StealthGas Inc. (NASDAQ:GASS) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 24, 2023 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Konstantinos Sistovaris - Investor Relations
Harry Vafias - Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Tate Sullivan - Maxim Group
Climent Molins - Value Investor’s Edge
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Q1 2023 Results 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, Mr. Harry Vafias. Please go ahead.
Harry Vafias
Good morning, everybody and welcome to our first quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. This is Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas, to discuss market and company outlook. And with me is Mr. Sistovaris, handling Investor Relations, to discuss the financial aspects.
Before we commence the presentation, I’d like to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. At this stage, if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of the presentation. The risks are further disclosed in the StealthGas’ filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to point out that all amounts quoted unless otherwise clarified are stated in U.S. dollars. Today, we released our earning results for the first quarter 2023, reporting yet again another quarter of strong profitability. So let’s proceed to discuss these record results and update you on the company’s strategy and the market in general.
On Slide 3, we summarize some of these highlights. The first quarter is usually a seasonally strong quarter for LPG trading. So we continue with our strategy of fixing more ships on time charters at improved levels. The reduction in spot market days by 13% and the fact that we had a single vessel to drydock increased the operational utilization of the fleet to 97.3%. We saw increased interest from charters in launching longer periods and we took advantage of that. With that, we managed to have secured today 80% of the remainder of 2023 days contracted out. We have locked in about $115 million in revenues for all subsequent periods.
In terms of our sale and purchase activity, we continue to look for opportunities to sell some vessels in a boosting market. Together with our joint venture partners, we sold the [indiscernible] for a profit of about $14 million in March. Following that, we – following that, we recently entered into an agreement to sell 4 more vessels for a combined sale value of about $70 million. We will incur a profit that would be reflected in over the next couple of quarters, depending when the deliveries will take place to their new owners.