Frontline plc (NYSE:FRO) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 30, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Lars Barstad - CEO
Inger Klemp - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Jonathan Chappell - Evercore ISI
Omar Nokta - Jefferies
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2024 Frontline plc Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]
Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lars Barstad, CEO of Frontline Management AS. Please go ahead.
Lars Barstad
Thank you very much for that introduction. Dear all, thank you for dialing in to Frontline's Quarterly Earnings Call. The second quarter of 2024 ended up very much in-line with the first with volatility, but ending up on softer notes, as we entered the seasonal summer lull. Complications around war risk in the Middle East and tightening sanctions against Russia has regretfully become the norm. And I will be touching on that later in the call. It's important to remember though that we are at the seasonal lows and I would like to say that all shareholders have a very exciting fall ahead, as Frontline has not had this number of potential money making days going into the winter for decades.
Before I give the word to Inger, I'll run through our TCE numbers on Slide 3 in the deck. In the second quarter of 2024, Frontline achieved $49,600 per day on our VLCC fleet, $45,600 per day on our Suezmax fleet, and $53,100 per day on our LR2 / Aframax fleet. So far in the third quarter, 79% of our VLCC days are booked at $47,400, 85% of our Suezmax days are booked at [$49,900] (ph) and 65% of our LR2 / Aframax days are booked at $50,100 per day.
Again, all these numbers are on the load-to-discharge basis, meaning they will be affected by the amount of ballast days we end up having at the end of the third quarter. Although Q3 bookings came in somewhat short of market expectations, please do keep in mind the binary characteristics of our market, especially as we come out of the seasonal lows. And then I'll let Inger take you through the financial highlights.
Inger Klemp
Thanks, Lars, and good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let's then turn to Slide 4 and look at profit statement and highlights. We report profit of $187.6 million or $0.84 per share this quarter and adjusted profit of $138.2 million or $0.62 per share. The adjusted profit in the second quarter was comparable to the first quarter, as you can see from the slide, and the decrease in our TCE earnings with $12.4 million, as a result of the disposal of two VLCC fleetsand two Suezmax tankers was offset by a decrease in ship operating expenses, administrative expenses, depreciation and finance expense, as well as an increase in interest income of $12.6 million making up the $0.2 million increase in the quarter.