International Seaways, Inc. (NYSE:INSW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher Robertson: Yes, definitely. That makes sense. Turning to a little bit more esoteric question here on the balance sheet, Jeff, could you talk about the $75 million of short-term investments that sit there in terms of what those are, the duration, how liquid are those investments, and when they might be converted to cash?

Lois Zabrocky: Go ahead Jeff.

Jeff Pribor: Yes, hey, Chris, it’s just our cash management. What we’ve been doing is, instead of just overnight money market funds, which are yielding quite well, but we flattered out some of the investments into time deposits with typically our facility banks, our relationship banks, and per gap, if you go out a little bit, it just doesn’t get to be listed as cash. It comes out of the short-term investment, but it’s a TD, and our longest is six months. It looks and quacks a lot like cash, but it’s listed as a short-term investment.

Christopher Robertson: Okay.

Jeff Pribor: [Indiscernible] see it as cash. Yes go ahead.

Christopher Robertson: Definitely. Yes, just wondering, I guess, is that the continued strategy to kind of ladder those over time while the interest rates are attractive?

Jeff Pribor: Well, sure. I mean, I think you’ve heard Lois described we have a balance of cash and revolver. We think that’s a good mix for security and optionality, but it’s nice getting above 5% on our money market funds, and then when you extend that a little bit with CDs or lately moving at another 50 basis points in our balance. So we actually have a lot of our cash is earning more than a substantial part of the debt that we have that’s either fixed or swapped. So that’s kind of a nice situation to be in. So we’re sort of happy with that extra interest income we’re making these days, and the Treasury Department is working hard on that, and we’ll keep sweating those assets like we do the ships.

Christopher Robertson: Yes, it makes sense. Last question for me is just turning back to the four LR1s. Can you talk a bit about the cadence related to the installment payments for those four vessels?

Lois Zabrocky: Yes, I’ll take that just to start, Jeff. What I would say is that the installment payments are attractively weighted to the backside of the vessel’s construction cycle toward their delivery. I don’t know if you want to say anything more than that, Jeff?

Jeff Pribor: Maybe we’ll find and make sure we can – may have an [indiscernible] safe way to explain that, but it’s very typical back-end loaded where it’s not too much up front, I would say. We probably only have the first two required deposits maybe in the coming quarter. So for near-term modeling, I think, I would go with that. And then the rest will be back-end loaded, and we’ll fix that with confidentiality, we’ll get more information out of that. But pretty typical newbuild scheduled, but of the back-end loaded variety, I’d say.

Christopher Robertson: Got it. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Lois Zabrocky: Thank you.

Jeff Pribor: Thank you.

Derek Solon: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] I would now like to open the line for Omar Nokta of Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Omar Nokta: Thank you. Hi, Lois, and Jeff and Derek. I did want to – I had a couple questions, but then maybe just perhaps just a quick follow-up to the last one from Chris about the LR1s. I did notice, at least the way it reads on the balance sheet, that perhaps there wasn’t a deposit made on those two initial LRM1s that were ordered last quarter. Is that right, or were those sort of accounted for differently?

Lois Zabrocky: No, no, you are correct, Omar. It’s a very clever pickup there. We have received the refund guarantees, and those are fully in place. And, of course, that is the time at which you make your down payment, so that will be made in the fourth quarter.