Norwegian shipping firm Flex LNG, the owner of 13 liquefied natural gas carriers, raised its revenue guidance for this year following recent charter deals for the company’s vessels.
Flex Rainbow, Flex Enterprise, and Flex Amber have secured in total 24 years of fixed hire employment, bringing the total for Flex LNG’s fleet to minimum 54 years.
The shipping firm controlled by billionaire John Fredriksen said in a statement on Wednesday it has made the positive adjustments to its revenue guidance for the year and now expects revenues in the second quarter of this year to reach about $85 million. This compares to $80 million before.
In addition, Flex LNG expects revenues in the third quarter of $90 million versus $82-92 million before, while it expects revenues in the fourth quarter to reach $90-100 million versus $85-105 million before.
Flex LNG also expects higher revenues and time charter equivalent earnings (TCE) in 2023 than 2022 due to “repricing of its employment portfolio and significantly reduced spot exposure which dragged down revenues in Q1 2022 due to the pull of US cargoes to Europe in this period,” it said.
Furthermore, the company has also initiated a phase 2 of its balance sheet optimization program with the aim of increasing its available liquidity by a further $100 million.
This comes on top of the expected free liquidity as of June 30, 2022, of about $285 million.
In total, Flex LNG expects phase 1 of the program to have released an aggregate $137 million when it completes refinacing of the Flex Endeavour in the the third quarter. This compares to the stated ambition of $100 million when announced in November 2021, it said.
