Thomas Backmann, Vice President, Investor Relations at ADNOC Logistics & Services, joins Lucy Gazmararian at ADX to discuss the company’s growth strategy, strong financial performance, and diversified logistics, shipping and services business, which continue to drive investor interest and analyst recognition. The interview comes ahead of the company’s participation at the Marine Money Conference in New York.
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ADNOC Logistics & Services Highlights Growth Strategy, Strong Performance, and Expanding Global Footprint
So welcome to the ADX.
Today I have Thomas Bachmann.
He is VP Investor relations at Adnoc Logistics and Services.
So thank you for coming along to the ADX today, Thomas.
Thomas, how would you describe Adnoc Logistics and Services and the scale of the business today?
Aetna Logistics and Services we listed here on the ADX for exactly 3 years ago in June 2023.
Since that listing took place, we have committed investments of more than $7 billion mainly increasing the focus on our integrated logistics, but even more within our shipping segment.
So I think it's fair to say that over the course of those 3 years we have been one of the fastest growing integrated maritime logistics companies in the world and where are we today?
We stand now with a fleet of more than 600 vessels, one of the biggest fleets in the in the whole DCC region.
We have.
LND carriers, we have very large gas carriers.
We have very large ethane carriers.
We have a fleet of both the products and crew carriers.
We have dry bulk.
We have offshore support vessels, and at the same time we are the world's largest owner of self-elevated buses.
And so a lot has happened there.
So really delivered very strong financial growth over the recent years.
How do you articulate that growth story to investors today?
I think the three key words that we, we highlight for our investors, uh, that is diversification.
It's the long-term contracts and it's resilience.
Our platform is pretty diverse between integrated logistics and shipping and services, and we have ever since we were founded.
Tense focus on long term contracts.
We have more than $25 billion of backlog in our books, so together with that diversified business, that is what makes our business extremely resilient and what makes us beat our financial guidance year after year.
More than 60% of our revenue on a yearly basis is already contracted.
When we commence the year.
We have been delivering a ca of more than 9% on a yearly basis and expect to do so also going forward, and our net debt to EBITA is extremely low, 0.28%, so we certainly have the capacity to go even further.
So as you're expanding internationally, how exactly is the company evolving from a domestic player into an integrated global maritime and logistics platform?
Yeah, I think some of the key milestones that is worth highlighting here is our acquisition in 2022 from Saka Marine, which made us now the world's biggest owner of self-elevated yakabases.
Also in early 2025, we acquired 80% of Navigate.
Which is an international shipping pool operator and commercial manager with a fleet of more than 32 tankers that gave us the global platform because Navigate, they had offices, have offices in 15 places around the world.
So with that acquisition.
We are now a worldwide player and we are ready to grow not only locally but certainly also internationally, especially thinking about the Adnox international investment arm Exoy that is growing all around the world.
So speaking of internationally, you're going to be heading to Marine Money in New York.
What are some of the key messages you're going to be sharing with the international investment community there?
Exactly, yeah, first of all, we look very much forward to, to meet our international investors there in the US.
Our US investors consist of more than one third of our international investor base, and it's a growing base that there's a lot of focus on, um, but I'm sure what we'll be talking about is, is our strong Q1 results, um.
Where we again showed the resilience in our business, but also the fact that when we announced the Q1 result in mid-May, we upgraded our financial guidance for the full year.
So we have an exciting Q2 coming up.
You can see the shipping rates across the world is being elevated, which we are also benefiting from.
At the same time, I think also we will touch base on our dividend policy.
Even though we are the growth company within the Aetna ecosystem, we are also paying a decent dividend that is actually growing 5% on a yearly basis, and we expect to.
To pay more than $340 million of dividends this year.
We actually increased the base by 20% in the second half of last year and with the low leverage ratio we have there might also be room for further dividends or additional growth.
And so Bernstein actually upgraded the target price for the stock.
What do you think is driving that positive momentum?
I think one of the key factors is, of course you know the upgrade we made in mid-May with our full year guidance, but also what is happening in the in the shipping markets worldwide here.
The shipping markets was quite elevated because starting from the second half last year where we started to see the increase of the OPEC production, all of these volumes need to be transported right.
Then we saw the Venezuela oil suddenly flowing to the market.
Um, we also in January, February started to talk about the increased scrutiny from, from mainly US and also UK and France on the, on the sanctioned fleet.
We started to see the end of the dark fleet when the dark fleet consists of more than 20% of the global fleet, meaning that all of those volumes need to be transported by the conventional fleet, which is extremely beneficial for the.
The players operating with that and so you could say the TCE rates already had a great momentum.
Currently it looks.
It looks really interesting how the markets are evolving.
Definitely a lot of positive momentum.
Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today.
Back to you.
