Please standby. Your program is about to begin. If you need any assistance during your conference today, please press star zero. Good morning. My name is Shelby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Pangaea Logistics Solutions Q4 and full year 2022 earnings teleconference. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 11:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. The recording can be accessed by dialing 800-283-9429 domestic or 402-220-0871 international. All lines are currently muted, and after the prepared remarks, there will be a live question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A segment, please press star 1 on your phone.
If your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing the star and 2. We do ask that you please pick up your handset for optimal sound quality. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Noel Ryan with Vallum Advisors.
Thank you, operator, and welcome to the Pangaea Logistics Solutions Q4 and full year 2022 results conference call. Leading the call with me today is CEO Mark Filanowski, Chief Financial Officer Gianni Del Signore, and COO Mads Petersen. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about future business and financial expectations. Actual results may differ significantly from those projected in today's forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties, including the risks described in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mark.
Thank you, Noel. Welcome to those joining us on the call and webcast today. After the market closed yesterday, we issued results for the 3 and 12 months ended December 31, 2023. Last year, we continued to develop a leading dry bulk logistics and transportation services company of scale while providing our customers with specialized shipping, supply chain and logistics offerings in commodity and niche markets. Our record full-year profitability and operating cash flow put on display the durability of our vertically integrated premium rate shipping logistics model during a period of pronounced market volatility. TCE rates were strong in the first half of 2022, with the first 6 months being some of the best we've seen in years.
During this period, we capitalized on the strong demand and rate environment by fully utilizing our fleet, including our 4 new build ice-class vessels, together with 5 secondhand vessels purchased in the prior 24 months, and the purchase of one-third interest in our MBHC joint venture from one of our partners in late 2020, which effectively added 2 more vessels to our fleet. During the Q4, our chartering strategy drove positive arbitrage in a falling rate market. While market conditions deteriorated beginning in the latter half of 2022, our long-term transportation contracts and flexible chartered in fleet positioned us to perform well in excess of the market indices. TCE earn declined 38.5% on year-over-year basis in the Q4, our average TCE rate exceeded the average benchmark by 41% in the period.
Q1 2023 to date, our TCE booked for 3,970 ship days is $15,065 per day. Our premium rate model, which leverages the integrated benefits of specialty cargo carriage and onshore supply chain solutions, contributed to the 480 basis points Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion realized in the Q4 when compared to the prior year-end, year period. In 2022, we generated nearly $100 million in free cash flow, positioning us to pursue a balanced, self-funded approach toward organic and inorganic growth investments, together with a robust and consistent dividend program.
In 2023, our capital allocation priorities will include fleet renewal and measured expansion, expanding our logistics platform, particularly as it relates to complementary, immediately accretive onshore opportunities, further debt reduction and continued support of our quarterly cash dividend, which on an annualized basis represents more than $18 million in dividends to shareholders. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2023, we anticipate that a post-pandemic reopening in China and stable economic activity in the West should provide incremental support for global dry bulk demand. On the supply side, global dry bulk shipping capacity is constrained for the foreseeable future, given the combined impact of low new build activity and recent introduction of new IMO-mandated emissions reduction regulations that will impact older, less efficient fleets and will further restrict new building orders.
In January 2023, we entered into an agreement to sell our Bulk Newport, a 2003 Supramax vessel, for $9.2 million. This sale is consistent with our strategy of maintaining a modern and efficient fleet amid tightening global emissions regulations. Looking ahead, we intend to opportunistically manage our fleet and commercial operations with the purpose of maximizing TCE rates while continuing to support client requirements. In closing, I want to personally thank all of our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. We see many opportunities for profitable growth on the horizon, and we look forward to providing you regular updates on our progress. With that, I'll hand it over to Gianni.
Thank you, Mark, and welcome to all of those joining us today. Our Q4 financial results continue to emphasize the flexibility of our business model as we were able to maximize our operating leverage through our chartering strategy and deliver solid returns amid a weakening dry bulk market. Fourth quarter TCE rates were approximately $20,000 per day, a premium of more than 40% to the average published market rates for Supramax and Panamax vessels in the period, which is supported by our long-term COAs and our ability to opportunistically lock in short-term cargo business. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $26.8 million, capping off 2022 with full year Adjusted EBITDA of $140 million, a record for Pangaea.
Our margins expanded approximately 480 basis points on a year-over-year basis in the Q4, even as Adjusted EBITDA declined year-over-year. The overall decline in Adjusted EBITDA in the Q4 was primarily due to a 45% year-over-year decrease in total revenue attributable to lower market rates and a 29% decline in total shipping days. This revenue decline was partially offset by lower charter-hire expenses , which declined by $86.8 million year-over-year to $28.2 million in the Q4. Chartered in days declined by 55% as the company favored trip charters over period charters in the Q4 of 2022 versus 2021. Vessel operating expenses increased approximately 21%.
For the full year, vessel operating expenses on a per day basis, excluding management fees, was approximately $5,800 a day, an increase of about 10%, mainly due to increased crew travel expenses and crew management expenses. As we've discussed in the past, we utilize forward freight agreements and bunker swaps to selectively hedge our exposure to the market on our long-term cargo contracts and forward bookings. While this approach locks in future cash flows, the mark-to-market on unrealized gains or losses can lead to fluctuations in our reported results on a period-to-period basis, while settlement of the position and execution of the physical will occur at a future date.
As such, during the Q4, our reported net income reflects unrealized gains of approximately $1.1 million and $465,000 relating to mark-to-market adjustments on bunker swaps and forward freight agreements, respectively, and an unrealized loss on interest rate derivatives of $371,000. In total, our reported GAAP net income attributable to Pangaea for the Q4 was $15.5 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, in line with the Q4 of 2021. Moving on to the cash flow statement. Total cash from operations increased 73% year-over-year to $32.9 million in the Q4 of 2022.
As a result, the company had $128.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and total debt, including finance lease obligations of $299.5 million. During the quarter, the impact of higher interest rates was relatively muted in our results due to our fixed rate and capped rate debt. Of our total long-term debt and financial leases, 53% is fixed at an all-in rate of 4.04%. 40% is capped at LIBOR rate of 3.25%, and 8% is floating at LIBOR plus 2.1. At the end of the Q4 of 2022, the ratio of net debt to trailing twelve-month Adjusted EBITDA was 1.25 times.
In conclusion, our vertically integrated shipping and logistics model delivered above-market growth during the Q4, supported by strong execution of our chartering strategy, continued fleet expansion, and disciplined capital allocation. Entering 2023, our liquidity position has never been stronger, positioning us to drive strategic investments in new vessels and logistics operations while continuing to reduce debt and pay a stable quarterly cash dividend. As we seek to deploy capital toward new growth opportunities, we will aim to further optimize our return on capital invested, consistent with our commitment to long-term value creation for our shareholders. With that, we will now open the line for questions.
Thank you. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your touch-tone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star and one to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. We'll take our first question from Liam Burke with B. Riley.
Thank you. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Gianni.
Morning, Liam. Nice to hear from you.
Thank you. Mark, you mentioned the IMO mandate in terms of carbon emissions and slow steaming. I know it's early in the year, but are you seeing any further capacity tightening on the global fleet related to slow steaming?
We don't see it yet, Liam. I think people are still trying to figure out exactly how the CII regulations are gonna affect everyone. You've gotta be careful on how you plan your voyages, and try to operate your ships as efficiently as possible to make sure that you don't end up with a problem at the end of the year by doing something that's gonna affect you early in the year. People are trying to work their way through these regulations.
We're looking at the CII impact of the voyages already on our ships and trying to make sense of exactly what we're gonna have to do toward the end of the year to make sure that we get the best ratings on our ships. Mads Petersen is here with me. He's really leading the charge here on the Pangaea side in terms of these regulations. Maybe he has a comment directly.
No, but thanks, Mark and Liam. it is essentially a question of at the moment of sort of we're sort of shadow complying with this, where we are, where we are monitoring and tracking how we are, you know, you know, how we're stacking up against the new regulations. it's not something that has an operational impact yet for us, and I doubt for many others.
Okay, got it. Your CapEx is relatively low, except, if you go out and buy more assets. Cash flow should be strong, your balance sheet's in the best shape ever. How are you looking at capital allocation in 2023?
Hey, Liam, it's Gianni. I think we're pretty consistent. You know, our strategy remains the same it's been for many years. I think like you said, we've never been in a better position. We can be opportunistic, and we can look at, we can look at different things that in the past, perhaps we wouldn't be in a position to look at. That being said, I think if we look at our priorities, our chartered fleet and our own fleet are always priorities to us. We're selling the Bulk Newport. We may look at one or two additional assets this year to sort of, you know, supplement the fleet and continue to look for some opportunities to renew. Debt service, we continue to pay down debt.
We're paying $8 million to $10 million a quarter for 2023. Then we have our first meaningful balloon in Q2 of 2024. We wanna have flexibility, you know, to do what we want as we approach that balloon. It's about a $20 million, $20 million dollar balloon in 2024. Then we've said it before, you know, our message to everyone is, you know, we try to be consistent and that goes for our dividend as well. We wanna continue to be in a position where we can pay that dividend through the cycle for as long as possible.
It's good to be in a position we're in, and it's good to have that flexibility so we can be opportunistic.
Great. Thank you, Gianni. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mads.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We'll take our next question from Poe Fratt with AGP.
Good morning. Gianni, for you first. Can you just talk, I mean, you sort of alluded to it, but can you just talk about, you know, cash on the balance sheet is, you know, almost doubled over the last year or more than doubled. It's, you know, you're carrying about $2.85 of cash on the balance sheet, granted you're, you know, you still you have a reasonable amount of debt. Can you just talk about, you know, your, a little more deeper into your cash management strategy? On top of that, you're selling the Newport, you know, so that you get another roughly $8.5 million net coming in. You know, does it make sense to carry that much cash?
Thanks, Poe. It's a great question, and we are certainly looking at that internally and at the board level as well. Well, the first thing I guess I would point you to and others is note 4 in our 10-K, which is, you know, a reconciliation or a breakdown of our cash. I think it's worth noting that some of that cash, of the $128 million, is held in joint ventures that are consolidated. We have our partners that also have a say in the utilization of that cash.
If you look at note 4, there's the amount of cash attributable just to Pangaea, and we have full access to, let's say, versus consolidated, is about $85 million. In whole, I agree with you. It's, we're looking for opportunities to deploy it. There's actual yield now at different banks. Back to my comment to Liam, I think being able to have the, you know, to be as opportunistic as possible to be in a position where we have flexibility to look at different projects, I think is important for us. We are returning cash to shareholders. We are paying a dividend. We've incrementally increased it over 2022.
If we see opportunities to do other things, or return in other forms, then, you know, we certainly are looking at that as well.
You know, you control the joint venture, though. You have a 2/3, you know, ownership interest. You know, you refinanced a lot of the joint venture debt. You know, why not move that cash over to corporate and.
Yeah, we did. We're doing that. We paid a $15 million dividend out of one of our joint ventures, we will continue to do that. Absolutely. I think the, we revisit that periodically at the Pangaea board level, we revisit it with our partners frequently as well. We don't wanna sit on cash if we don't expect to use it. We wanna be able to deploy it in ways that are meaningful to the business and are generating value. I think that'll be, you know, that's how we view our cash, and that's how we'll view it going forward.
You know, who would've thought over the last 10 days, you know, some of the things that are happening in the banking industry? Can you just comment on how, you know, whether you've run a risk analysis on where your cash is and, you know, where you potentially, you know, might see some concerns?
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's, you know, it certainly sends some panic through the market, what, you know, on where you have your cash, and we're very mindful of that. We've always reviewed our banks. You know, we're in a not just a U.S.-focused banking system, but we're global, right? We're making payments, we're receiving payments all across the world. We've generally been in, you know, the big banks. And we have a lot of our cash, almost all of it, in what we would deem the larger banks and larger Western banks in the U.S. and Europe. Yeah, we're looking very closely. We feel we are in a good position where our cash currently is.
But who knows? I know who knows what's ahead, but we'll try to, we'll try to keep it in a place that we feel as comfortable as possible.
Great. Then, Mads, if we could talk about, 1, how's the ice-class market looking for the rest of the year? Then 2, you know, you really scaled back the chartered-in fleet over the course of the Q4. Can you give us an idea of where you are on the chartered-in fleet right now and how the chartered-in fleet looks for the rest of the year? Then just on, you know, layer on top of that, just, you know, where you might see the, you know, the 1-2 assets, is it ice-class or non-ice-class, sort of what you're looking at to, you know, continue the fleet renewal program.
I hope, happy to do that. I think as starting with your last point there in terms of the assets we're looking at for to add to the fleet, to the own fleet, our focus is on our sort of conventional fleet, the Supramax and Ultramaxes. That is probably, you know, that's where we have our focus, and that's where we will, we'll look to add to the fleet. We're not looking to add to the ice-class fleet at the moment, in any size really.
In terms of the chartered-in fleet, I mean, that number will fluctuate in accordance with the market, our customers and how busy they are and ultimately, of course our, you know, our view on where we think the market will be. You're absolutely right that number did go down throughout the latter half of last year. That is, that's the way that this part of the business is designed to operate. You know, when the market is dropping like it did the last couple quarters last year, we can reprice the fleet. We can redeliver the chartered-in fleet as we go, and then we fix and ship cheaper, right?
That means that rather than having maybe some short period ships in the fleet, we will just execute on time charter trips to extract the most value out of whatever market is at the current time, right? We have done that before. You know, we didn't wanna load up on period charters going into Q1. That proved to be the right decision as the market kept trending lower. But as things are improving now, I imagine that this part of our the fleet will actually sort of will grow a bit over the next, yeah, 3-6 months, depending on what happens in the market. We're already seeing the early signs of better value in the short period market, and we are trying to extract that.
We don't have a fixed number of ships that we need to employ in this part of the business. It is designed to be dynamic and contract and expand in line with the markets. On the ice-class front, the ships have been predominantly engaged in sort of the North Atlantic market at the moment and have been doing some business out of the St. Lawrence. We haven't done really anything in the Baltic following our decision that was already taken last year to not engage in any trades from Russia or with Russian, with cargo of Russian origin.
you know, that did impact the earnings of that fleet compared to where it normally would be this time of year. It is an efficient fleet. It's a modern fleet. It can do, you know, conventional dry bulk business. and it did that for the quarter, right? of course, we still have our Bethlehem's contract that's coming up over the summer, where all 10 ships will be engaged in that business. yeah. I... Does that answer your questions?
Absolutely. Great, great color. Thank you. Mark, not to leave you out.
Thank you.
You've been talking about expanding the logistics business for, you know, a couple quarters, if not longer. Can you just talk about strategically what you wanna accomplish on the logistics side? You know, it hasn't hit the radar screen as far as materiality yet. Can you just talk about, you know, strategically what you wanna do there? Also give us an idea of sort of how much capital you might be able to deploy. If you could just talk about, you know, what kind of return on capital your targets might include.
Okay. First of all, the strategy really, Paul, is to get more cargo to put on our ships, expand the opportunities for shipping, right? We can get closer to cargo by developing a relationship with a miner or a producer, and get more cargo on our ships to deliver to customers on the other end of the voyage, that helps our shipping business. It also gives us a little return on the activity we're doing, even during activity we might be doing in the load port. Overall, our margins increase, our throughput increases, our revenue increases, and it gives us other opportunities for other movements that miner might be making.
On the other side, where we arrive with cargo, you know, say in our Sabine terminal, We arrive with our ship or another person's ship, another company's ship, comes in and we discharge that cargo. We get closer to the end user on that point. Maybe if they've got cargo to ship into the U.S. Gulf, they can ship it into Sabine. We can do the same thing, get more cargo on our ship coming to our managed terminal, where we get additional margin for doing the extra work. That's really the strategy, to expand the shipping business by doing these other things on each end. Having the opportunity, having the operation going in Sabine gives us other opportunities to do business for other ships.
In fact, last summer when Houston was very crowded, congested, we did some business with third-party companies, either suppliers or buyers of commodities that were trying to get into Texas, into Houston, but they came to Sabine instead, and we helped them in that area. We developed relationships with those customers that are ongoing. It's just expansion of the whole touch of cargo from beginning point to end point, is what we're really after, Poe. In terms of capital, you know, we could spend a lot of money going out and buying real estate up and down the Mississippi River or in U.S. Gulf Coast, but it's not in our target right now to do that.
We're trying to do it where our current customers are active. Maybe try to get hold of another terminal that we can operate with existing customers to expand our business with them and expand, like I said, in different ways, with suppliers, producers, shippers, to get more cargo on the ships. In terms of ROE, we're looking at projects today that would be in the mid-teens, I guess, in terms of if we just took that opportunity by itself. Really, again, what we're trying to do is expand returns on the whole business by getting additional freight on carriage of cargo and extra services, even during services. Package it all together, gives us an overall higher return. Again, that's the strategy.
Looking at individual projects, probably mid-teens is our target right now.
Okay. Mark, would you know, I think I heard it, but would you characterize the logistics business as, you know, lower risk and a little more consistent than, you know, on the fleet side, you know, that there's, you know, risk adjusted, the volatility is gonna be a lot lower. Maybe the returns are, you know, lower in peak cycles, but, you know, there's more consistency, so it creates a little more consistency in the overall business.
Yeah. For instance, Poe, we're looking at a project right now to take cargo into a new port that we're trying to develop a relationship with in the Gulf Coast. The project comes with. It's really based on a contract for carriage of a commodity into that port. If we can get a contract for one year or two years or three years for commodity, this commodity business, because we're doing the stevedoring on the discharge port or the stevedoring on the load port, then that adds consistency to the whole business. Right. It could be we put together the contract carrying the goods along with the stevedoring. We're not dependent on, you know, market fluctuations so much. That's why we think it's more consistent.
Just one comment, Poe, here, that we're not looking to create something that is that operate totally independent from each other, right? Both offering are actually depend on each other for the maximum output, right? Stevedoring alone without any activity on our own ships, sort of, derived from that is not something that will generate a, you know, comparable return to buying a bulk carrier, for instance, right? The combination is really powerful and drives higher margin and much more meaningful relationships that you find traditionally in the shipping market. It's a way to operate and create a niche for yourself. It's not different. Our approach to it and our view on it is not different from our ice-class business, for instance.
It's the same idea, just different way of getting to the same end result of offering a more comprehensive service that is of higher value to the customer than just moving stuff from A to B and not really thinking about what happens before or after.
Great. Those comments are really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. It appears that we have no further questions at this time. I will turn the program back over to Mark Filanowski for any additional or closing remarks.
Once again, thank you for joining our call. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at investors@pangaeals.com and a member of our team will follow up with you. This concludes our call today. You may now disconnect.
That concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.