Dampskibsselskabet Norden A/S (DNORD) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome everyone to this webcast with the presentation of the Q2 2026 report from NORDEN that was published this morning. [Operator Instructions] With that, I'll hand over to CEO, Jan Rindbo; and CFO, Martin Badsted from NORDEN. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. And from my side also, welcome to our Q2 presentation. I think this quarter is probably one of the most sort of complicated in terms of operations, but it's also one of our better quarters in terms of the financial performance. So we'll dive obviously into that a little bit later. I'd like to just start by setting the scene, just giving you a short introduction to NORDEN. As you know, our purpose is to enable smarter global trade. We transport all the essential raw materials that you use in energy, construction, manufacturing -- and manufacturing. And all these commodities underpin the modern living that we all know. NORDEN is one of the world's largest carriers. We operate a fleet now just under actually 500 vessels, and we transport around 130 million tonnes of these essential raw materials on an annual basis. This scale gives us extensive market insight, gives us strong access to our customers, and it gives us the flexibility to optimize our fleet across all these various vessel segments that NORDEN are in and across all the regions that we operate in. So our model combines, on one hand, customer solutions with very disciplined exposure management and flexible capital deployment. And that enables us to manage the shipping cycles, but also retaining strong cyclical upside. And when you look at that approach, that has generated, over the last 5 years, a return on invested capital of 25%, and that demonstrates our ability to create attractive returns through these changing markets. So as we now move on with the slides, let me explain how this -- the business model behind our results, how that actually works. So NORDEN is more than just an owner of vessels. We combine 3 closely connected capabilities: commercial operations, exposure management and asset allocation. This commercial platform connects all the essential cargo that we carry with the right vessel capacity and enables us to optimize voyages, trading patterns and the fleet utilization. And we manage this exposure through a combination of owned, leased and short-term charter capacity. And it allows us to adjust our fleet to markets and also to customer requirements as they change. So we allocate our capital across segments, vessels, owned, leased, short-term charters, purchase options in order to seek attractive risk-adjusted returns while we have the flexibility to recycle capital back into the business. And together, when you combine all this, these capabilities create an integrated and capital-efficient model that is built around the customer solutions that we deliver, the market insight that we have and then this disciplined execution. And this model becomes particularly valuable when trade flows are complex and customers place a premium on reliability. And that's the kind of market backdrop we are in today. So I'd like just on this slide to just highlight the market fundamentals that we see increasingly favoring this NORDEN model. So the supply side outlook is positive. We are seeing that particularly in dry cargo, where we have an aging global fleet and where the order book actually still remains modest. And at the same time, we see the geopolitical disruptions and strained supply chains are making trade routes longer, less predictable and operations are becoming even more complex. And these conditions, they support vessel demand, but they also increase the importance of flexibility, scale and execution capabilities. And here, we see that customers increasingly are preferring large, professional and reliable operators that can secure capacity and manage their complex logistics across multiple regions. And this is sort of where NORDEN stands out with our fleet of just under 500 vessels, global commercial network and this customer-centric approach that we have. And therefore, we are actually really well positioned to benefit from these structural trends, not just through our freight market exposure, but also by helping our customers managing these complex supply chains. So with that introduction, I'd like to hand you over to Martin to sort of translate this into financial numbers here in the second quarter. So Martin?

Thank you very much. So NORDEN had a good quarter in Q2. As you can see from the graph on the left-hand side here, in the dark blue bar, we made a net profit of $101 million in the second quarter. That means that our return on invested capital grew to 11% when measured over a 12-month basis. Asset values actually continued to increase, leaving our NAV at the end of the quarter at DKK 466 per share, which implies an increase of 23% since the beginning of the year. And finally, we continue to distribute cash to our shareholders, now distributing $34 million, in line with what we also did after Q1. And those $34 million is composed of a dividend of DKK 2 per share and a share buyback of $25 million. Looking at the development in the 2 segments, there were improvements in both of them. As you see from the graph here, the tanker division made $81 million in the second quarter, which was up some $30 million compared to the year before. That was based on a very strong spot market driven, of course, by geopolitical disruptions and uncertainty and notably these good performance in the chartering teams. Dry Cargo delivered an EBIT of $8 million, which, of course, is not enough, but it was a huge improvement over the minus $45 million delivered in Q1. As we discussed in Q1, we invested in fleet repositioning, i.e., moving vessels from the Pacific into the Atlantic despite incurring costs in that respect, but in anticipation of better rates in the Atlantic going forward. And that has panned out as expected and has resulted in benefits from the fleet position in Q2, which we expect to continue during the rest of the year. Another important factor when interpreting these numbers is that within dry cargo, we had a number of ships getting stuck in the Persian Gulf. And that, in our estimation, added some $30 million of extra costs in the first half of the year. So of course, without these extraordinary costs, performance would have been even stronger. We continue to proactively manage our core fleet. The asset management team has been super active in the first half of the year, doing 29 sale and purchase transactions. The overall intention with this is, of course, to take money off the table because the asset values are so high. But it is actually also a movement of the exposure within our portfolio away from the commoditized and large vessels such as Capesize and Panamax and MR and moving the capital into the smaller segments where specialized capabilities and customer relations are more important. So we are investing in Handysize and Multipurpose vessels. And that actually means that even though we are taking sales gains off the table with our vessel sales, we are still investing in the fleet and maintaining a core fleet of around 80 units and maintaining a large amount of purchase options, providing good upside going forward. And with the fleet changes and the improvements in asset values, we saw our net asset value, as I said, improved to DKK 466 per share compared to -- or an increase of 23% since the beginning of the year. As you can see in the pie chart, around 2/3 of the NAV is concentrated in dry cargo, 19% in tankers and the rest in other net assets with 14%, covering, of course, balance sheet debt, cash and other investments. And on the right-hand side, we provide some sensitivity analysis indicating that if the asset values and forward rates increase, for instance, by -- or change by 20%, that will either, if it's a decline, lead to an NAV of DKK 333 per share or if it's an improvement to an NAV of DKK 625 per share. Turning to the market developments. It was overall strong markets in both dry and tankers. You can see here from the 2 top graphs that spot rates increased in dry by some 70% year-on-year and in MR about 63% year-on-year. That improvement was, of course, also visible in asset values, which increased both by 27% to 28% across the different segments. The Supramax or the dry cargo market strength was driven by an actually strong demand picture, especially in thermal coal, iron ore and minor bulks, whereas the bauxite imports were a little bit weak despite having been a growth driver in the most recent quarters. The outlook for dry, in our view, is actually quite firm. We expect '27 that is probably similar, slightly lower than '26, which has been a good year so far, driven again by strong demand, but certainly also by a modest supply outlook. The order book is increasing as people are chasing these returns in the market. But so far, we don't think it's alarming and there is still an aging of the fleet, which will provide decent scrapping potential to offset the higher fleet growth going forward. On the tanker side, what is happening is, of course, disruptions in trade flows that are keeping spot rates high, even though fundamentals are looking weaker by the week here. So you have actually seen tonne-mile growth being quite negative, and you have seen order books growing quite a lot, especially in crude. And that, of course, starts to imply that maybe there are some more uncertainty on the level of tanker rates going forward. Also in tankers, we see a very strong order book development. And even though there is also aging of the fleet there, it seems like the order book acceleration is somewhat running ahead of that aging so that the scrapping potential is not enough perhaps to support the market fully. That then means that if we look at our guidance, we actually increased our guidance back in the early parts of July based on a strong performance in Q2, and we issued there a guidance of $120 million to $190 million. And now after also a good performance over the summer, we have decided to increase the bottom to $140 million, narrowing the interval to $140 million to $190 million of net profits for the full year. We are, in terms of open capacity, mainly exposed to dry cargo with some 4,500 open days and less in the tankers where we have around 1,200 open days. But overall, for the next coming years, we are fairly highly covered in both the large dry cargo vessel types and within MR with a cover of 80% over the coming couple of years. And with that, I will hand you back to Jan, and final words.

Thank you very much. So in terms of the strategy, the -- our strategic direction is clear. We want to reduce the earnings volatility while maintaining the high returns that have characterized NORDEN. So firstly, we are deepening our customer relationships. We are building more recurring cargo flows that will support a broader and more predictable earnings base going forward. And secondly, we are expanding into more specialized areas. This includes multipurpose vessels, project cargo, minor bulk and maritime logistics. This is where expertise and operational capabilities and that complexity that we are solving for our customers that creates a greater differentiation to what we can offer our customers compared to the rest of the industry. And at the same time, we will preserve the agility that is fundamental to NORDEN. We will continue to capture attractive market opportunities, but it is within clear risk/reward guardrails. So the ambition here is not to remove cyclicality, but to combine a more resilient earnings base with disciplined exposure management to the cyclical upside that we see. And if you take that together, the strategy reinforces what we believe is a differentiated and actually attractive investment proposition. So when you look at sort of the equity story for NORDEN, we are combining, on one hand, strong fundamentals where -- which NORDEN obviously offers exposure to. We have constrained vessel supply, increasing complex trade flows, and that favors large reliable operators such as NORDEN. And our flexible and capital-efficient model allows us to combine both short-term capacity, leased vessels, owned assets and all the embedded purchase options that we have and allows us to adjust to markets as they change. And importantly, this model has actually delivered -- when you look at our average return on invested capital over the past 5 years, we have generated 25% annual average over that period. We also see significant underlying value. Martin highlighted our NAV at DKK 466 per share, and that is somewhat higher than the current share price we see for NORDEN. And when you look at the returns that we have given, we have a strong record of that. We've returned $1.2 billion to our shareholders over the last 5 years. So to summarize that, NORDEN represents a differentiated shipping investment. It's asset-light. It's commercially agile, and it's focusing on generating attractive returns through the cycle. So with those words, that concludes the presentation, and we can now move to the Q&A session.

Thank you, Jan and Martin. And yes, we are now ready for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And we will first have a question on your guidance here and the question goes here. Is it to be on the safe side or somewhat conservative that you're only guiding for annual earnings of $140 million to $190 million when Q2 alone generated around $100 million. Could you elaborate a bit more on what is driving this and, in my view, relatively low guidance?

I can put a few words to that. I think, obviously, the Q2 seen in isolation was a very strong quarter. I think as usual, in shipping, you have to see our financial performance over several quarters. And here, if you combine Q1 and Q2, you obviously get a slightly different picture than just looking at the second quarter. I think what is important to understand in our numbers when you look at the first half figures is that we have already delivered $61 million of sales profits in the first half. And therefore, we are guiding towards $79 million for sales profit for the total year. And that means we have much less contribution from sales gains in the second half. So that is clearly one important driver. I think the other one I would highlight is that the tanker market was exceptionally strong in the second quarter. And that was obviously driven by the panic in the market right after the Hormuz closed. And some of that panic has subsided, and that means also rates are, if not normalizing, they are still high, but they are not as high as we saw in the second quarter. So I think the tanker tailwind will be less pronounced in the second half. That is certainly embedded into our expectations. Having said that, we do expect this -- the turnaround that we've seen in dry. We do expect that to continue into the coming quarters. We've had a very positive development in the dry cargo business here through the second quarter, where, as Martin highlighted, we are back in black, first of all, but it actually also includes some fairly significant one-off costs that has hit the dry cargo bottom line in the second quarter. So the underlying performance is actually even better than the numbers suggest. And we expect this continued momentum continuing into the second half of the year. And then maybe just a final comment, we did lift our guidance back in July. We are now lifting the bottom end of the guidance again. So I think also the guidance here supports that positive development that we are seeing in the business.

And then another follow-up on this. Can you explain the graph under your guidance and it says 450 vessels, but don't NORDEN have notably less vessels?

No, I think actually that recently, we have seen tremendous growth in our activity levels, which actually means that we have employed around 470 vessels on average in the most recent quarter. So activity levels are quite high. But you can see here, of course, in terms of exposure, most of this is covered in Q3 also because we are sort of almost in the middle of Q3. But otherwise, it does indicate how much open capacity we have in the 2 segments, dry cargo and tankers, for both the remainder of the year and for the coming years.

And then there's a question related to sort of the low water situation in some of the rivers in Europe and the price increases on the Panama Canal. Can you -- and the price increase for using it be passed on to the customers 100%? Are you seeing like DSV and Maersk that it actually lifts your margins? And what about the rivers in Europe? Can you say a few words about the situation here?

Yes. I think -- I mean, it's all part of this El Nino effect that we do see impacting our business. And the Panama Canal, what we're seeing here is a reduced number of transits because of declining water levels, and we actually expect them to continue to decline in the coming months. We see more congestion on both sides of the canal, so more waiting time. All this builds into the fact that the world needs more ships to move the same volume of cargo because if you take one of our core trading routes, grains from the U.S. Gulf to Asia, typically, a lot of that traffic would go through the Panama Canal. There's one alternative that is to go through the Red Sea, that is not so popular now, and the Suez Canal. And that means, again, it's a good example of ships going on longer routes, carrying the same volume of cargo. So yes, we absolutely see this supportive of both NORDEN and our markets. And it's just one of the sort of bottlenecks that are growing in the supply chains that we are an important part of. So yes, it has an impact.

And then there's a question related to your net asset value slide to this -- go to this slide. So it says here, net asset value is DKK 466 per share, and you have been buying back at an average of DKK 313. Why is the new buyback only at $25 million if you believe the share trades well below value?

Yes, that's actually a good question. We firmly believe that it's a good idea to buy back shares with the current share price compared to the NAV. But we buy back our shares under something called Safe Harbor regulation to avoid conflicts in relation to inside information. And part of those regulation is that there are limits to how much you can actually buy back on any given day. And the $25 million is sort of the maximum amount that we can actually buy back over the course of the period here. So there's actually not so much more we can do on this front.

Maybe if I can just add one thing on the NAV. And I think what is interesting is that, actually, if we turn to this -- we had a slide with the pie chart here. I mean what is interesting here, I think, is that we have a significant part of our NAV that is cash, so therefore, not actually exposed or at risk in terms of the markets. We have 19% of our NAV here tied to tankers. But we have very large coverage of our tanker capacity for the next 3 years. So here, actually, we are well covered. And then within the dry cargo NAV, as Martin mentioned earlier, we are taking cover, locking in profits on the more volatile elements of that on the larger vessels. And that means that increasingly, the NAV exposure is more towards the more specialized vessels, where actually we think that not -- it's not just a question of having market exposure. We like that. That's good. But it's also a question of having those capabilities. Those ships are typically servicing customers with more complex requirements, and that's typically where the ability to earn higher margins is also better than it is on the more larger commoditized parts of the shipping segments.

And then a question related to the Strait of Hormuz. I assume all D/S Norden's operated vessels are now out of the Strait of Hormuz and no longer stuck here. How will you handle voyages there going forward? Are you avoiding the Strait entirely? And what are the consequences of that?

Yes. So first of all, the 7 ships that we had in the Persian Gulf when the hostilities broke out are now out. So we managed to take advantage of one of the sort of relatively short peace periods there to get the ships out. So we no longer have any ships that are stuck in there. So that's obviously positive, and we're happy to get the ships out safely and the crew. We are not currently operating into the area for the same reason, safety, is not good enough for us to operate in the region. So we are awaiting what a peace deal could look like and then, obviously, waiting to see if it's sufficiently solid to regain confidence that it is safe to sail into the region. So what -- so right now, we're not operating in the area, and that means that we are seeing an increased traffic into nearby countries. There is definitely more overland transportation. Again, it's a good example of these much more complex supply chain challenges that our customers are facing. And again, it typically leads to longer routes. I think on the tanker side, one thing to watch there, of course, is that the longer a lot of the world's oil production is basically shut in, then there is less oil in the market. There's also less oil to transport. So it is one of the sort of headwinds perhaps that could be seen in tankers here in the second half if these hostilities continue.

And a question related to this. You're also entering the second half with about 196 open tanker days and 223 open dry cargo days. How much of the guidance depends on the Strait of Hormuz staying open? And what happens to the range as it closes again?

That is a very, very difficult question to answer because what is open and what is closed. I think actually in dry cargo, we probably see that the Strait of Hormuz will not have a huge impact because there are both vessels getting trapped and cargoes not moving. So I don't think that will have a big impact. But on the tanker side, we have seen that this open up, closing, open and closing actually has a tendency to continue to create noise and disruption in trade flows. So that could have a positive effect on tanker forward rates or spot rates and, therefore, add some extra dollars to the earnings going forward, but it's incredibly hard to project.

And a question related to dry cargo. Is the continued improvement we began to see in the previous quarter still being confirmed? And can you generally put some words on your expectation and forecast for dry cargo over the coming years? Are we facing a really good period ahead as is being suggested in several places in the market and with other companies?