Frontline Ltd. (NYSE:FRO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Frontline Ltd. (NYSE:FRO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 29, 2024
Frontline Ltd. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.46 EPS, expectations were $0.52. Frontline Ltd. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2023 Frontline plc Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker Mr. Lars Barstad, CEO. Please go ahead sir.
Lars Barstad: Thank you very much dear all, and thank you for dialing in to Frontline's fourth quarter earnings call. The last quarter of 2023 did not deliver the full on crazy off the hinges bull market we all wished for, but still gave us decent returns. We also started to take delivery of VLCCs from Euronav in December. And we are very happy it's all been smooth sailing as they have come under the Frontline flag. I would especially like to praise our project, technical and operations team that effortlessly and professionally have incorporated these vessels into our fleet proving our company's very scalable business model. Before I give the word to Inger, let's look at our TCE numbers from Slide 3 in the deck. In the fourth quarter from plan achieved ph $42,300 per day on our VLCC fleet, $45,700 per day on our Suezmax and $42,900 per day on our LR2/Aframax fleet.
Both Suezmax and LR2 markets performing well above the previous quarters as they came to an end -- as the [indiscernible]. As our press release shows, the full year 2023 came in firmly as we earned $50,000, $362,600 and $46,800 per day on our VLCCs, Suezmax and Aframax/LR2 fleet, respectively. [Indiscernible] we made over $650 million in full year [technical difficulty] and this is deemed respectable in some circles. In fact, the best year we've had in 15 years. So far in the first quarter of 2024, 81% of our VLCC days are booked at $55,100 per day, 72% of our Suezmax days are $52,800 per day, and 69% of our LR2/Aframax days at a whopping $67,800 per day. Again, all this numbers in this table are on a load-to-discharge basis and they will be affected by the amount of ballast days we ended up having at the end of [technical difficulty].
I'll now let, Inger, you can take us through the financial highlights.
Inger Klemp: Thanks, Lars, and good morning and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Let's turn to Slide 4, profit statement and look at some highlights, Frontline achieved total operating revenues in the fourth quarter of -- sorry, operating revenues net of voyage expenses of $207 million and adjusted EBITDA of $198 million in the fourth quarter. We reported a profit of $118.4 million or $0.53 per share and adjusted profit of $102.2 million or $0.46 per share in this quarter. Adjusted profit in the fourth quarter increased by $21.4 million compared with the third quarter, and that was primarily due to an increase in our TCE earnings due to higher TCE rates, partially offset by fluctuations [ph] in other income and expenses.
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