Ardmore Shipping Corporation (NYSE:ASC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Anthony Gurnee: Yes. So look, I think the very newest designs coming out of yards are — they’re very, very fuel efficient. So that’s something that’s — those levels are probably unattainable on any secondhand ships, certainly kind of 5 years and older. What we’re doing is really building our TCE performance. And I think we’ve been doing that for a while, if you look at our performance over the last kind of year, 2 years versus the peer group. And a component of that comes from the upgrades. So we’re now — many others have done this before, but we’re now installing scrubbers, new generation scrubbers that are cheaper and more efficient, and we think are — have some environmental features, which we really like. And of course, those should bump up — those ships that are equipped, they’ll be bumping up their earnings by $2,000 to $3,000 a day given where spreads are right now.

Benjamin Nolan: Right. And I mean, once they’re fully kitted and everything else, do they — would they potentially make sense for you to guys to have them in your fleet for another 10 years? Or how are — like a protracted period of maybe…

Anthony Gurnee: Yes. Sorry, I forgot — apologies for not answering that question as well. Yes, it’s a good question and one where we’re going to wait and see. Our policy at this point has been to operate them until around 15 years of age. The difference is these are ships that we actually built. And we’ve been running them for a long time, obviously, and I think we have a higher degree of confidence in their condition and they’ll be very, very fuel efficient for what they are. So it’s very likely that we’ll operate them beyond 15 at this stage. And then Bart on some the…

Bart Kelleher: Maybe Ben, just to add to like these different CapEx upgrades, the — I mean, the payback periods on them are 1, 2 years and change. So as we’re thinking about it, obviously, lots of flexibility thereafter, but we’re getting paid back very rapidly.

Anthony Gurnee: And to add to that, I think the point being that we’re — there are things that we would consider on newbuildings today that we just can’t do on ships that are 8 years old.

Benjamin Nolan: Sure. Well, and that connects to the second question I was going to ask. I mean newbuilding prices are pretty elevated, and I know that you’re not — you mentioned you’re not taking anything off the table. Obviously, you have the financial flexibility to do a lot of things right now. I guess my question is, given inflation and where the order book stands and everything else, do you think about the risk profile a little bit differently? Or maybe what the appropriate mid-cycle asset value is, is it meaningfully higher going forward? Or something else, such that maybe buying a ship or ordering a ship at current levels, it might have been untenable a few years ago, and today, you just don’t think that is the same level of downside risk?

Anthony Gurnee: I think you’re hitting on a really important point, which is that there is a long-term inflation trend, if you look back 20 years and you can kind of project to where we are today or assess on that basis. And it’s clear that new building prices have overshot that line. But we’re not going back — unless there’s a big, big change in the structure of the shipbuilding industry, we’re not going back to the pricing levels that we saw 10, 15 years ago. So it’s an interesting thing to think about. But — so I think, certainly, we’re realistic about what represents a fair price today or kind of a reasonable mid-cycle type price today for newbuilding, and it’s very different from kind of 12, 13 years ago when we were building our ships.

Benjamin Nolan: Right. Okay. So we’ll see.

Anthony Gurnee: But at the moment — in the moment, certainly in key shipbuilding regions, the current prices have overshot.