Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Euroseas conference call to discuss the Euroholdings spin-off. We will have with us Mr. Aristides Pittas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer of the company. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. Please be reminded that the company announced its intent to spin off three older vessels, M/V Aegean Express, M/V Joanna, and M/V Diamantis P, into a separate company, Euroholdings Ltd, with a press release that has been publicly distributed. Before passing the call to Mr. Pittas, I would like to remind everyone that today's presentation and conference call, Euroseas will make forward-looking statements. These statements are within the meaning of the federal securities laws.
Matters discussed may be forward-looking statements which are based on current management expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that may result in such expectations not being realized. I kindly draw your attention to slide two of the webcast presentation, which has the full forward-looking statement, and the same statement was also included in the press release. Please take a moment to go through the whole statement and read it. And now I'd like to pass the floor to Mr. Pittas. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are currently in Korea, the whole management team of Euroseas. You all know that Euroseas is a provider of worldwide ocean-going transportation services with the ownership and operation of container vessels. Today we took delivery of a 2,800 TEU newbuilding vessel, and tomorrow we are taking delivery of another 2,800 TEU container vessel, the last of the series of nine new builds that were placed, all that were placed at the beginning of 2021 and 2022. Euroseas currently will have 25 vessels on the water and the current capacity of 72,000 TEU, approximately, and we also have another two vessels under construction, 4,300 TEU each, with delivery expected in 2027.
You also know probably that Euroseas has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2007, and I think a major differentiator that we have to many other companies is that the interests of the public shareholders and the interests of the managing family, the Pittas family, are very much aligned due to the common ownership. The Pittas family, which founded the company, owns close to 60% of the shares in the company. We only have one class of common stock. We have an independent board of directors and a very experienced executive team over the years that we've been public. Vessel management is performed via the affiliated management company, Eurobulk, which has a proven track record the last 20 years being public, but even before that, of safe and cost-efficient operations.
In addition to investing in accretive opportunities and maximizing operational returns, we strive to create value by providing shareholders with clear investment choices. Thus, in 2018, the then-owned drybulk fleet of Euroseas was spun off in a separate company, EuroDry, leaving Euroseas focused on the feeder intermediate container ship sector. That spin-off went extremely well as the combined valuation of the two companies increased about 50% right after the spin-off of EuroDry. We believe that a similar opportunity to increase value appears to us around the current spin-off of our elder vessels. Euroholdings, a spin-off of the elder vessels of Euroseas in a separate publicly listed company, should allow each company to follow its own strategy, have its own risk-return profile, and thus offer more options to investors. Based on our EuroDry experience, we expect the combined valuation to be higher than if they continued operating together.
Please move to the next slide to give you some details of which vessels we are spinning out. We are spinning out the three oldest vessels of Euroseas in exchange for 100% of the shares of Euroholdings. The three vessels are M/V Aegean Express, a 1,400 TEU built 1997 vessel which has an intermediate special survey and in-water survey due in September 2025. The motor vessel Joanna is a 1,700 TEU built 1999 vessel with its next intermediate survey in-water in June 2027, and motor vessel Diamantis P, which is built in 1998, it's 2,000 TEU approximately, and it has its next intermediate survey plus the next dry docking in October 2026.
The three vessels have an average age of 26 and a half years, approximately, are debt-free, and are valued at approximately $26.5 million by an independent valuator, with a scrap value representing about $12 million of that, and the remaining really being existing charters on the ships or charters that we expect to secure on the motor vessel Diamantis P. These three vessels represent just 5% of Euroseas' net asset value. This means that Euroseas practically is not changing at all. It's just offering a 5% dividend to the Euroholdings shares of its shareholders. In the process of registering the Euroholdings shares with the SEC, and we have applied for listing them on the Nasdaq. The distribution will occur upon effectiveness of the registration statement and approval by the Nasdaq.
Tasos will give you a bit more details a bit later on on the exact process. After the spin-off, Euroseas will still own 22 vessels, including the 15 feeder vessels and seven intermediate container ships, and have the two vessels under construction as I mentioned before. The nine of the 22 vessels are part of the program, of the newbuilding program I told you in the beginning of the presentation. They were built between 2023 and 2025. The average age of the fleet in the water has reduced to about 12 and a half years. We have also effected the retrofit program on the largest vessels of the fleet to reduce fuel consumption and further improve the environmental profile of the fleet. Thus, Euroseas is positioning itself as a reliable, environment-friendly transportation provider, partner of the major liner companies working towards a sustainable future.
It seemed a good idea to sell or do something with the elder vessels and which owns the Euroholdings procedure because we believe firmly that there is still value in these elder vessels. You can see in the following slide the vessels that Euroseas will keep and the three vessels that will go to Euroholdings. The next slide, I'll talk to you a little bit on the reasons for the spin-off. As I said, we see value in the older vessels. They are near the end of their economic life. We acknowledge that, but they are currently unlevered and will generate very significant cash flow, thus allowing for growth and meaningful distribution to our shareholders. Euroholdings will have the opportunity to lever its expertise in managing shipping assets to create outsized returns for shareholders.
With the shorter remaining economic life and the easy-to-assess end-of-life valuation, the scrap value, residual value uncertainty is essentially eliminated, and thus valuation of the company should better reflect its NAV. There is no downside that we can see in the NAV valuation of the company. It's comprised of the scrap price, as I said, and the charter value that is already secured for the two ships, and one of the ships, the Diamantis, has not yet secured the charter. We are working on that charter. It's finished some temporary repairs it had to do, and now we are looking at the value of potential opportunities in the market, trying to fix the vessel at the best possible rate and considering all possible options for this vessel in order to maximize its value.
Euroholdings, we think, can become a consolidator of vessels exploiting the needs in the shipping market, which is undergoing a transition due to the environmental regulations that are driven by decarbonization. There is value there. We believe we will unlock it, and that's why we're doing this spin-off. Euroseas, on the other hand, will continue with the current strategy of renovating the fleet, fixing long-term charters as we can, and being a huge, very significant tonnage provider for the main liner companies. With that, I think I would like to pass the floor to Tasos to give you some more information on the. Let me first tell you a few things about the corporate structure. The corporate structure and governance of Euroholdings is very, very similar to Euroseas. It's the same management team, the same board of directors.
Management team, as you know, is myself, is Tasos Aslidis, is Simos Pariaros, is the other who is the Chief Administrative Officer. They are the C-level employees of the company, and the board of directors, you can see it on the slide, so minimum increase in costs is what I think we are achieving through this structure, but opening up a door for new opportunities with a 5% of Euroseas' NAV, and with that, I will give the floor to Tasos to take you through the details of how this will work.
Thank you, Aristides. I will use the next five to 10 minutes to give you a little bit about the mechanics, a top-level view of the mechanics of the spin-off and the distribution, and then some highlights from the charter book and the balance sheet of the two companies. There will be a distribution of the shares of Euroholdings to all Euroseas shareholders. There is an intended and expected record date, which currently we think it will be January 23rd, and there will be a distribution date on January 30th of 2025. Those would depend, of course, on getting timely approval from the SEC on the effectiveness of the statement and approval from Nasdaq to list Euroholdings shares on Nasdaq. There are now about 7 million shares of Euroseas, and we are going to use an exchange rate of 2.5 Euroseas shares for one Euroholdings share.
Thus, there will be about 2.8 million Euroholdings shares that will be distributed to our Euroseas shareholders. Later in the day, there will be a registration statement available that will provide further information about the whole spin-off exercise and the certain further mechanics of the transaction. Let me move down to slide number 10, where we can compare and analyze the various charter books. And first, let's look at Euroholdings, where you can see the current charters of the three vessels that will constitute Euroholdings fleet. Aegean Express, we have announced earlier this week or at the end of last week, that has been chartered for about 10 months, $16,700 per day. Joanna was announced that it was chartered for two years and goes all the way to the fourth quarter of 2026.
As Aristides mentioned, our third vessel, Diamantis P, is just completing some minor repairs and is seeking for charter and potentially other commercial alternatives. The important thing about these three vessels is that they are unlevered, and thus, if we move to slide 11, you can see that they set a very low cash flow break-even, relatively low operating cost level for the age of the vessels, a relatively low allocation of G&A expenses, minimal dry docking expenses based on the in-water surveys that we expect to have in the next couple of years, thus having an overall break-even level of about $7,800 per vessel per day.
You can appreciate, with the market being at least in the high teens, if not in the 20s for these types of vessels, how much cash flow margin these vessels generate, which, as Aristides mentioned, will allow us to, will provide us with many options of how to use the funds, part of them for distributions and also for growing the Euroholdings model further. Let's move to slide 12 to get some very brief highlights of the NAV per share of Euroholdings. We have taken some third-party valuations for the fleet, which is about $26.5 million. There is no debt, and as I mentioned in my previous slide, there will be 2.8 million shares outstanding, so the NAV per share is expected to be $9.5, and we expect to trade very close, if not at that level.
Let's now close our remarks by taking a look at what is left with Euroseas, which is a lot left. On slide 14, you can see now the charter book of Euroseas. We have seen that information before. All of our vessels are currently chartered. About 75% of our available days in 2025 are chartered, and about 35% of our available days for 2026. So there is significant visibility of revenues, and as you can look at the levels of charters, you can see, especially if you look also on the following slide, slide 12, slide 16, I'm sorry, the contribution that we have also in Euroseas on a per vessel per day basis, with an average charter rate around $30,000 and an average cash flow break-even level of around $12,000.
There is a significant excess cash flow that is generated at the Euroseas as well from 22 vessels in this case that would allow us to continue our investment, dividend, and share buyback strategy. Our debt level, you can see on the top part of this slide, constitutes of debt that results in about $40 million of debt repayments in 2025, significantly less in 2026, and about $35 million in 2027. A good chunk of the repayments that are due in 2025 and 2027 are balloon repayments, and typically, Euroseas is able to refinance those and will do that if we choose to do so. We have made in the past remarks about the cost of our debt.
The average cost of our debt is about 2%, the average margin, which on top of a three-month SOFR rate of 4.35%, results in having an overall cost of debt of about 6.4%, and that's further reduced since we have covered the 10% of our debt doing the rate swaps. Let me move down to the last slide, slide 16, to give you an assessment of the NAV of Euroseas on a pro forma basis. We are using here September 30th published numbers, and we are making adjustments that reflect the debt that we have assumed for the two vessels we just took delivery of, the payments for the two new buildings we ordered in the fourth quarter.
And with that, we expect to have a debt of about $272 million, a valuation that as of December for the 22-vessel fleet of about $711 million on a charter-free basis, which is adjusted a little bit lower because of the charters that we have. You can appreciate here that the market has increased since we have booked our charters. That's why we have a negative charter value. And we have made advancements for the two vessels that we ordered of about $17 million. Taken all together, we have a proforma NAV of about $457 million, and against our 7 million shares, results in almost $65 per share NAV.
At the end of last week, we traded at $36 per share, and that represents a 45% discount vis-à-vis to NAV, which we expect and we hope to reduce significantly, especially as we communicate our strategy of focusing on modern vessels and retrofitted vessels. I think with that, we have concluded our main remarks. I mean, we are ending up from Euroseas with two companies. Euroseas, that has a modern fleet, it's a growing company. The company that is solely dedicated in the feeder intermediate containership sector, and Euroholdings, as Aristides explained, we view it as a platform for consolidating elder vessels and pursuing other opportunities in an industry that is in transition due, among other things, to decarbonization. I'll turn the floor back to Aristides if he has any concluding remarks.
Thank you, Tasos. No, I think this completes the presentation. We would be very interested to hear any questions and try to answer them.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Reichman with NOBLE Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. I just have two questions. The first is, could you just please elaborate on how you expect the two companies to differ in terms of capital structure, capital allocation, dividend policy, and commercial strategy? And on that commercial strategy, I'm talking kind of feeder versus intermediates.
Okay. That's four questions in one, but I'll try to answer them all. On commercial strategy, Euroholdings will be more open to discuss different sizes of vessels, even different types of vessels. Euroholdings will look at opportunities in the maritime spectrum that might not be related with feeder container vessels. So Euroseas, on the other hand, changes nothing. It's as it used to be. On the second issue of capital structure, again, there is not a real difference in the capital structure other than that Euroholdings currently is unlevered. We're not saying that we might not lever it, but the capital structure is only common stock that is fully aligned with the family and debt. Currently, as I said, Euroholdings does not have debt, but we might decide at some point that we have a good opportunity and we need to get some debt. So.
Dividend policy.
That's the second thing. The third thing is capital allocation. I think it goes a lot, it's like the commercial allocation. Capital will be allocated to the right investments, which might not be in the same field. Dividend policy, we envisage that we will be giving a higher dividend in Euroholdings than Euroseas. In Euroseas, we have always aimed to provide a dividend yield, which is in the levels between 6% and 8%, 5% and 9% maybe if we stretch it at some point, but a very decent dividend. Euroholdings will be closer to a 10% dividend. So that's one differentiation. Also, Euroseas might be using share repurchases to enhance the shareholder returns. I think Euroholdings at this stage is too small to look at this kind of policy, but we will see as time goes by. Have I answered all your questions, Mark?
You did. You did. And I had one more, but I'm just going to get back in the queue so others can answer questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to join the queue, it's star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you, and congratulations on the new build delivery today and tomorrow. And you mentioned the previous spin-off of EuroDry organizationally. I mean, does that previous experience make you ready to do another spin-off, more ready to do another spin-off? Did you change anything organizationally?
Absolutely, Tate, you're very right. The solidarity that we had through that first effort in 2018 and the success, I would say, of it made it a relatively easy decision for us to take when we were considering what to do with the elder ships and with our idea about gradually reducing the amount of elder ships that we had within Euroseas. It made much more sense at that point to keep the old vessels because there is still life in them rather than sell them at the market at that point.
There is interest in the old vessels. From the charters that we booked, you can see that there is marked interest on the markets to keep using those vessels.
Right, the Aegean Express contract. And then did you mention—I don't think so—were you planning to extend any capital from Euroseas to Euroholdings? Will there be any retained ownership? I did not hear that, but I wanted to check.
I think there will be, Euroseas will receive only shares of Euroholdings, and Euroseas will distribute all the shares to its shareholders. So after the distribution, strictly speaking, there will be no connection between Euroseas and Euroholdings. They will have a common manager, of course, of the vessels, the Eurobulk, and in the beginning, the same management and the same board, but they would operate independently.
Thank you both.
Thank you, Tate.
Thank you. Once again, it is star one to join the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Good evening, Aristides. Good evening, Tasos. I just had a couple of questions. One is just, can you just talk about—I think you said that you decided you looked at the S&P market on these three assets, and you decided to spin them out instead of selling them. Did you actively market them in the S&P market, or was that just sort of a strategic decision?
No, it was more of a strategic decision, but we are very close to the S&P market, so we know what happens. On the Diamantis, we have had some interest, but the levels that we have seen up to now were lower than what we thought we can get through the chartering. But this is a project that has not finalized yet, and within the next week or two, we should have the final decision on the Diamantis.
I'm sorry, Aristides, so you may sell that before the spin-off?
The vessels have been spun out into Euroholdings, and even if it is sold, the proceeds would obviously go to Euroholdings to pursue the strategy of buying other ships at the right time. But we are discussing chartering opportunities together with the possibility of a sale. We'll see what materializes. But whatever happens, it stays within Euroholdings.
Okay. And would you address one issue that I've heard from a lot of investors? It's that the shipping industry doesn't need any more small companies that don't have critical mass and economies of scale. And can you just sort of talk about your view on that?
Sure. Two things. Everything has to do with profitability. So even a small company can be profitable. I think Euroseas has proved that over the years by starting as a very small company and still being probably one of the smallest listed entities, but it's been extremely profitable. So profitability doesn't necessarily have to do with scale. So that's one issue. And the second issue is that I think that we differ tremendously to most of the other small companies that have gone public because shareholder interest is aligned with the management interest in this case. There is only one class of stock, which is common stock, and therefore the only way for these companies to be profitable is if we manage to improve the result for the common shareholders. Tasos, you want to add something?
Also, we identified that need, that we tried to describe, that the industry is undergoing a transition because of the decarbonization. We noticed that many of our clients, liner companies, wanted to have certain older vessels off their balance sheets. Euroseas got into some deals in the past couple of years, and we feel that there will be a need to grow space that a company like Euroholdings would have room to grow and develop and provide really a service to the industry of consolidating and exploiting the use of the older vessels. We definitely have experience in operating older vessels, so we identified we believe in it, and we feel we have the expertise.
Okay. And then I think I heard that you thought that Euroholdings would trade very close to net asset value of [$9.50]. I'm a little surprised about that given the current valuation of the entire company. It would seem like older assets would be discounted even more than newer assets. Can you just talk about that? And then also, Tasos, if you could highlight whether there will be any waiting period or restricted period within which you won't be able to issue additional Euroholdings shares?
Tasos will answer the second part of your question, as you rightly said. Let me answer the first part. We know that Euroholdings' value cannot really go down significantly because it's based on the scrap value plus the value of the charters, mainly. It can go up if these ships manage to recharter themselves at some point, but it is protected. So the money is there, and it's not like in more modern ships where you can see values dropping substantially. In order for Euroholdings to drop in NAV, you have to see the scrap value drop significantly, which it has already dropped somehow. I don't think it will drop much more. So we feel that there is a good floor there, which investors will understand. They will see the good returns, the profitability that the company is having due to the charters that exist.
So we expect, we would hope that they would appreciate that and value us close to NAV. We have to see what happens, obviously. The market is the market, and the investors do what they feel. But what we want to convey through this discussion today is our belief that the bottom is very much protected in Euroholdings. And if the previous spin-off showed us something, was that the market was able to understand the differences between containers and dry bulk at the time and give us a 50% increase in our valuation instantly. Nothing has changed, but the combined valuation increased by 50%. We therefore hope that they will understand this change now and reward Euroholdings shareholders with the bottom valuation, which is, as I said, scrap plus charter. And Euroseas should not lose its value because that's also trading below NAV. So this is our thought.
This is our hope. Even if that doesn't happen, we know or we believe that it will happen as time goes by because people will see the consistency of our management team performing as they always say that they will perform over the 20 or so years that we've been public.
There is much less uncertainty, I should say, for a company that has vessels that have one to three years of life left compared to a company that has vessels that have 20 years left. So we hope that would allow us to trade closer to the conservative valuation that Aristides mentioned. But can you repeat the other part of your question? You asked something about.
Yes. I just wondered whether there was any post that's been up, whether there's any restriction or limitation on issuing additional Euroholdings shares.
I don't think so. I don't think we have any limitation. If we need to buy a vessel, it would serve. I think the board decides to do that, but I think we should be able to do it.
Okay.
This question is right?
Yep. I appreciate that. Thank you, Tasos. Just if I could ask a couple more. You have two other close to 23-year-old assets and 24-year-old assets right now. You have the Corfu and the Evridiki G—I always pronounce that wrong. I apologize. But did you consider putting those into Euroholdings? And is it possible that those could be, at a later date, put into Euroholdings?
Yes. It is possible that at a later date we would consider doing that. Many things are possible in Euroholdings at this stage. Really, we wanted to keep Euroseas as it is. We didn't want to affect it. We didn't want to take out too much out of Euroseas at this stage. Euroseas is the same company as it was before. It just gave a distribution of 5% of its NAV, or you could say a dividend of 5% of its NAV. So that is something that we don't want to change. We want Euroseas to be considered the old Euroseas. There's nothing really changing there. So initially, we just did this. We'll see how all things go. We'll see if we want to do that or not. But it's not a decision to be taken today.
These two vessels are chartered for at least a year, well into 2026, so there's no issue for the time being with. For those two vessels.
Okay. And then just one last one. Overnight, it looks like there were additional sanctions put on the COSCO fleet. It always depends on how they're enforced. But can you just talk about that broadly and what kind of impact that and potentially the upcoming labor negotiations on the East and Gulf ports? If you could just talk about those two industry issues, that'd be great.
I somehow missed that there were good sanctions on COSCO ships. Maybe it's a new development with having them taking delivery today of our ship. I hadn't seen that. But any sanctioning of other people rather than us is a positive for us, obviously.
Anything to move the transportation system from equilibrium creates more demand for ships.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Climent Molins with Value Investor's Edge. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, investors. Thank you for taking my questions. You've been clear you'd like to become a consolidator in the older age cohort. Looking ahead, you mentioned you may add some debt to Euroholdings if that makes sense. But when you think about expanding the fleet, do you envision Euroholdings being a cash acquirer or focusing on leveraging its shares on NAV to NAV transactions?
We're going to look at all opportunities. Obviously, we cannot only grow the company just using the cash that we are generating. That would be extremely slow. So the idea of putting on some debt is there. The idea of perhaps getting a ship in exchange for shares is an idea that may be considered if we're trading close to NAV. There are various options open, and that is the reason for doing this deal and this spin-off. We think there are options, and we think that we will be able to exploit the market opportunities existing today.
If we trade close to NAV, as we hope because of the low remaining uncertainty, it would be much easier to do NAV to NAV transactions, so that is really the catalyst for our strategy. I mean, we can use debt to facilitate these acquisitions, cash that we generate, but really the growth could come from paying with shares, hoping that we trade close to NAV.
That's helpful. Thank you. And this one is more on the modeling side. On slide 12, you include the working capital Euroholdings will be spun off with, around $200,000. Could you comment on the amount of cash you expect to include?
There will be minimal cash into Euroholdings when the distribution and the contribution agreement happens. That is really just the current working capital, current assets minus current liabilities that we expect to have at that moment. The vessels are chartered, so they generate cash flow from day one. So that's why there isn't any significant starting cash balance.
Makes sense. That's what I imagined. That's all for me. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you for your interest.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that completes our question and answer session. I'll turn this one back to management for any final comments.
We would like to thank you all for participating in this call. We felt it was important to have this call in order to tell the market and explain a little bit about this spin-off. We always are transparent and like to discuss with our investors our various moves. So I think we've tried to answer all the questions. Within the next few days, Euroholdings will start trading as a public company. By mid-February, we will have our [audio distortion]. A lso the updates will be continuous.
Obviously, there will be an updated press release with confirming the date that we discussed today and informing all of your shareholders about the effectiveness of the registration statement and Nasdaq approval. Thank you all for attending, and look forward to working with you and through both of our container companies and the consolidation that Euroholdings is hoping to make a reality.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.