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Dorian LPG Q4 Profit Slashed 79 Percent as Shipping Rates Down

Dorian LPG Ltd. has reported $21.36 million in net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 (third quarter of fiscal year 2025), down 78.63 percent compared to the same three-month period 2023 as freight rates fell. The Stamford, Connecticut-based owner and operator of very large gas carriers (VLGCs) logged $18.5 million in adjusted net profit, […]

Dorian LPG Ltd. has reported $21.36 million in net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 (third quarter of fiscal year 2025), down 78.63 percent compared to the same three-month period 2023 as freight rates fell.

The Stamford, Connecticut-based owner and operator of very large gas carriers (VLGCs) logged $18.5 million in adjusted net profit, or $0.43 per diluted share, according to results it published online. That was down from $106 million for the fourth quarter of 2023.

The adjusted net earnings per share figure missed the $0.56 Zacks Consensus Estimate, an average of projections by brokerage analysts.

“The $87.5 million decrease in adjusted net income for the three months ended December 31, 2024, compared to the three months ended December 31, 2023, is primarily attributable to (i) a decrease of $82.4 million in revenues; (ii) increases of $2.2 million in charter hire expenses, $2.2 million in vessel operating expenses, $0.2 million in voyage expenses, and $0.1 million in depreciation and amortization expenses; and (iii) decreases of $1.1 million in realized gain on derivatives and $1.6 million in other gain/(loss), net, partially offset by (i) decreases of $1.2 million in interest and finance costs and $0.2 million in general and administrative expenses and (ii) an increase of $0.9 million in interest income”, Dorian LPG said.

Revenues for the October-December 2024 period totaled $80.67 million, compared to $163.06 million for the comparable period in the prior year.

Dorian LPG’s time charter equivalent rate per available day in the fourth quarter of 2024 dropped 49.86 percent year-on-year to $36,071. Available days decreased from 2,256 to 2,210.

“Weaker import demand from China, driven in part by lower steam cracking demand, resulted in a decline in LPG imports from high levels of 3.5 MMT [million metric tons] in July 2024 to 2.3 MMT in November 2024”, it said.

“Imports into China recovered in December to an estimated 2.8 MMT, though remained lower than the levels seen earlier in the year.

“Overall, total LPG imports into China in Q4 2024 totaled 8.2 MMT compared to a high of 10.1 MMT in the second calendar quarter of 2024 (Q2 2024), reflecting the impact of higher import prices seen in Q4 2024 compared to earlier in the year. It was also an unseasonably warm start to the winter in the Far East”.

Dorian LPG added, “After falling in Q3 2024, freight rates remained relatively steady in Q4 2024 with the Baltic averaging around $56 per metric ton for the Ras Tanura-Chiba route, although the Houston-Chiba route posted higher with an average of about $108 per metric ton during Q4 2024, up from around $99 per metric ton during Q3 2024”.

Earlier it declared an irregular cash dividend of $0.7 per share, or $30 million in total, payable this month. Last November Dorian LPG paid an irregular cash dividend of $42.8 million.

“The quarterly results reflected an improving market environment”, said chair, president and chief executive John C Hadjipateras. “With additional export capacity coming online in the United States this year and a modest orderbook, we have a positive market outlook. Our dividend payout in excess of the quarter’s net income reflects our constructive view of the VLGC market over the coming months”.

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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