CMBT

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the CMB.TECH Q1 2026 earnings call. My name's Alexander Saverys, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Ludovic Saverys, Enya Derkinderen, and Joris Daman. We will present to you the highlights of our first quarter and the title of this call is Firing on All Cylinders. We had a very interesting quarter, a very good quarter, and then we would like to start with some financials and highlights, and I will hand it over to Ludovic.

Thanks, Alex. As usual, we will start with a high-level overview of our company. We're active in five different segments from dry bulk, crude tankers, containers, chemicals to offshore energy. We had an interesting quarter, as Alex mentioned. Compared to last quarter, our total fair market value has increased, our market cap has increased. We re-reduced our leverage. We've reduced our CapEx commitments and increased our contracts backlog. Next slide, please. If we zoom in on the Q1 financials, we've ended the quarter with a net profit of $368.8 million. Notable in these figures are obviously our increased revenue, but we have been able to, while the quarter passed, de-lever quite a bit and reduced our margins with the banks.

Our interest, our net finance expenses decreased from $113 million from last quarter to $81 million this quarter, delivering a very nice profit. The liquidity of the company end of Q1 stands a little bit above $500 million. Our equity on total assets value adjusted is below 50%, which is our through the cycle target. Further zooming in, we have de-levered. We are paying dividends and we're strengthening the balance sheet while we are optimizing our fleet through well-timed S&P. Notable on the contract backlog, we have signed a five-year time charter on the Suezmax charter, a Suezmax vessel, and extended two nine-year time charters by another year. The board of directors has decided they would like to distribute $0.64 per share as a distribution.

This will be managed by $0.20 interim dividends and $0.44 distribution out of share premium. That's quite interesting because there is no withholding tax on that part, so 70% of our dividends will be exempt from withholding tax. We took delivery of seven newbuild vessels, which Alex will discuss a little later on, and we have sold quite a few ships that were announced already on two Capesizes and a VLCC. One additional vessel, the Suezmax Sienna, has been sold and will be delivered in Q2. The capital gains of the first quarter were $267 million, and in Q2, we're expecting a capital gain of $127 million. We are a diversified platform.

However, we have a large spot exposure on two of our promising markets, which is dry bulk on one hand and tankers. If you look at a full 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 80% is spot. From those spot days, we have 36,000 open dry bulk days, which is roughly 10,000 on the Kamsarmaxes and 26,000 on Capes and Newcastlemax. These are increasing markets, and hence we are favorably positioned to enjoy those in the coming quarters. On this slide, we have shown hypothetical free cash flow for our company in 2026.

This is including a free cash flow from the first quarter, but putting some rate assumptions on the right bottom side, where you could see that actually, if we take the market today, we are in the +20% case compared to our market assumptions, and we would have a operational free cash flow of over $1 billion. This is excluding vessel sales, but it is also excluding the remaining CapEx, which we will discuss a little bit more. On the CapEx, we've come a long way. We have a remaining CapEx end of April of $1.2 billion, from which roughly $184 million is unfunded. If you have followed our story, you know that with the vessel sales, this is more than double covered for the unfunded CapEx.

This slide shows that 2026 will be the last heavy new building delivery a year, with the remaining $740 million to be paid to the shipyards in the coming three quarters. Whereafter, obviously, our free cash flow could be used on other topics than the CapEx. Contract backlog. We've increased our contract backlog roughly by $200 million. As mentioned, there is a gradual repayment. The contract backlog reduces by roughly $100 million per quarter, but we've added $200 million of fresh charters. Of these long-term contracts, still $1.9 billion is on dual-fuel related vessels. We have a quite strong counterparts, most of them investment grades, as you can see on the right side.

I'll hand over the discussion topics to Alex to talk about the markets.

Thank you, Ludovic. I'll start with our normal slide overview slide in all the segments. We are, as you can see, still positive on the dry bulk market, the tanker market, and the offshore energy market. We are and have been over the last two quarters, cautious on the container and the chemical market. High-level dynamics, we see in dry bulk, ton-mile growth for major commodities that we are transporting in our Capes and Newcastlemaxes like iron ore and bauxite. Also on other commodities in dry, we see some growth. Looking at the supply side, we will see a growth of 1.7% of the fleet in Capes today, a tick under 5% on Panamax.

We still believe that in balance, and we'll dig in in the following slides more in detail, that the supply-demand is actually positive for freight and positive for our market. The same can be said on tankers. Of course, tankers is a more complex story with what is happening right now in the Middle East. In terms of ton-mile, it's very difficult to predict, but as it stands, analysts are expecting a small reduction in ton-mile for crude oil this year, some growth next year.

What is interesting on the tanker market is that the supply side, even though in the short term the fleet is not growing that much, as from 2027 and particularly in 2028, we will see a big growth in the fleet. The order book to fleet in VLCCs and Suezmaxes is coming closer to 30%. This being said, in the short term, the tanker market dynamics are positive. We'll definitely zoom in on that a bit later. On the container side, not a lot has changed. I would say that in kind of the more negative story that we have been seeing over the last quarters, the Middle East turmoil has given some support to the market.

With a large order book and an expected contraction in TEU-mile demand, we are cautious on the container side. As you know, all our ships are fixed, so we are not really exposed on the spot market. On the chemical side, it all feels a little bit softer. Chemical market is less volatile, but there we see there are some new vessels being delivered to the fleet. There is a little bit softer growth in demand for chemical tankers. In, on balance, we are a bit more cautious. Last but not least, we remain positive on the offshore energy markets. After two slow years of wind installation, we're expecting an increase this year and next in, for instance, the important North Sea market.

Also on oil and gas, we are seeing a lot of demand for offshore energy supply vessels like our ships. All in all, we're expecting good markets going forward in that segment. I want to zoom in on the largest segment and the market that is most important to us right now, which is dry bulk. On the left side of the slide, you can see our fleet. We have 36 Newcastlemaxes on the water. We're adding this year another 10, maybe one or two will deliver beginning of next year. In the next six months, we will have 46 Newcastlemaxes, big armada of Newcastlemaxes, on the water. We have performed very well during the first quarter, which is traditionally a slower quarter.

You can see that we reached levels of $28,000 a day. What is even better is that, looking forward for the second quarter, we have fixed most of our days, 80%, already at $44,000, which is very good for that segment. Capesizes is a big fleet as well. We have 37 Capesizes on the water. We achieved rates of $26,000 in the first quarter. Have already fixed roughly three-quarters of our days at $37,000 for the second quarter. With the amount of ships, the amount of days, this is all very supportive for our results going forward. Last but not least, our Kamsarmax Panamax fleet of 30 ships. The first quarter was satisfactory.

We reached kind of a break-even level of $14,500. We have seen in recent weeks a market uptick, and we have already been able to fix very good levels close to $20,000 for three-quarters of our days in the second quarter. When you look at the main drivers in dry bulk, it's a mixed picture. Some very positive signals, some not so positive. We will dig into some of the elements in the next slide and slides. Let's first start on the supply of the vessels, which is the new buildings, the order book, and then the age of the fleet.

When you look at the new buildings, the order book to fleet has increased over the last three to six months. There have been more orders for dry bulk tonnage, and specifically on Capesizes and Panamaxes. You can see that we are now reaching a level of 14%-15% of the fleet. If you put that against the age of the vessels, and you can see that we've reached kind of an all-time high average age of the fleet, there is a lot of potential for scrapping. There is a lot of potential for all these new buildings to replace the aging fleet.

Actually, as it stands, there should normally be more ships leaving the fleet than being added to the fleet in the next two years at least, and even going forward in 2019, 2029, and 2030. On the supply side, we are still believing that this is supportive for our market going forward. If we look at the demand side, we are zooming in on important commodities for the Capes and important commodities for the Panamaxes. On Capes it's of course iron ore, bauxite, and a little bit of coal. You can see that the numbers are adding up very nicely, definitely compared to last year. We are in all segments above. Coal is a little bit below.

But all in all, it's a supportive picture in the first quarter and in the month of April. The similar story can be said on the Panamaxes. The typical cargoes that Panamax transport, coal and grain, have been growing. We are seeing this being translated in, of course, better freight rates. I would say that Q1 has surprises to the upside, has been less slow than usually, and has underpinned the freight market. If we look at the total year, what to expect for the next couple of months, the picture remains supported for our Capes with the iron ore trade. The bauxite trade is a bit of a question mark.

If we see some export caps out of Guinea, then this could be a negative for our market. In the numbers we don't see it yet, but it is of course something to watch. Interestingly, something that could underpin our market is the coal trade. I'd like to zoom in on that on the next slide. We have added on this slide as well the rate forecasts for a regular 180,000 Capesize for this year, including the first quarter. We are now at $31,500, which is actually a very good rate and definitely in a profit-making territory. Operation Epic Fury and the gas to coal switching.

We've tried to analyze, based on the information that is available, what the impact would be if certain countries that are powering their countries and are making electricity with oil and gas would shift more to coal. This gas to coal switching is basically sketched out on this slide. Initially on the coal side, all the analysts and including ourselves were expecting a relatively soft market for seaborne coal, definitely going into the second half of the year. We were looking at our base case scenario of coal power generation in Europe and in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to go down.

Now obviously, the war in Iran and the turmoil in the Middle East, which have led to an increase in gas and oil prices, have changed the situation. What we are now taking as a base scenario is that over the course of this year, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will increase their imports of seaborne coal by 27 million tons. Increase the utilization of their existing coal infrastructure. On Europe, as it stands, expecting 12 million tons of coal to be added to the trade, an increasing utilization from 40% to 55%. There is further upside to that if Europe would import in a high case another 60 million tons of coal.

We've tried to map this out on the right side of the slide, where you can see in green the supply of ships and in blue, gray and light blue, the different scenarios on the demand. You can see on Capes we were looking at 1.7% increase in the fleet and a 3% base case increase in ton mile demand. We have revised that to 3.5% ton mile demand. Now, if you get this extra kicker on coal to Europe in the high case, this could go all the way up to 5.2% increase in demand. The same goes for Panamax, and I think that's very interesting because obviously that's coal is a very important commodity for Panamax. We have a pretty high delivery schedule this year of close to 5% increase in the fleet.

The base case we were looking at, a bit under 4% demand growth for Panamax. In the current new base case, we're looking at 5% growth, but in the high case this could even go to 7.5%. This Epic Fury, the war in the Middle East, could have a significant positive impact on the dry bulk markets and we're seeing some of it already now. Basically to conclude, what we've mapped here is the new base case, so not the high case, in numbers of volumes from Q1 to Q4. What we wanted to highlight here, for those who are not very familiar with the dry bulk market, is that the first quarter is always the lowest quarter in terms of volume.

Usually volumes then ramp up in the second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter, which again, we think bodes very well for our dry bulk market going forward. Of course, CMB.TECH is very well-positioned with our large fleet of Capesizes, Newcastlemaxes and Panamax. I want to talk about Euronav and the crude oil markets and probably where most of you have a lot of questions on what our view is on what is happening in the world. Let me first start with a quick overview of what our fleet has done. After the sales of our VLCCs, we are down to six VLCCs. Four are on the water, two will be delivered during the course of this year and in January of 2027.

We achieved very good rates in the first quarter, and even better rates for the bookings that we have done in the second quarter. You can see we're at $180,000 of rates booked for 80% of our days. Of course, we only have six VLCCs left, but nevertheless, this will of course contribute very positively to our profits going forward. The sale of the eight ships, we have communicated on that already. We did a very nice capital gain of, in total, $360 million on the sale of these six older VLCCs, which have been reflected in our first quarter results and will partly be reflected in the second quarter results. We have 18 Suezmaxes on the water. We recently took delivery of the Cap Grace and Cap Joseph.

We have 18 ships in our fleet. We achieved rates on the spot market of $91,000 in the first quarter, $122,000 for most of our days in the second quarter. Again, excellent rates in the current circumstances. We have sold one of our older Suezmaxes, the Sienna. She's a 19-year-old Suezmax, which we'll deliver in the second quarter, and this will give us a capital gain of $30 million. You can see on the right side, all the indicators. Again, these need to be taken with a big pinch of salt because the real impact of these numbers is, of course, influenced a lot on the seagoing side with what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

First, before we talk about that, I wanted to show you the slide on the order book and the supply of ships and the age of the vessels. The order book has really shot up. We are now looking at a combined 500 VLCCs and Suezmaxes on order, which we believe is a lot of ships, obviously very much skewed towards the second half of 2027 and 2028. You can see the numbers there. In 2028, already more than 200 VLCCs and Suezmaxes are on order. Even though theoretically the age profile of the fleet would be able to absorb these vessels, i.e., older vessels should be scrapped and the new buildings could replace them, we are, you know, a little bit concerned going forward looking at the order book.

In the short-term, of course, not that many vessels are coming on stream, and this is, of course, translated in good freight markets. Average age of the fleet, you can see there, is getting to historical highs. We're at 13.5 years. Again, this is a positive, as and when and if, we would need to scrap some vessels. Wanna talk about the Strait of Hormuz situation, Operation Epic Fury, and the impact on shipping in general and on the oil supply. On the left side, you can basically see the number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. We are talking anywhere between 110, 150 ships a day. We are down now between five and 20 transits a day.

In terms of tankers, we see that 115 VLCCs and 24 Suezmaxes are still trapped in the Persian Gulf. Of that fleet, 40% are dark fleet vessels, so not really vessels that we would compete with. It's still a significant amount of ships that are trapped there. On the supply side of oil, my colleague, Joris Daman has made a very interesting analysis on the right side of the slide. Because it's his analysis, I wanna hand it over to him so that he can explain to you what he is seeing in the numbers.

Yes, happy to run through it. The right-hand side graph really starts by showing the baseline. The baseline was 15 MMbpd of crude oil. This is only crude oil traversing the Strait of Hormuz, so being exported out of the Persian Gulf. Now, that's closed. The strait is de facto closed, so we made the assumption that's lost. We are going to look, okay, what is the actual impact on crude tanker flows? We have a selective passage of 1.2 MMbpd. That's the actual passage over the last two months divided by 60 days. That's 1.2 MMbpd, so it's actually one Suezmax a day or every second day, one VLCC. We have some pipeline capacity which came upstream and is today roughly around 5.5 MMbpd. It's Yanbu, Fujairah, and then the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.

We had a temporary effect of floating storage release, so reversal of floating storage, and also some Russian sanctions being lifted and actually being able to be added to the tanker markets. The real interesting part comes, and that's on one hand, the export growth out of the U.S., which is a combination of additional volumes, but also SPR, Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, roughly 1.4 MMbpd, and then also other countries stepping up the game. For example, Brazil, Guyana, Canada, Angola, and they are additionally bringing 1 MMbpd capacity to the market. If you go from the 15 MMbpd, we take all those steps, we end up with a loss of 5.3 MMbpd capacity lost to be transported on board of crude oils.

It's really important to see here that we are actually increasing longer mile transportation, so we get a ton-mile kicker because of the exports out of the U.S., but also Brazil, Guyana are actually further away than a typical Middle Eastern-China transportation, and it's 2x-2.5x more. If we take the 2.4x and we multiply that by 2.5x, and we compare it to the 5.3x, we are actually quite balanced from a ton-mile perspective, and that's really the reason why the utilization of the tankers are still healthy and that the remains for U.S. Gulf China transportation are actually still quite healthy.

If you go one step further and really, really look, okay, what could be the potential impact on the barrel price, there it's really important to understand that we started the Operation Epic Fury in a global situation where there was a large oversupply. There was a bigger supply of crude oil to the market than a demand. We had actually an oversupply of 2.6 MMbpd, meaning that in the end, today's market is only undersupplied by approximately 2.7 MMbpd of crude, which will have an impact on demand structure or any other means to have the balance again in the market.

Thank you very much, Joris.

After that analysis, what we just wanted to add is basically the consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is that we see a lot more ballasters going towards the Atlantic to pick up the oil where it is still available. This obviously also has an impact on rates. You can see the rate from the Middle East to China, which we think is much of a theoretical rate. Not that many ships are being fixed at these kind of levels.

The more interesting one is, of course, is the TD22 route at the bottom in green, where you can see that rates were very high, then gradually started going down as more ballasters, more VLCCs, were coming towards the U.S. Gulf to pick up the oil there. When I say gradually going down, we are still at a level around $100,000 a day, which is very, very healthy for our market. It shows you the disruption that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz also has on the positioning of the vessels. I'd like to finish with our three slightly smaller divisions, Delphis, Bochem, and Windcat. On Delphis, we can be relatively short. You know, all our ships are fixed on long-term time charters.

We still have one new building coming this year, delivering in October, which has been fixed on a 15-year contract. The bottom line on the container market is that the order book is very high. We still see a huge TEU-mile disturbance with the de facto closure of the Red Sea. If no container ships pass by there, it's basically 12% of demand kicker. If that falls away, including the big tsunami of new container vessels that will come on stream in the next couple of years, the market should continue to go down. Very short term, we have seen a little uptick because of the disturbance around the Strait of Hormuz.

Rates both on the spot market and also on time charter rates have gone up a little bit in recent days and weeks. We believe fundamentally, this should normally go down again as soon as certain things resolve themselves and as the order book starts delivering to the market. Chemical tankers, I was mentioning a slightly softer market that is reflected in what we are earning in the spot pool. Now, most of our vessels are fixed on time charters, so we're not really affected by that. It has to be said also, chemical tanker markets are much less volatile than other markets.

When we say softening and you look at the numbers that we are achieving on the spot market of $21,500, that is compared to around $25,000 last year, we still believe these rates are very healthy. Finishing off with Windcat. Exciting times for our division, Windcat, because we have taken delivery now of our third CSOV, which is our large offshore energy supply vessels. We still have three that will be delivered, plus one larger CSOV, an MPASV, as we call it. Still four ships on order. We have seen very healthy rates for our CSOVs. You can see an average of $65,000 a day in the first quarter. Second quarter already fully fixed at $62,000 a day.

We have further vessels delivering and are in talks with customers for both short-term and longer-term employment. Our CTVs are doing well as well. After the traditionally slow winter period, we are now coming into the peak period of spring and summer, and you can see that our utilization is above 90%, and we are earning good rates of an average of $3,400 a day. We're expecting, as I said before, this offshore wind market, offshore oil and gas market, to remain supported in the following months. This wraps up the market update, and I will now hand it over to Enya for the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you, Alexander. We will now continue with Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Make sure to introduce yourself and unmute before asking your question. For telephone participants, if you want to raise your hand, you can type star five and star six to unmute. If in any case you can't ask your question live, you can also use the Q&A section, or you can send an email to Joris Daman. His contact details are also in the presentation. We will now start with the first question coming from Frode Mørkedal. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Yes. Thank you. This is Frode at Clarksons. My first question is on capital allocation. You basically reached the 50% of net loan-to-value target. Yeah. You've been de-leveraging the balance sheet. You have plenty of liquidity, and the new-build program looks fully funded. Basically, how should we think about capital allocation from here? Specifically on the dividend, you raised it from $0.16 to $0.20 on the interim dividend.

Is this a level that you would like to maintain, or should we think about dividends as variable quarter-to-quarter?

Yeah, Frode, let me take this one. Indeed, we are, I think, working on all sites. The deleveraging the balance sheet, especially, with the bridge loan that we had, which was quite expensive. You know, we were able to repay that fully, but we also reduced our margins on close to all our financings, with our banks. I think that was visible on the net finance expenses. The CapEx program is coming to an end. I think on a dividend, which is as every quarter, the Board decides what to do, whether it's paying, accelerating down payments on debt, capital, potential M&A, or distributes to shareholders.

I think, we have made clear that once the leverage targets are more into play like we are today, then we can start allocating more of the free dollars to shareholders. Yet we do have a full discretion in dividend policy, so we'll continue to keep that. Historically, as I mentioned, on the previous earnings calls, we've always paid between 50% and 60% of the net profits distributed to the shareholders. After announcing the 50% distribution on the vessel sales, which was in December, we announced it, the board decided that we would actually rather pay 50% on the whole profit of Q1.

Now, going forwards, I think there's, there's definitely every quarter analysis is going to happen, the less leverage we have, the less CapEx that we have, less opportunities that could arise. Like, we mentioned on new builds, there's nothing really interesting in the core markets, dry bulk and tankers today. I think distribution to shareholders will definitely continue to be a full focus on our side. To your question, we didn't go from $0.16 to $0.20. We actually went from $0.16 to $0.64. I think the parts, the $0.44 on share issue premium, it's a different way to a more fiscal optimized way of reducing the withholding tax for mostly the retail shareholders, and then the foreign shareholders to do that.

I think going forward, we will see how the market continues. We'll definitely analyze the distribution to shareholders with a full focus.

Okay, that's interesting. 50% looks reasonable. That's what I heard from you.

That's what we also, historically, we paid to the shareholders, yes.

Okay. Next question I had was, just started thinking, I mean, the Golden Ocean acquisition, that looks quite well timed now. You know, clearly, dry bulk asset values have moved higher. Just had like a quick question. Do you have any sense of how much you're up on that investment, so far?

Frode, can you not do the calculation for us? Let's say that, you know, based on the acquisition price, obviously we've done, but you have to take the full costs because we did a semi-leveraged buyout. Yes, we paid 50% with shares, we did pay 50% with full financing. It is true that the returns on paper today look good, but as always, I think we need to ride the cycle fully before we can claim victory on that. The market has picked up somewhat faster than we were expecting on the medium term. I think the spot strategy that we've entailed is definitely setting us up to reap the benefits on the short term.

Yeah. No, I did actually do the calculation. I think you're up at least 20%. Yeah.

Only 20% Frode? Boy, you're selling it short.

Maybe I'm wrong. Could be, could be. As a follow-up, I mean, given where asset values are today, do you still see value in further investments? Or is this becoming a more market to sell, you know, further assets?

Well, it's a good question, Frode. I can repeat what I told you last time, I think, or I told someone else. Everything's pricey today. Let's not, you know, let's not lie about the facts. New buildings, second-hand, everything has gone up. There will always be opportunities, I'm sure. We will analyze these opportunities. Right now, having sold most of our older vessels, we still might sell some ships, of older vintage or sell some ships, if we see a very good price. What we wanna do now is really, ride the cycle definitely on dry bulk, and see what comes, you know, after this high cycle. Obviously, for us, the story doesn't end when the cycle turns. That's when the story begins.

Good answer. That's it for me. Thank you.

Thanks.

The next question is coming from Clement. Can you please unmute and ask your question?

Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by following up on your finance expenses, which declined significantly as you reduced debt and refinanced some facilities. Did the $82 million expenses for the quarter include any one-offs due to refinancings? Secondly, is the G&A for Q1 a good proxy for the remainder of the year?

Yeah. No, it's two great questions, Clement. On the net finance expenses, I think, in the 82 there were maybe $3 million one-offs. It's insignificant, I would say. It is definitely on the current optimized debt situation, but not yet taking into account some of the margin reductions we're actually executing on roughly $2 billion of financing, which will only come into play end of Q2. There's more room to reduce the net finance expenses. On the SG&A, with the $51 million we had in Q4 compared to the $27 million in Q1, I think Q4 was definitely exceptional. I think we mentioned that also the last earnings call.

Q1 is definitely better, but we are as management, we're keeping optimizing and looking at that. Integrating companies is often harder than we think. We're well on our way to reach our targets on the SG&A.

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Could you talk a bit about whether you've had any impact on the operations on of the two FSOs contracted with QatarEnergy on the back of the conflict?

Yes, Clement. We have had some operational disturbances, we are trying to get everything back on track. As you know, the safety of our people on board is the most important one. We are in a very close collaboration with NOC, who is our customer, to make sure that we can restart the operations in a safe way.

Makes sense. Final question from me. You've got a $12 million profit from equity accounted investees. To what does that refer specifically?

That's a good question. It's reflecting the proportional profits that we made. At least that's the companies where in which we have small participations made. This is, I would say, half of it is one-offs from these companies. It's a very diverse slew of small participations, from ammonia logistics to basically Japanese joint ventures. There is, I think, a good smaller companies that deliver profits quarter-on-quarter. There's definitely some of that to stay in the coming quarters.

Great. Good to hear. That's everything from me. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

Thanks.

The next one is Petter Haugen. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Good afternoon. This is then Petter Haugen from ABG Sundal Collier in Oslo. First, well, I would like to put some emphasis on the Joris work on slide 25. That, the slide showing the shortfall and the partial refillment of what was lost is a very, I think, instructive way to think about this. One question in this context. Would it be positive or sort of if adjusted for distances, the same slide just on ton-mile, so to speak. Would that be still in a negative territory, or is it in positive territory?

Joris can take that question?

It's fairly balanced and that's, that was the main message here, that if you not only look at tons, but at ton-miles, the situation is actually up until today a balanced situation whereby that the lost volumes are being balanced out by the additional distance. Of course, that only holds as long as U.S. exports keep the same levels and the other countries like Brazil, Guyana, Angola keep on the, let's say, the higher volumes than what we saw in the first two, three months of the year. That's the big assumption of this slide.

Okay. very balanced on, ton-mile wise. Thank you.

Yeah.

Just one further question. In Q3, you ordered one CSOV, the large version, and also had options for five more. Is there any progress on those options in terms of, well, either striking them or lapsing them?

Yeah. We still have time to lift the next option. Right now if you ask me, it looks very interesting. There's good demand for these assets. As long as we don't need to lift the option, we will still wait. The market can still change. It is definitely one of the segments that we are watching closely for potential new buildings, because we still see value and the value at which we hold the options is interesting.

Okay. Could you elaborate a bit on then what sort of employment you would potentially do on a newbuild order?

Yeah

Also the delivery schedule for those options.

Would be in 2028, and we would lift the option most probably without any employment attached. We have decided on the CSOVs that we would operate on the spot market, and if we see long-term business, we would go for the long-term business. That's exactly what we've done with the first two ships. What we're doing with the next vessels, always be a mix of spot employment and longer term employment, if it makes sense. You know that in this offshore wind market, if you order some of these CSOVs with a charter attached, usually the returns are very, very low. If we lift the options, we will most probably I mean, never say never.

We might find some customers before we're lifting the option, but it will most probably be without any employment, then we will work on the employment as we go.

Just to add to Alex, as a spot market today, both in international winds but also regional and international oil and gas is actually very good. For us to do long-term charters, it really has to be great rates, otherwise we just stay in the spot market and enjoy the rates we've shown on the slides.

Understood. Thank you. Just then, finally, the options, all five of them, could you elaborate on when those lapses?

I think the first one is in a couple of months from now, end of the summer.

Okay.

The first one, and then we still have time for the following ones, which is always with a couple of months interval.

Okay. Understood. Thank you. That was all for me.

Thanks.

Thanks.

We received some questions in the Q&A. I will go to those questions. The first question, the premium of Newcastlemaxes to Capes in Q1 seemed quite low. Any particular reason for this? What premium would you expect over time?

I think I'll take it from a financial point of view. Alex, you can take it from operational. It was, as we are delivering quite a bit out of the yards, there's a lot of repositioning on the ships, ballasting to Brazil, for instance. It's a more IFRS load-to-discharge. I think the Newcastlemaxes on a discharge-to-discharge basis would have been higher. Since we had a relatively much higher repositioning, so ballasters, that impacted it, the results.

Yeah. I would say, in a premium, it always depends, of course, on the height of the market, but you would be anywhere between 15%-30%, depending on the market and of course, depending also on the fuel prices.

Okay. Moving on to the next question. Do you have any plans for the 25 million treasury shares you hold? Reissue to outside holders as dividends, use for acquisitions, retire? I assume they do not receive the dividends.

No. The treasury shares, to be clear, do not get dividends. They cannot vote neither. Our company has 290.2 million shares. That's what you really have to look at. Retiring them, for us, there's part of the authorized capital. That set the board discretion to use them to dividend to shareholders or for M&A acquisitions or other instruments. Today, we don't have any plans. We bought them quite inexpensively, if you see, over the last years. I think this was a good investment from a long-term investor, but we have no plans right now.

Okay. The next one. With the cost per ship massively increased, when the cycle turns, the recently purchased ships will have a much higher break-even level. That could indicate what? If rates do come down, there'll be a lot of for sale signs at much lower prices.

Is that a statement or a question?

It's a question.

Yes. If the market comes down, if owners are under duress, they will have to sell their ships at a lower price. It is clear that the break-even of the whole fleet has gone up, not only because of the high new building prices, but also because of the higher secondhand prices. It will be indeed interesting to see when the cycle turns, how the market will react and then how distressed sales could potentially come to the market.

Okay. The next one. Could you please clarify whether any CMB.TECH vessels are currently blocked in the Persian Gulf? If so, how many and what type of vessels are involved?

There's a couple of ships that are indeed in the Persian Gulf right now. We don't communicate about the details of the vessels, the vessels' names, out of safety concerns for our crew, which is on board.

The next one. What is the ambition with respect to your green ammonia terminal project in Namibia? What is the latest status? What are the timelines and CapEx requirements?

Right now, no, FID has been taken on that project. We are assembling all necessary information for the investment, and we hope to be able to say something more in the next quarterly call when we have a better view on that file. Have a little bit of patience with us, but we will definitely mention that in the next quarterly call.

Moving on to the last question. This one is referring to slide 25. It's a slide that Joris explained from Euronav. How much crude oil, if any, is coming onto the world market from Venezuela?

Venezuela crude oil for April was roughly 1.2 MMbpd. It increased with 150,000 bbl compared to March because of, let's say, the political changes in the country. Exports are being increased. It's not the increase which is interesting, it's rather that those barrels are now being transported on compliant vessels and no longer on any, let's say, dark or gray fleet vessels. It's a net positive for crude tankers.

Okay. We have one last question. Can you explain what the $20 million in other operating income booked in Q1 is?

Yes, sure. It's a series of, it's an amalgamation of all smaller profits we took. This goes from claims we won, from lawsuits or, vessel claims we have over the last couple of years. It's liquidated damages, that way we deliver ships, and then they deliver earlier or later, with shipyards as well. It's a whole slew of, I would say smaller one-offs. There's half of it, or roughly, is a revaluation of some investments we hold in smaller companies. Nothing meaningful, mostly one-offs, but always nice to have when you can book that on your balance sheet.

I think that, concludes the questions.

Thank you very much, Enya. Thank you, all of you for joining in this, quarterly call, and I am looking forward to talking to you either at our general assembly on Thursday or on the next call we organize, during the summer. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the CMB.TECH Earnings Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter of 2025. My name is Alexander Saverys, and I'm joined here by my colleagues, Joris, Enya and Ludovic. We will touch upon our classic topics. We'll start with our financial highlights. We will then give you a market update and finish with a conclusion and a Q&A. And for the financial highlights, I'd like to hand it over to Ludovic.

Thanks, Alex, and good afternoon, everybody. As usual, we start with a snapshot of our company, where here, we've shown you the key metrics of the fleet, roughly 40 ships with about a $10.7 billion fair market value. This is excluding the vessels we have sold already. Our market cap sits today at $4.2 billion after a nice run-up on the share. We have $1.5 billion CapEx remaining as from end of January and operate a modern fleet of 5.9 years. Dry bulk today is predominantly 60% of our total fair market value with the other divisions showing the rest of the value of the fleet. Zooming in on the highlights of the Q4, we had a net profit of $90 million bringing the full year profit to $140 million. And the EBITDA of this quarter was $322 million to end the year on a $943 million EBITDA. Our liquidity sits at a pretty strong $560 million and our covenants for the bonds on the equity on total assets sits at 31% and for the rest of our loan agreements at 44%. We've had a pretty remarkable Q4 where we were able to delever the company, at the same time, pay dividends again, which we'll discuss later and strengthen the balance sheet with a couple of actions that we've performed in the company. Running through it, the result, I mentioned $90 million. We had some nonrecurring one-off and sometimes even noncash impact on the results, which are mostly related to the finalization of the integration of the merger with Golden Ocean. There's IT costs, but there was also, I would say, refinancing costs that we had to take as a one-off on arrangement fees, success fees in Q4. On top of that, we had roughly $15 million, 1-5 of nonrecurring costs on the SG&A, which is tax reversals and other, again, integration fees from the Golden Ocean merger. The liquidity stands at $560 million, which is quite strong with the good markets, with the sale of assets, and we'll discuss later, gives us a lot of capabilities to further strengthen the balance sheet in 2026. The acquisition, if you recall, the first 50%, 49% of Golden Ocean, we bought through a bridge facility. Happy to inform that it was fully paid back end of January. There was also some costs related to that of acceleration of arrangement fees. But this will give an interest saving of roughly $42 million for 2026. So quite happy to say that we were able to do this, but that also we were able to repay it out of own cash, but also some releveraging on other dry bulk ships. The contract backlog sits at $3.05 billion. Alex will go in further detail, but we added in Q4 roughly $304 million, primarily on Capesizes and on one CSOV. Happy to tell that there an interim dividend declared of $0.16. This is roughly $45 million of dividend being paid later in April. We feel that the balance sheet has strengthened good enough to increase from the $0.05 we previously paid in the quarters to a somewhat higher dividend. This dividend is not yet the dividend that we announced in the press release on the sale of the 6 VLCCs of 50%. So this -- the capital gain on those ships will be taken in Q1 and Q2, and the Board will decide on the dividends at that moment. We've had a very active delivery schedule in Q4, 6 newbuildings, but Alex will talk about it later. But more importantly, for our balance sheet, we were able to, in Q4, Q1 and Q2 already secured more than $420 million in capital gains. That's profit that is locked in. $50 million was booked in Q4. But in Q2 and in Q1, we have already a guaranteed $370 million profit, which gives us a lot of opportunities for the rest of the year. We have a large spot exposure still on tankers, but predominantly on dry bulk. If you look at 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 44,000 are spots. And if we zoom in into dry bulk, where we have a pretty strong feeling that there will be a good market in 2026. We have 36,000 days from which 27,000 on Capesizes and Newcastlemaxes. This means $10,000 up on our breakevens brings in $270 million in cash flow. When we look on the right side, we always like to position on the segments we are active in compared to the order book to fleet ratio. The bottom segments are compared to some of the other shipping segments on the relatively low side on the order book. When we look at Capesize and Panamax, I think we're very well positioned to look for better markets in 2026. Looking at the CapEx program. It's a recurring slide we like to show. As of end of January, we have roughly $1.5 billion remaining CapEx from which $216 million will come from our own cash. You can see in this slide, which is quite interesting is that the next 12 months will be a heavy delivery schedule, roughly $1.2 billion will be paid to the yards. All the financing has been secured. And if we look at the cash from the sale of the VLCCs and Capesize we've already done, the whole CapEx has been taken care of. This also shows that within 12 months, every sale, every cash flow generation we'll have will give us an opportunity again to look at dividends, delever further in an even more accelerated way. The free cash flow, we've given an estimation based on hypothetical rates that you see on the bottom right. I think we're still pretty conservative if you look at today's markets. But should we have the estimated rates even with 20% where we're already in today, this would create a $700 million free cash flow on top of the normal debt repayments. This gives us ample capability to pay back the Nordic bonds, which we anticipate just to pay out of own cash, continue to fund the CapEx and delever the company in an accelerated way. This was the financial highlights. I'll move on to the market update and give the floor to Alex.

Thank you, Ludovic. I want to update you on the various markets where CMB.TECH is active. You see our overview sheet where we put all our markets and zoom in on the demand side, supply side and where we see the balance. This slide has fundamentally not really changed compared to 3 months ago. We are still positive on dry bulk tankers and offshore. We are cautious on the container side and on the chemical side. If you look at dry bulk specifically, you see that we see very nice ton-mile growth for iron ore and bauxite in 2026, which is a positive. On the supply side, the order book to fleet has grown a bit. There's been some more orders for Capesizes and Newcastlemaxes for delivery in 2028 and 2029, but we still believe it's a manageable 12.4%. The fleet growth this year in Capes specifically will only be 2.3%, and we see the trade growing by more than that. So all in all, the balance is positive. On our dry bulk side in Bocimar, we have 87 spot vessels. There's another 9 vessels that will be delivered to us that will also be traded spot unless we have fixed the charter. And with the addition of the recent charters that we concluded, we have now 16 ships on charter, and that's another 3 newbuildings on charter as well coming later this year, beginning 2027. On the tanker side, the figure in pure supply/demand is a little bit more muted. There is more fleet growth than demand growth at least on paper, but there's a big element of sentiment, and I'll zoom into that when we speak about Euronav that has propelled the market to very, very high levels. All in all, sentiment is good. Earnings are good. The tanker market is still very positive. Our tanker fleet with the sales of the 8 vessels recently has reduced a bit. We still have 12 vessels on the spot, another 3 newbuildings coming. And then we have 10 vessels on time charter with another 2 newbuildings that will also be on charter, but I'll talk about that when we talk about Euronav. Containers and chemicals, I'll handle a bit later. And then just on the offshore energy, which is both on the offshore wind and the offshore oil and gas. Specifically on the wind, we are seeing a slight acceleration again of the installation of capacity, which should support our CTV and CSOV markets. And on the supply side, we have seen basically a slowing down of ordering new vessels. The order book to fleet for CTV stands at 13%, which we think is very manageable. Order book to fleet for the CSOVs is much higher. But again, there is also a lot more demand for that type of vessels, specifically from the offshore oil and gas markets. I want to run you through a couple of slides for Bocimar and dry bulk, starting with the overview of what Bocimar has done in Q4 and Q1. We have 36 Newcastlemaxes on the water. We have another 10 newbuilding Newcastlemaxes that will all be delivered by the first quarter of 2027. In Q4, we achieved actuals of close to $35,000. Q1 quarter-to-date, we are at slightly more than $30,000 a day. We have 37 Capes on the water. There, the results in Q4 were $30,000 and Q1 to date, we are at $26,000. These are strong rates Definitely, for the first quarter of the year, we are seeing rates that have not been as strong over the last 15 years. So we are seeing a very strong Q1. We have sold the Golden Magnum and the Belgravia and we'll record a capital gain of $8 million in the first quarter. Our 30 Kamsarmaxes and Panamaxes are all on the water. We achieved rates of $17,300 in Q4 and $13,200 so far in this quarter. You can see the breakeven levels and what we have achieved on the right side. Just a couple of important indicators on the right side. We see that there's a lot of green indicators, a lot of support for dry bulk demand. Just the inventories on iron ore in China are up. The coal imports in China are down. These are slightly more negative indicators. But all in all, we see more positive signs than negatives for dry bulk. Here on this slide, we look at the order book to fleet ratio for Capesizes and why we believe that vessel values could well be supported for the next 2 or 3 years. We basically have put on the right side of the slide, the recent number of vessels that have been delivered, including the newbuilding prices that are being quoted by brokers and compare that to the last time we were in a dry bulk boom. Here, basically, we want to say that as long as the order book is around the levels that we see, this market still will be supported on asset values. We don't see an oversupply coming. The fleet profile for Capes and for Panamaxes, again, it's a recurring theme. There's very little scrapping going on. We see that vessels are aging, aging rapidly. We are now at close to 150 Capes that are over 20 years of age, close to 600 Capes over 15 years of age, and the numbers on Panamaxes are even more important. So if the market one day would correct and scrapping would start, this would definitely be something that can balance the market. When we look at Q4 and Q1, the 2 big themes for us, definitely for our Capes and NUCs have been iron ore and bauxite. You can see on these graphs, the rainfall and then the volume of iron ore and bauxite that's being loaded in the Atlantic, in West Africa and in the Pacific. What we have seen specifically with West Africa on the bauxite side, but now also the iron ore will start playing a very important role is that it is a bit counter seasonal compared to the weaker seasons that we have used to be seeing in the Pacific for Australia predominantly and the Atlantic for Brazil. So it is helping our market. It is balancing the market. There are more opportunities for large bulkers to load cargo even in the first quarter of the year. And as you can see, the rates have reacted very positively to these volumes. Capesize market fundamentals this year are positive. I mentioned it when we spoke about the overview. We see a ton-mile increase in demand of 2.7% and a fleet growth of 2.3%. So we expect the utilization to creep up. We are already around the 90% utilization mark. This could go to 91%, 92% in the coming months. The big market moves in dry bulk and then specifically for iron ore is -- well, you can see them on this slide, all the volumes coming out of West Africa, Brazil, Australia. We see that iron ore, according to the forecast will continue to grow. So seaborne iron ore will continue to grow. It will come from areas that are far away from the main customer for these goods, which is China, which is good for ton-mile demand. And you can see that the same story can go for bauxite. We have been very surprised by volumes of bauxite in January. So the number of 184 million tons could well go higher if this trend continues this year. So very supportive of these 2 commodities, both in volume and in ton-mile for 2026. I will say a few words about Euronav and the crude oil tanker market. Starting with our fleet of VLCCs. So the fleet has been reduced. We have sold 8 of our older vessels as we have announced last month. We are left with 3 VLCCs on the water. That's one 2016 built ship and 2 newbuildings. And then we have another 3 eco VLCCs coming in the next couple of months. So our fleet of VLCCs is 6 ships in total. You can see what we have achieved in terms of rates, around $75,000, both in Q4 and in Q1 quarter-to-date. The Suezmaxes, we have 17 Suezmaxes on the water. We have another 2 vessels delivering very soon. These 2 vessels, these 2 newbuildings have been fixed on long-term time charters. But for the spot fleet, we achieved rates around the $60,000 to $65,000 mark, both in Q4 and in Q1. The markets there are very, very supportive, watch the space because the numbers that we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks are way higher than the numbers that we are reporting here. If you look at the key indicators, a lot of green indicators, the market is supported. We are seeing the tanker fleet growing a bit. But all in all, both in sentiment and in fundamentals, we see that the tanker market right now is very supportive, and that's probably the understatement. It is more than supported is actually very high. The sustainability of the expanding crude tanker order book will depend a lot on the durability and the potential uptick in scrapping. The order book has risen. We are seeing more orders for VLCCs and Suezmaxes. These orders will not come through this year or next year. But as from 2028, this is something to watch because the market balance will depend a lot on how many vessels we can scrap to make sure that the amount of newbuildings that are coming to the market will not distort the market to the downside. Demand durability of crude tankers, all the different agencies have different numbers. It's not always easy to follow. It looks like we are producing more oil in the world today than we are actually using. And so the only big explanation for that can be that someone and particularly the Chinese are probably stockpiling oil in great numbers. That as long as this continues, it is, of course, very supportive for the oil tanker markets. Depending on what will happen in the next 6 months, both with the oil price and on geopolitics, of course, all these scenarios can be rewritten. But for the time being, what we're seeing is an oversupplied oil market, whereby the oversupply is absorbed in stockpiling. Sanctions remain a very important theme, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, what's happening or what will happen in Iran and of course, Venezuela. We just wanted to highlight one interesting graph on the right side, whereas we see that the Indian crude imports from Russia have gone down after the sanctions that the U.S. imposed in December. We see actually that probably China has picked up some of that slack, as you can see on the graphs to the right. A few words about Delphis and our container vessels. As you know, our 4 container vessels on the water have been fixed on long-term charters for 10 years. We have one more newbuilding delivering this year, which will be under a 15-year time charter contract. So we are not really exposed to the spot market. If you look at the spot freight market, it's a downhill slope. We see that the SCFI is actually trending downwards. So spot freight rates are down. Interestingly, the charter market is still quite supported. So not a lot of charter vessels available. Some big liners still fighting for market share and chartering vessels. We expect this actually to go down going forward because there is still a very significant order book to be delivered both this year in '27 and in '28. Bochem and our chemical tankers, we have 8 ships on the water. You can see the performance in Q4 on the right side. So there's a mix of time charters mostly, but we also have 2 vessels operating in a spot pool. Bochem still has an order book of 8 vessels. We have 2 product tankers coming this year. We then have another 6 chemical tankers in '28 and '29. All these vessels have been fixed on long-term time charters. So our spot exposure is relatively limited. And what we see on the spot market is a slightly declining market, nothing dramatic, but definitely, the rates are not what they were in 2024. So still seeing okay rates, but definitely, things are going down a little bit. And then I want to end with a very good performing business unit recently. That's Windcat. We have taken delivery of 2 of our CSOVs last year. One CSOV has been trading for the last 4 to 6 months on the spot market, but earning very good rates, as you can see on the right side, the equivalent in Q4 of $108,000 a day. The other one has been fixed on a 3-year agreement for work in the North Sea. We still have another 4 CSOVs coming and one larger CSOV is CSOV XL this year and next, but the market is very supportive. And it's supported because the oil and gas market requires good modern offshore supply vessels. And these good modern offshore supply vessels, in some instances, were earmarked for the wind business but actually can now earn better rates in oil and gas, and that is where they are going. On the wind market, we're actually seeing some positive evolutions as well. Last year was a bit slow in terms of delivery of new projects. But in North Sea and Europe, we are seeing new projects coming on stream this year and next, which will necessitate demand for CSOVs and CTVs. CTVs, we have a large fleet of close to 60 vessels on the water. You can see the rates that we achieved. We definitely are satisfied with the rates that we achieved and are looking forward for probably a better 2026 than 2025. So this ends our market update. I'd now like to hand it over to Enya for the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] So we will now start taking the first question. Frode Morkedal, you can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. Perfect.

Okay. Perfect. On this Golden Ocean bridge repayment, is it fair to assume that the strong tanker market helped you with this? And specifically, obviously, the sale of the 8 VLCCs must have been instrumental in being able to repay this way ahead of schedule, right? So that's -- and also you could just remind us the numbers we're talking about, how large was the bridge facility? And what's the net proceeds of these 8 plus 2 Capes, I guess, you sold?

Yes. If it's okay, Alex, I'll take that one. So just to remind, we had a $1.4 billion acquisition facility given by the banks. We only drew upon $1.3 billion. So that was the actual exposure we had fully drawn to buying the first 40% and then another 9% of the market. Of that $1.3 billion, quite quickly after the merger in August, we re-levered the ships of Golden Ocean with a $2 billion facility. And we used $750 million of cash of the releveraging to pay down to $550 million. And that $550 million was what we carried since, I would say, September until 2 weeks ago, $550 million, which half of it has been paid with operational cash flow and cash from sale of vessels with a little bit of the Q3 vessels we sold delivered in Q4, but also some of the tankers, as you mentioned. And then there is roughly half of it, $270 million, which we shifted from the "expensive $2 billion facility with Golden Ocean with some Chinese leasing that we did execute last December." And that was -- so roughly $260 million that we did. So own cash, only about $260 million, $270 million on that. And I think the sale of the tankers, especially the 6 plus 2 Capes and then the remaining 2 has even further strengthened, I think, the belief on the Board to pay more dividends, delever more and then also get a comfort on the Nordic bonds for the remaining of the year that the cash out of the 8 tankers was roughly $420 million cash. So that obviously gives good opportunities to do all of the above that we mentioned.

Right. So is it still that the target is to bring down the LTV -- net LTV to around 50%? And at that point, you could...

At that point, Frode, I think the target -- the long-term target is at 50% LTV. The LTV today end of December was roughly 55%. Now with the increase in tanker rates -- in tanker value, sorry, as everybody has seen in the market, we're probably already at those levels. But that is the target. I think it's more important to say what are the opportunities with every dollar that comes in from sale of operational cash. And then we stick to the point that it can be dividends, it can be further deleveraging. It can be accelerating the payments on some of the revolvers that we have to reduce the interest costs. Because one thing, when you do M&A, there is a cost of it, especially when you leverage buyouts. And we have seen that in 2025, the SG&A was higher because of lawyer, success fees, refinancing. And hopefully, going forward, our interest costs in '25 should go much lower, that is because there's no more bridge because we are changing expensive or more expensive bank debt sometimes with Chinese leasing and other cheaper, I would say, instruments.

Right. So is it fair to assume that you would probably wait for the bond maturity or some type of refinancing before you step up the dividend payments, even if you are probably approaching 50% earlier than this, right?

I think the decision of the Board of the $0.16 that we paid today is testimony that I think we can do both paying dividends, both delevering and both continuing to delivering all the newbuilds.

Great. Final question is on NAV. What do you see about investment opportunities, specifically newbuilds, I guess. For example, in tankers, I mean, I'm hearing it's starting to get tempting to start ordering VLCCs, right, because you can order at $120-something million and the prompt resale is $40 million to $50 million higher. So that type of, let's say, [ arm ] is opening up and maybe that is interesting. What's your view?

Our view is that the ship you ordered today at $120 million, delivers in 2029. So today, it might look cheap. In 2029, it might look very expensive. Right now, Frode, we are not actively pursuing tanker newbuilding plans. We are, of course, opportunistic. We will look at any possibility that comes across. But right now, right now, we'd rather enjoy the spot market and not order any tankers.

The next one is Petter Haugen. You may now unmute and ask your question, please.

In terms of -- well, I suppose then turning through this question upside down. You still have tankers, although now it's predominantly Suezmax tankers, obviously. Would you consider to sell some of those in order to, well, do the combination of further paying down debt and dividends?

Yes, Petter. Look, the first thing we wanted to do over the last 1.5 years is to sell our older vessels. I think we've done a good job at that so far. So obviously, we still maybe have 1 or 2 older vessels that could be up for sale. The second thing is if we see an exceptionally high price for any asset, we will always look at it. Look, trading ships, buying and selling ships is part of our business. And where we like to keep our younger vessels, we will never say no to a very high price. Do we need it to deliver? No. That I would say, I think the heavy lifting on delevering has been done. I think operational cash flows can bring us to a very comfortable leverage over the next 9 months. But we will always be ship traders. If someone comes with a very high price on any assets, we will look at it.

Understood. And in terms of your dry bulk fleet, sort of the same question there. I suppose we've seen how the market has appreciated your -- yes, your sales and the communicated increase in dividends. So on the Capesize fleet, there are, I suppose, more opportunities still to sell older ships. But is that done now? Or is that still on the table? I know that you say that you sell at the right price. That's true to all of us, I would say. But in light of the very strong tanker market and increasingly strong dry bulk markets. I would -- well, in interpretation of your earlier statements, I would think that you were contemplating to sell more rather than the opposite.

No, I think that is not really correct. I think on the dry bulk side, we believe we are not yet where the tanker market is right now. We think this market has a lot more in it, and we would like to let it run. So stay spot exposed unless we find some good charter parties. And as you've seen, we fixed 5 of our Capes for 5 years at what we believe are very good rates or unless, again, an exceptional price comes along. But I don't think we're there yet. So we're very happy with the dry bulk fleet we have now. We have sold some of our older vessels. And now we really want to just enjoy the market for the next couple of quarters.

Now, Kristof Samoy, you can now unmute and ask your question, please.

I have 2. One on long-term charters. You've concluded these 5-year charters for your Capesizes. Could you disclose the counterparty? And then secondly, we've also seen in the market that Vale has been ordering quite some newbuild VLOCs. Would your Newcastlemaxes have been competitive for the trade? Or were they particularly looking for 400,000 deadweight ton plus vessels for the transportation? That's the first bulk of my question. And then secondly, on the U.S. Maritime Action Plan proposal. I recall when we discussed USTR and the impact or the potential impact of USTR in previous calls that you indicated that the impact would be fairly limited because you have little port calls in the U.S. Does this logic still apply to the now proposed U.S. Maritime Action Plan? Or are there like substantial differences there that you see for CMB?

Okay. Thanks, Kristof. So first, the counterpart of the charters, that's confidential. So we are not disclosing that, but it's a very good counterpart. On Vale and their large ore Valemaxes, typically, what they like is to do very, very long-term deal at very, very low returns. That's not something we like. Could our Newcastlemaxes have completed, of course, but then we would have accepted a very, very low return. That's usually these large projects, and we leave that to some of the specialists in Asia. And our relationship with Vale on the spot market is still there. We do business with them with our Newcastlemaxes. On what is happening in the U.S., Kristof, you will agree with me that the only thing we know is that we don't know. Things are changing by the day. When you say that we don't have a lot of port calls in the U.S., that's actually not true on the tanker side. Don't forget, we do quite a lot of business with our tankers in the United States. But under the USTR and all the other regulations, we would have been exempt anyway because energy was going to be exempt. The new package that is there, it's too early to assess what the impact would be on our business.

Climent Molins, you can now unmute and ask your question.

I wanted to follow up on Kristof's question on the Capesize charters. Could you disclose the rate on the contracts? Or is it confidential as well? And secondly, what's your current stance on potentially adding more coverage based on your forward outlook on the dry bulk side?

Yes. Thank you, Climent. So no, again, we can't disclose the rate. But I think if you look into broker reports, how they quote a 5-year Cape rate, and add a little bit to that because our vessels are more modern and better than what brokers are quoting, then you're probably in the ballpark. But so unfortunately, we cannot disclose the rate. Would we look at taking more coverage? Yes. Answer is yes. We have said this in this call many times. We think that, ultimately, we want to create stable cash flows in our company. We will not do it at any price. But when markets move in the kind of zones we are now, we will actively engage with our customers to see whether we can take more long-term cover.

Makes sense. And I also wanted to ask about the dividends on the gains on sales. I assumed a few minutes late, and you may have already touched upon this, but is it fair to assume you'll declare a dividend on that front on both Q1 and Q2 based on the reported gains?

The answer is definitely on Q1. And again, if you take back full discretionary dividend policy, I think every quarter, we look at it. We had a very good Q4 quarter. We were able to achieve a lot of the internal check the boxes to reinstate, I would say, a somewhat higher dividend than before. So the $0.16 was purely on Q4. Q1, we have already $270 million profit, which we announced our intention to pay a dividend on it. So that will be decided and confirmed, I would say, on that part in the May earnings release for Q1. And as the market continues, as we continue probably to shift from sales to really operational cash flow and take out the remaining parts of the new build program and the bonds, it frees up a lot more capacity for dividends. But again, we're not going to commit to a fixed percentage. I think it will be quarter-by-quarter that we look at, but it's fair to say that it all looks pretty good.

We have 2 more questions in the Q&A. So the first one is, do you expect Sinokor?behavior to trigger a regulatory reaction?

I don't know. You should ask Sinokor.

And then the second one is, what are your expectations on framework changes after the European Industry Summit?

I think the theme of that summit was more the industry based on land and not specifically on the maritime side. But I do think it's great that our politicians are aware that if we want to make sure that prosperity continues in Europe, we need to change certain things. And that can only help our vibrant maritime industry, which, as you know, is very strong here in Europe.

We have one more question live. [ Victor ], you may now unmute and ask your question.

I had a quick question regarding your leverage. Do you intend to lower it back to pre-2025? Or do you have a figure in mind on the leverage you're looking for? Also on the equity ratio, you haven't moved a lot on this part. And just wondering how far you are within your covenants? And last question, can you give us more flavor on the recent cooperation you signed with China for your new project there?

Yes. [ Victor ], thanks for the questions. On the leverage, we have a target of 50% loan-to-value. I think we're not far off. If you would take today's value, especially with the increase in tankers, we're there or thereabouts. I think it's about making sure that combined with the long-term cash flows that you have, but also the opportunities you see. I just recall, we did increase our leverage quite dramatically with the Golden Ocean opportunity. But I think as shareholders, we're all pretty happy that we did. That leverage has reduced. and we're now positioned with another 90 dry bulk ships in what is seemingly a strong market. So we do justify that increase in leverage tactically. The equity ratio, just to remind, we have a pretty low book value, which is, I would say, taking a long success because we buy or order quite cheaply, and we don't re-rate our assets in book values. If you look more towards the value-adjusted equity, which we showed on slide -- on the overview slide, that has, I would say, equity ratio increased quite dramatically with the adjustment on fair market value. The bond covenant of 31% in Q4, you don't have to be a mathematician to see that if you add another $370 million of profit in Q1, Q2 on fixed sales. I think that covenant is high and dry definitely until the maturity of the bonds in September. And so we mentioned that we will probably not issue a new bond to just pay back at maturity. So we're good in all covenants, by the way, and you'll see that in the audited financials end of March.

And then Victor, to answer your question on our investments and our joint venture in China. You know that we are building ammonia-powered vessels that will deliver this year. We have secured an offtake of green ammonia in China. And we have also invested in a company that provides the logistics for that ammonia, bringing the ammonia from the factory where it is produced to the tank and from the tank with a bunker barge to our ship. So that is the nature of our investment there.

And for everybody, we mentioned this, this is quite a small investment. We took a stake to better understand, to better control that logistics and to see how that is developing. But we we're talking a couple of tens of millions, but definitely not a huge investment.

And last question, if you allow me this. Do you have a target on the EU ETS price?

That I want to pay or that I want the market to go to.

That you want the market to go to for your investments to be more interesting for our customers.

It's a very good question, Victor. Of course, the higher, the better because then there will be more incentive for people to use our assets in European waters. Okay. Thank you, Victor.

Okay. Then Quirijn want to ask a question. You can now unmute.

Quirijn Mulder from ING. You sound quite optimistic about the wind offshore market. Can you maybe give some idea about the utilization and let me say, the future prospects? Let me say, is it more what you see from your order book? Or is it more what you see in the market happening? Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that.

Yes. So I think the optimism comes from 2 sides. The first side is purely related to the wind and the new parks that will be developed in the next 3 to 4 years. As you know, a lot of projects over the last 2, 3 years have been either halted or delayed. What we do see is that certain projects are still coming through in the North Sea, which will create additional demand for offshore wind supply vessels. But we're also optimistic Quirijn because our assets that we are deploying for wind parks can also be deployed in offshore oil and gas markets. There, the fleet has been aging, has not been renewed sufficiently. The quality and the comfort of the assets in the oil and gas markets is much less than the ones in the wind markets. So our assets that are suited for wind are actually in very high demand to serve the oil and gas markets. And what we're trying to do over the last 6 to 9 months is basically to make sure that our ships can earn good money in oil and gas. And then once they have done their job, their transition to better wind markets.

Okay. But let me say the contract size is very different in wind compared to oil and gas, as you might know. So wind in general is longer, more -- let me say, more -- takes longer time, especially. And oil and gas short time, short time contracts, et cetera. So...

That's not really true. You see long-term contracts in oil and gas and you see spot contracts in wind. Our CSOVs have been ordered to operate on the spot market first. And as and when we see longer-term contracts, then we go for it. What we have not done, unlike some of our competitors is order these vessels with a charter attached because there the charters were very, very low paying.

It's a little bit the similar analogy with the Vale contracts that, yes, there are certain peers that accept not the IRRs we would accept. And hence, with the balance sheet that we have, the strength we have, the knowledge in the market, we order speculatively spot based on long-term fundamentals and then wait a little bit until, as Alex mentioned, we see good long-term contracts as we've done on the second CSOV, which is actually quite profitable contracts over 3 years.

I think this concludes the questions.

Okay. So I'd like to thank everyone for dialing in today. Thank you for your questions. Thank you for your attention. You know that if you have any other questions, we are here to answer them. Do reach out to us if you have any further questions. And I look forward to speaking to you on our next call. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.