LNG

May 23 (LNGJ) - Flex LNG, the Norwegian shipping company with a fleet of 13 vessels and several chartered to some of the largest market players, reported a doubling of first-quarter net income to $33.2 million from $16.5M in the same three months of 2023.

   In quarterly highlights, Flex said it extended the charters by two years for the “Flex Resolute” and “Flex Courageous” until at least the first quarter of 2027 and the “Flex Endeavour” by 500 days to the first quarter of 2032. In its outlook for the second quarter, the company expected time charter equivalent rates to be between $72,000 per day and $74,000 per day.

Feb 23 (LNGJ) - Flex LNG, the Norwegian shipping company with a fleet of 13 vessels and several chartered to some of the largest market players, has seen the charterer of “Flex Courageous”, known to be BP of the UK, exercise its first extension option. The “Flex Courageous” was fixed on a three-year time charter on November 1, 2021, together with the “Flex Resolute” which was also recently extended by two years until 2027.

   “We are pleased that the charterer of ‘Flex Courageous’ has decided to extend the Time Charter in line with what was recently done for ‘Flex Resolute’. This means that earliest redelivery for the ship is 2027 where the charterer has a further option to extend her until 2029,” said Øystein Kalleklev, Chief Executive of Flex LNG Management AS. “Flex LNG has about 94 percent charter coverage for the remaining part of 2024, so we remain well positioned with only one ship, the ‘Flex Constellation’, coming open during the second quarter,” Kalleklev added.

Flex LNG, the Norwegian shipping company with a fleet of 13 modern vessels and several chartered to the largest US exporter Cheniere Energy, reported higher third-quarter revenues and profits as global demand soared for cargoes.

“The gas crunch is not going away anytime soon and arbitrage between the US and import nations in Europe and Asia will stay at elevated levels supporting freight market economics,” said Flex in presenting its earnings.

Flex explained that about 40 LNG carriers in the global fleet were tied up in floating storage due to traffic congestion and contango - when the futures price was at a higher level than the spot price as has happened throughout the third quarter.

Flex’s vessel operating revenues in the third quarter amounted to $91.3 million to the end of September 2022 compared with $81.8M in the same three months of 2021 and $84.2M for the second quarter of 2022.

Net income increased to $46.6M from $32.8M in the prior-year quarter and $44.3M in the second quarter this year.

Charter rates

The Bermuda-based company’s average time charter equivalent (TCE) rates for the three months came to $75,941 per day versus $68,341 per day a year ago and $70,707 per day for the second quarter of this year.

“During the third quarter, ‘Flex Enterprise’ and ‘Flex Amber’ commenced their new seven-year time charters agreed in June 2022,” said Øystein Kalleklev, Chief Executive of Flex LNG Management AS.

“Additionally, ‘Flex Aurora’ was delivered to Cheniere as the fifth and last ship under the agreement announced in April 2021,” he added.

“Flex LNG today has 12 LNG carriers on fixed-hire time charters and one ship, ‘Flex Artemis’, on a variable time charter,” stated Kalleklev.

The CEO noted that Flex’s first fully open ship, after charterer’s options, is in the middle of 2026 with three other ships coming open in 2027.

“With 2027 the earliest newbuilding delivery window and newbuilding prices at around $250M, we are therefore upbeat about the prospects of re-contracting our ships at attractive levels thereby adding further backlog to the company,” said Kalleklev.

Rate derivative gain

“For the first nine months of 2022, total net income was $147M, fuelled by $75M gains on interest rate derivatives, as we have been ahead of the curve locking in long-term interest rates at very attractive levels before the Federal Reserve started to hike US rates,” he explained.

Flex said it planned to optimize financing for the remaining seven ships in the fleet with the aim of increasing its cash position by a further $100M while at the same time improving overall financing terms.

“We have now secured refinancing for four of the seven ships with net proceeds of $110M. We are thus already ahead of the $100M target, and we expect the cash release to grow further as we are also making good progress on the refinancing of the remaining three ships,” said the CEO.

“Given the strong freight market, our extensive contract backlog and our super strong financial position we are therefore pleased to declare an ordinary quarterly dividend of $0.75 per share which should provide our shareholders with an attractive yield of approximately 10 percent,” added Kalleklev.

The company noted in its presentation that the fleet had been acquired at “historical attractive prices” compared to the newbuilding prices today, while book equity values reflect historical costs adjusted with regular depreciations.

Flex LNG, the growing shipping company with six vessels operating and seven others on order and whose largest shareholder is Norwegian magnate John Fredriksen, reported favourable market conditions in the second half of 2019 even in the face of lower natural gas prices.

Flex LNG took delivery of the newbuilding 173,400 cu m LNGC ‘Flex Courageous’ from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine engineering on 27^th August.

This is the sixth vessel to join the fleet. Another five newbuildings are due to join the fleet in 2020 and another two in 2021.

She is powered by a 2-stroke MEGI and fitted with a partial reliquefaction system (PRS) and claims to have an industry low boil-off rate of 0.0075%.

She has left South Korea for the Pacific Basin and following this voyage, she will be available fir employment opportunities during the fourth quarter of this year. Flex LNG said that she “will be well positioned for the winter market.”

Flex LNG, the growing LNG shipping company with four vessels operating and nine others on order and whose largest shareholder is a company controlled by Norwegian magnate John Fredriksen, reported wider first-quarter loss, though remained confident of a market turnaround.

Flex LNG, the growing LNG shipping company with four vessels operating and nine others on order and whose largest shareholder is a company controlled by Norwegian magnate John Fredriksen, posted a rise in net profits as fourth-quarter spot LNG cargo rates reached record levels then slumped in the first quarter of 2019.