Pangaea Logistics Solutions, Ltd. (NASDAQ:PANL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Poe Fratt: Good morning. Gianni, for you first. Can you just talk – I mean you sort of alluded to it, but can you just talk about cash on the balance sheet has almost doubled over the last year or more than doubled. It’s – you’re carrying about $2.85 of cash on the balance sheet. Granted, you’re – you still – you have a reasonable amount of debt. Can you just talk about you’re a little more deeper into your cash management strategy? And then on top of that, you’re selling the Newport so that you get another roughly $8.5 million net coming in. So does it make sense to carry that much cash?

Gianni Del Signore: So I think – Thanks, Poe. It’s a great question, and we are certainly looking at that internally and at the Board level as well. The first thing, I guess, I would point you to and others is Note 4 in our 10-K, which is a reconciliation or a breakdown of our cash. And I think it’s worth noting that some of that cash of the $128 million is held in joint ventures that are consolidated. So we have our partners that also have a say in the utilization of that cash. So if you look at Note 4, there’s the amount of cash attributable just to Pangaea and we have full access to, let’s say, versus consolidated is about $85 million. But in whole, I agree with you. It’s – we’re looking for opportunities to deploy it. There’s actual yield now at different banks.

But back to my comments to Liam, I think being able to have the – to be as opportunistic as possible, to be in a position where we have flexibility to look at different projects, I think, is important for us. And we’re trying to – we are returning cash to shareholders. We are paying a dividend. We’ve incrementally increased it over 2022. And if we see opportunities to do other things or return in other forms then we certainly are looking at that as well.

Poe Fratt: And then you control the joint venture though. You have two thirds you know, ownership interest. You refinanced a lot of the joint venture debt. So why not move that cash over to corporate?

Gianni Del Signore: Yes, we did. We are – we’re doing that. We paid a $15 million dividend out of one of our joint ventures, and we’ll continue — we will continue to do that, absolutely. So I think the – we revisit that periodically at the Pangaea Board level, and we revisit it with our partners frequently as well. So we don’t want to sit on cash if we don’t expect to use it. We want to be able to deploy it in ways that are meaningful to the business and are generating value. And I think that will be – that’s how we view our cash, and that’s how we’ll view it going forward.

Poe Fratt: And then who would have thought over the last 10 days, some of the things that are happening in the banking industry. Can you just comment on how – whether you’ve run a risk analysis on where your cash is and where you potentially might see some concerns?

Gianni Del Signore: Yes, we – you’re absolutely right. It’s – it certainly sends some panic to the market on where you have your cash and we’re very mindful of that. We’ve always reviewed our banks. We’re not just a U.S.-focused banking system, but we’re global, right? We’re making payments. We’re receiving payments all across the world. So we’ve generally been in the big banks, and we have a lot of our cash, almost all of it, in what we would gain the larger banks and larger Western banks in the U.S. and Europe. So yeah, we’re looking very closely. We feel we are in a good position where our cash currently is. So who knows? I know who knows what’s ahead, but we’ll try to keep it in a place that we feel as comfortable as possible.