Everyone, thanks for joining. My name is Omar Nokta, a shipping analyst here at Jefferies. I'm pleased to start our next discussion. I have the management team from Genco Shipping. I'm joined by John Wobensmith, CEO of the company, and also newly elected chairman. I also have Peter Allen, CFO, and Michael Orr, investor relations. So I figured we can start off with a presentation. I think you'll go through a few slides, and I'll have some questions to ask afterwards, and happy to open it up to the audience for Q&A also. And just as a, to frame it, Genco's one of the, I would say, one of the leading dry bulk shipping companies trading in the U.S. markets based here in New York, with a focus on the larger Capesize ships and the mid-sized vessels as well.
So it's got the barbell approach that the company will be talking about. We have a buy rating on the stock, symbol is GNK. The stock has done fairly well here recently, but there's probably room for a whole lot more. Stock's at $17, our target's $19, but we'll have to reassess, most likely. I'll leave it at that. John, to you.
Okay, well, Omar, thank you again for having us this year. Very much appreciated. So presenters, myself, Chairman and CEO, Peter Allen, who's our CFO, and Michael Orr is our VP of Finance, and also does a lot of our industry analysis, which you're going to hear from him as well today. So if we take a look at Genco Shipping, we are the largest U.S. based ship owner. We have 43 ships on the water today. We're headquartered in New York, and global offices in Singapore and Copenhagen, which are really commercial offices. Singapore, because that's where all the iron ore majors sit, so we have direct relationships with those individuals. And then Copenhagen, similar to our commercial team in New York, manage our minor bulk vessels concentrating on Europe.
We are transporting major dry bulk commodities all around the world, and we'll give you a little picture of that in a minute here, but we think it's extremely important to have direct exposure to all the dry bulk commodities that are in the industry. And I'm just going to ask, can I have a presentation like this? I did not bring my glasses. Thank you. So again, going to our commercial platform, we have a very robust full-service logistics solution that we provide to our clients. So we are taking our ships and getting their products from point A to point B, and we are handling everything in between, including fuel. We think we have created the most optimized risk-reward model within the dry bulk shipping industry: low leverage, 7% Net Loan-to-Value today, but also a high dividend payout that comes with that on a quarterly basis.
Peter Allen is going to go through some of the details of that in a few minutes. From an ESG standpoint, we've been ranked number one globally. I believe there are 64 companies that are in that ranking that Webber Research does. This is, we're now in the year four of being ranked number one. Part of that is because we're really one of the only transparent U.S. filers. Most of our competitors and peers are foreign filers, and we're the only U.S. listed dry bulk shipping company that doesn't have any related party transactions. It's been like that since the very beginning, which I know sounds funny, but that is unusual for the shipping industry. We're traded on the New York Stock Exchange under GNK. We transported 24 million tons of dry bulk commodities last year.
On the left part of the slide, you can see the dry bulk makes up a pretty significant amount in terms of tons of the global seaborne trade at 46%. And then you can also see the major commodities that are carried around the world: iron ore, meth, thermal coal, grains, which is corn, soybean, wheat mostly, and then minor bulks, which can run the gamut: cement, potash, pig iron, alumina, bauxite, and a whole host of other aggregate and building commodities. And then over on the right, you can see what we carried last year, iron ore being a very major part at 44%, and are moved on our larger Capesize vessels. So looking at the key trade routes, you can see the iron ore, coal, grain, and then the minor bulks as well.
What's been really interesting is that if you look at the line, purple line, coming out of West Africa, that is the bauxite trade going into China, and that is where we have seen tremendous growth over the last three to four years, with more growth coming as we get into next year. The other two major routes are the Brazilian iron ore trade, and that's really the longest route from a ton-mile standpoint, so there's a tremendous amount of operating leverage on that Brazil to China route, particularly when times get tight with a low number of vessels in the Atlantic Basin, and then you also have a big grain trade that's also coming out of Brazil, mostly soybean, but this year we've actually seen a bunch of corn as well, and Argentina, quite a bit of corn coming out and going east.
Omar referred to our barbell approach, the fleet composition. Again, we believe it's very important to have direct exposure to every dry bulk commodity. We have 26 Ultramax Supramax vessels, which are on the minor bulk side, but then the larger vessels, which are carrying, again, mostly iron ore, coal, and bauxite, we have 17 of those. Now, the larger ships have a larger beta. They have a higher beta than the mid-sized ships. The mid-sized ships provide a little more of a stable earning stream, but we think it's, again, very important, particularly for the equity valuation, to have that upside that comes from the larger ships, and we've structured the balance sheet with very low leverage so that even when we have downward volatility in the larger ships, we sleep well at night, and opportunities then present themselves for us.
Just taking a look at our value strategy, and Peter Allen will go into this in a little more detail. We have three pillars. We have fleet growth, fleet renewal, as we call it. We've paid down a tremendous amount of debt since early 2021, and we've also paid out a substantial amount in dividends. It's really about balancing that wheel. We have a set formula that's done on a quarterly basis to push out the quarterly dividend payment. Interestingly enough, last quarter we had some softness in freight rates, and the formula would have produced a zero, but we still made the decision to pay a $0.15 dividend last quarter, which again is a major part of the strategy of no matter what the market throws at us, we can always play offense. We obviously paid the dividend nonetheless last quarter.
And then taking a look at our fleet composition, we're certainly overweight capes on an asset value and a net revenue basis. That's important because our strategy for the next few years is that we believe the larger ships will outperform the mid-sized ships. So as we're looking at additional assets, we will most likely weigh ourselves a little more towards the larger asset class. The reason for that is, one, it does have a lower order book than the Kamsarmaxes and the Ultramax Supramax sectors. But also, if you look at where the real growth is going to come from, and Michael Orr will speak to this in a minute, it's iron ore out of West Africa, bauxite to a lesser degree out of West Africa. All of that is carried on the larger ships.
And then there are still new projects that Vale is doing in Brazil on the iron ore front, which we think will come to fruition over the next few years. So we're trying to set the company up to be what we believe firmness comes back into the market. It's actually pretty good right now, but more firmness is coming back into the market as we get into the second half of 2026 and then into 2027 and 2028, where the order book really just drops very significantly. And then in terms of, as I was saying earlier, we want the company to always be able to play offense. So when we have high earnings, high cash flows, we can pay out significant dividends and return capital to shareholders.
When we have countercyclical type markets, even if it's just a short-term softness, we can continue to pay the dividend, but we can also use our balance sheet to take advantage of opportunities on purchasing assets. And then I'll finish it up and turn it over to Pete. But as I said before, U.S. filer, no related party transactions. We have a diverse and independent board of directors. Actually, if you take me away, half of our board are female, which again, I think is unusual for the shipping industry. And we are the industry leader in governance. Pete.
Thanks, John. I'll touch on Genco's comprehensive value strategy, which is essentially our capital allocation policy that focuses on dividends, deleveraging, and growth. It starts with the balance sheet. Our cash position as of June 30th is about $36 million, with debt outstanding of approximately $100 million. That results in a net loan to value position of 7%, which is an industry low. John touched on it briefly, but we view that the operating leverage of the business that's inherent in the business is enough. You don't necessarily need significant financial leverage to juice returns, essentially, to really get a good ROIC on your investment. That's the model that we've put in place over the last number of years. We also have $500 million of undrawn revolver availability if needed to essentially purchase more assets.
And when we do take delivery of this new cape that we've acquired, we will be doing a draw for that acquisition. In terms of our debt repayments over the last five years, we've paid down approximately 80% of our debt, going from $450 million down to $100 million. But it hasn't been necessarily a straight line. We have a revolver in place that you can draw down opportunistically and promptly for acquisition. So in 2023, we saw an opportunity. We drew down about $65 million of debt, and we did the same thing again in Q4 of 2024, and we'll do so once again here. So our focus, as John has mentioned, has been investing in the capes, and we're using that undrawn revolver availability to play to our thesis, which essentially the larger ships are going to drive ROIC.
And earlier this quarter, we put into place a $600 million revolving credit facility that goes hand in hand with our capital allocation policy. So the big thesis and the big drivers of this was trying to increase overall capacity, which we did. We increased it from $400 million to $600 million. We also reduced our costs, reducing our margin from 185 down to 175 basis points. We also extended tenor out to 2030. Interestingly, we put in place a non-amortization or non-step-down period. So this $600 million revolver availability stays that way through early 2027. So you don't necessarily lose any borrowing capacity over that time, which just further adds to the optionality of the company to further renew and grow the fleet. And then touching on the quarterly dividend policy, it's a variable policy. It targets paying 100% of operating cash flows, less a voluntary reserve.
Genco's cash flow break-even rate, given that we have no mandatory debt amortization, given that we have basically very low interest expense at this point, our cash flow break-even is below $10,000 when you strip out regulatory-related dry docking expenses. So what that's enabled us to do is pay 24 consecutive quarters of dividends over that time, which is the longest among the peer group, and it's equated to approximately $7 per share or a little over 40% of the share price. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mike. Thanks, Pete. Beginning on slide 19, the drybulk freight market, following the seasonally weaker start of the year, has been quite firm for several months now. August was the strongest month to date, excuse me, for 2025 for the Baltic Capesize Index.
Notably, the Supramax Index, after being below $10,000 per day for quite some time in 2025, has increased significantly in the last few weeks, with now the Baltic BSI trading at roughly $16,000-$17,000 per day. Over the last few years, China has imported a significant amount of iron ore, resulting in an uptick in port stockpiles over the past few years. This year, China's iron ore imports have remained quite firm. However, the stockpiles have been drawn down by about 10% as compared to this time last year. We believe there is room for restocking as we turn to the seasonally stronger second half of the year. As John alluded to earlier, in the next few years, we expect significant supply coming online from the Atlantic Basin in the form of iron ore out of Brazil and West Africa, as well as bauxite out of West Africa.
What is important is that this is long-haul ton-miles. One cargo from the Atlantic Basin has three times the impact of one cargo coming out of Australia. This is really where you see the fleet get stretched and where you can see a real run-up in Capesize rates. Over the last few years, we've seen a significant increase in the global bauxite trade, most notably coming out of the country of Guinea and West Africa. This trade is largely carried on Capesize vessels, which is important because when ships ballast from China to the Atlantic, historically, they really only had the option of going to Brazil to load iron ore.
Now they have an option of going to Brazil as well, but Guinea as well in order to load bauxite now, but then also iron ore in the coming years coming from the Simandou mine in West Africa. Turning to the grain trade, a major reason why the BSI has picked up in the last few weeks has been a prolonged South American grain season. We've seen a strong demand for Brazilian beans going to China on both Kamsarmaxes, Supramaxes, and Ultramaxes. These are long-haul ton-miles, which has really constrained the supply of vessels in the Atlantic Basin. Ahead of potential uncertainty with the North American grain season towards the end of the year, potentially China has been purchasing significant volumes ahead of this uncertainty.
Finally, turning to the supply side, the global dry bulk order book is only about 10%-11% at the moment. That's historically pretty low. This compares to 10% of the fleet that is now 20 years or older. We view this order book as largely replacement tonnage. That old tonnage will have to come off the water in the near future. What's in the order book now is largely replacement tonnage for those older vessels. With that, I will turn it back over to John.
Okay. So just finishing up. Again, we think we've created the best and most balanced risk-reward model in the industry with the low, very low leverage, a very significant revolver in place in order to grow and buy additional assets, the high dividend payout, and overall, a real proven track record of capital allocation, which I personally believe is one of the most important aspects of running a shipping company because of the volatility. In terms of revenue, as we showed before, there's a majority that comes from our larger ships in the Capesize sector. I think you will most likely see that increase over the next couple of years as we add more Capesize vessels than the mid-sized vessels. Strong balance sheet and liquidity I spoke about. On the industry side, we definitely have the low cash flow break-even.
I think for fourth quarter, Pete, it's less than $10,000 a day with dry docking. Yeah, so extremely low, a lot of operating leverage above that, particularly in the larger vessel class. We're going to continue to focus on fleet renewal and growth, but again, weighted more towards the Capesize sector, the strong corporate governance, which is something we're very proud about, and then in terms, just to finish up with the industry, Mike showed you the slide on the supply side, and I will just go back to it for a second because this really tells quite a story. If you look at particularly the 20-plus age range of 5.7% and 2.7%, we're at 8%. It's almost the entire amount of the order book, so there is no real projected fleet growth that exists today.
All of the new orders will effectively be replacing ships that are eventually going to be scrapped. We haven't seen anything quite like this in a while. And again, the demand growth is good, but when you look at what really drives shipping over the medium to long term, it's the supply side and the number of ships that are on the water at any given time because you typically have 2%-3% of demand growth on a yearly basis if you go back historically. And then on the demand side, again, we're going to be in a growth situation as we get into next year again, particularly with Simandou and Rio Tinto's iron ore assets coming online in West Africa, gearing up supposedly in the next couple of months. But I think we're more focused on run rates as we get into the second half of next year.
Thank you very much for having us. Really appreciate it.
Thanks, John. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Michael. [Audio distortion] Just a few questions. Maybe, John, just to continue on with what you were just discussing, Simandou, and you're focusing on the second half of next year. Michael had the slide that showed the 172 million tons of incremental capacity that would be coming to market. Is there a way to quantify perhaps what kind of tightening effect that could have on the Capesize market? I think Michael just sort of said rates can just go up, which makes sense.[Audio distortion]. But maybe just perhaps paint a picture about what kind of tightening effect that could have.
Yeah. I thought we had. Let me just find. So if you look at the bottom right of this slide, we're talking 200 Capesize vessels to be absorbed by not just Simandou, but Vale, and there's also some incremental growth from BHP, most likely coming out of Australia, and then the bauxite trade. That's a pretty big percentage of the fleet with just one project. So hopefully that quantifies it a little bit.
Have we seen anything to this degree in recent years, or is this something we haven't seen growth like this probably since back in 2007, 2008, 2009 in terms of iron ore expansion projects?
Okay, so definitely very significant.
Yeah.
Again, for the most, it's not quite as long as Brazil to China, but it's damn close. So it is a long-haul ton-mile creating trade route.
Yeah, and as we were talking about break-even being around $10,000 or perhaps less than that in the fourth quarter, capes are earning somewhere in the $25,000 a day range. The mid-size is in that $16,000-plus range. So you're clearly right now generating a substantial amount of cash flow, but it doesn't feel exciting when you're talking about the story, but you're making a lot of money at today's rates.
Our cash flows are good. Again, having low leverage, it allows you to do a lot of things. Now, this was a pretty heavy year for dry docking for us. And that comes really to an end, or at least slowed down significantly in the very early part of the fourth quarter. So that's why I say that cash flow break-even rate really compresses because there's just not much dry docking because we've done so much of it already this year. When we were plotting out our budget for 2025, we're sort of right where we thought we were going to be. And we never believe that we can predict freight rates on an absolute basis. So we think we're pretty good directionally at it, particularly in the medium term.
We've always thought 2025, coming out of a very robust 2024, was going to be weaker because there just isn't a lot of growth on the larger ships' demand. So the iron ore growth is not there. It's basically flat, though. There's big-time seasonality, right? I mean, Vale has been really pushing out a lot of iron ore in July versus what they were doing in the first part of the year. But as we get into 2026, that's when we see the growth again on the demand side. So the fact that we haven't had that much growth and rates are where they are today, yeah, it's a tight market. And I think it's going to get even tighter over the next few years.
Yeah. I guess where we are right now, I guess August 3rd, we're generally supposed to be heading into perhaps a stronger period coming out of summer. But you're showing in the charts, Michael, where rates are. You just said that things are coming along as you expected. I think generally it felt like people had written off dry bulk for 2025, or at least put it on cruise control and said, "Okay, I'll revisit when Simandou comes on." But as you said, the market's gotten stronger. Are you surprised that it's gotten this much stronger?
So there's been more that's come out of Brazil. And the rainy season in West Africa for bauxite hasn't been as bad as one predicted. So there's been more of a bauxite trade. And to me, that bauxite trade, it's the real juice, right? Because you've got this iron ore, and then all of a sudden you add in this second commodity, and things can go up pretty quickly. And as you know, once you get into the mid-20s, high 20s, you start having pretty large incremental steps on the Capesize sector just because of the leverage that's involved with the fleet.
Yeah, and especially as you're saying, when you discharge in China and you return back to the Atlantic, you now have options, right? Different commodities in different locales versus before. Maybe just on the capital allocation, you had a really good pie chart, I think, that showed how much you had spent on debt reduction, how much on vessel acquisitions, and on dividends. It's been generally kind of evenly split or close to it. Is that the plan going forward to keep sort of a similar ratio where you kind of do a third, a third, a third?
The dividend is obviously formulaic. And so that's going to depend on whatever the operating cash flows are for the quarter. We have set a quarterly reserve of approximately $20 million. It's a voluntary reserve, but it's more voluntary on the downside, meaning if we need to dip into that reserve, which we did last quarter, we will do that in order to pay a dividend. I don't see us taking that up anywhere at this point. But we may lever up again. And when I say lever up, I mean 25%-30%, not 40%-50% because we want to continue to pay the dividend. The dividend is extremely important. So we'll lever up, continue to pay dividends, and de-lever and be in a position to do it again. But we have to find the right transaction, which is not the easiest thing in shipping, but it does happen.
Yeah. And so 7% leverage now on a fleet value basis going to 12% after that acquisition. You mentioned "levering up" to acquire vessels or a fleet. Is there a sweet spot you want to have that leverage at on an ongoing basis?
The sweet spot is zero, right? Because zero allows you to pay very robust dividends. You're not paying any interest expense. You're not repaying any debt. And it still allows you to keep that reserve in place for fleet renewal. But at this point, I see us going a little bit higher than necessarily going lower. We really want to set the company up for 2026, 2027, and 2028 as we look forward. Again, 2025, we look at as sort of a transitional year. Not as good as 2024. We never thought it was going to be recessionary. It certainly hasn't turned out that way. But then as, again, we go into next years, that's when the growth starts again on the demand front.
Very good. Going on offense.
Yes, very much so.
Anybody else have questions? I was just wondering if you could quantify or talk more about the incremental benefit going forward from having two places to pull from on the ballast back from China?
Yeah. So it's a great point because if you go back historically before the bauxite trade really existed, at that point, you had actually a pretty heavy iron ore trade that went to Europe. That disappeared. And so for several years, it was really Vale and maybe Anglo American, but to a much smaller degree in Brazil. And that was it, which created a lot of volatility because you'd have a lot of ships that would ballast to the Atlantic, and then all of a sudden Vale had their pick. Obviously, the opposite happens when there aren't as many ships there. Now, when you're ballasting, you have a choice. And you can decide whether you want to lift bauxite or whether you want to lift iron ore out of Brazil. So for us, it's a big advantage, particularly because everything we're doing is on a voyage basis and direct with charters.
So we can make that choice as we get close to South Africa.
Hi. I just have a quick question in terms of you said that we have a relatively highly aging fleet. In your eyes, how much fleet capacity could come offline at once? Is it like in three years, X% comes offline?
Yeah. Okay, so I can't stress this enough. I wish it was linear, but it's not, but if you look at this slide, and we've highlighted a few things here, the first being 16 years and older, and the reason why we highlighted that is because that's a portion of the fleet when it's getting to the next special survey, you have to make a decision whether you want to spend that money or if you want to scrap. One of the things that a lot of people are talking about right now is the IMO. There's a big meeting coming up in October to decide whether to do a global carbon tax. Very hard to predict what's actually going to come out of there. I mean, there's been a lot back and forth on the politics.
But if they do implement a carbon tax, when you're at 16 years old, okay, you're probably still going to pay that tax, but you're not going to be paying that tax at 20. It's just too expensive, and you can't necessarily pass it along. And so that's why when we look at 20 years and plus, at 8.4%, but 21% of the fleet at 16 years and older versus an order book of 11%, again, it's not one for one, but it certainly shows you medium term what can happen here, which is a very tight situation in 2027 and 2028.
Are your competitors also looking to add capacity, or are they looking to do anything to address that, or are they kind of also looking to benefit from the tighter market?
Well, there's not a lot of new building ordering going on right now. And part of the reason for that is the container ships, gas carriers, tankers have filled up all the available slots. So when you're ordering today, you're really talking about very early 2029 to take delivery. And I make a joke about it, but I'm very serious. I cannot be more thankful to the container ships guys and the gas guys for filling up these slots because I'm sure dry bulk shipping would have figured out a way to order and screw the whole thing up. So it's actually very positive. But we're not seeing a lot of ordering that is taking place this year. In fact, I think it's fallen off dramatically. You all probably have some numbers on that.
Yeah. It's particularly on the Capesize rates that dropped off dramatically year over year, about half.
Yeah. So again, when we look at what hurts this industry, okay, we've had demand shocks. We've had black swan events, but they tend to be very short-lived. They tend to be a quarter or two quarters, and then they fix themselves right away. The supply side, when over-ordering occurs, it takes years to work through that. And so that's why when we look at this slide, we're very optimistic.
I don't know if you'd already covered this, but in terms of your current break-even price versus current market rates, how big is the spread today, and where do you see that going in the next year?
Oh, okay. So Capesize rates, and I'm giving you basic rates, indices, are at $22,000-$23,000 a day. The Supramaxes are between $15,000 and $16,000 a day. Keeping in mind those Supramax rates were sub-10 two months ago. So they have really recovered pretty significantly versus our overall fleet break-even of $9,500 a day in fourth quarter. Again, larger ships have a little bit higher operating expenses than the smaller ships, but that's the fleet-wide. So where is it going to go? Again, we're just not good at absolute numbers. But as we look at next year, particularly in the larger sector where the order book is even lower than the general order book for Supras and Kamsarmaxes, with the additional iron ore coming on, a little more bauxite as well, we think things are going to be higher next year than they are this year.
I think that's probably the best way to put it. I wish I knew what the rates are going to be because I wouldn't be standing up here speaking to you all. I'd be doing something else if I could predict that.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.[Audio distortion]
Okay. Omar, thank you. Thank you, everyone.