Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this Frontline fourth quarter and full year earnings call. It's been a very volatile year, and black swans have become a common feature in our market landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our business on many levels, but most importantly, our seafarers have been safe and our organization has been spared serious human consequences. Tanker markets have been challenging, but the year as a whole has been solid business-wise, and we recorded our best full year result in 2020 since 2008. Let's move to slide three and have a look at the highlights. Frontline came into the fourth quarter of 2020 on a soft note, expecting some degree of normal seasonality to kick in as the Northern Hemisphere usually stock up for winter. This time around, the fourth quarter proved to be softer than Q3, actually for the first time in 10 years. On a load to discharge basis, we made $17,200 per day on our VLCCs, $9,800 per day on our Suezmaxes, and $12,500 per day on our LR2s. So far in the third quarter, we have booked 78% of our available VLCC days at $22,600, 68% of our available Suezmax days at $17,800, and 65% of our LR2/Aframax days at $12,200 per day. I think it's safe to say our markets in Q4 were challenging, but I will come to that later in this presentation. I will now let Inger take you through Frontline's financial highlights. Thanks, Lars. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let's turn to slide four and look at the income statement. We achieved the total operating revenues net of voyage expenses of $101 million in the fourth quarter and adjusted EBITDA of $31 million. We report a net loss of $9.2 million, $0.05 per share, an adjusted net loss of $20 million or $0.10 per share in the fourth quarter. We have some adjustments in the fourth quarter, which were the gain on the sale of SeaTeam of $6.9 million. Also, a $2.5 million gain on derivatives, a $1.9 million unrealized gain on marketable securities, a $1.3 million amortization of acquired time charters, and a $1.6 million share of losses of associated companies. The adjusted net income in the fourth quarter decreased from third quarter by $76 million. That was primarily driven by a $75 million decrease in our time charter equivalent earnings due to the lower reported TCE rates in the fourth quarter, which Lars went through. Frontline reports the full year 2020 net income of $413 million or $2.09 per share, adjusted net income of $422 million or $2.13 per share. This is the strongest yearly result since 2008. Let's take a look at the balance sheet on slide five. At the end of December 31, 2020, Frontline has $413 million in cash and cash equivalents, including the earned amounts under our senior unsecured loan facility, the marketable securities, and minimum cash requirements. In November 2020, we entered into two term loan facilities in a total amount of $351.5 million to refinance two existing term loan facilities which matured in the second quarter of 2021, which had total balloon payments of $324.4 million. We also entered into a loan facility in an amount of $233.7 million to partially finance the CapEx requirements as of the end of 2020 of $142.4 million for the four LR2 tankers that we have under construction. In February 2021, we extended the terms of our senior unsecured revolving credit facility of up to $275 million by 12 months to May 2022. $60 million of this extended facility has been recorded as long-term debt as of December 31st, 2020. $215 million remains available and undrawn under this facility. Following the concluded refinancing and financing, we have no material debt maturities until 2023, and the new building program is fully funded. Let's take a total look at the cash break-even rates and OpEx on slide six. We estimate average cash cost break-even rates for 2021 of approximately $21,000 per day for the VLCCs, $17,800 per day for the Suezmax tankers, and $15,600 per day for the LR2 tankers. The fleet average estimate is about $18,200 per day. These rates are the all-in daily rates that our vessels must earn to cover the budgeted operating cost and drydock, the estimated interest expenses, TCE and bareboat hire installments on loans and G&A expenses. We recorded OpEx expenses in the fourth quarter of 2020 of $7,800 per day for the VLCCs, $9,700 per day for the Suezmax and $8,300 per day for the LR2 tankers. The OpEx expenses were impacted by drydocking of four Suezmax tankers and one LR2 tanker in the fourth quarter. We will drydock one Suezmax tanker in the first quarter of 2021. In the graph, on the right-hand side of the slide, we have shown incremental cash flow after debt service per year and per share, assuming 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 per day in achieved rates in excess of our cash break-even rates respectively. Sorry. The numbers include vessels on time charterer out. They are adjusted for new building deliveries, and we are looking at a period of 365 days from January 1st, 2021. As an example, with a fleet average cash cost break-even rate of $18,200 per day, and assuming $30,000 on top, the average fleet TCE rate would be $48,200 per day. Frontline would generate a cash flow per share after debt service of $3.46. With this, I leave the word to Lars again. Thank you, Inger. Let's move on to slide seven and recap the fourth quarter tanker market. During Q4, oil inventories drew at a record pace, to the tune of 2.6 million bpd, according to EIA. As oil demand continued to rise to levels near 10 million barrels above the Q2 levels, oil prices continued to strengthen further and the structure of the oil market incentivized players to empty tanks, both floating and on land. As the future price was increasingly lower than the prompt price, making it uneconomical to hold stock. A significant number of tankers were employed in storage in the second half of last year, particularly outside China. This inventory draw cycle added pressure to an already oversupplied market as these vessels now return to compete in the spot business. Asia, and in particular China, has been the key driver in the recovery so far. This supported the VLCC market for a while as they sourced their returning oil demand from the Atlantic Basin. In the latter part of last year, we saw China also draw on inventories, muting their demand for tankers. By December 2020, Chinese oil consumption reached all-time high at 15.6 million barrels, according to the EIA. Let's move to slide eight and look at the crude fleet and order books. The argument that ships older than 20 years struggle to trade in the conventional oil market is undisputed. Oil majors, traders, and national oil companies all practice a hard stop at 20 years. This means that you have a very limited amount of options once the vessel has gone through the 20-year classing. With freight rates at zero to negative for non-eco tonnage, we struggle to see the prospects for this portion of the fleet for alternative use. The conversion markets for FSOs and FPSOs is not very hot at the moment, and there is a limited demand for storage as all the curves are in steep backwardation. We also believe the upcoming regulatory changes with regards to GHG emissions will challenge the fleet going forward. This indicates a limited lifespan even for vessels of 17.5 years of age. Ordering activity is muted and does not match the current age profile of the fleet. We did see some orders towards the end of last year, and that has lifted the order book slightly. 30% of the overall tanker fleet is above 15 years. As the regulations on energy efficiency or the famous now EEXI kicks in in 2023, the potential for carbon tax regime kicks off. This whole portion of the fleet will either need to invest heavily or retire. Let's move to slide nine, where I want to talk about our clean product tankers. We normally don't mention our clean trading capabilities in these presentations, but we do have 18 modern LR2s and four more to come, which makes us a significant owner in this space. The reduction in jet fuel demand as travel got restricted in 2020 hit refinery margins severely. Refinery margins in Europe and U.S. have been under pressure for years, and due to bleak prospects, little investments have been done in improving and modernizing these plants. Last year's depressed margins accelerated the decisions to permanently close or convert refineries to storage plants, or in some few examples, biofuel plants. Asia, in general, and in particularly Middle East and China, have over the last three years expanded refining capacity significantly. Modern refineries can process a wider range of crudes more efficiently. I could give you an entire presentation on the topic. The key is how they out-compete local refineries in especially Europe, but also to some degree in the U.S. We can see on the slide here that the refining capacity that has permanently closed in Europe is to the tune of 500,000 bpd. In U.S., close to 700,000 bpd. There have been some closures in Asia of 705,000 bpd. The new additions are 1.4 million bpd. In net, we see that or we expect the trade flows to be affected by this. As product demand normalizes post-COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and U.S., we have to assume we return to some level of normality over the coming years. Jet fuel and other products are far more likely to be sourced by Asia, and this will incur longer ton miles. Our larger ships offer great economies of scale for the expected developments in the product trade flows. Let's move on to slide 10 and discuss the market outlook as we see it. I'm focusing on the short-term drivers in this presentation, as that's probably the interesting part considering where the markets are. Saudi Arabia has signaled the reversal of their voluntary 1 million bpd cut to come in April 2021. That comes in addition to whatever they release. Unusual cold weather in the northern hemisphere distorts usual demand patterns. The gas LNG spike in Asia and the unknown capabilities as to how oil for heating dynamics work, as we haven't really seen oil for heating in 10 years, create a lot of uncertainty around how much incremental oil has been consumed during this period. The spike in LNG prices implies oil prices at $260 per day, making great incentives to burn oil for heating. We have episodes of or saw situation where skiing suddenly became popular in Madrid, and most recently in Texas, we've seen how the cold weather has affected production. Goldman Sachs estimates this production loss to be close to 700,000 bpd for February. Oil demand continues to recover despite extended lockdowns. Oil prices indicate tightening markets. The floating storage is no longer a significant factor weighing on the tank market as we see it. In April alone, oil supply is expected to increase by three million barrels, according to EIA. Let's move to slide 11 and sum all these things up. The global tanker markets have corrected sharply during second half 2020 after a significant retraction in world growth. All the leading commodity markets are pricing a strong recovery in 2021, and the global GDP is expected to grow by 5.5% during this year. Oil demand is recovering, and to what pace is a little bit unknown. We all know that the analyst agencies are slow to react, both on the downside when demand disappears, but also to the upside when demand is recovering. Global oil production is expected to increase by 5.3 million barrels during 2021. When this recovery starts for tankers is unknown, but we are very low in the cycle as the chart on the bottom right side indicates. OPEC+ is expected to ease caps from Q2 2021 onwards, and with all the above, we believe Frontline is very well-positioned for a recovery in tanker markets with our modern spot-exposed fleet. With that, I would like to open up for questions from the audience. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. This will only take few moments. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, it's star one if you wish to ask a question. Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Jon Chappell from Evercore. Please ask your question. Your line is open. Thank you. Good afternoon. Lars, as I was reading your press release and your presentation, it struck me that Frontline has a history of being nimble and acquisitive when others can't. Now that you've been very prudent with your dividend, Inger's done a great job of pushing out the maturities. It seems like you're in a position of financial strength at a time when the market's really still struggling. How do you think about these next six months and Frontline's willingness and ability to acquire ships before the optimistic upturn starts maybe later in the year or early next year? Do you sit back and wait to see the whites of the eyes on a recovery before you get more aggressive? Well, it's a good question. It's an expected one. I think I would like to emphasize on our capabilities. They are, as you mentioned there. Whether if we sit back or whether if we're looking at something right now or whether if we will do something in Q2 or later, I'm not going to comment on, to be quite honest. The third answer, I believe is we're always looking. Our financials show we are also ready to move when we see the opportunity. Okay. Second question, more of an industry one, but the one I've also been thinking about. I think scrapping is important on the margin. It's not the most important part of a recovery in this market that's going to be demand-driven. It seems like a lot of companies have been talking about the new emission standards and the terrible market environment and older ships being discriminated against and why that's going to drive scrapping, and you had a whole slide on that yourselves. It just seems like there hasn't been much in the form of scrapping in the last 12 months where rates were pretty much as bad as they could be, at least the last six- nine months. There's this kind of consensus optimism that OPEC starts producing again and the world's recovering and everything's going to get better. Why would we see scrapping accelerate when the view is that things could only get better from here when there really wasn't much to be done at the absolute trough? Well, I must admit, and I think I mentioned or at least indicated in my presentation that the lack of scrapping in this market is a bit of a mystery to me. I think I pointed out that for all economical reasons, and we should be scrapping a lot during this month or the last month, and we haven't seen that yet. I think scrapping will accelerate throughout the year. With regards to the challenging kind of, or the somewhat hazy outlook with regards to regulatory changes and so forth, I think it's going to be a very important factor to our market going forward. I won't join the doomsday predictors saying that every vessel that's above 10 years needs to scrap and all that stuff. There is a lot to be done for the tankers to actually improve their GHG emissions with the existing kits. For sure, it will affect our market going forward. I think one has to be a little bit critical of all the various kind of analyst predictions on the outlook for the tank ships. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Thank you, Lars. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Tsung from Webber Research. Please ask your question, your line is open. Good afternoon. How are you, Lars and Inger? Good afternoon. Hi. I guess I just want to start it off, kind of following up on what Jon was talking about regarding your strong balance sheet. You guys pushed out your debt a bit, instead of asking about acquisitions and expanding the fleet, is there any appetite to increase your operational leverage and possibly terming in charters at what could be the trough of this market? If so, what sort of durations are you guys looking at? I'm so sorry. We can't really hear you too well. I'm sorry for that. Oh, no, Is this better? Yeah, this is better. Hi. Sorry. I guess I was just following up on what Jon was saying and commenting and noticing that you guys have incredibly strong balance sheet. Inger's done a great job in pushing out the debt maturities up to 2023. Instead of just thinking about this purely from a fleet expansion perspective, what about your appetite to increase your operational leverage and terming in new charters of any sort of duration? Yeah. If I got you correctly, basically the appetite to increase our operational leverage. Let me answer the question in a different manner. Right now we're really happy with the situation we're in because we have a fleet that's spot exposed to a very large degree. Apart from the five Suezmaxes we have on long-term time charter out, we are nearly 100% spot exposed. Basically we are in a position where we want to reap the benefits. Whether if we want to increase our ability to make more money, I think that's potentially a few months out. Back to the previous comment. We are looking, but I can't really confirm anything. Yeah, no, that's fair. I guess if you're looking, are you able to sort of color if you're looking at these specific propulsion tech or maybe leaning a little bit more into the contrary to like LR2s? Is there something you can share? Sorry, I'm really struggling to hear you, but did you mention propulsion? Sorry, is this better? Yeah, you're like breaking up. Yes, you're breaking up, yeah. Whether if we are looking at the various propulsion types, yes, we are. We are not ready to invest on that yet. We think the jury is, to some degree, out. As I mentioned in our Q3 presentation with our modern fleet, we're actually in a pretty good shape, at least when it comes to emissions towards 2030. Obviously for us to make an investment in propulsion and with that, I mean retrofitting or ordering kind of ships with a different propulsion than the traditional one. We actually need to see. It's a little bit like a scrubber discussion, kind of we and others started to invest in scrubbers when it was obvious the economical case for it. On propulsion, it's not yet. We don't know. Well, we're pretty sure there will be a carbon tax. We don't know how much it's going to be. We don't know how it's going to be applied. Basically the propulsion discussion is still something we have. I could easily say that both LPG and LNG and then eventually ammonia looks probably the way to go, or one of the ways to go. I think we'll end up in a situation where there are various propulsion types depending on what kind of trade you're doing. I think it's very important to keep in mind that as ship owners, we can't be paying for this ourselves. It is basically the market needs to tell us what it's willing to pay for. If that was an answer to? Okay. All right. Yeah, part of it, but I'm going to just try to reconnect and jump back in the queue, so sorry about my connection. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Randy Giveans from Jefferies. Please ask your question in a minute. Howdy, Lars and Inger. How are you? How are you? Very good. Am fine. Good. All right. Just asking about the dividend, obviously you bought that back last year. Haven't paid a dividend now for the last two quarters. If earnings return, as expected, I guess, here in the coming quarters, is there a formula for the dividend to return or is it kind of fully discretionary? If so, what will cause you to reintroduce the dividend? Randy, I think it's like we stated in the earnings release. We are in a way dedicated to return dividends to our shareholders where the board is. We would have to look at both positive results. First, we have to have a positive result, then obviously also we would have to look at the market expectations. That's the same wording in a way as we have in our press release. Got it. Okay. As you operate in both the crude and the products tanker market, which of those or maybe which asset class VLCC, Suezmax, LR2s are you most bullish on here in the coming months? Well, I've been asked that a couple of times today actually. Our company is like a four-cylinder engine, where we have the VLCC, Suezmax. We have the LR2s that are trading clean and dirty. Recently we've had at least some spark in the Suezmax cylinder, not to any excitement at all, but at least recovering from negative returns. Right now we have the Aframax space where there's some excitement due to weather and disruptions in the U.S. Gulf. I am unsure which segment will be hit the first, to be quite honest, when the recovery story starts to kind of come true. Potentially the VLCC market because eventually you need refinery runs to increase for products to flow. The start of any return of volume will probably come from the Middle East, which would firstly benefit the VLCC, I would say. Yeah. Got it. All right, that's fair. Then quickly here on asset values, how have those been impacted kind of in this current market weakness? However, there's also an optimistic outlook, right, for the back half of this year. It seems like the share price rally has maybe outpaced the increases in asset values. Is that accurate or what are you seeing on that front? I agree with your analysis. I believe the share market is pricing the recovery a little bit further out. Obviously jumping over the uncertainty in the front here. We have seen a few transactions that kind of underpin the values, at least if you look at the five-year-old bucket. We're also about to get some price transparency, I believe, on resales and new builds, but I wouldn't say it's an upward movement, but I would say we're at least firmly at what might be the floor. Sure. Good deal. Well, that's it for me. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further question at this time. Please go ahead. We have no further question at this time. Please continue. Okay. With that, I would like to thank you all for listening. We are excited for the time to come in tankers and wish you all a great weekend. Thank you.
Loading workspace