Costamare Inc. (NYSE:CMRE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Omar Nokta: Got it. Okay. And then maybe just one final one. And I know you mentioned in the release, you committed at the $200 million to CBI. If I recall, the business was loss making in the first half, just the trading side of it. You mentioned that rates of order, we’ve obviously seen quarter-to-date average in the fourth quarter relative to what we’ve seen this year. But just in general, any color you can give on how the platform performed in the third quarter? And maybe how it’s sort of looking here in the fourth?

Gregory Zikos: Yes. Look, the platform the fixed – the first 6 months, there have been a lot of initial average set up course. And it is a company that started operating from zero, reaching 60 vessels within a certain amount of time. In order to put all the systems in place, hire people and have the whole infrastructure supporting the business. So it’s something normal to be sort of losing money the first 6 months, and we didn’t expect to enter into this business within the first month or like a year to be highly profitable. So I think this is more or less the case in all similar platforms. Now going forward, regarding Q3, we’re going to be releasing the numbers with our 6-K filings pretty soon. For year-end, I don’t know what the – how the platform is going to be performing.

But I can tell you that this is not a short term or even medium term deal here. We talk about the long-term commitment to the sector, which is complementing, as we mentioned, the dry bulk owned fleet. So we’re not going to be taking a short sighted view because that it is doing well, the first half of the year or that after the company was set up the first year or like the first 6 months, it has not been highly profitable. We take a long-term view, and I think this is how it should be viewed because we need to have a minimum size. We need to have a minimum size of the book in terms of cargo book as well. And based on that, we’re going to be trading. So the long-term view, this is sort of – this remains to be seen, but the company has been very well capitalized.

We are supporting it, and we will continue supporting it. And as mentioned earlier, it has no debt. So it’s all equity in order to make sure that it’s going to be operating freely of any debt restrictions.

Omar Nokta: Perfect. Okay. Thanks, Greg, very helpful. I’ll turn it over.

Operator: The next question comes from Ben Nolan with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Ben Nolan: Thanks. So just a follow-up on the CBI stuff. I’m just – just as I’m trying to get my head around what causes things to move, Greg, maybe if you could, in September and in the first part of October, we saw a real sharp turn-up in the capesize rates they’ve subsequently come down. Can you maybe frame in what that kind of a move does to the profitability, if anything? Or just trying to see where the sensitivities are with respect to rate movements and profitability?

Gregory Zikos: Look, it’s difficult to say. I mean it’s – there’s also some commercial restrictions here. We have an FFA book on capes. And we also have fronthaul voyages on capes as well. So since we charter in and then we enter into a Voyage charters. So regarding the volatility in capes, we do try to take advantage of it, both with the FFA book and with the positioning of the vessels and it’s 37 of those. I’m afraid I cannot get into more detail on that because it’s like telling you how like we run our capes business during Q4, which it’s difficult for me to explain now in an open call. But I can tell you that the first like priority is to monitor downside and then opportunistically capitalize on this capes volatility, especially in the last two to three weeks, charter rates in the capes market has been very volatile and the same applies for the FFAs, and we try to take advantage of it.