Navigator Holdings Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Record Net Income Driven by Ethylene Terminal Surge and Geopolitical Tailwinds

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Navigator Holdings conference call for the first quarter 2026 financial results. On today’s call, we have Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Gary Chapman, Chief Financial Officer, Oeyvind Lindeman, Chief Commercial Officer, and myself, Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer. I must advise you that this conference call is being recorded today. As we conduct today’s presentation, we’ll be making various forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, the future expectations, plans, and prospects from both a financial and operational perspective, and are based on our assumptions, forecasts, and expectations as of today, May sixth, 2026, and are as such subject to material risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ significantly from our forward-looking information and forecasts.

Additional information about these factors and assumptions are included in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I now pass the floor to our CEO, Mads Peter Zacho. Go ahead, Mads.

Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you, Randy. Good morning and good afternoon, thank you for joining this Navigator Gas earnings call for Q1 2026. Before I get into the highlights of the quarter, let me again address the Middle East. As of today, we have no vessels operating in or transiting the Hormuz Strait. Just to be clear, we have experienced no significant negative operational or financial impact from the conflict, only commercial tailwinds. We are watching the developments closely, we will keep our crew and assets safe. Please turn to slide number 4. The first quarter of 2026 was a quarter of resilient trading and a quarter of record net income for Navigator Gas. Now in Q2, which is starting strong.

In terms of our operations during Q1, TCE rates came in just below $30,000 per day, about $1,000 below Q4, and just below same period 2025. Utilization was slightly better than Q4 and within our guided range. Net income was $36 million or $0.55 per share, and EBITDA was $80 million. All three are strong numbers. The balance sheet remains strong. Total liquidity, less restricted cash, was $241 million at quarter end. This is essentially flat versus year-end, even after paying down debt and returning capital to shareholders and completing a significant share repurchase. On that note, in March, we repurchased and canceled 3.5 million shares from BW Group at $17.50 per share for a total of $61.2 million.

This is a substantial transaction, and it reflects our strong conviction of the value in our company. We’re also improving our capital return policy. From Q2 onwards, our policy will be to return 35% of net income each quarter, up from the 30%. The board has declared a fixed dividend of $0.07 per share for Q1, and we expect to add $6.3 million worth of buybacks to bring the total to 30% of Q1 net income. Now to what I consider the real highlight of the quarter. Our ethylene export terminal at Morgan’s Point delivered record throughput at over 300,000 tons. This is up 57% from Q4, and more than 2.5 times up compared to the volumes from Q1 of last year. Both European and Asian demand for U.S. ethylene is growing.

European crackers are undergoing restructuring. Asian producers are switching away from naphtha-based production, given the elevated oil prices. 3 new offtake contracts for the Morgan’s Point terminal were signed in the quarter. More are expected shortly. On vessel sales, in January, we sold the Navigator Saturn and the Happy Falcon at attractive prices and generating substantial book gains, as we communicated last quarter. In April, we also sold the Navigator Pegasus for approximately $31 million, generating a book gain of about $15 million. As I’ve said a couple of times before, I view these asset sales as recurring income stream. We have been able to consistently sell well above book and at or above market estimates. The proceeds fund capital return and our fleet renewal ambitions. There’s the Unigas news.

In April, we signed a letter of intent to sell our eight gas carriers in the Unigas Pool for an aggregate price of approximately $183 million. This is a significant strategic step, and I’d be pleased to discuss any of this in more detail during the Q&A. On new builds, financing is in place for the first two of the six vessels that we’ve ordered at attractive margin of 150 basis points, equal to the best ever. Expect more good news on our new building financing to come in shortly. Looking at the Middle East, the commercial angle, only 3% of global Handysize volumes load in the Persian Gulf. These exports have been disrupted, but that creates demand for substitute product, U.S. ethane-based ethylene over Middle Eastern naphtha-based production and longer ton-miles on ammonia.

We also expect to see more LPG volumes from Venezuela that will come into the regular fleet. The supply side remains in our favor. The Handysize order book is only 10% of the fleet, while 22% of the fleet is more than 20 years of age. Net fleet growth is likely to be flat or even negative. On to the outlook for Q2. This is where it gets exciting. Both TCE and utilization are expected to be above Q1 levels. April has already set some monthly Navigator records. Ethylene export volumes are also expected to set a new record in Q2. I’ll leave it to Gary to talk a little bit more about the financial details. Over to you, Gary.

Gary Chapman, Chief Financial Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you very much, Matt. Hello, everyone. As we entered 2026, we saw a slightly softer start to the quarter than we would have liked, but we ended with a resilient outcome overall for the quarter. By the time we reached the end of March, supported by the strength and diversification of our platform. This was, of course, against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, including continued disruption and risk across key global shipping corridors, which influenced and continues to influence trading patterns. However, many of these influences have turned into a positive tailwind for Navigator as we entered the second quarter, and Ivan will talk more about this later.

Turning back specifically to the first quarter on slide 6, we’re reporting an average TCE of 29,684 for this first quarter of 2026, compared to 30,647 in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 30,476 in the first quarter of last year. The slight softness in TCE this quarter arises principally from quarter end revenue recognition under US GAAP, due to having more vessels on voyage charters at the end of this first quarter compared to the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 or at the end of the first quarter of last year. Considering loading dates, revenue from a number of these vessels being recognized in the second quarter as a result.

Utilization was above our benchmark at 90.6% for the quarter and was above 95% for April 2026. EBITDA for the quarter was $8.3 million, benefiting from strong terminal performance and fleet renewal gains on vessel disposals. Adjusted EBITDA was $65.9 million, lower mainly due to the factors around TCE revenue recognition mentioned just now. Vessel operating expenses were down compared to the first quarter of 2025 at $45.8 million, very slightly below in dollar per vessel per day terms due to timing of vessel sales. There’s more guidance for 2026 on slide 9.

Depreciation was slightly down compared to previous quarters due to our now slightly reduced fleet size and due to our remaining older vessel, Navigator Pluto, that reached the end of her 25-year accounting life during the fourth quarter last year and hence is no longer depreciated. General and admin costs are higher in this quarter, primarily due to one-off project related activities and associated legal and professional fees, which are not expected to recur at the same level.

Randy will discuss more about our ethylene terminal. As Mads mentioned, throughput volumes for the first quarter were a record high of 300,537 tons, up compared to 191,707 tons in the fourth quarter of 2025, and up from 85,553 tons in the first quarter of 2025, resulting in a profit to Navigator from our Morgan’s Point terminal in this first quarter of $2.6 million. Our income tax line reflects movements in current tax and mainly deferred tax in relation to our equity investment in the ethylene export terminal. Net income attributable to stockholders for the first quarter of 2025 was $35.5 million or $0.55 per share, as Mads mentioned, and is the highest Navigator’s ever reported.

In the quarter, we completed the sale of 2 vessels, recording a gain of $12.1 million and completed the $61.2 million share buyback as part of the secondary offering from BW Group. The EPS figure also represents a significant increase versus both the prior quarter and the same quarter in the prior year. We continue to actively use, strengthen, and build our already strong balance sheet, as shown on slide 7. Our cash equivalents, and restricted cash balance was $199.6 million at March 31st, 2026. Including our available but then undrawn revolving credit facilities of $91 million, gave total liquidity of $291 million at the same date. Taking out restricted cash leaves a total available liquidity of $241 million.

This strong liquidity position is despite paying out $29 million for scheduled loan repayments, $5 million under our capital return policy in respect of the fourth quarter of 2025, and over $61 million for the 3.5 million shares repurchased and then canceled as part of the secondary offering from BW Group. Our ethylene export terminal is currently unencumbered, and we also owns 9 unencumbered vessels at March 31, which gives us significant additional available leverage to tap when and as needed. Alongside this, we have paid from our own cash a total of $110 million as at March 31, 2026 towards the 6 vessels we have under construction. The difference of this figure to our balance sheet figure represents capitalized interest in the US GAAP.

A significant part of these construction payments will be recouped as we fix financings for our newbuild vessels. Together with the still growing operational cash flow, this all helps to demonstrate our financial stability and strength. To bring you up to date, we had around $310 million of available liquidity or $360 million, including restricted cash, at the close of business on May 4, 2026. We continue to maintain a conservative and well-managed capital structure. On slide 8, across the quarter where with a very supportive banking group and a strong underlying business, we were able to return capital to shareholders, raise funds for the construction of our new builds, reward our shareholders through buybacks, and continue working on managing our debt and financing needs.

We successfully entered into a new secured term loan, signing a 5-year post-delivery facility for up to $133.8 million, which will be used to finance up to 65% of the delivery and also pre-delivery installments for the construction of 2 of our new ethylene Panda newbuild vessels. As of March 31, we have partially drawn down $26.8 million of this facility to recoup some of our cash already paid out for these vessels. This transaction was executed at a very low margin of 150 basis points plus offer. We would very much like to thank our banking group for supporting Navigator on this transaction. We believe the deal and the very keen pricing not only reflects the banking market today, but also the strong and stable credit position of the company.

We expect financing for the remaining 2 of our 4 Panda vessels to be completed in May 2026, and financing for our 2 Coral Ammonia vessels to be completed in June 2026. This would result in all 6 of our newbuild vessels being financed by the end of the second quarter this year. In terms of debt repayments, in addition to scheduled repayments of $29.3 million in this first quarter, we have only 2 relatively small debt balloons due before 2028, with payments due in 2026 of $54 million in total. We expect to pay down an average of $128 million of annual scheduled pro forma debt amortization per year across 2025 through 2028.

Net debt for the last 12 months adjusted EBITDA stood at 2.5x at March 31, materially consistent with prior periods and remains at a level where we believe is comfortable for the business. Our loans to fleet value ratio was approximately 32% or below 30% when including the reasonable value for our Morgan’s Point terminal investment. Finally, as at March 31, 2026, 56% of the company’s debt was either hedged or was on a fixed interest rate basis, with 44% open to interest rate variability. This is another key metric that we keep under close review, particularly in today’s economic environment. Hopefully that you can see we continue to prioritize returning capital to shareholders while maintaining balance sheet strength. We’ll continue to balance growth, de-leveraging, and shareholder returns in a disciplined and careful manner.

On slide 9, this slide highlights two of the core strengths of our Navigator platform, our ability to generate consistent operating cash flow and our structurally lower all-in cash break evens. Starting with cash flow, over the last 12 months to March 31, 2026, the businesses continued to generate strong underlying operating cash flows with a pre-CapEx cash flow yield averaging around 15%. Whilst post CapEx free cash flow has seen some variability, this is largely a function of CapEx planning and investment in our newbuild program rather than any change in the underlying earnings capacity of the business. Operating cash flow generation itself has remained quite stable.

Our latest estimate for 2026 all in cash break-even, shown below, is $21,230 per vessel per day, which incorporates over $180 million of operating costs, $119 million of debt amortization, and approximately $44 million of net interest expense. This level remains significantly below current and historic TCE levels, providing significant headroom for the business and should allow us to deliver positive EBITDA and cash generation even through more challenging market conditions. Our cost guidance for 2026 remains materially unchanged from that provided in the fourth quarter, 2025, when adjusting for changes in fleet composition. You can also see the expense guidance across vessel OpEx, G&A, depreciation, and interest expense for both the second quarter and the full year. As noted, this guidance includes our 8 Unigas vessels.

Of course, should the sale of those vessels complete, there would be a corresponding reduction in certain of those cost lines, particularly OpEx and depreciation, reflecting what would then be the smaller fleet. Slide 10 outlines our historic quarterly adjusted EBITDA, adding this first quarter’s results. We now have 13 quarters in a row since the beginning of 2023 of reporting at least $60 million of quarterly adjusted EBITDA at an average of $71 million over that period. On the right-hand side, as we highlighted previously, our earnings remain sensitive to TCE movements with approximately $17 million-$18 million of annual EBITDA uplift for every $1,000 increase in TCE rates, all other things being equal.

As for previous quarters, an update on our vessel dry dock schedule, projected cost, and time taken can be found in the appendix, slide 30, should that detail be of interest. Overall, Q1 started a little more slowly than we would have liked, but accelerated well as we moved into March. The resilience of our results and the flexibility of our fleet have again been shown with another very solid set of numbers and record net income. With market tailwinds translating into improving second quarter conditions, we can look forward with confidence and from a position of strength. With that, I hand you over to Øyvind to provide some more details on Q1, but also on what we’re seeing as we move forward. Øyvind.

Øyvind Lindeman, Chief Commercial Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you very much, Gary, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with one of the big topics, the Strait of Hormuz on page 12. The Strait has essentially been closed for over 2 months now. Since the 28th of February, we’ve seen commodity prices across the board, LNG, LPG, petrochemical gases, and of course, oil move sharply higher. That makes sense because the Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the world’s energy supply. When that tap gets turned down, prices goes up. There’s still some traffic moving through, but it’s a trickle. Most of what’s moving are what we call shadow fleet vessels, ships that are sanctioned in one country or another. Many of them switch off their tracking equipment, so it’s genuinely difficult to know exactly what is passing through.

What we can say with confidence is that LPG flows have fallen from around 1 billion metric tons per week down to about a fifth of that. The vessels still move. Moving these cargos are largely Iranian flagged or ships that have specific permission from the Iranian government to discharge into places like India. For Navigator directly, our exposure is limited. As Mads mentioned, we do not have any vessels inside, and we do not have any vessels waiting to enter. Our last vessels actually loading LPG from Iraq passed through the strait exactly on the 28th of February. We got out just in time. The indirect impact on our business has been very meaningful and very positive. With traditional supply chains disrupted, buyers around the world started looking hard at North America as an alternative to Middle East supply.

That shift in behavior has created a strong tailwind for us, and I want to walk you through what that looks like. Turning to page 13, which covers fleet utilization and our ethylene terminal. I’m pleased to say that our 1st quarter utilization came in about 90%, and April has continued building on this trend, reaching 95%. What happened is that when the strait first closed, the market was a bit caught off guard. No one knew if this was going to last a week or a month or longer. Once it became clear that this wasn’t going away quickly, our customers moved decisively to lock in stable supply from North America, and that drove our utilization higher as we moved into April. That same urgency showed up at our joint venture ethylene export terminal.

From March onwards, the volumes have been at record levels, not just above normal capacity, but above the expanded nameplate capacity as well. That means the flex feature we built into the terminal is actively adding value today. More volume means more ship movements, which feeds directly into high utilization and stronger rates. These things go hand in hand. I’ll come back to spot rates in a moment. Page 14 gives you a really clear picture of the competitive position North America finds itself in right now. The chart on the left tracks the price of U.S. ethane and U.S. ethylene compared to international markets. Here is what’s remarkable. While every other energy commodity has been impacted by what’s happening at the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. ethane, however, that price have barely moved.

Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Navigator Holdings: I think we will need to just hold off a second while Øyvind is getting back on. If he is not back in half a minute, we will take over and continue on his behalf.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: All right, I’ll keep going while we wait for him. Yeah, the chart on the left tracks the price of U.S. ethane, U.S. ethylene versus the international markets. Really, the remarkable thing is, while every other energy commodity was squeezed by what’s happening at the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. ethane prices, as Øyvind was saying, has really barely moved. This is an extraordinary situation. Think about it from a producer’s perspective. If you can buy ethane in the U.S. for under $200 per ton, crack it into ethylene versus dealing with oil at $100, $110 a barrel, there’s really no contest. Now, North America’s, by a long way, the cheapest place in the world to make ethylene right now. The gap to Asian naphtha producers is enormous.

It’s about $1,800 per metric ton in terms of a U.S. advantage. The arbitrage, really the price difference between U.S. ethylene and markets in Europe and Asia is at an all-time high. A $900 per metric ton gap to Europe means much higher revenues for us as a shipowner and higher revenues for us as a terminal owner, which I’ll get to in a minute. You might ask, is this really a short-term bump or something more lasting? We believe it’s the new normal, not just the situation in the Middle East, but the competitiveness of America, right? Yes. Maybe the Strait of Hormuz reopens soon, the U.S. cost competitiveness remains. On page 15, we’ll explain why. The three major U.S. shale gas basins, they’re all producing gas that is getting richer and richer over time, right?

The crude depletion curve is much steeper than that of gas. The gas streams are what we called wetter, right? Meaning they contain more NGLs, which means more LPG and more ethane. That’s really the raw material that underpins everything that Øyvind and us have been talking about. For the global Handysize fleet, North America has really become the center of gravity. Around 45% of all of our Handysize cargo is linked here to North America. Now 4 times what it was back in 2017. This is clearly a structural shift, not just a cyclical change. Turning to the supply side on page 16. Picture really hasn’t changed much since our last update. We’re looking at around 10% of our order book in terms of potential fleet growth over the next 3 years.

Conversely, 22% of the existing fleet is already over 20 years of age. It’s a pretty healthy setup from a supply standpoint. What does this all mean for freight rates? Looking at the next slide, ethane and ethylene capable vessels are earning record daily numbers right now in the range of $45,000-$75,000 per day for some spot voyage charters. Now to understand really what you’re looking at, we want to explain something important. This green line you see on the chart is the 12-month assessment. This is not the spot rates, right? In other words, what it would cost to hire one of our ships for a 1-year contract today. That number is assessed by third-party brokers to be around $33,000 a day.

That line’s almost theoretical because the time charter market has really gone quiet. Customers don’t want to really lock in rates at these very elevated levels at this time of uncertainty. Ship owners like us have really little incentive to tie up our vessels for a year-long when the spot market is offering such strong elevated levels. If you’re trying to understand the real earnings power of the ships right now, look past the green line and focus on those spot pictures. That’s where the real premiums are. Clearly, not all of our vessels are able to capture those spot rates. Some are committed to time charters. Some, frankly, aren’t even capable of carrying ethane and ethylene on our semi-refs, on our fully-ref. Page 18 gives you a breakdown of our 2026 time charter coverage profile.

Again, with most of them being on time charters. Our semi-ref vessels, they’re around half and half. The ethane ethylene capable ships, those are the ones that are predominantly in the spot market earning those premium rates. Those are the ones capturing the upside right now. Bringing it all together, the gap between North American commodity prices and the rest of the world has widened dramatically. Buyers are chasing U.S. supply. Demand for ethane and ethylene shipping is strong. Our terminal is running at record volumes. Utilization is up, rates are up, and the underlying competitiveness of North American supply, driven by that shale gas that just keeps getting richer, means it isn’t going away. April shaping up to be a record month. May is looking very strong as well.

I’ll turn it over to myself to find out what else is happening at Navigator Gas. You know, we’ve made several announcements in recent months. We want to provide some additional details and updates on these recent developments. Starting on slide 20, we’ve been saying how attractively valued our shares are, and we’ve been putting our money where our mouth is being, right. In March, we repurchased and canceled 3.5 million shares of NVGS directly from BW for $61 million, or $17.50 per share. A few things to note. This transaction was done at a discount to the prevailing market price at the time. It removed some of the overhangs. It had no negative impact on our free float and has further increased our earnings per share and NAV per share.

importantly, our recent buybacks really answer three key questions. Do we have a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity? As Gary said, yes. Is the earnings outlook attractive? As Øyvind said, yes. Is the share price undervalued? As Mads has been saying, yes. For a quick recap, you can see on the bottom left chart, we had about 56 million shares outstanding for many years up until the merger with Ultragas in 2021, in which we issued 21 million shares in exchange for those 18 vessels. Since peaking at around 77 million shares outstanding in December 2022, and including the capital return here in March, we’ve just continued to reduce this number. We’ve repurchased and canceled 16 million shares, totaling $236 million for an average price of around $15 per share.

Additionally, we paid our $41 million of cash dividends for a total of $277 million of capital return to shareholders over just the past three and a half years. This equates to around $4 a share, greater than 26% return during that time. Seeing over the past few years, and you’ll hear about here in a minute, we want to reiterate that returning capital to shareholders will remain a priority for us going forward. Looking at slide 21, we recently celebrated the five-year anniversary of the Navigator Gas Ultragas merger, a match made in Handysize heaven. I wanted to show you three graphs that cover the past half decade.

Starting on the left, our share price has more than doubled from $11 to about $22, and thus far this year we’re up around 30%, but still trading at a 25% discount to NAV, which we do not think is warranted based on the positive outlook for our shipping business, terminal throughput, our strong balance sheet, and our steadily climbing earnings. Focusing on the center chart, our ownership structure has had quite the transition during this time. Our shares are now 55% in free float that’s publicly traded. Ultranav owns 34% and BW is down to 11%. Looking at the table on the right, this increased free float, coupled with many new shareholders coming aboard, has led to much higher daily trading liquidity, right. We’re currently averaging more than $7 million per day, and that’s year to date.

Some days we’re doing $10 million, $15 million, as you see there on the table. That covers the past. Now let’s look to slide 22. Looking ahead, our capital return policy, it includes a fixed quarterly cash dividend, $0.07 per share, and as part of that quarterly payout percentage of 30% of net income. As a result, for the first quarter, we paid a $0.07 quarterly cash dividend totaling $4.3 million, and repurchased over 50,000 additional common shares in the open market. That totaled $1 million for an average price of around $19.34 per share. Looking ahead, we are announcing that we’re returning 30% of net income, a total of $10.6 million to shareholders during this second quarter.

The board has declared a cash dividend of $0.07 per share, payable on June 10th to all shareholders of record as of May 20th, equating to a quarterly cash dividend payment of $4.3 million. Additionally, with our shares still trading below our NAV of more than $30 a share, we’ll use the variable portion of the return on capital policy for share buybacks. As such, we plan to repurchase $6.3 million of our shares between now and the quarter end, so that the dividend and the share repurchases together equal 30% of net income. $10.6 million this quarter. Wait, there’s more. Starting next quarter, we’ll be increasing our capital return policy to 35%, more than one-third of our net income.

To fund this incremental capital return policy, the board has also approved a new $50 million share repurchase plan authorization. Based on our current expectation of improved earnings in 2Q 2026, coupled with a higher payout percentage, we expect to announce even more than $10.6 million of return to shareholders under our quarterly capital return policy next quarter. Stay tuned. Turning to our ethylene export terminal on slide 23, all of us touched on it earlier because it’s pretty exciting news here, ethylene throughput volumes rebounded to a record high of 300,000 tons during the first quarter, and that was including a monthly record high of 150,000 tons in March.

This was despite the domestic ethylene prices ticking up, but multiple European crackers undergoing turnarounds and both European and Asian demand for U.S. ethylene also increased due to that recent surge in oil-based naphtha prices that Øyvind was discussing earlier. To even better news, as we’ve seen in the bottom of the chart, that strong demand for U.S.-sourced ethylene has continued into the second quarter, leading to another record high monthly throughput in April of around 151,000 tons. We expect a third consecutive record high month in May, with around 160,000 tons currently scheduled. To note, this is above the nameplate capacity of 130,000 tons per month. That is really proving the upside of the flex train that we have alluded to in recent quarters.

As such, we expect to report another record quarter of throughput on our next earnings call for the second quarter. Looking at the bottom right chart, despite that near-term increase in U.S. ethylene prices, the ARB remains wide open, and that’s driven by the much higher international ethylene prices. That’s led to numerous new spot customers buying cargoes from the terminal. Longer term, the forward curve remains very stable at around $0.25 per pound throughout 2027. When it comes to contracting the expansion volumes, we recently signed 3 new offtake contracts for various quantities and durations, and the robust demand has resulted in multiple customers now in advanced discussions for take-or-pay contracts commencing in the coming months.

As such, we expect that additional offtake capacity will be contracted soon as new customers continue to request updated terms for the terminal and for shipping. In the meantime, we’ll continue to sell those volumes on a spot basis at very attractive rates. Finishing with our fleet and the fleet renewal on slide 24. We’re continuing to right-size our fleet by selling our older vessels and our non-core assets. On the same day in January, we sold both the Navigator Saturn and the Navigator Falcon. In April, we sold the Navigator Pegasus, a 2009-built 22,000 cubic meter semi-refrigerated gas carrier for $30.5 million. That’s netting a book gain of $15.2 million, which will be booked in our second quarter 2026 results.

Furthermore, as Mads was mentioning, we announced the upcoming sale of 8 Unigas vessels for $183 million. We’ll repay around $54 million of associated debt so that the net cash proceeds will be around $129 million. These 8 vessels will also result in a book gain of about $65 million, which we’ll book upon vessel deliveries throughout the second, third, and maybe into the fourth quarter of this year. Looking at all 17 of our vessel sales over the last 4 years and including those Unigas vessels, the total proceeds are expected to be $342 million. After all the associated debt repayments, total net cash proceeds of $288 million, which we’ll be sure to use prudently.

Our current fleet consists of 54 vessels with an average fleet age of 12.3 years, average fleet size of 21,000 cubic meters. Excluding the Unigas vessels, our fleet would be a little younger on average at 12.2 years and a little larger on average of close to 23,000 cubic meters. We continue to upgrade our vessels with some various energy savings technology. You can see that on slide 30. We continue to roll out new artificial intelligence, AI programs to make our fleet even more efficient. With all that, I’ll now turn it back to Mads for some closing remarks.

Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Navigator Holdings: Good. Thank you, Randy. It’s great that you illustrate we have a good redundancy not only in our vessel operations and our financing structures, but also in our investor presentation. That’s great. The first quarter of 2026 was a quarter of resilient cash generation, continued structural tailwinds, and once more a demonstration of our disciplined capital allocation. It was also a quarter where we delivered the strongest quarterly net income in the history of Navigator Gas. The strong net results include both tailwinds from vessel sales, but also some headwinds. Importantly, some of those headwinds that Gary just reviewed with us, they will translate into tailwind in Q2, which is a quarter that has already taken off to a good start.

Our resilient earnings and strong cash generation are underpinned by the structural advantaged U.S. exports, particularly the low-cost ethane and a tightening supply fundamental. These effects will outlast the more cyclical effects that we are seeing from the war in the Persian Gulf. With record terminal throughput anticipated and improving fleet utilization and TCE and supported macro dynamics into Q2 of 2026, we enter the remainder of the year from a position of strength, and we are well-positioned to sustain this momentum. A strong balance sheet and clear capital return policy continues to drive attractive shareholder returns. With that, I’ll round it off. Thank you for listening, and back to you, Randy, to open the Q&A.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thanks so much, Mads. Great to see Øyvind. Looks like he’s back. We missed his calm and strong Norwegian voice. Operator will now open the lines for some Q&A. To raise your hand you can press star nine, then you’ll have to unmute yourself by also pressing star six. If you’re using Zoom, just raise your hand. First question, your line should be open.

Spiro, Analyst, Citi: Hey, morning team. You got Spiro here from Citi. Hope you’re well. wanna start with the Middle East. Obviously very fluid situation, seeing some of that play out today. You did know the disruption has been a net positive for you commercially. To the extent you do see a return to normal, however you define it, you know, it doesn’t sound like you guys are expecting business to go back as usual. Curious to hear your thoughts on maybe the durability of some of these tailwinds to last longer. Even you talked about renewed interest in U.S. cargoes. Kinda wanted to get a glimpse of maybe what you’re hearing from customers, how those conversations are going, and when you think this starts to convert maybe into longer term commercial success for you guys.

Øyvind Lindeman, Chief Commercial Officer, Navigator Holdings: I think the most important feature, what is happening now is what we mentioned. At the boardrooms around the world, when they’re looking at the supply chains, they’re looking for reliability. What the issue in the Middle East has shown is that is not reliable. When you’re running your multi-billion dollar production system, crackers and so forth, you can’t rely on that anymore. That has highlighted that issue and that is herding many of those customers to the U.S. Talking about ethane and ethylene. I think that is a lasting change in the supply chain strategies around the different companies or our customers.

In short term, in terms of freight and so forth, et cetera, I think this is going to be if the straits opens, you know, there’s going to be a long lag on the prices and to settle and so forth, et cetera. I think long term is a structural shift. Short term, I think we’ll see a strong market continue for the foreseeable future until things are settled. When that happens, it takes time.

Spiro, Analyst, Citi: Understood. That’s great color. Second 1, maybe just going to capital redeployment here. Liquidity getting pretty healthy. Looks strong at these levels following these vessel sales. Just wonder if you guys could provide a little more color on how you’re thinking about redeploying that capital, maybe where the best value is, if there’s any obvious holes in your portfolio, and if some of that capital could maybe find its way to infrastructure development.

Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Navigator Holdings: There’s still a continuation of the strategy we have communicated at previous occasions that we still see some opportunity for consolidating the markets that we’re in. That goes for both the Handysize market and also the mid-size market that we’re looking at. The mid-size market is a little bit more fragmented and there may be more opportunities. Here we just need to find the right deals at the right price at the right time. We clearly see that there are opportunities for consolidation here. We also see opportunities in infrastructure, that can be both export infrastructure out of North America, and it can be import infrastructure into Europe. We have a pretty active business development portfolio.

The infrastructure projects will tend to take a little bit longer before they materialize, whereas you could say the secondhand consolidation for on vessels could maybe happen a little bit faster. We still We are a company that want to grow over time. Nothing wild, but just gradually, as you’ve seen in the past, quite predictable in how we look at it. That leaves also ample cash on hand to deploy both into repayment of debts and at the same time in particular, capital return to shareholders. It’s a little bit the same story that you heard before, that we think we can do all of the things at the same time, growing gradually but also deploying gradually more cash over time to shareholders.

Spiro, Analyst, Citi: Great. I’ll leave it there for today. Thank you, gentlemen.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you, Spiro. Next caller, your line should be open.

Christopher Robertson, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Hi, good morning. This is Christopher Robertson at Deutsche Bank. Thanks for taking my questions.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Absolutely.

Christopher Robertson, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Just wanted to start with the, with the terminal. I think you’re currently around 23% over nameplate capacity at these levels, around 160,000 tons for April. How confident are you in maintaining throughput at that level sustainably, I guess, across the year without periods of increased maintenance due to the increased throughput? Are there any technical or physical limitations that you could continue to optimize further on here? Is there any low-hanging fruit in terms of some minimal CapEx investment to continue to improve the total capacity number?

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: I’ll start there. A few questions. I was actually out there on Monday at the terminal. Back in February, you saw that dip. We did 60-ish thousand tons. During that time we did some maintenance, did a few little capital improvements, added an additional pump, and that really bode well for us. Obviously, in the last few months you’re seeing us operating above nameplate capacity. This is our partner, the operating partner, Enterprise Products more than Navigator turning screws. All that being said, we can operate above nameplate for an extended period, not at the 160,000 ton level, probably for multiple months.

Once we get into the summer, June, July, especially August, you’re here in Houston, you know very well, when the temps are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s a lot harder to chill this commodity down to negative 104 degrees Celsius, right? There are some technical difficulties to keep going at these levels. On the commercial standpoint, right? The flex train does ethane and ethylene. There’s a balance there. We have a contractual agreement that we’re buying a quarter of the capacity. There’s upside above and beyond that when it’s not being used for ethane. It’s hard to really say, yeah, every month will be at X level. We have the kind of the throughput that we expect and hope, 130,000 tons a month.

It’d be hard to get above that continuously in the short term. Longer term, when some of those contracts roll over to the Neches River ethane export facility that Enterprise has, there will be some opportunities for that. For the time being, I think the 130, 140, 150, is a great level. Probably not gonna stay at those levels perpetually, but we’re hoping for some strong throughput here in the second quarter and beyond.

Christopher Robertson, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Got it. Fair. This is a follow-up question. Just as it relates to the ethylene pricing we’re seeing in both Europe and Asia have moved up. Obviously, Europe is still at an advantage here, but less so, let’s say, from a ton-mile perspective, as Asia’s a further distance away. As it relates to ethylene, are you guys still doing 100% of the cargos to Europe? Is there any Asian buyers on that, or is that more on the ethane side?

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Oeyvind, welcome.

Øyvind Lindeman, Chief Commercial Officer, Navigator Holdings: The ARB to Europe is the widest. Logically, most of the volumes will go there because that’s those are the guys who pays the most for the product. Means that the scope, more scope for the terminal, which we’re part owner, and for the freight side to extract more additional value. Most of the ethylene is currently heading to Europe for those reasons. Some is starting to go to Asia as well. We believe that the Asian producers, the naphtha producers and so forth, had quite large storage available in oil. Now those are dwindling and therefore appetite for ethylene to Asia is coming on the scene. Ethane, however, have been flowing to both locations simultaneously.

Christopher Robertson, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: All right. Great. Thank you very much for the time. I’ll turn it back.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you, Chris. Next caller, your line should be open.

J. Mintzmyer, Analyst, Value Investor’s Edge: Hi Dean. J. Mintzmyer from Value Investor’s Edge. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one, I think it’s gonna be for Gary. Considering that if the sale of the Unigas vessels goes forward, it will include the pool. Will any working capital be included? Would the EUR 183 million transaction price get adjusted for that, or is it already accounted for?

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: You’re muted, Gary.

Gary Chapman, Chief Financial Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you, Mads. J. Mintzmyer, yeah, good question. The price that we’ve quoted for the vessels, there’s a small administrative pool that we own a third of. And there’s a small $2 million attached to the value of that pool entity. You know, the vast majority of the value here is on the vessels. I can go into a lot more detail should you want me to, but that’s the crux of the answer, I think.

J. Mintzmyer, Analyst, Value Investor’s Edge: Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you. I also had a question regarding the ethylene export terminal. You may not be able to provide exact commentary, but pro forma for the addition of the 3 contracts you mentioned year to date, what % of the 1.55 MTPA are currently fully fixed?

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Yeah, we won’t go into the exact percentages, but the vast majority. However, we’re still in some offtake discussions with additional customers. We’ll just leave it at that.

J. Mintzmyer, Analyst, Value Investor’s Edge: Perfect. Thanks. Thank you, guys.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you. All right. It looks like that’s all the questions we have. Mads, final thoughts.

Mads Peter Zacho, Chief Executive Officer, Navigator Holdings: No, good. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for listening in. As you can see, we had a quite resilient first quarter. It seems like the Q2 is gonna be a pretty exciting one. We definitely look forward to meeting same place, same time in about a quarter and just reviewing with you the Q2 results. Thanks a lot for all the good questions from the analysts and thanks for listening in. Have a fantastic day and evening. See you next time.

Randy Giveans, Chief Investor Relations Officer, Navigator Holdings: Thank you.