Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Baltic Trading Limited – Earnings Estimate For 2011 Q2

For the quarter ended June 30th, 2011, we forecast that Baltic Trading Limited (NYSE: BALT) generated a net loss of $1,150,000 or ($0.05) basic earnings per share. We estimate that the company’s net TCE revenues for the quarter were $9,700,000 & the fleet average TCE was $11,800. We also forecast that during the second quarter of 2011 BALT generated EBITDA of $3,600,000.

Based on our earnings forecast and the company’s formula for declaring quarterly dividends, we project that BALT will not have cash available for dividend distribution. However, in the previous quarter and under similar circumstances, BALT did declare a dividend of $0.06 per share. After taking into account that BALT generated sufficient free cash flow during this quarter to pay a similar dividend, and given the company’s intention to declare a dividend quarterly, we forecast a dividend of $0.06 per share for the second quarter of 2011.

As of June 30th, 2011, we forecast that the company had $101,250,000 in long-term debt and a total capitalization of $384,000,000. Its debt to capitalization ratio stood at 26.4%. BALT had a remaining $48,750,000 under its amended 2010 credit facility, to finance future vessel acquisitions and for working capital purposes.

BALT operates a modern diversified fleet of 9 dry cargo vessels, consisting of 3 handy size vessels, 4 supramax size vessels and two cape size vessels, with a total DWT capacity of approximately 670,000 MT, and an average age of 1.7 years as of June 30th, 2011.