Ardmore Shipping Corporation (NYSE:ASC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Unidentified Analyst: Obviously, we’re €“ in the financial markets generally, there’s a premium being paid for dividends. It seems they continue. You mentioned the payout ratio, but you’re in a hugely cyclical business. So what has to happen for that dividend to be vulnerable? And then secondly, what’s your view on growing the dividend over time? And obviously, that’s a longer period of question.

Gernot Ruppelt: Sure. I think as we reinstituted the dividend after a considerable period of time, we’ve thought about determine one-third level being something that you look to have sustainable through the cycle. And it allows us to build strength at this point in the up cycle, but also address the other pillars of our capital allocation policy. And so with €“ accretive growth opportunities don’t emerge, and we continue to be disciplined and patient there for the long-term. We can always review an additional return on capital above the stated dividend policy and our Board is supportive of that as well.

Unidentified Analyst: Are there any €“ if you’re right on this supply/demand in the market is as tight as you think, are there any relief valves, whether it’s steaming speeds after coming back from the dirty side, ships trading older than they are typically allowed to help create some relief or there’s really no kind of improvement to the laden, ballast ratio across the industry? I’m just trying to think of what could be wrong.

Anthony Gurnee: Yes. So part and then maybe Gernot Ruppelt can pitch in. Despite of the very high rates, ships are up, but not as much as you would able. No, that’s possibly just because of the high fuel price as well. I think if you had a very low fuel price, all the demand you might see more speed. We haven’t seen a lot of congestion is a little bit, but that was the whole container ship story. That’s not part of the tanker story now. And it’s really not even a lot to do with volumes at the moment. It’s the distance. So you can €“ obviously, LR2s can clean up from dirty trade and go into clean. You can even have crude tankers on initial voyages that do multiple voyages and be clean. Not too many of resets do that on a sustained basis, but they’re there to do that.

And I think that if the freight rates are high enough, then the market kind of sorts itself out in terms of the trades or the oil trades that are possible. So obviously, I think a lot of what happened is disruption in which once it kind of settles into more stable trading patterns, again, obviously is a lot more efficient.

Unidentified Company Representative: I was just thinking, I mean, oil trades obviously do have that greater sophistication in the just relation and safety concerns. So I mean when you think about dry bulk vessels, we’re able to put stack containers on deck and that substitutability. You don’t have that in general in the industry.

Unidentified Analyst: Just touching back on capital allocation for a second. You showed you’re down 25% debt to cap. With this extra cash you’ll have, I mean, do you want to pay that down to zero? I mean at what level €“ it sounds like you’re not going to buy a whole lot of ships right now. So when would that maybe extra dividends and what have you done for us lately beyond the formula come into play?

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