Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. This is Omar Maher from EFG Hermes. On behalf of my colleague, Ahmed Hazem Maher, it's my pleasure to welcome everyone to Nakilat's 3Q21 results conference call. I'm pleased to be joined by Mr. Hani Abu Aker, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Fotios Zeritis, Head of Investor Relations. As usual, the call will begin with a discussion of the key highlights for the period, and this will be followed by a Q&A session. I will now hand the call over to the management team to begin the presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Omar. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Nakilat's Q3 2021 results conference call. For your convenience, these transcripts of this call and presentation will be available on the company's investor relations section on our website. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Many of our remarks contain forward-looking statements and for factors that cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, please refer to the Slide two of the investor relations presentation. In addition, some of our remarks contain non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of this is included in the notes of this presentation. Nakilat CFO, Hani Abu Aker, will begin today's call with a discussion of company's highlights and followed by a brief discussion of group's earnings results. After, I will give you an overview of LNG shipping market, and finally, Nakilat CFO, Hani Abu Aker, will walk you through the company's business outlook. We will be very happy to address all your questions. Now, I would like to hand it over to the CFO of Nakilat, Mr. Hani Abu Aker. Hani, please go ahead. Thank you, Fotios. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Nakilat Q3 2021 earnings results conference call. I hope all of you and your family are safe and staying healthy. Before we get into our financial results, I will take this moment to thank all our seafarers and shore-based staff for their continued dedication to maintain business continuity and bringing clean and reliable energy to the world. Now, please return to Slides seven and eight of the presentation. We are pleased to announce that Nakilat has reported a profit of close to QAR 1 billion or QAR 0.18 per share for the first nine months of 2021. An 11.5% increase compared to the same period in 2022, which effectively supported by streamlining our expenses and creating additional savings to ensure sustainable return to our shareholders. We can see that Nakilat G&A and operating expenses decreased by 4.8% and 0.9% respectively, compared to the same period in 2022, due to Nakilat management emphasis on cost rationalization, structure, and economies of scale. In addition, we remain fully focused on delivering reliable, high-quality service to our customers. This focus will allow us to maintain a high degree of uptime of our fleet utilization. All of the above emphasize Nakilat ability to deliver the required earnings and operating cash flow to our shareholders. Nakilat EBITDA has reached QAR 2.4 billion in nine months due to operational excellence that we just talked about. Our Nakilat goal is always to maximize sustainable bottom-line growth and create value to our shareholders. You can see that our current ratio is at 1.47, and our return of equity has reached 13.3%, due again to our strategy to optimize the utilization of our fleet and continuous efforts for cost savings, which will benefit all our key stakeholders. Let me hand it back to Fotios to take you through an overview of the energy shipping market. Fotios, if you can please, take it from there. Thank you so much, Hani. Hello, everyone. I would like to give you a brief update of the LNG shipping market. The unseasonal high in the market has pushed LNG shipowners' confidence. Charter rates have spiked during recent winter as the LNG spot market struggles to find sufficient capacity for prompt deliveries. According to Wood Mackenzie, operational fleet capacity has doubled since 2010, but more capacity is required to prevent seasonal charter rate spikes. Demand for short-term vessel charter surged in 2021 as charterers jumped to secure tonnages in anticipation of surge of spot rates during the winter. Drewry projects that LNG trade growth, it will be at a CAGR of 5.6% from 2021 - 2026 due to rising demand for power generation as well as industrial and marine bunkering consumption. According to Refinitiv vessel tracking, the global exports of LNG reached 280 million tons approximately in the first nine months of 2021. This is implying increase of 4.2% year-on-year. In addition, China imported approximately 57.6 million tons of LNG in the first nine months of 2021, which implies an increase of 22.2% year-on-year. Please turn to the slide 11 and 12 in our presentation. According to SSY, the current spot charter rates for modern two-stroke tonnages is approximately $190,000 per day. For DFDE, it's $150,000 per day and $110,000 approximately for the steams. SSY asserts that one year LNG shipping charter rates are at approximately $130,000 for mega DFDE, $100,000 for DFDE and $62,000 per day for steam, which is a very helpful benchmark when an owner discusses current charter opportunities with the charterers. Please turn to the slide 12 of our presentation. There you can see that in 2021, the global LNG fleet has reached approximately 604 vessels in operation and another 141 conventional LNG vessels on the order book until 2025 as per the Clarksons data. This implies an increase of 26% of total LNG fleet in terms of number of conventional LNG vessels as of October 2021. The long-term outlook for LNG shipping is positive, driven by the upcoming global LNG supply growth. Supply growth by LNG producers will require longer voyages to meet the growing demand in Asia, tying up shipping capacity and increasing shipping demand. Now I would like to hand it back to Mr. Hani Abuaker to give you an insight into Nakilat business outlook. Please, Hani, go ahead. Thanks, Fotios. Okay, I will go now to slide 14. I will discuss about Nakilat business outlook for 2021. As we can see, against the backdrop of global uncertainty about the economic environment, Nakilat has results for the nine months have shown and highlighted the benefit of having a great asset portfolio and a long-term contract, which is backed by high quality customers and the resulting earning of the power of our company. All of this makes Nakilat a compelling story for our investors and shareholders. In 2021, we expect another successful year, although actually we expect also the next quarter to be more promising for us as we continue to optimize our expenses. Not only that, but also we expect to receive the 3rd new build jointly owned LNG carrier, which is going to be commercially and technically managed by Nakilat. In regard to the shipyards, we expected to strengthen, we expected to have a better financial performance and to strengthen their abilities in the way they carry on their work. We also continuously screening a global opportunities to identify an attractive business opportunity, which will add value to our company and shareholders. Before we open the floor for questions, as we have emphasized before, we're not going to take any question during this call related to QatarEnergy announcements. Nakilat does not comment on commercial and technical details related to the North Field project that is owned by QatarEnergy and Qatarg as. For additional details on QatarEnergy announcements, I refer you to their website and press releases where you can find the information that you need. With that, I will ask the operator to open the floor for questions, and we're happy to answer you. Thank you. If you wish to have a question at this time please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Shabbir Yusuf Kagalwala. We will now take our first question from Shabbir Yusuf Kagalwala from Al Rayan Investment. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the call. Fotios, another good set of results for you and the company. Just wondering in terms of the JV income, which has grown significantly during the quarter, obviously you highlighted that there was a one-off in Q2. Now that that's gone, is this a level at which we should expect the JV income to continue, provided that you will have additional vessels coming in? That's my question. Thank you. Actually, yes. You should expect that sort of level of income coming from our JVs. If not, better even performance. We have seen a good turnaround and sustainable results that's coming from the shipyards ventures. Hopefully over the next quarters and in the foreseeable future, we should really have very sustainable results from the joint venture overall. Right. Just an addition to that, when exactly are you getting the third LNG vessel? Is it end of the coming quarter? Just some timeline on that, please. Hello? Yeah, it should be coming very soon. Within the next 10 days, I would say. Okay? Great to hear. Is it going to be on a short-term charter or have you contracted it out on a long-term basis? We have already something contracted for, if you want to call it a short-term contract. We don't comment a specific duration, but should be between one to three years. All right. Perfect. Thank you so much. Yes. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. We will now take our next question from Samer Darwiche from Amwal Capital Partners. Please go ahead. Hello, Hani. Hello, Fotios. This is Samer. Congratulations on Q3 results. I just have one question regarding your debt repayment strategy. How much should we expect in terms of debt repayment per year going forward? Okay. We have the scheduled debt repayment, which is usually around QAR 900-QAR 100 billion a year. However, if there's any new opportunities and if we don't have enough internally generated fund, usually we go for sort of a corporate loan to bridge that, and we might incur some of that on a corporate level. I hope I did answer the questions that you just asked. Yeah. On a normalized, basically, roughly we can assume up to around QAR 1 billion, correct? If I understood you correct. Yes. This is like a mortgage, so over time, year-over-year- Yes ...the payments towards these becomes more the principal than the interest. Yeah. Exactly. No. What I mean is only the principal part. How much debt repayment from the principal part you expect? It's around QAR 1 billion, right? Yes. Around QAR 900 million-QAR 1 billion. Okay, perfect. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. We will now take our next question from Santosh Gupta from Drewry Maritime Financial Research. Please go ahead. Thanks. Hi, Hani, and hi, Fotios. Going by the presentation, I think the fourth new build LNG vessel has also been fixed on that short-term charter, short-term contract. Is the fourth LNG vessel going to be delivered in January next year? Does this timeline still holds true? By short-term, like for the previous vessel, we mean one-three years contract or slightly different? Thank you. Santosh, can you little bit repeat? I could not hear you very well. My understanding is you are referring about the new building that is coming, correct? Yeah, I am repeating my question. Thank you. Yeah, I am asking the 4th new build LNG vessel, when is it expected to be delivered? I think previously, if I remember correctly, it was expected to be delivered around January 2022. Second thing is on the duration of the contract. Is it also similar as in one-three years contract or is it different? Okay. Let me tell you. Yes. Okay. First of all, you remember correctly. The third delivery, as Hani said previously, is the following weeks. The last one, the fourth new build is on January on 2022. Now, when we will have something to announce about the last delivery, we'll announce it. We have not announced something about the last delivery. For the current one that we expected, as the CFO said, it's on the short term for one to three years contract. We cannot comment anything regarding the fourth one because as you know, it's a commercial sensitivity and we don't want to give a competitive advantage to our competitors. Okay, sure. Thank you. That answers my question. Thank you. We will now take a follow-up question from Samer from Amwal Capital Partners. Please go ahead. Hello, gents. Yes, just a follow-up from my part. Regarding what's the plan for the excess cash that you'll be able to generate. Are you basically setting aside this cash to pay more debt, especially the 2025 senior debt facility that's coming in 2025? Just wondering what's your strategy regarding that? Actually, we look at capital allocation rather than paying the debt. That's including also if we have to really pay some of our corporate debts or exploring potential opportunities. I think the extra cash that we're currently generating, we are deploying it, as you can see, in a very good and successful ventures. We allocate some back to our shareholders in the form of dividends. This year we have increased our dividend. In the coming up debt repayment in 2025, we can also look into refinance that amount if needed, because we still have a contract that ends in 2030 or 2031 or 2032. It all depends on the actual opportunities that is going to come up in our way and what we can do with that cash for the best interest of our shareholders. I hope I did answer your question. Very sure. Thanks. Yes, thank you. We will now take our next question from Ashish Kumar from United Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, Fotis, and congratulations for the good numbers. I had a small query in terms of hedging reserves. Just wanted to understand the working of it, if you can. Thank you. Sorry, what you're looking for? The reserves? Or what? Hedging reserves. I just want to understand a little more. Yeah. In the management. Like a hedging reserve is just basically Yeah. You understand, when we took these vessels, we have hedged- Okay ...almost up to 70%, 80% of our interest rate based on a set specific rate. If interest rate goes against us, which is when it goes down, that hedging reserve becomes negative. If the interest rate starts to go up, okay, it rebalances and starts to become more positive. For me, the hedging reserve, to be honest with you, it's an accounting treatment rather than reflection of the actual economic performance of the company. Right. Thank you for that. Yeah, great. As there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to turn the call back to your speakers for any additional or closing remarks. Okay. If there's no further questions, I would like to thank you all for attending and participating in our conference call. Thank you for your questions. We are happy to see you, hopefully, in the new year, once we are announcing our fourth quarter results. As we said, we're expecting to see it as good and as strong as what we have reported this quarter. Hopefully, we'll see you then. Thank you very much. Please stay safe and healthy, and we'll see you in the next year. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody, for your. No, please go ahead. Thank you very much for everyone. Have a great day. Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.
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