StealthGas Inc. (NASDAQ:GASS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
StealthGas Inc. (NASDAQ:GASS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 21, 2024
StealthGas Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.29 EPS, expectations were $0.3. StealthGas Inc. 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 StealthGas Inc. Q4 2023 Results Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode, with no question-and-answer session. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Michael Jolliffe, Chairman. Please go ahead.
Michael Jolliffe: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. I'm Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. And joining me on our call today as usual is Harry Vafias, to discuss the market and company outlook, and Konstantinos Sistovaris to discuss the financial aspects. Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking statements which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. So if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation, I should be grateful. Risks are further disclosed in StealthGas’ filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I would also like to point out that all amounts quoted, unless otherwise clarified, are implicitly stated in U.S. dollars. Today we released our results for the fourth quarter and for the full year 2023, announcing for the second year in a row, record profits. So let's proceed to discuss these results and update you on the company's strategy and the market in general. Turning to slide 3, we summarized some highlights starting with fleet and operations update. We first concluded the previously announced sale of two vessels, the Echo Dream and Echo Green, delivering those vessels in January. That same month, we also took delivery of our long awaited MGC new building vessels, the Echo Wizard and Echo Oracle, that were deployed on their respective time charters.
As the market was firm during the last couple of months, we continued securing more period charters both in our fully owned fleet and for the joint venture vessels with contract coverage for 2024 of 66% of our fleet days for our fully owned fleet. We have thus contracted revenues of over $200 million for all subsequent periods, excluding our JV vessels. Moving to our financial highlights, with on average seven or fewer vessels compared to last year and a 20% reduction in fleet days, net voyage revenues, that is net of voyage costs, were flat at $130.6 million and $130.3 million for 2022 and 2023 respectively in spite of the smaller fleet. Our profitability remained strong in the fourth quarter and was $8.9 million compared to $7.7 million last year, a 15% increase.
While for the full year net income was $51.9 million compared to $34.3 million last year, a 52% increase which is the highest profit recorded by the company since it became public. Earnings per share for the 12 months were $1.38 and also worth pointing out is that during 2023 we have halved our debt by paying down facilities of $154 million and still maintain strong liquidity. In the first two months of 2024, we drew down on a $70 million loan to finance the delivery of our two new building vessels and prepaid one of the older facilities, thus having made debt repayments of over $30 million so far this quarter. As far as the share buybacks during the last quarter of 2023, we bought back 1.2 million shares, bringing the total number of shares repurchased to 3.9 million shares, costing over $19 million.
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