KNOT Offshore Partners LP (NYSE:KNOP) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Poe Fratt: No, that’s alright. I’ll miss working with you. When you look at this first quarter revenue number, it’s a 100% utilization with the exception of the — I guess the 55 days of downtime on the survey. Can you just talk about sort of direction of revenue for the second quarter, the potential impact time charters. And then also if you could give us any color on the cost level of what we should anticipate for the costs. I’ve been looking at and trying to forecast costs using not only the — Okay. But there will be a little bit of a change because the previously bareboat rate charters —

Gary Chapman: I think —

Poe Fratt: The Transpetro will change a little bit.

Gary Chapman: Yes. So, you’re going to have higher revenue and higher vessel operating expenses both, as a result of us receiving a time charter rate and incurring OpEx costs, whereas obviously previously we had a bareboat rate, which was lower, but no operating expenses. So, the operating income line effect should be marginally positive, but that change from bareboat to time charter probably isn’t going to make a huge difference quarter-by-quarter, over time, yes, it’s positive. But I think Q2 isn’t going to be dramatically different from Q1 at the operating income level. From that it’s not issue.

Poe Fratt: Okay. Great. Yes, because I’ve asked you in the past about the net impact of the bareboat charters shifting to time charters. So, that’s the impact shouldn’t be should be fair with (ph) in other words to cash flow should stay recently close to the previous level.

Gary Chapman: Yes. I mean, obviously, the income that we get from the customer is CapEx plus OpEx. And obviously, our cost base is linked to that, but is independent. So, there is the opportunity for us to run our company efficiently and profit from that, and that’s what we hope to do, obviously. But I think in this case, we’ve got just two vessels moving from bareboat to time charter. So you’re not going see across the whole company’s results, you’re not going to see a sudden big jump in operating income just because those two vessels have gone from bareboats to time charters.

Poe Fratt: Okay. And then congrats on the preliminary refinancing. Can you just talk about the impact of the refinancing on your liquidity, it looks like the balance on the previous term loan that you’re refinancing was a — I’m calculating close to $177 million.

Gary Chapman: Yes. So, the $375 million was the original notional number, obviously since that we’ve paid it down. But, the simple answer to your question is that, this refinancing is almost like-for-like. It’s a continuation of the finance that it’s replacing, in terms of the profile, the tenure and even the margin. So, we said in the earnings release and I’ve said in the presentation today, that it’s on similar terms. So, you can think of it like just a continuation of the finance that is already in-place.

Poe Fratt: So, just to be clear, so the term loan from here on out will be roughly call it a $175 million, and then will you have a credit revolver of $55 million going forward.

Gary Chapman: No, we’ve put the two together into one facility. Essentially the $55 million was largely treated as historically, this goes back a few years now, but it would — I can’t recall the exact reasons off the top of my head why it was separated out, but we put them two back together and so it’s going to be one facility going forward.

Poe Fratt: And that one facility, Gary, would be in the — would it be the $175 million plus with $55 million or would it just be $175 million? I’m just trying to figure out sort of how you’re —