah. That's the final last question for me. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Rahil.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have a text question from Vinay M: "Significant free cash flow has been generated since your last share buyback. Why did you choose to issue dividends rather than create additional value for shareholders by more pursuing aggressive buybacks? This especially when buyback price could have been easily been way below the NAB.
Yeah, so, we have chosen dividends because this is something that goes to every shareholder. Buybacks go to the shareholders who tender in the buyback. We've also had this issue in the last few years, where the tax treatment of the buyback has made it somewhat unviable as an option. So, it is something that is there in our minds at an appropriate price, just as we would like to buy ships at an appropriate price. We look at buybacks as a replacement for the capital allocation decision. If we can buy the stock with the underlying ships at a certain price, then that is how we compare buybacks themselves. So it is not a way for returning cash. If we are to return cash to shareholders, it is by way of dividend.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Shiva kumar for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, everyone. That was an interesting session. As always, the transcript will be up in a couple of days' time. We will also be posting the recording of this call. Our investor relations and corporate communication contacts are in our presentation. Please reach out if you want to meet to discuss anything further. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. On behalf of the Great Eastern Shipping Company, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now exit the meeting.