Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Costamare Inc. conference call on the fourth quarter 2022 financial results. We have with us Mr. Gregory Zikos, Chief Financial Officer of the company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. At which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, February eighth, 2023.
We would like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to read slide number 2 of the presentation, which contains the forward-looking statements. I will now pass the floor to your speaker today, Mr. Zikos. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 2022 has been a record year for Costamare. With a fleet of 117 vessels, including 45 dry bulk ships, the company generated net income of about $520 million. As of the end of the year, liquidity stood at around $970 million. On the containership side, 2022 was a unique year, with the first half drawing upon favorable market conditions with strong demand and logistical disruptions continuing to impact the sector. During the second half, charter rates and other devices normalized as a result of reduced cargo demand and the return of capacity previously tied up by congestion. We chartered a total of 16 second-hand containerships during the year, which added incremental contracted revenues of more than $550 million.
Total contracted revenues amount to $3.2 billion, with a weighted average remaining time charter duration of about 4.2 years. We are above 95% covered for 2023. We have to actively arrange long-term deployment on a forward basis for a number of containerships coming off charter between 2023 and 2025. At the same time, we are in the process of disposing off some older tonnages at prices fixed during a tight market environment. On the dry bulk side, the new dry bulk operating platform previously announced commenced operation during the quarter. With an equity commitment of up to $200 million, our goal is to grow the business on a prudent basis, realizing healthy returns for our shareholders.
On the back of our increased liquidity and containers under coverage, we are actively pursuing new investment opportunities in the shipping sector that have the potential to provide enhanced returns at acceptable risk levels. Moving now to the slide presentation. On slide three, you can see our annual results. 2022 was the best year since our listing. For the year ended, net income was above $520 million or $4.3 per share, while adjusted net income was around $400 million or $3.3 per share. Our year-end liquidity is up by almost $420 million year-over-year to round to $970 million. Slide four. During the previous quarter, we announced the setup of a new venture under Costamare Bulkers Inc.
CBI will charter in and out dry bulk vessels into COAs and trade FFAs and bunker swaps. Up to now, we have already invested $100 million with a commitment for another $100. Over the last month, we fixed 23 vessels and entered into numerous COAs and debit rates. On Slide 5, you can see an update on our financing arrangements, which amounted roughly to $560 million without any material increase in leverage. Most of them were coupled with significant improvement of the funding cost and extension of maturities. Our corporate leverage remains below 35%, and we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet. Slide 6. We continue to charter all our dry bulk vessels in the spot market, chartering 37 ships since our last earnings release.
On the container side, our revenue days are 96% fixed for 2023 and 85% for 2024, while our contracted revenues are roughly $3.2 billion, with a TEU-weighted remaining time chart duration of about 4 years. Lastly, we fixed 16 containerships with incremental contracted revenues of more than half a billion dollars. Slide seven. The containership charter market has normalized in the second half of the year, mostly due to reduced cargo demand and the return of capacity previously tied up by congestion. The dry bulk market has also weakened, and the FFA market indicates significant strengthening signs, especially from Q2 2023 onwards. Finally, we continue to have a long, uninterrupted dividend track record boosted by strong spot support. On slide eight, our liquidity has increased significantly year-over-year, starting at around $970 million.
This liquidity gives us the ability to look for opportunities to grow the company on a healthy basis. Moving to the next slide. Here you can see a snapshot of our fourth quarter 2002 results. We had an average of 115 vessels at our adjusted net income of $75 million or $0.61 per share. Our adjusted figures take into consideration the following items: the accrued charter revenues, accounting gains or losses from passive exposure, impairments, and other non-recurring or non-cash items. On the last two slides, we're discussing the market. Moving to slide 10. Box rates have normalized from historically high levels. The latest containership fixings that have been concluded have been for shorter periods at the lower rates.
The annual capacity has reached 0.6%. On slide 11, you can see the recent dry bulk market trends where rates have been under pressure.
The order book is at 7.5% of the total fleet and new ordering continues to be subdued. With that, we can conclude our presentation and we can now take questions. Thank you. Operator, we can take questions now.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. That's star 1 to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Chris Wetherbee from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe we could start on the container shipping side. I was curious about your take on discussions with charterers. I know you have a degree, you know, a strong degree of coverage as we move through 2023, but in the instances where you've been having conversations with some of your customers, can you give us a sense of sort of what that dynamic feels like? Obviously, we heard from Maersk earlier this morning, and I think broadly speaking, overall box rates have fallen precipitously. I want to get a sense of how we should be thinking about sort of charter development, either over the course of the next couple of quarters or maybe as we think about the next couple of years.
Okay. Thanks. Thank you for that and good morning, Chris. Couple of things. Look, the softening in the charter market, both in charter rates and box rates, it is something that was expected. At some point the congestion eased and we have also seen reduced cargo demand for a lot of reasons, but it's got to be inflation related, or it may have to be with financial tightening, et cetera. Now, as you said, we have, we are pretty much close to 100% fixed for this year and 85% for the year after.
We don't have a lot of ships opening and the trend we see is that apart from the fact that charter rates have been falling, at the same time, the period of the fixture has been shorter and shorter and there are extension options that we see back again for 2-3 month charters option. I cannot predict how the market will go. All I say that for the time being we have not seen asset values being softening at the same level although there is definitely some correlation but like we haven't seen it yet. Regarding charter coverage, first of all we feel more than comfortable with the quality and the credit standing of our charterers also considering the fact that they've been extremely profitable over the last couple of years.
Secondly, from our side, you saw our liquidity. So, in case or like when we feel that asset values in the containership market are gonna be at levels which we find interesting, I can tell you that we might be there as a buyer, but for the time being, we pause. We sit and wait.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Then I guess I just wanted to come back, and ask a little bit about, you know, what your thoughts are in terms of deploying capital in the market. What maybe is the most attractive area in your opinion currently? Obviously you have ample liquidity as you highlighted on slide 8. Kind of curious where you think the best use of that capital will be or does it make sense to kinda sit back a little bit and kinda see how the broader macro plays out?
Look, part of the answer is what I just mentioned is that when we see asset values on the containership side, being correlated to charter rates today and, we will look at it again. This sort of may take some time, both for secondhand and also for new building. This is one area that I guess we're gonna be active again should the market prices justify that. The second applies also for the dry bulk fleet. Still, we don't think that asset values have reached a level where they have become of interest again. Should this be the case, we will deploy capital buying ships at prices which we think make sense and it's gonna position ourselves in a quite opportunistic timing.
It's ship acquisitions, both dry bulk and the containers. As you've seen, we have started the dry bulk trading platform where we have allocated up to now $100 million that is gonna go up to $200 million. This is another area we have been investing. Finally, we are looking at some other initiatives which have not materialized yet, so I cannot disclose them for 2 reasons, both for legal reasons and also because they're not material yet or sort of they're not concluded yet. We are working on some other initiatives where we feel that part of our liquidity could be deployed there as well.
If we don't see asset values coming at levels that make sense both in the containership side and also in the dry bulk side, simply we will just sit back and we're not gonna be buying any ships. I have to remind you that we didn't put any new building orders at the high prices we saw in the containership market over the last couple of years simply because we felt that asset prices were prohibitive even if the charter rates offered were at high levels as well. We will take our time. We are patient when like we feel we should be and we will wait.
Okay. That's helpful. I guess maybe one final from me before I turn it over. Just in terms of the trading platform, are you gonna need to maintain a higher degree of liquidity in the business, you know, in terms of, you know, capital reserves to be able to manage the risk potentially associated with that? I get kind of curious about how that might influence how you think about liquidity and cash balances.
Yeah. The way we see it now, our equity there is gonna be up to $200 million and that's it. Of course, if the business grows and if you see more potential, I don't think you would be surprised that we can go higher. What we have today in mind, and let's see how it goes. What we have today, in mind is that those $200 million are gonna be more than enough, in order to cover our liquidity needs, this business, and manage our exposure and our market risk.
As I said, if this thing is something that we feel makes sense, and we feel more comfortable with the whole setup, and we see potential, in that market, the $200 is not a limit, it is just what we feel we should allocate today. We could easily go north of that, if it is justified.
Okay. Okay, that's very helpful, caller. Thanks for the time this morning. Appreciate it.
Sure. Thank you. Have a nice day. Thank you.
Next question comes from Omar Nokta with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Greg. Good afternoon. Thanks for the update.
Hi, Omar.
I just wanted to follow up maybe on the last discussion about the dry bulk fleet and the trading operation. You've obviously moved, you know, very quickly here over the past 18 months, building up the owned asset base, and now you've chartered in those 14 Capes and the nine Panamax that you referred to in the release. I guess from the maybe the perspective of risk or maybe just duration, how should we think about those vessels? Are these short-term charters? Are they longer-term? You know, how should we be thinking about those, how they sit in your portfolio today and for how long?
Yeah. The ships are chartered in in the trading platform, which is asset light. They are first of all, not all of them have been delivered. Most of them will be delivered over the next couple of quarters. The charter period could be between two to three years. However, most of them are on index. Strictly speaking, when you have a ship chartered in the, on index, there is no real exposure because it is on index you pay what the market is paying, and sort of, you get a COA based on market terms. However, having said that, in the future we may have ships with a fixed rate, again for periods, and it's gonna be a combination of both I guess.
Most of those vessels today, to answer your question, they are for a period ranging up to 3 years and most of them are on, or in, sort of index-based, charter rates.
Okay, that's helpful. Good to know that they're index-based. You were saying you have the COAs basically covering them on the other side where you can capture-
Correct.
effectively a spread.
Correct.
Okay.
We have COAs and at the same time we have started employing FFAs as well, both in order to hedge and also in order to position ourselves. We've done FFAs, we've done COAs, especially for the vessels that are sort of, are going to be delivered now. We have 23 vessels chartered in, most of them on index. For the bunker exposure, we will also be doing bunker hedging.
Okay. Thank you. Just on the 23 ships that you are about to have in the fleet, is that kind of a... Is that the right size it needs to be? Is that or is that maybe a starting point? Is there a certain number given the liquidity or the capital you're putting forth into that operation? What could be the size of that trading fleet?
Yeah. No. This is a starting point. Those ships were committed over the next couple of months I would say. I think sooner rather than later, we could easily reach the threshold of the 50 ships being operated. Of course, subject to market conditions, we could go to 100 or 250 easily. This is why I said earlier that if we feel it makes sense, the $200 million of total equity commitment could go higher because at some stage you need to have a meaningful size in this business as well. It will definitely be 50, I guess sooner rather than later.
In the future it could also go to a 100, 150 or even north of that.
Okay. Thanks. That's very helpful. Maybe just one quick follow-up just on the reference you made to the, a couple of initiatives you were looking at that you can't comment on. Can we assume that those were maybe outside of dry bulk and containers?
Well, it's gonna be in shipping. I cannot comment. You know, whatever I say, if I say it's gonna be within dry bulk and containers, I'm giving partly an answer. If I say that, it will not be same thing. I'm afraid I cannot comment at all. It's gonna be shipping related. Of course, it's not gonna be aviation. This is something, both for legal reasons and for the simple reason that it's not concluded yet, I cannot comment more than that.
Okay. I appreciate it, Greg. I'll turn it over.
Sure. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone. The next question comes from Clement Mullins with Value Investors Edge. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. You've been clear you want to pursue additional acquisitions if attractive opportunities arise. Given your solid financial position, I was wondering, how do you plan to balance this additional spending with potential shareholder returns, especially considering the significant discount to NAV shares are trading at?
Yeah. It's no. It's a question about capital allocation which comes quite often, and it is a fair question. I cannot rule out share buybacks, and we did it in the past. We also increased the dividend in the past, and we also had a one-off extra dividend payment. At the same time now for the time being, however, if we feel that asset values make sense, and as I mentioned earlier, justify further acquisitions either in the containership sector, second part or used buildings or sort of dry bulk vessels, this is something we would look very, very carefully without excluding share buybacks, for example. We follow the market for timely acquisitions should the circumstances change.
Makes sense. Thanks for the call. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks a lot.
This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now like to pass the floor to Mr. Zikos for his closing remarks.
Thank you very much for your interest in Costamare and for dialing in today. We look forward to speaking with you again during our next quarterly results call. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.