Welcome to Himalaya Shipping Q3 Investor Presentation. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the Q&A, please press five-star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to CEO Herman Billung and CCO Lars-Christian Svensen. Please begin.
Thank you, Operator. I'm here together with my colleague, Chief Commercial Officer Lars-Christian Svensen, and I'm Herman Billung, Contracted CEO of Himalaya Shipping, and we will take you through first some highlights, then a financial update, a company update, and then Lars-Christian will take you through the market and how we see the present situation and the future. I kindly ask you first to pay attention to our disclaimer, and then to the highlights. In the third quarter of 2024, all delivered vessels generated total operating revenues of $39.2 million, an average Time Charter Equivalent of approximately $36,800 per day. Net income of $10.7 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $31 million for the quarter ended September 30th, 2024.
Conversion of index linked charters on Mount Blanc and Mount Neblina to fixed charters from 1st July 2024 to 31 July 2024, and on Mount Blanc and Mount Neblina and Mount Hua from September 1, 2024 through September the same year. During the quarter, we made an acquisition of 40% of the issued shares of 2020 Bulkers Management AS to fully align the management functions with Himalaya Shipping for $3.2 million. Payment of cash distributions for May, June, July, and August 2024 of $0.04, $0.05, $0.06, and $0.07 per common share, respectively. Some subsequent events: we converted Mount Blanc back to index linked charter rate from October 1st, 2024, and we declared a cash distribution for September and October 2024 of $0.10 and $0.04 per common share, respectively.
We have executed an addendum to the Drew Revolving Credit Facility up to $10 million, extending the timeframe to drawdown from the facility to December 31st, 2025, and the latest repayment date to December 31st, 2026. Then I turn to the financial update. We had an increase in operating revenues of $8 million during the quarter due to full quarter operation of all 12 vessels. Average Time Charter Equivalent gross of approximately $36,800 per day in Q3 2024 versus $34,600 per day in second quarter 2024. This against the cash break-even Time Charter Equivalent estimated to be approximately $24,600 per day. We had an increase in vessel operating expenses of $0.9 million in the third quarter due to additional three vessels delivered during the second quarter. Average vessel operating expenses of approximately $5,900 per day per vessel in Q3 2024 versus $6,000 per day in the previous quarter.
G&A expenses remained consistent in the third quarter 2024 from the previous quarter at $1.3 million. We had an increase in interest expenses by $2.3 million in the third quarter of 2024 due to a higher average loan principal outstanding following the sale and leaseback financing of the three vessels that were delivered during the second quarter of 2024. Increase in operating profit by $6.2 million in the third quarter. Net income of $10.7 million in third quarter 2024 versus $6.9 million in the previous quarter. Adjusted EBITDA of $31 million in the third quarter, an increase of $7 million over the second quarter same year. Then just a few comments related to the balance sheet. Net cash generated by operating activities in the third quarter of $16.5 million.
Net cash used in investing activities in third quarter was $0.1 million, primarily relating to the acquisition of the aforementioned 40% equity in 2020 Bulkers Management AS for $0.3 million, offset by cash rebates on new buildings of $0.2 million. Net cash used in financing activities in the third quarter was $16.8 million, consisting of payment of cash distributions paid of $9.7 million, loan repayments of $6.4 million, and payment of deferred loan costs of $0.8 million. Minimum cash balance required under the sale and leaseback arrangements of $7.6 million shown as part of cash and cash equivalents as of September 30th, 2024. Vessel and equipment decreased primarily due to the quarterly depreciation of $7.3 million during the quarter. Equity method investment relates to the acquisition of the 40% equity in 2020 Bulkers Management AS for $0.3 million.
Decrease in short-term and long-term debt was mainly due to loan repayments of $6.4 million, offset by deferred finance cost amortization of $0.7 million. $10 million available to drawdown under the revolving credit facility with Drew Holdings Limited. Then just take through some key financials year to date. Operating revenues of $94 million on all delivered vessels. Average time charter equivalent earning of approximately $34,300 per day gross, as I said, is on aggregate for the first nine months of 2024. Vessel operating expenses of $17.1 million, average vessel operating expenses of approximately $6,000 per day per vessel. G&A expenses of $4 million, including $0.4 million in share-based compensation, $1.3 million in management fees, $0.7 million of D&O insurance, $0.6 million of employee-related costs and director's fees, and $0.5 million in legal audit and accounting fees.
Interest expenses of $33.4 million on the sale and leaseback financing net of interest capitalized. Operating profit of $52.6 million and a net income of $20 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA of $71.8 million. Then a few words about the company, how we stand at the moment, a company update. The entire fleet, apart from one vessel, is fixed on index. A premium of $42.25 on average compared to the Baltic Cape Index, which we believe is the highest premium in the industry, plus the scrubber fit. So in other words, we have 11 vessels on index linked charters with strong counterparts and one vessel fixed, Mount Norefjell, which was the first vessel they delivered to us at $30,000 per day gross, including scrubber benefit.
The next slide is showing the growth and the evolvement of EBITDA since the third quarter of 2023, and to the right, the dividends paid so far in 2024. We firmly believe that we ordered at the right time, and we finance long-term at the fixed price. With the current valuation, we believe today to order a similar vessel, you would have to pay in the region of $95 million against our original order price at $71.6 million, which gives us a theoretical loan-to-value of 64%, and to derive at our cash break-even, we mentioned the long-term financing, where we have a fixed bareboat day rate at around $16.5 per day.
At the scrubber financing, at the estimated OPEX and the estimated SG&A, we derive at the cash break-even of about $24,500 per day, which when we kind of subtract the estimated scrubber benefit when sailing and the earning premium, derives at the cape size index cash break-even rate at $16,300 per day. We have a solid dividend capacity. This slide shows free cash flow per share based on various cape size indexes, and I think Lars-Christian will come back to our market view, but there is indeed a potential for some really nice dividends going forward. I think what describes and the most important thing for Himalaya, apart from the very simple business model, is the buzzword is really capital discipline. We have an attractive cash break-even, full alignment between shareholders and management. The sponsors own one third of the equity.
We do not have any reinvestment plans, and we have the youngest fleet in the industry. Cash flow from operations target to be distributed in monthly dividends, and we have already announced nine monthly dividends and with $0.10 for the month of September, and I just mentioned that we will pay $0.04 for the month of October, so then I leave the word to my dear colleague Lars-Christian, who will take you through some market update.
Thank you, Herman. We are soon closing out on a solid 2024, which has averaged $24,000 per day on the Baltic Index. That's up over 70% year over year. Taking history into account from 1990, we are entering into strong seasonality, as you also can see from the right-hand graph. We will in this presentation illustrate why we believe, even though we had a solid 24, the next few years will hold more potential.
Capesize vessels have seen a large increase in ton-miles over the last years. So far in 2024, the Capesize Newcastlemax market has enjoyed a ton-mile increase of 5.4%. This has largely been driven by increased iron ore volumes from Brazil and more bauxite from Guinea to China, but there are more to come. The Simandou iron ore mine, commissioned in Guinea, will commence their export of iron ore next year. During a 36-month ramp-up, they are on schedule to export 120 million tons of iron ore to the market. In addition, Vale will increase their mining capacity in Brazil, providing an increase of 50 million tons. This means a total of 170 million fresh tons anticipated to enter the market in the next few years.
If we make the assumption that these volumes will be carried on Newcastlemaxes, these two factors alone will absorb an entire equivalent of 150% of the current order book, and while we're on the subject of the order book, the supply of new ships in the Newcastlemax and Capesize space is very limited. We currently have a 25-year low order book, and as you can see from the right-hand graph, our segment has by far the lowest order book to fleet ratio. A large dry bulk carrier is a relatively low margin product for the shipyards, which also means that the yards favor building container ships, tankers, and gas carriers.
In addition, the previously mentioned segments had favorable market conditions prior to the Capesize in Newcastlemax market, which occupied the various shipyards with capacity to build ships of this size prior to the large dry bulk market's end. Not only are we looking at a low order book, but we also have an aging fleet in need of replacement. 14% of the current fleet was built before 2009, and 50% of the current fleet was built between 2009 and 2015. That means 60% of the fleet will be over 20 years in 2033.
However, as we addressed earlier, with the majority of the yard capacity being full for these types of vessels until 2028, it will be close to impossible to build meaningful fleet capacity to reduce the average age of the fleet, not to mention staying within the increasingly strict environmental and regulatory framework in place to reduce emissions and to comply with health and safety. To round off this presentation, it's also worth mentioning that an aging fleet would need maintenance, in this case, dry dock. Every fifth year, a vessel needs to go into dry dock to be maintained and thus renew their trading certificates required to be in service. 23% of the total Capesize Newcastlemax fleet will be required to dry dock in 2025. That is a 52% increase year over year.
Historical dry dock data for the entire Capesize Newcastlemax fleet from 2015 until 2024 shows that a five-year dry dock takes 13 days on average, a 10-year dry dock takes 16 days on average, and a 15-year-old dry dock takes 19 days on average. Applying these numbers to the entire fleet, we anticipate a total between 2%-3% capacity will be taken out of the market over the next two, three years. In conclusion, there are more demand and ton-mile coming. We have a 25-year low order book, an aging fleet in need of replacement, which seems unlikely due to the scarce yard capacity, and 23% of the total fleet to be affected by dry dock in the coming year alone. Considering these factors, we see solid upside potential from today's levels as we soon enter 2025.
Thank you very much, and I will now hand the word back to the operator.
Thank you. We'll now start the Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing five star again. There'll be a brief pause while questions are being registered. And the first question will be from the line of Frode Mørkedal from Clarksons. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Thank you. Hi, guys. I guess first on the market, Herman, your crystal ball has a reputation of clarity. At least that's my experience over the last 15 years. So I'm just curious, what does it show you for particularly Q1, right? So when I look at the FFA market, it's a few weeks ago, cape was at $17K, today just below $15K.
What's your view in the near term here?
I mean, Q1, as we all know historically, is the weak season. What happened this year is kind of the contrary, rather. We believe that, I mean, there's always a lot of uncertainty related to Q1, but personally, this is my view. I think what the present FFA market is indicating is, I would say, on the weak side, I see upside, but usually we kind of don't, even though we have our crystal balls, we wouldn't give you exact numbers. But personally, I am of the opinion that there is upside from what the present FFA market is indicating for the first quarter. And what also Lars-Christian mentioned is that it's been in a way in a bit kind of flattish 2024, but Q1 surprised on the upside.
We have indications that December could be quite interesting from Brazil on the iron ore side, but if that is kind of moving into Q1, it could be an interesting first quarter. And usually also in the first quarter, that's when we typically get most of the deliveries, but where the order book is at the moment, that doesn't really drag the market down. So that's what we believe at the moment.
That's good. And hopefully we'll get some positive macro news tomorrow from China, right? So maybe that helps as well, you know, fiscal stimulus that is. One thing when I look at my email box, people are asking about is this investment into the management company. So all the questions are basically, you know, first step in a wider M&A basically. Anything you could say about that? What's your thinking here?
You say between the two companies?
2020, yeah.
No, that's not really on the agenda. This is just to align the management functions. And given that we have, that obviously that the size of the Himalaya fleet has grown quite a bit, and it's just to have an alignment in the management functions. But there are no, the capital structure and cash break-evens, etc., as you know, quite different. So we have no plans to merge the two. So this is just related to the management company.
Okay, that's good and clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Frode. The next question will be from the line of Jesper from Arctic Securities. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Hello guys, this is Christopher, not Jesper. Can you shed some light on recent development in the Capesize index?
How much of the drop we have seen in recent weeks is due to normal seasonality? And are you seeing a lot of effects due to EGA still not exporting bauxite out of Guinea?
I'll leave that to Lars-Christian.
Thank you, Christopher. You know, I think the drop that we've seen over the period now, the last three weeks, is a mixture of several things. I think the Chinese stimulus disappointment was the kicker of it. The Capesize did very well before any talks of stimulus, but the expectations were high, which impacted the sentiment negatively. At the same time of this, we had the large funds selling FFAs in volumes, which led to a sort of a tail wagging the dog scenario where the FFAs dictated the physical short-term freight.
But now it seems that this balance has been restored and we see the physical leading the charge over the FFAs again. We also noticed that we had less coal on Capesize due to the Panamax has been quite desperate for business. So it's no surprise that the smaller sizes are trading lower due to the lack of the solid sort of structural trades. But we note with interest that they have been responsible for quite a few Capesize splits in the month of October. Regarding your questions on EGA, we still see that last week Guinea had the highest exports they had since 2020 in a particular week. So EGA accountable for 14 million tons of the total, it's a small percentage in what seems to be quite a hefty operation continuing out of West Africa at the moment.
Okay, perfect.
On the dry docking side, as you mentioned, it's quite interesting potential effects into 2025. What do you assume there on dry docking days in your calculation? And do you see the need for the 15-year-old vessels to do a lot of efficiency upgrades in order to comply with regulations? And how might that impact days in dry dock?
Yeah, a 15-year dry dock usually is quite substantial. On average, I mentioned it has about 16 days. Obviously, it's quite individual as to which ship who needs steel reinforcements, etc. But with a 52% increase year over year in dry dock, I also think we're going to see delays in dry dock ports. It's a massive program. Remember, I assume the most clever owners out there have been booking dry docks in Q1 due to the historical lower market there.
I think it's going to be quite a congestion in the yards as well for this particular dry dock scenario. And what we do like about this as well is now we're starting to have visibility. We talked about the order book before. We have the Vale mine upgrades plus the Simandou. And with this, we're going to actually have a negative fleet growth until 2028, which bases the visibility we have today. So we're looking with interest into next year and the next years. And I think this dry dock impact will have a larger effect than most people have calculated for.
Okay, thanks a lot, Crossing Fingers.
Thank you, Christopher.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. We'll now have the next question. Please state your name and company.
Your line will now be unmuted.
Hi, it's Poe Fratt from AGP or Alliance Global Partners. Good afternoon. Can you go to your market outlook based on recent developments, meaning the U.S. election? Can you just address potentially what could happen if the U.S. gets more aggressive on tariffs versus China? And then secondly, if there is a mediation or, for lack of a better word, a tempering of the Ukraine-Russian situation, how do you think the market will react?
Hey there. Thank you for the question. Based on the U.S. election, it's obviously difficult to interpret how that's going to look going forward. But in terms of Himalaya, most of our trades is not really linked to the U.S. Our big routes is bauxite out of Guinea, it's iron ore from Brazil, and coal routes also from Indonesia, Australia, etc.
But needless to say, we think there's going to be some noise between the U.S. and China here. But I would say it's highly likely that both parties would like a good deal. Maybe something like Japan and the U.S. back in the day where it was more, please sell cars to the Americans as long as you produce them here. But if anything, it might also be that the Chinese will put a little more larger impact into the stimulus package.
And then could you address Russia, Ukraine? And you know, I know that you feel like there's limited exposure from a cape standpoint, but you know, if you could potentially, could there be a knock-on effect just of grain flows changing?
Yeah, no, I think if the war ended tomorrow, and that being with all the sanctions related to it, it would be a very much welcome addition, especially for the Ultramaxes and Panamaxes if the war ended. It's very difficult to assess how much of the supply that's been damaged over the last three, four years. But if that could be a good flow again, it will definitely impact the Panamaxes, Ultramaxes to a larger degree, which has a tendency to lift the Capesize market as well.
Okay, and then if you could just discuss the, you know, the aging of the fleet, and you know, you talked about it in the context of, you know, higher dry dock costs, longer dry docks.
Can you just potentially talk about when you might start to see some scrapping as the age of the fleet, you know, gets, as you mentioned, you know, over 50% was built, you know, close to 20 years ago as you get to 2028, 2029. What's your view on, or what's your working assumption on scrapping at this point in time?
Yeah, based on the estimations that we've done in the dry docking and the added volumes, etc., where we come up with a negative fleet growth going forward, we have not taken scrapping into consideration at all in those numbers. On average, a Capesize vessel has a lifespan of about 23 years, which obviously, if the market continues to go up, it's likely that the scrapping ratio will increase.
But at the same time, with the regulations now coming into the environment, slow steaming, etc., and the big charterers of the world preferring younger tonnage, I think the older tonnage passing 20 years will struggle to find competitive trades in the long run to extend their lives. And don't forget that if you do a 20-year-old dry dock, it's highly likely that that's going to cost you between $4 million and $6 million, depending on how hard you've been trading that vessel over time.
Great. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question will be from the line of Climent Molins from Value Investor's Edge. Please go ahead, your line will now be unmuted.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by asking about the assumptions behind slide 16.
Do your calculations assume the volumes will all head towards Asia/China? And secondly, do you expect to see some charter interest to cover some of those volumes under long-term commitments?
Thank you for your question. Most of these volumes today are moving towards China. I would estimate it to be plus 90%. With the new Simandou mine, which is a joint venture between the Chinese government, Rio Tinto, and the government of Guinea, the Chinese have already put in a lot of investment into this mine. So we also assume that it's likely that these volumes will continue to flow to the east, most of it.
That's helpful. Thank you. And this one is more on the modeling side. You've been clear since creating the company that you intend to distribute all excess free cash flow, and you've already started to do that.
Should we assume you're comfortable having cash and cash equivalents of around $21-$22 million plus the revolver going forward?
That is on the high side. I think we are focusing on having, obviously, on the covenants, you should focus on the eight CCBFL ships, where it's required that we have $1.5 million in cash at any given time, which then adds up to around $12 million. And then to be on the safe side, we will add some cash on top of that. So say maybe $20 million is a fair kind of estimate of where we'd like to be. Which, yeah, if this was answering your question.
Yeah, it does. Sounds good. That's all for me. Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. As we have no further questions in the queue, I'll hand it back to the speakers. Thank you very much.
We have some questions on screen here as well. The first one is, can you provide some insights regarding the current cash position, liquidity reserves going forward? Is the $3.6 million per AVIC ship and $1.5 million per ship plus liquidity reserves for the CCBFL ships your preferred cash position?
Yeah, and I guess that I answered to the previous question we had. I hopefully that answers that. And then the next question, can you provide some insights on the long-term profitability outlook for LNG as a bunker fuel? That is a tough one to answer. I mean, we know that there is a lot of new LNG entering the market, at least from 2026 from Qatar. So long term, we believe that there will be more a normal price of LNG coming back to, say, pre-Ukraine situation.
But when that is going to happen, it's a very hard call to make.
And then we have one last question on screen here. Further on Q1, do you agree to the thesis that bauxite volumes from Guinea being strong in Q1 implies that seasonality should even out more for Capesize rates in years to come? And I agree with that thesis. I think with Guinea being high season in Q1 for exports of bauxite, where traditionally the iron ore from Brazil has had a low due to maintenance of the ports, etc. in Brazil, I think the Guinean volumes now, which are currently one third of the iron ore volumes from Brazil, will contribute massively into the Q1. We also see that a round trip for a Capesize, if you take her from China to Brazil, back to China, is about 90 days.
If you go to Guinea to do bauxite because of the loading operation, it takes longer, so a round trip is about 110-120 days, so not only do you get the ton for ton impact in Q1 from Guinea, but you also get the ton-mile effect on top of this, so with that, thank you very much for dialing in.
Thank you so much, and have a nice evening, and hopefully next quarter we meet, we have some good news to share with you regarding the market development, so thank you very much.