Dorian LPG Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 22, 2025
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Operator

Morning, and welcome to the Dorian LPG Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call.

Operator

At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Additionally, a live audio webcast of today's conference call is available on Dorian LPG's website, which is www.dorianlpg.com. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ted Young, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Mr. Young. Please go ahead.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Thank you, Nikki. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us for our fourth quarter twenty twenty five results conference call. With me today are John Hajbateras, Chairman, President and CEO of Dorian LPG Limited John Lecouris, Head of Energy Transition and Tim Hansen, Chief Commercial Officer. As a reminder, this conference call webcast and a replay of this call will be available through 05/29/2025. Many of our remarks today contain forward looking statements based on current expectations.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

These statements may often be identified with words such as expect, anticipate, believe or similar indications of future expectations. Although we believe that such forward looking statements are reasonable, we cannot assure you that any forward looking statements will prove to be correct. These forward looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, as well as general economic conditions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should underlying assumptions or estimates prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those we express today. Additionally, let me refer you to our unaudited results for the quarterly and annual periods ended 03/31/2025 that were filed this morning on Form eight ks.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

In addition, please refer to our previous filings on Forms 10 k and 10 Q where you'll find risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those forward looking statements. Also, please note that we expect to file our full 10 k no later than 05/30/2025. Finally, I'd encourage you to review the investor highlight slides posted this morning on our website. And with that, I'll turn over the call to John Hajjavateras.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. My colleagues Ted, John, and Tim will provide you with detailed comments on our financial results, our sustainability and operational progress, and our market outlook. First, I'd like to highlight the following. Our dividend of 50¢ per share, totaling 21,300,000.0 reflects our commitment to returning capital to shareholders in a manner that's aligned with market conditions and our policy of distributing earnings prudently. This past fiscal year, we paid over $155,000,000 in dividends.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

So far, in 2025, freight rate movements have been dramatic. While traders grappled with the tariff announcements and the fact that for a time it became uneconomic to export US LPG to China, the market quickly assessed the ability of The Middle East and Canada to replace US tons. Through this, US exports remained strong, with more than 300 VLGCs loading more than 14,000,000 tons in the last quarter. US LPG specifications are particularly attractive for Chinese PDH plants. As you will hear from Tim, we believe that increased production in The US and The Middle East and US terminal expansion, combined with just nine new buildings for the rest of the year, will support a balanced freight market and healthy earnings for 2025.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

We are confident in the long term fundamentals of LPG demand, which are underpinned by growing petrochemical and residential consumption, particularly in Asia, and by infrastructure expansions in The US, which will support steady growth in NGL output. Moving to the operational side of our business, we are progressing our investments in quick payback energy saving devices and performance optimization. We have eight dry dockings planned for this year. John L. Will provide an update on our initiatives and our decision to convert some of our VLGCs to facilitate the carriage of ammonia.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

And now I'd like to pass it over to our CFO, Ted Young, for our quarterly financial overview.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Thanks, John. My comments this morning will focus on capital allocation, our financial position and liquidity, and our unaudited fourth quarter results. At 03/31/2025, we reported $317,000,000 free cash, which was sequentially up from the previous quarter. Cash flow from operations more than doubled from 24,000,000 to 50,300,000.0 quarter over quarter and we generated 10,000,000 from the maturity of some bond holdings, all of which gave us enough cash flow to support our dividend, a progress payment on our new building made in January and our quarterly debt amortization. Thus, in spite of significant outflows, we still managed a modest increase in cash.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

As disclosed two weeks ago, we will pay an irregular dividend of 50¢ per share or roughly 21,000,000 in total on or about 05/30/2025 to shareholders of record as of May 16. Including this dividend, we have returned approximately $875,000,000 in cash through dividends, a self tender offer and open market repurchases since our IPO. With a debt balance at quarter end of 557,400,000.0, our debt to total book capitalization stood at 34.8% and net debt to total capitalization at 15%. We have well structured and attractively priced debt capital with a current all in cost of about 5.1%, an undrawn $50,000,000 revolver, and one debt free vessel. Coupled with our strong free cash balance, we have a comfortable measure of financial flexibility.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Looking ahead, we expect our cash cost per day for the coming year to be approximately 26,000 per day, excluding capital expenditures for dry docking and progress payments on our new building. For the discussion of our fourth quarter results, you may also find it useful to refer to the investor highlight slides posted this morning on our website. I would also remind you that my remarks will include a number of terms such as TCE, available days and adjusted EBITDA. Please refer to our filings for the definitions of those terms. Looking at our fourth quarter chartering results, given the fact that our entire spot trading program is conducted through the Helios Pool, its reported spot results are the best measure of our spot chartering performance.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

For the March, the Helios Pool earned a TCE per day for its spot and COA voyage of $29,800 reflecting the more challenging LPG product environment during the quarter, which Tim will get into more in his remarks. Our available days were also affected by a relatively heavy dry docking schedule. The overall TCE result for the pool of 33,200 per day reflects the strong time charter out portfolio in the pool. On page four of our investor highlights material, you can see that we have three Dorian vessels on time charter within the pool indicating spot exposure of just over 89% for the 28 vessels in the Helius pool. Dorian's reported TCE revenue per available day was about $35,300 per day.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

This rate was marginally lower than the prior quarter's results, again reflecting the challenging LPG product market. However, forward bookings for the quarter ending 06/30/2025 are more promising. We currently estimate that we have fixed 79% of the pool's available days in the quarter at a TCE of roughly $42,000 per day. The rate includes both spot fixtures and time charters in the Helios pool. Given the difficulty in predicting loading rates, which obviously have a huge effect on revenue recognition, this port options in some charters and the fact that some of our COAs are priced on average Baltic rates, the estimates we quote during these calls and the rates actually realized can vary.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Daily OpEx for the quarter was $11,000 a day excluding dry docking related expenses, which was up from the prior quarter. Crew and spare and stores costs were both up. This quarter also saw nearly $1,000 a day difference between reported OpEx that includes expense dry docking amounts and our preferred measure of OpEx that excludes those costs. Those non capitalized dry docking expense totaled about $3,200,000 and equated to $07 per share for the quarter. Our time charter and expense for the four time charter in vessels came in at about $10,300,000 or about $2,600 per time charter in day, thus those vessels contributed positively to our quarterly profits.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Total G and A for the quarter was $8,300,000 and cash G and A, which is G and A excluding non cash compensation expense was about 6,800,000.0 This amount contained about $800,000 of statutory accruals, which puts our core G and A at around 6,000,000, more in line with our typical levels. That 800,000 was worth about 2¢ per share. Our reported adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $36,600,000 Total cash interest expense for the quarter was 6,700,000.0, which is down sequentially from the prior quarter. Note that we capitalized approximately 425,000 of interest related to our new building during the quarter. Principal amortization remained steady at around 13,000,000.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

For the current fiscal year ending March 2026, we expect to drydock eight of our vessels for which we have budgeted approximately $12,000,000 excluding off hire time. Days in drydock should be consistent with our disclosures, namely around twenty five days per vessel. Also, we have two progress payments on our new building in September and December 2025, each of roughly $12,000,000 The irregular dividend declared at the beginning of the month of $0.50 per share brings the 15.7 per share in a regular dividends that we have paid since September 21. The modest reduction of the dividend versus the prior quarter is consistent with our previous discussions around the topic. It reflects a balanced mix between results and the long term needs and prospects of the business.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

Obviously, recent rate gyrations underscore the range of variables that affect our business, weather, terminaling fees, global petrochemical demand and global trade policies, just to name a few. Including the irregular dividend to be paid this month, we've paid over $640,000,000 of dividends and have generated net income of $641,000,000 over the same time period, I. E. Back to 06/30/2021. Our board weighs current earnings, our current near term cash forecast, future investment needs and the overall market environment among a number of factors in making its determination of the appropriate level, if any, for our dividends.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

The $0.50 per share dividend reflects a constructive market view when considering last quarter's earnings and our heavy drydock schedule this past year and for the coming year. In addition, the dividend decision was made before the conclusion of the most recent US China trade talks. We continue to be on the lookout for fleet renewal opportunities and will be judicious with our free cash flow, working to balance shareholder distributions, debt reduction and fleet investment. With that, I'll pass it over to Tim Hansen.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Thank you, Chad, and good day, everyone. At the start of the quarter ending March 31, the freight market kept its momentum from last December. Activity remained strong in the East with the Indian PSU actively covering January requirements. And in the West, charters quickly returned post holidays to secure first half February liftings out of The U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Gulf at rates in the low 110s on the PLPGs. Three routes used into Chiba, which equals some GTEs in the mid to high to high 40s per day. The race trended upwards at the end of twenty four, and the physical the typical winter spike was yet to materialize. Thus, there was expectations of further gains. However, in the January, a cold spell in The US Gulf caused charters to pause forward fixing, being aware of disruptions such as a Texas freeze in prior years and recent terminal delays experienced last summer.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Sudden tightening in the Panama Canal with options fees spiking to $500,000 added to further strain on the voyage planning. Repeated coal spells in The U. S. Drove up domestic LPG demand, leading to a rise in the Mont Belvieu LPG price. In meantime, seasonally warm weather and subdued petrochemical demand in Asia narrowed the arbitrage, tightening the terminal fees and freight rates.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

With no spot activity, rates began to soften on sentiment. With February exports down with about 1,000,000 worldwide, with 300,000 in the East and about 700,000 out of The U. S. And no US productivity for the second half February liftings. Plus, he mentioned on certain Panama transit costs, more owners started to ballast from Asia towards Middle East Gulf or via Cape to The U.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

S. Gulf, putting pressure on the Middle East Gulf rates and increasing vessels availability. Due to limited U. S. Activity, vessels availability gradually increased and freight rate continued to decline.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

By mid February, earnings on a modern non scrubber vessel had dropped from the high $40,000 a day in early January to low $20,000 a day in both the East and West market. Activity eventually resumed stabilizing the rates at these levels before recovery began in early March. As surge in fixtures by mid March, by a tightening position list, led to a sharp rebound ending the quarter with earnings back in the mid to high forty days forty thousand dollars per day range. The quarterly average spot earnings were settled around $30,000 a day, reflecting a balanced market. This was despite the absence of a typical winter demand in the East in both Q4 and Q1.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

The U. S. Co snaps, as mentioned, a February export dip, elevated fixed feedstock costs weighting on PDH and petrochemical margins and a narrow arbitrage, plus a high oil and gas market volatility amidst the tariff announcement by the U. S. Administration.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Reciprocal tariffs by China announced in Q1 twenty twenty five did not initially include LPG imports from The U. S. To China, but Spurs are cautioned us by charters for committing too far ahead with the ever changing tariff announcement and the possibility of China including LPG in the reciprocal tariffs again. U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

LPG production hit another quarterly record in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, producing 5,000,000 tons above the previous quarter despite U. S. LPG exports falling from 5,600,000 tons in January to 4,900,000 in February, the quarterly exports have shown to be the highest on record for Q1, and it is the third highest on record per quarter overall. In addition to the first quarter updates, by early April, the trade war continued to escalate. China included LPG and ethane in the reciprocal tariffs.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

This caused a huge shock to the LPG market, causing freight rates to collapse from approximately 40,000 a day down to OPEC's level virtually overnight. Two traders relet their vessels at roughly $40 per ton below the last ton levels on the Houston cheaper route, reflecting the expectation of immediate market disruptions. However, within a week, the market stabilized and freight rate rebounded to a more sustainable level, although still below the highs seen at the end of the first quarter. While the steep rise in tariffs effectively prevented direct LPG trade from U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

To China, the market anticipated a repeat of the twenty nineteen trade war pattern with China sourcing replacement volumes from alternative origins, Although, substituting the entire Chinese to U. S. U. S. Originated volumes would be difficult and could cause some demand destruction.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

The shift in trade lanes happened quickly and led to inefficiencies and increased ton mile demand, as also seen in the previous trade war. This time to a larger extent due to the large volume to be substituted and the limitations of such available alternative volumes. The Mt. Bellevue prices declined rapidly along other energy markets, making U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

LPG increasingly competitive as an absolute substitute for non Chinese PDH units and for steam crackers. This shift supported demand outside China. While the concerns being that the Chinese PDH demand destruction might lead to rising U. S. Inventories, especially in a post winter period.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

The improved price competitiveness of U. S. LPG helps sustain export flows. The key question was whether the increase on mild demand elsewhere would be sufficient to offset the loss in Chinese volume. In the short term, it did.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

This dynamic was quickly overtaken by development in The U. S. To China trade policy. Carriage was temporarily reduced, at least from the critical levels of February and 02/25, respectively, for a ninety day period with a 10% Chinese import tax on U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

LPG production. Notably, even this tariff this lower tariff level was enough to alter the trade float in 2019. Today, we have a high Saudi CEP price and a low value price, which suggests that U. S. Cargoes may remain competitive on a landfill price basis into China despite the tax.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

As negotiation continues, the market has regained balance and has been trending upwards since the tariff reduction. While the potential impact of future trade tensions remains uncertain, we are positive in our outlook for the market in 2025. U. S. Production and exports are set to increase, supported by terminal capacity expansions scheduled in the second half of the year, alongside Asia continuing to drive growth with new PDH plants coming online in China and sustained competitiveness of propane and butane versus naphtha in both East and West, increasing the overall demand.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Additional support comes from the Panama Canal at the moment operating at maximum efficiency, thus a limited downside and limited newbuilding deliveries, as mentioned by John in 2025. This contributes to a favorable supplydemand balance. With that, I'll pass over to mister John DeCouris.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

Thank you, Tim.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

At Dorian LPG, we are committed to continuously improving energy efficiency and advancing the sustainability of our operations in our vessels. We maintain a daily focus on optimizing vessel operational efficiency, whether underway or in port, while continuously incorporating insights from our crew. To ensure comprehensive performance monitoring, we leverage both proprietary tools and third party platforms to assess the efficiency of the hull, main engine, auxiliary engines, boilers, and the integrity of data quality. Hull performance is assessed by monitoring frictional resistance with careful consideration of trim and speed optimization. We consistently monitor and clean the hull and propeller to optimize performance and minimize overall fuel consumption.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

We conduct regular monitoring of the main engine, auxiliary engines, and boiler, focusing on performance metrics such as utilization, power loads, and lubrication efficiency. Our scrubber vessel savings for the first quarter of twenty twenty five amounted to $1,370,000 or about $11.74 dollars per calendar day per vessel, net of all scrubber operating expenses. Fuel differentials between high sulfur fuel oil and very low sulfur fuel oil averaged $67 per metric ton, While the differential of LPG as fuel versus the very low sulfur fuel oil stood at about $93 per metric ton, making LPG economically attractive for our dual fuel vessels. We now operate 16 scrubber fitted vessels and four dual fuel LPG vessels. We have now completed the second VLGC vessel upgrade to carry ammonia cargo.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

And a third vessel is planned to be upgraded during its dry docking in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty five. Once this last vessel is completed, four VLGC vessels in our Dorian LPG fleet will be able to carry ammonia cargoes in addition to our new building VLGC VLA C vessel delivering in 2026. We believe that the cargo fitness upgrades to include the ammonia cargo capability enhance the fleet's commercial optionality and readiness for employment when the first ammonia projects develop and when the large ammonia cargo markets are established. At MAPC eighty three during April 2025, member states finalized and approved the draft legal text for the IMO Net Zero framework as part of the IMO's mid term greenhouse gas reduction measures to be added as a new chapter five to MARPOL Annex six. Key features include, one, a mandatory well to wake greenhouse gas fuel intensity standard, which is called GFI, effective 01/01/2028.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

'2, '2 compliance tiers, a base and a direct, with annual tightening reduction factors through 02/1935. '3, remedial units at USD 100 per ton for every CO2 equivalent unit, and US dollars $3.80 per ton for each carbon CO2 equivalent unit, CO2, for compliance shortfalls payable into the IMO net zero fund. Credits, that's number four, credits of overcompliance aiming to accelerate zero and near zero carbon fuel uptake. Detailed implementation and verification guidelines for the IMO Net Zero framework are due to be finalized in mid-twenty twenty five ahead of formal adoption at the extraordinary MEPC session to be scheduled in October 2025. The IMO committee also adapted resolution MEPC 400, which sets out annual CII reduction factors relative to the 2019 reference line at thirteen and five eighths in 2027, increasing incrementally by two and five eighths percent each year to reach 21.5% in 02/1930, compared to the 2019 reference.

John Lycouris
John Lycouris
Head of Energy Transition & Director at Dorian LPG

Our continued focus on energy and emission savings reflects our belief that our environmental responsibility aligns with long term value creation for our shareholders. And now I would like to pass it over to John Henjipateras for final comments.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Thank you all. Thank you, John, Tim, and Ted. Nikki, we can open up for questions.

Operator

We'll take our first question from Omar Nokta with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Thank you. Hey guys. Good morning. I wanted to just ask a bit about the volatility that we've been seeing in the VLGC market. Obviously there's always volatility.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

It just seems to be much more extreme perhaps recently. But one thing is clearly the spot rates have exceeded many expectations. And right now we're hovering over 50,000 a day it seems on the spot market. Ted you mentioned you booked 79% of the quarter at 42,000. It seems that the rates are basically much stronger than anticipated.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Could you maybe I know Tim you talked about this a little bit, but could you talk about what's driving this market strength here recently? And is this sort of, are there any kind of trade pattern changes that have evolved out of what happened in April between China and The US? Can you just give a bit more context as to what's driving this latest upswing? Thank you.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Thank you. Thanks for the question, Omar. I think Ted I mean, sorry, I think Tim is best positioned to answer you this. He's on the front line, and obviously, it's something on everybody's mind. So, Tim, can you take it, please?

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Yeah. Omar, as as as you said, it it has gone up quite a lot on on lately. I mean, we see that a tightening, so we still see these trade flows that altered when the high tariffs was in place and China put on the resettatory tariffs. So we're still seeing a lot of cargoes going from The U. S.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

To India and to Southeast Asia. So, that, of course, gives a lot of ton miles. So, I think there's still a balance between whether it makes sense to swap the tons or from with with a 10% tax, whether it makes sense to use US origins into China or whether it's better to take and supplement out of AG. So so there doesn't seem to be demand destruction, but but some of the cargoes are still going the longer route around The Cape to to Southeast Asia and to to India, particularly. And that also means that you have more time miles out of the AG when they go to China, which would normally go, for example, to India. So, on top of that, I mean, the production is still very strong, we have before we talked about tariffs, expected a strong year of 2025 and which have seemed to be a little bit forgotten in all the noise on the tariff trade. We have I mean, 2025 was predicted to be relatively tight compared to 'twenty four with the limited newbuilding deliveries.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

And you can say that the previous little jump in newbuilding deliveries have been absorbed now from 'twenty three, 'twenty four, and production is still quite high. Plus, as John mentioned, also, do have a lot of dry dockings coming this year and even more next year. So we did have kind of a firm outlook for '25 already. Yeah, with the change in trade routes, has definitely helped, as we haven't seen any destruction of demand here in China.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

No. I was gonna say, even at the best of times, it's very difficult to kinda make a projection on rates. But, right now, it's even more. But we have all else, if things are staying the way they are, which they rarely do, we feel that these rates are sustainable.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Yeah, yeah, All good. And so I guess maybe just kind of on that talked a bit about the kind of the reshuffling perhaps of vessel capacity kind of moving into different trade routes. You have a longer ton mile. You know since this U. S.-China trade deal over the you know kind of beginning of last week have you seen kind of like a flood of inquiry or a flood of fixtures on the part of Chinese buyers again?

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Have you seen a noticeable pickup or are these trade lanes kind of perhaps becoming more saturated and how they've been developing the past several months?

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Tim?

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

Yeah, I think we it seems to have kind of settled now. I mean, when you have the high $2.45 to 25 tariffs, definitely, you didn't see any US going into China now. And now I think we do, so it's balanced. But it seems to have already shifted, people seemed content to keep selling to India. I guess, also, expectation of things could change again.

Tim Hansen
Tim Hansen
Chief Commercial Officer at Dorian LPG

So so as long as it's on on on balances, it's you could say, if it was immaterial, whether you go one or the other place, you would probably still try to place US tons outside China just to make sure that no surprises spring upon you. So, we have seen a change in the trade routes and also the way that Indians import and have taken advantage of The U. S.-China trade war.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Got it. Okay. And then, a final one. I think, Ted you have mentioned in your opening comments the decision on the dividend was made before the China U. S.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Trade talks. Is that perhaps maybe a hint that you're more comfortable with something different something higher perhaps especially given the rate improvement we've seen recently?

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

I wouldn't want to commit the board or anybody. I just think that obviously it did change things as you just talked about. And so the board made the decision with the best information available at the time, and I wanted folks to have the benefit of understanding that. How the board in its discretion decides to evaluate the environment when it next meets, we'll see. But obviously, it is a better rate outlook, as John said.

Theodore Young
Theodore Young
CFO & Treasurer at Dorian LPG

But as John also said, things rarely stay the same. So we shall see.

Omar Nokta
Managing Director at Jefferies LLC

Yeah. No, that's clear. I appreciate that. Thanks, guys. That's it for me.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Thank you, Omar.

Operator

Thank you. And we show no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

John Hadjipateras
Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG

Thank you, Nikki, for running a good show for us. And thank you, Omar, as always, for your, difficult and incisive questions. And, have a good summer. Talk to you in late July or early August.

Operator

Thank you. And this does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

Executives
Analysts
    • John Hadjipateras
      Chairman, President and CEO at Dorian LPG
    • Omar Nokta
      Managing Director at Jefferies LLC
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Key Takeaways

  • Declared an irregular dividend of 50¢ per share (≈$21 M) for Q4, bringing 2025 dividends paid to over $155 M and demonstrating commitment to disciplined capital return.
  • Ended Q4 with a free cash balance of $317 M and operating cash flow doubling to $50.3 M, while maintaining a conservative debt-to-capitalization ratio of 34.8%.
  • Helios Pool spot performance yielded a TCE of $29,800/day in Q4, with 79% of Q2 days already fixed at roughly $42,000/day, and daily OpEx of about $11,000.
  • Tariff-induced volatility in U.S.–China LPG trade drove freight rates down before rebounding to mid-$40K/day, but management remains confident in long-term fundamentals backed by petrochemical and residential demand growth.
  • Realized $1.37 M in scrubber savings in Q1, now operates 16 scrubber-fitted and four dual-fuel vessels, and is upgrading VLGCs for future ammonia carriage to boost fleet optionality.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Dorian LPG Q4 2025
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