Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today in spite of such cold winter weather.
I will explain outlook for our 3rd Quarter (October - December) Fiscal Year 2011 consolidated financial status and our revised estimate for full-year financial position for Fiscal 2011 (April 2011-March 2012), and then briefly touch on segment-wise environment.
A-1 Financial Results for 3rd Quarter Fiscal 2011
As mentioned in this first Slide, outline of 3rd Quarter financial results are: Operating Revenues 235.9 billion yen, Operating income was deficit of 13.2 billion yen, Ordinary Income deficit of 20.3 billion yen and Net Income was deficit of 23.6 billion yen.
Accumulated results for 9 months (Apr-Dec) are as described in the right column.
Regarding segment-wise results, Ordinary Income for 3rd Quarter Containership Business was deficit of 13.4 billion yen, and Bulk Shipping Business deficit of 8.0 billion yen. Including Others and Adjustments, total Operating Revenues 235.9 billion yen and Ordinary Income deficit of 20.3 billion yen. Accumulated results for 9 months are just as quoted in this table.
Next, let us go to the Slide A-2.
A-2. Key Points for 3rd Quarter Accumulated Results
Key points for our 3rd Quarter accumulated results are quoted in this slide, which are summed up item-wise.
For year-on-year basis, Operating Revenues decreased by 29.0 billion yen and Ordinary Income by 93.2 billion yen. The biggest impact was Market Volatility with freight rates having considerably declined in almost every business sector, which I will explain later in more detail. As I believe your questions will also concentrate on this point, let us now move on to other points. The total impact of Exchange Rate and Bunker Oil Price that put pressure on our profit was 24.0 billion yen in year-on-year comparison as extracted from data in this table.
Average exchange rate for this 9-month accumulated period was higher by 8.13 yen per U.S. dollar in comparison with the same term last year. The average rate during this 9 months was 79.33 yen per U.S. dollar versus 87.46 yen for the previous year. Fuel oil price for the same period was 661 U.S. dollars per ton in average, versus 470 U.S. dollars last year. These two factors put great pressure on our profit.
Now I will talk in more detail about segment-wise results so please go back to Slide A-1again.
【return】 A-1 Financial Results for 3rd Quarter Fiscal 2011
Containership Business for this 3rd Quarter (October-December) resulted in deficit of 13.4 billion yen, and Bulk Shipping Business deficit 8.0 billion yen.
We are afraid we cannot provide more detailed breakdown of this 8.0 billion yen, but major portion of this amount consisted of Energy Transportation Business and Heavy Lifter Business. The total loss by these two segments represented most of the entire 8.0 billion yen deficit.
Moving on to other sectors, profit by Dry Bulk Business sector declined drastically in the 3rd Quarter compared with 1st and 2nd Quarters, respectively, which barely remained in the black due to such drastic decline. The reasons are as follows:
This 3rd Quarter from October to December also includes July-September results of our overseas subsidiaries which operate Dry Bulk Business independently in Singapore and London. During the term, Market for Cape-size especially was unusually bad. In addition, there was a certain amount of valuation loss from exchange rate on debt borrowed in yen and other currencies by these overseas subsidiaries. Mainly because of those factors, profit from Dry Bulk Business for this 3rd Quarter fell drastically.
As for Car Carrier Business, although we anticipated profit increase, results unfortunately went against our expectations due to the effect from flooding in Thailand. As the floods in Thailand were a natural disaster, there is no point trying to find any other blame. Due to shortage of auto parts, export of completed cars from Japan decreased and we failed to earn profit as had been planned.
Those are the outlines of segment-wise results for this 3rd Quarter.
Let us next move to Slide A-3,
A-3. Estimate for Full Fiscal Year 2011
Estimates for 4th Quarter are quoted in this Table: Operating Revenues for this term estimated at 237.1 billion yen; Operating Income expected to be minus 11.4 billion yen; Ordinary Income minus 13.4 billion yen; and Net Income minus 11.8 billion yen.
And estimates for this full fiscal year are as indicated in this slide: Operating Revenues 970.0 billion yen; Operating Income minus 43.0 billion yen; Ordinary Income and also Net Income both minus 54.0 billion yen.
As supplementary comments for these estimations of 4th Quarter and full year on segment-wise basis during 4th Quarter, we expect profit earned by Containership Business to improve somewhat compared to 3rd Quarter. Nevertheless, it is only estimated as minus 9.8 billion yen. As to Bulk Shipping Business, minus 2.9 billion yen is forecasted, and adding income by Others, with Adjustments, a total of minus 13.4 billion yen Ordinary Loss is expected for this 4th Quarter.
In the box below in this Slide, major items to be bound as non-operating and extraordinary items throughout this 3rd Quarter and 4th Quarter are quoted. Among these items the biggest one is, as I touched on briefly earlier, minus 5.4 billion yen for appraisal loss resulted from variation of exchange rate for our overseas subsidiaries’ debt.
Then, counting loss on sale of investment securities and impairment loss on sale of ships and land, there is 1.3 billion yen and 4.3 billion yen, respectively. A further 1.9 billion yen of cancellation charges for shipbuilding contracts with other items is also expected.
Let me add another comment that Net loss looks much bigger in comparison with Ordinary loss because extraordinary losses greatly increased as I mentioned earlier.
Outline of our full year estimates is as I have stated. I will now briefly report further about 4th Quarter segment-wise situations the same as I previously explained about 3rd Quarter results.
Containership Business for this 4th Quarter is estimated having deficit of almost 10.0 billion yen; Bulk Shipping Business is improving from 3rd Quarter in terms of profit in spite of present market conditions really being worse, but we have some fixed profit already. Car Carrier Business is anticipated to return to black eventually.
In Energy Transportation Business, oil tanker segment is improving as we have carried out disposal of under-performing vessels. However, Heavy Lifter Business is expected to end up with almost same loss as 3rd Quarter due somewhat to a continuously slack market.
Summing up all sectors, Bulk Shipping Business is expected to post about 3.0 billion yen loss, which is an improvement of about 5.0 billion yen from 3rd Quarter.
B. Division-wise Trends
I would like to explain just key points from my view as it is about each business division trend from here.
B-1. Division-wise Trends - Containership Business
With regard to Containership Business, as I said previously, because of sluggish cargo growth and
continuous freight rate decline caused by over-supply situation due to deliveries of new large ships,
this sector had biggest deficit in 3rd Quarter in terms of quarterly periods.
But in 4th Quarter it is presently expected that there will be good effects from freight rate restoration to some extent.
Each operator could restore freight rates because cargo volume was relatively firm as there was export rush before
Chinese New Year on 23rd of January. As of today there is no sign of decline in restored freight rate levels.
Next point is how long this freight rate restoration can continue!
In addition there is new information which was heard recently, as you may know, that major operators in Asia-Europe trade, Maersk Line and/or Hapag-Lloyd will increase freight rates by a substantial extent from March.
If the rate increase will be conventional, it is possible that freight rate trend could be in much better condition than we expected. In that case further improvement of Containership business performance is expected, so this is the current situation.
As for Containership sector business, our Senior Managing Executive Officer, Mr. Murakami, will talk in more detail later.
B-2. Division-wise Trends - Dry Bulk Business
Slide B-2 Dry Bulk Business shows present BDI as of today is 702 because market declined sharply in each vessel size from the beginning of this year contrary to our expectations, which means market dropped to substantially below the level at which it is felt it would be difficult to continue our business.
For example, the lowest BDI after Global financial crisis during 3 months, from end of October 2008 to end of January 2009 was 660. In short, current decline in market level is the same as after the Global financial crisis.
Just for information, after the Global financial crisis, BDI remained at a very low level for 3 months, but then suddenly rose sharply to 2000 in middle of February 2009, afterward to 4000 in June, with the market being 4000 in December although it dropped a bit during the summer. I'm not sure if present market will be the same as at that time.
At any rate, market of dry bulk just depends on China, so if China proceeds with further easing of money supply and shifts to economic stimulus policy again, I think BDI will naturally improve.
B-3. Division-wise Trends - Car Carrier Business
Talking about Car Carrier Business, and as I said previously, in this year there was so much impact from the March 11 earthquake to Car Carrier sector in 1st Quarter; in 2nd Quarter the situation improved slightly so our original plan was to recover from 3rd Quarter.
However, as we said, then there was the unfortunate flood in Thailand which caused large cargo decrease with impact to our profit being roughly 1.5 billion yen.
Therefore, this sector is still in the red in 3rd Quarter, but as we said previously, from 4th Quarter we believe it will overcome those factors and recovery of exports from Japan expected to some extent, so there will be a return to black in 4th Quarter.
B-4. Division-wise Trends - Energy Transportation and Heavy Lifters
In Energy Transportation Business where there are sectors of LNG Carriers, Tankers and offshore support vessel business by classification.
For LNG Carriers, although current spot rate is upward, we do not have vessels in the spot market.
All of our LNG Carriers are under long or mid-term contracts and this means we cannot enjoy any benefit from the current market hike.
In this Fiscal Year 2011, some low profit contracts still remain, so profit performance is not so good right now.
After April in Fiscal Year 2012, LNG Carrier sector will recover into black because there will be effect of contribution from some mid-term profitable contracts which were signed at the time when market had recovered.
The problem is Tankers.
Markets of VLCC remained at an extremely low level for a long period, however the market has recovered a little, the reason being that demand for ships temporarily increased because of stretched transportation distance with a part of crude oil source having shifted from Arabian Gulf to West Africa due to Iran issues.
It is currently uncertain what will happen in the future, but we do not have any ships under spot market at the moment.
All of our VLCC’s are under long-term contracts and providing stable returns.
Almost all of our AFRA-max and Clean tankers are exposed to the spot market, so it will be difficult for us if those markets do not recover. As for AFRA-max, we took countermeasures and sold some ships or posted some impairment loss as we said.
Although there will be no recovery in 4th Quarter, we think there will be a return to the black at some point in next year.
A part of the Offshore Support Vessel sector is stable because we concluded some mid or long-term contracts. However, market is very volatile for spot exposures, sometimes being very high, then suddenly dropping sharply, so our present business is almost at break-even but this is not much of a worry to us.
Regarding Heavy Lifters, we bought all remaining shares and made SAL our 100% subsidiary. In 2009 and 2010, although
there was temporary adverse effect from the Global financial crisis, business performance was comparatively good. However,
the situation is again severe because we are unable to acquire project cargo which was originally targeted for our Heavy
Lifters. Possibly due to various debt crises in Europe, financing for such projects has slightly receded. However, our opinion is
that the market will improve with long- to medium-term vision.
This ends my brief explanation of each business division.
In addition, however, I would like to report just briefly on what we have done as structural reform that includes canceling ship building contracts for 5 bulk carriers totaling 8.7 billion yen. I’m confident this will have positive effect on earnings improvement in the future.
This concludes my brief overview explanations.
Details of Containership business
【return】 B-1. Division-wise Trends - Containership Business
(Supplementary explanation by our Senior Executive Managing Officer, Mr. Murakami)
With regard to supplemental explanation of Containership business, let me explain some figures in advance which will be asked by you in Q&A session later.
Result of Containership business in 3rd Quarter was a deficit of 13.4 billion yen and estimate for 4th Quarter is 9.8 billion yen, as Mr. Asakura said.
This 3.6 billion yen improvement results from effect of winter capacity cuts by our CKYH Alliance which has presently had good effect as it is after Chinese New Year, and another reason is freight rate restoration from 1st of January this year. So the reasons for improvement from 3rd Quarter to 4th Quarter are therefore from effect of capacity cuts and rate restoration.
