Golden Ocean Group Limited (NASDAQ:GOGL) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 16, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Ulrik Andersen - Chief Executive Officer

Peder Simonsen - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Omar Nokta - Jefferies

Sherif Elmaghrabi - BTIG

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2022 Golden Ocean Group Limited Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ulrik Andersen. Please go ahead, sir.

Ulrik Andersen

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this conference call where we will be presenting Golden Ocean’s Q4 results. Thank you very much for listening in. In today’s call, we follow our usual procedure. Peder Simonsen, Golden Ocean’s CFO, will talk us through the financial highlights. And hereafter, I will be discussing the market and the outlook for the company.

At the end of the presentation, I will provide more details on our recent acquisition of 6 modern Newcastlemaxes. So in the next 20 minutes, we will show you that despite macroeconomic factors presenting a challenging backdrop, Golden Ocean generated solid results in the fourth quarter that we continue divesting older tonnage and recycle the proceeds into equity for modern tonnage. And that despite an expected slow first half of the year, the long-term dry bulk fundamentals remain strong.

With that, let’s take a look at the main highlights for the quarter. In Q4, we recorded an adjusted EBITDA of $112 million, which resulted in net income of $68 million or $0.34 per share. We achieved average time charter equivalent rates of $21,000 per day for our Capesizes and $19,000 per day for the Panamaxes. Like the other three quarters in 2022, these earnings are well above the benchmark indices. For the Capes, it is $7,000 per day per vessel and for the Panamaxes $5,000 per day per vessel. The premiums are driven by our modern fuel-efficient fleet, fixed paying contracts and scrubber premiums. Rate guidance and looking at this quarter Q1, we have so far secured $13,000 per day for 63% of our Cape days and $15,000 per day for 73% of our Panamax days.

Looking ahead into Q2, we have secured $21,000 per day for 19% of our Cape days and $18,000 per day for 14% of our Panamax days. During the quarter, we insert into a $250 million facility refinancing 20 vessels. We also completed the sale of 2 older Panamax vessels while entering into an agreement to acquire 6 modern Newcastlemax vessels for total price of $291 million. I will discuss this transaction later in the presentation.