Pangaea Logistics Solutions, Ltd. (NASDAQ:PANL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Poe Fratt: And so relative to the third quarter, how does the fourth quarter look right now? We’re close to halfway through it, can you just give me sort of a color on how that stevedoring terminal operation looks right now relative to the third quarter?

Mark Filanowski: It’s ports of terminals operations specifically, you said? Is that supposed to

Poe Fratt: Yes. I’m just trying to figure out where — I know it’s a very small part of the business right now, but it’s fairly new, and I’m trying to appreciate sort of how to model it.

Mark Filanowski: We get a schedule of upcoming ships. It only goes out about a month. But I think we’ll be pretty effective over the next month or two.

Poe Fratt: Why don’t we move on your forward cover. Relative to the second — or at the time of the second quarter call, the days that you flip for the fourth quarter are down a little bit modestly like 20%, but the rate is a lot higher. Can you just talk about the dynamics of your forward cover right now and that 2,715 days that you booked, where do you think — how many shipping days do you think you’ll have total in the fourth quarter? And just Mads, could you give us sort of dynamic of how were you able to capture the run-up in rates in September, October and the rest of the quarter is going to be a little weaker or sort of just if you could give us an idea of the dynamics of your forward cover at this point?

Gianni Signore: So I’ll start with the — as far as what we published and sort of guided to for the fourth quarter, which was the $19,000 a day rate in about 2,700 days. That — what we’re estimating for the quarter, I think it’s similar, we’re about 45 vessels in that ballpark for the fourth quarter. So the 2,700 days obviously is just a snapshot for what has been performed and booked through November 7 — or November 6, rather. So there are definitely — there’s certainly days that will still come into the quarter based on, we continue to operate around that 45. It’s probably coming down from a high 51 ships down to about 45 to 48. So that’s what the quarter will look like. As far as rates, we’re happy to see it. We had a great start going into the fourth quarter. We have booked a lot of forward cargo. So we think we’re pretty well positioned for the fourth quarter. But I’ll let Mads give a bit more color on that.

Mads Petersen: Yes. I think Poe, it’s driven primarily by our active business, which sort of extends from the third quarter into the fourth that for sure is a positive contributor to that. But in addition, we do have quite a bit of non-ice business on the books that we are performing at the moment. We will have that in Q4 as well. But yes, the market is obviously softer in those numbers. So that won’t potentially impacted us well. So…

Poe Fratt: And then, Gianni, you highlighted charter hire expenses were lower year-over-year, a lot lower than what I expected. Can you talk about the fourth quarter run rate so far for charter hire expenses? Are you going to charter in less vessels, it looks like you’re going to have about 500 less days in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter. But can you just talk about charter-hire days or it’s just maybe a gross number or even on a per day basis?

Gianni Signore: Yes. I know this is sort of the lagging effect that impacts us. And certainly, it’s a positive. It can be a positive and sometimes it’s certainly in rising markets we’re able to charter in at lower rates and then utilize those ships in those higher markets, and it has that sort of inverse effect. Yes, Q3, it was $10.8 million, I think, was our total cost for charter-in, which was compared to that $15.7 million that we earned. So we’ll probably see a little bit of an uptick in our charter hire expense, but I don’t expect it to increase significantly. We’re still chartering for period and have some ships coming into the fourth quarter that we had already fixed. But of course, as the market fluctuates, our charter hire expense fluctuates, but it’s — again, it’s largely dependent on timing and where the market is.