GasLog Doubles 2Q Profit, Expects Business Growth
Monaco-based owner, operator and manager of LNG carriers GasLog ended the second quarter of 2017 with more than a doubled profit of USD 6.9 million, compared to USD 3.3 million posted in the same period a year earlier.
The company’s revenues also rose to USD 129.9 million in 2Q 2017 from USD 114.5 million in the three-month period last year, MANA correspondent reported.
“GasLog had a stronger quarter with record revenues as a result of high uptime across our chartered fleet and improving earnings on our spot vessels,” Paul Wogan, Chief Executive Officer, explained.
During the quarter, GasLog completed the dropdown of two vessels, GasLog Greece and GasLog Geneva, to GasLog Partners.
“These two transactions show our continued ability to recycle liquidity from the Partnership to GasLog, which we can then use to repay debt and grow our business,” Wogan commented.
“Towards the end of the quarter, we repurchased the outstanding 2018 Norwegian bond meaning that GasLog now has no material debt maturities until 2019. With the increased dropdown activity, improving spot rates, a growing fleet and largely amortising debt, we expect the company’s leverage to continue to fallthrough 2017 and beyond,” he continued.
“In the short-term market, spot rates continue to be low. However, we are seeing a return to a more seasonal market pattern as well as round-trip economics on many spot charters, both of which suggest a tightening shipping market,” according to Wogan.
Currently, GasLog’s owned fleet comprises 27 LNG carriers – 22 ships on the water and five on order, slated for delivery in 2018 and 2019.