Pacific Basin Shipping Limited (PCFBF) 2024 Annual Results Earnings Call Transcript

2025-02-28 16:17:36 ET

Pacific Basin Shipping Limited (PCFBF)

2024 Annual Results Earnings Conference Call

February 28, 2025 5:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Martin Fruergaard – Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Cathy Huang – HSBC

Presentation

Operator

Martin Fruergaard

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for attending Pacific Basin's 2024 Annual Results Earnings Call. My name is Martin Fruergaard, CEO of Pacific Basin. Assuming that you have already gone through the presentation, we will briefly highlight some of the key points discussed in it before we proceed with the Q&A session. In 2024, we generated an EBITDA of $333 million, an underlying profit of $114 million and a net profit of $132 million. This resulted in a 7% return on equity and an earnings per share of HK 0.199. We have a strong balance sheet with net cash of about US$20 million and available committed liquidity of $548 million.

Our core business generated $178 million before overheads benefited from the stronger freight market, while our operating activity contributed $17 million, having generated a margin of $630 per day over 27,610 days. In view of our sound cash generation, the Board recommends a final dividend of HK0.051 per share. Combined with the interim dividend distributed, this amounts to $61 million, which represents 50% of our net profit for the full year, excluding vessels disposal gains, consistent with our distribution policy. The Board has also approved another share buyback program of up to $40 million in 2025 as our shares continue to trade substantially below the current market value of our assets.

Please turn to Slide 4. In 2024, we completed the announced $40 million share buyback program, buying back and canceling a total of 138 million shares, which reduced our issued share capital by 2% after our convertible bond conversion in June 2024, resulting in the issue of 30 million shares. This combined with the recommended final dividend, means we are committed to distributing about $101 million or 83% of our 2024 net profit, excluding vessels disposal gains.

Since 2021, we have generated approximately $1.75 billion in profits and are distributing around $1.17 billion or 67% of total net profits, excluding vessels disposals gains. We believe that buying back our own shares at significant discount to NAV is a strategy that enhances shareholder value more efficiently than acquiring secondhand vessels at current prices....

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