STNG

Good day, and welcome to the Scorpio Tankers Inc. First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to James Doyle, Head of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the Scorpio Tankers First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. On the call with me today are Emanuele Lauro, Chief Executive Officer, Robert Bugbee, President, Cameron Mackey, Chief Operating Officer, Chris Avella, Chief Financial Officer, Lars Dencker Nielsen, Chief Commercial Officer. Earlier today, we issued our first quarter earnings press release, which is available on our website, scorpiotankers.com. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today, May 5th, 2026, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements. For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties, you should review the forward-looking statement disclosure in the earnings press release, as well as the Scorpio Tankers SEC filings, which are available at scorpiotankers.com and sec.gov.

Call participants are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcasted live on the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. An archive of the webcast will be made available on the investor relations page of our website for approximately 14 days. We will be giving a short presentation today. The presentation is available at scorpiotankers.com on the investor relations page under reports and presentations. The slides will also be available on the webcast. After the presentation, we will go to Q&A. For those asking questions, please limit the number of questions to two. If you have an additional question, please rejoin the queue. Now I'd like to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Emanuele Lauro.

Thank you, James, and good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start this earnings call by saying thank you. Thank you to all the stakeholders who have supported us in bringing the company to where it is today. When Robert Cameron and I started this business in 2009, I cannot say that we envisioned every detail of what the company would become, but in our most ambitious plans, I remember it looking at something like this. We have built a platform that can return capital through the cycle whilst preserving the flexibility to invest countercyclically. This would not have been possible without the trust of our shareholders, the partnership of our customers, and most of all, the commitment of our people. Thank you. Now focusing on the business front.

In the first quarter, the company generated $214 million of adjusted EBITDA, $151 million of adjusted net income. For years, we have focused on what we have under control, on what we can control, strengthening the balance sheet, optimizing the fleet, and reducing our cash breakevens. Today, the discipline is fully reflected in the model. Our cash position stands at approximately $1.4 billion, it is bound to hit the $2 billion mark early in the summer with a daily cash breakeven of around $11,000 per day. To put that into perspective, in today's market, we generate, of course, substantial free cash flow, but in a stressed environment similar to the depths of the COVID 2020 markets, we remain at or above breakeven. That is a structural advantage.

Our recent financing further reinforces this. We reduced our cost of capital through 1 and 3/4 convertible bonds and a new bank facility at 120 basis points. These are the lowest margins in our history. These were proactive and opportunistic actions that were executed from a position of strength and not necessity. We are applying the same discipline to the fleet. Since the start of the year, we have sold 12 of our older vessels at prices above their original purchase levels more than a decade before. This is value realization is not only fleet management. The balance sheet strength and fleet optimization together create a powerful foundation for sustained capital returns. In April, we repurchased 1.4 million shares for around $100 million. Today, we are going further.

We are announcing a new $500 million share buyback authorizations and a quarterly dividend of $0.45 per share. This is deliberate capital allocation, and by any measure, this was one of the strongest quarter in the company history, not only in earnings but also in execution. Rates have improved for six consecutive quarters, and that momentum actually not only continues but has strengthened further into the second quarter. While the timing of geopolitical developments in the Middle East remain uncertain, we remain constructive on the underlying fundamentals that are driving the tanker market. We expect restocking and demand reassert themselves as the disruption normalized. Critically, our low break-even model allow us to perform across all environments. As mentioned before, we can be resilient in a weaker market and highly levered in stronger ones.

We believe Scorpio Tankers is exceptionally well-positioned to continue generating meaningful cash flow and deliver long-term shareholder value. Thank you again. I will now turn the call to James.

Thanks, Emanuele. Slide seven, please. Today, product tanker rates are at unprecedented levels, with average clean tanker earnings over $70,000 per day. It's unclear when returns to the Strait of Hormuz will normalize. What we do know is this: Global inventories, commercial, strategic, and floating, have been significantly drawn down. The system will need to rebuild inventories globally. Given the scale of these draws, that process will take time. This creates a constructive setup for product tankers as refinery utilization and seaborne flows increase to support restocking and global demand. More importantly, product tanker rates were strong prior to these disruptions as a result of robust global demand driving higher seaborne exports, refinery dislocation, increasing ton-mile demand, and modest fleet growth constraining supply. We remain optimistic that those fundamentals support a constructive outlook in the short and medium term.

Slide eight, please. Last year, over 18 million barrels of crude and refined products transited the Strait of Hormuz. Approximately 90% of the crude oil and naphtha volumes transiting the strait were destined for Asia. West of Suez, roughly 75% of jet fuel flows go to Europe, and 45% of diesel moves to Africa. The temporary loss of these volumes has forced global rerouting of trade flows on an unprecedented scale, reshaping supply chains across regions. Slide nine, please. We are seeing a rebalancing of flows, with increased exports from the U.S., Africa, and Europe partially offsetting reduced volumes from the Middle East and Asia. Voyage distances have more than offset lower volumes, tightening effective supply and supporting a strong rate environment that we're seeing today. Slide 10, please. Despite the scale of the disruption, demand has remained quite resilient.

In the second quarter, refined product demand is expected to decline by approximately 1.5 MMbpd year-over-year, before rebounding by roughly 2.4 MMbpd in the third quarter. This aligns with what we're seeing on the water, with seaborne exports down approximately 1.9 MMbpd in April compared to last year. As transits through the Strait of Hormuz normalize, we expect demand to recover. Slide 11, please. Importantly, the recovery in demand is expected to occur alongside a period of significant inventory restocking following recent draws. High-frequency refined product inventories have declined by more than 80 MMbpl since the start of the year. US refined product inventories have drawn 12 out of the last 13 weeks. Taken together, these data points highlight the scale of the drawdown and reinforce the magnitude of the restocking cycle ahead.

Slide 12, please. Product tanker new building activity has slowed meaningfully over the past 18 months. Only 37 vessels have been ordered year to date, and approximately half the product tanker order book is LR2s. As we've highlighted, a meaningful portion of LR2s operate in the crude market. Today, roughly 57% of the LR2 fleet is trading crude oil. As a result, the effective product tanker order book is smaller than it appears, reinforcing the view that future fleet growth will remain constrained. Slide 13, please. Today, the order book is 18% of the existing fleet, which may seem high, but context matters. As you can see on the left, 21% of the product tanker fleet is already older than 20 years old.

By 2028, it will be 30%. Roughly 25% of the Aframax LR2 fleet and 9% of the MR Handysize fleet are sanctioned, averaging 20-21 years old. In a normal market, much of this tonnage would have likely already exited the fleet. Slide 14. When adjusting for aging vessels, sanctioned capacity, and LR2 crossover, effective clean products supply fleet growth is materially lower than the headline order book implies. We expect fleet growth to average approximately 3% over the next three years, but potentially lower. As refinery utilization and seaborne flows increase to support global restocking and demand normalization, the market should tighten further. Longer term, refining capacity remains constrained while the fleet is aging faster than it can be replaced. Overall, we expect ton-mile demand to outpace fleet growth. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Chris.

Thank you, James, good morning or good afternoon, everyone. Slide 16, please. This quarter, we generated $214 million in adjusted EBITDA and $216 million in net income on an IFRS basis. This includes a $66 million gain on the sale of four vessels during the quarter. We sold another two vessels in April and have reached agreements to sell another nine vessels, all built in 2014 or 2015 and all at cyclically high prices. Additionally, we declared a $0.45 per share dividend and replenished our securities repurchase program to $500 million. The chart on the right shows the evolution of our net debt position since December of 2021. Our capital allocation policy over this period has been headlined by debt reduction and balance sheet fortification.

As you can see, this approach has resulted in a reduction of our net debt position by $3.8 billion from a net debt balance of $2.9 billion at the end of 2021 to a pro forma net cash balance of $876 million as of today, which reflects our actual net cash balance of $479 million, adjusted for the sales of nine vessels that are pending closing. Slide 17, please. The chart on the left breaks down our outstanding debt by type. As you can see, our capital structure keeps evolving as we continue to pursue opportunities to lower our cost of capital. First, we have $368 million in secured bank debt with a lending group exclusively comprised of experienced shipping lenders, and this debt all carries margins below 200 basis points.

Further to this, $198 million of this amount is drawn revolving debt, an important tool that we can use if we want to repay the debt but maintain access to the liquidity in the future. Next is our $200 million five-year senior unsecured notes, which were issued in the Nordic bond market in January of 2025 and are currently trading at above $103 to par. Last is our $375 million convertible notes due 2031, which were just issued under a month ago. These notes have a coupon rate of 1.75% and are convertible to common stock only under certain circumstances at a conversion price over $100 per share.

As part of the offering of our convertible notes, we repurchased $1.3 million or 2.6% of our outstanding common shares for $100 million. The chart on the right shows how we continue to pursue ways to reduce our cost of capital. Over the past four years, we have transitioned our vessel-related borrowings out of expensive lease financing into lower cost, higher flexibility secured bank debt. Our efforts to pursue lower cost, longer tenor structures are ongoing, as you can see with our recent announcement of a $50 million secured credit facility with Bank of America at just a 120 basis point margin and a seven-year tenor. As you can see, this strategy, coupled with our aggressive prioritization of debt reduction, has transformed the company's credit profile, thereby unlocking these opportunities in the unsecured markets.

Now, around 60% of our debt structure is unsecured and not due until 2030 and 2031. Slide 18, please. The chart on the left shows our liquidity profile. We had $1.4 billion in cash as of May 1st, and if we consider the sale of three vessels that were pending closing as of that date, the cash balance is $1.8 billion on a pro forma basis. We also have an additional $712 million in availability under revolving credit facilities for a total of $2.5 billion in available liquidity. Since November of last year, we have signed contracts to purchase 10 new building vessels. The chart on the right is a waterfall reflecting our commitments to purchase these vessels.

Our disciplined capital allocation over the last three years has afforded us the financial flexibility to enter into these new building contracts. Our remaining new building commitments total just over $641 million as of today. After the payment of $69 million towards these vessels in the first quarter of 2026. Hypothetically speaking, we could pay for all of these vessels today in cash without incurring any new debt. Importantly, approximately 80% of these remaining installment payments are not due until the years 2027, 2028, and 2029. With a low cash breakeven rate currently at approximately $11,000 per day, we are well-positioned to build cash prior to delivery. The age and specifications of these vessels make them attractive financing candidates, which has the potential to open opportunities for us to further optimize our capital structure and lower our cost of capital.

Slide 19, please. Our cash breakeven rates are at the lowest levels in the company's history. As shown on the left, these levels are below our achieved daily TCE rates dating back to 2013, with the closest point occurring during COVID-19 when global oil demand saw its largest decline on record. Just to add, the cash interest on our convertible notes only raises our cash breakeven levels by a modest amount and is more than offset by the interest we currently earn on our deposits. To illustrate our cash generation potential at these cash breakeven levels, at $20,000 per day, the company can generate up to $260 million in cash flow per year. At $30,000 per day, the company can generate up to $548 million in cash flow per year.

At $40,000 per day, the company can generate up to $836 million in cash flow per year. At $50,000 per day, the company can generate up to $1.1 billion in cash flow per year. This concludes our presentation today. We'd like to thank everyone for their time and attention. Now we'd like to turn the call over to Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time we will pause momentarily to assemble a roster. Our first question will come from Greg Lewis of BTIG. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you, and good morning, and good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. You know, I guess this first question is either for Chris or Robert. You know, could you kind of walk us through the decision on the convertible bond? Clearly, you laid out how strong the balance sheet is, you know, and you kind of touched on it, but just kind of curious, you know, a lot of cash on the balance sheet. How are we thinking about, you know, the liquidity and the opportunities for staying, you know, post the convert?

Chris, would I start and I'll follow?

Sure. Sure. thanks, Greg. You know, as we said, it was opportunistic. The convertible markets are strong right now, and we have a strong credit profile, so it made for a good opportunity to execute an instrument that we view as a low cost of capital, 1.75% coupon and a high conversion premium. You know, we're mindful of the fact that we have a lot of secured debt maturing in a couple of years, say 18 to 24 months. You know, our debt position's not static, and we're just gonna continue to look at opportunities to execute on low-cost transactions, and this is just one of those.

I don't have anything really to add to that, Greg.

Okay, great. The other question, you know, just on the market as we think about it. You know, James, you touched on, you know, ton-miles expanding, maybe volumes not being where they need to be. Maybe volumes being a little bit light. You know, I guess roughly a little over two months into the conflict or the war in Iran. Have we started to see pockets of hoarding or anything that is kind of just I mean, I imagine there's lots of things out of the ordinary that you're seeing, but just kind of curious, you know, how that's translating into, you know, maybe new trade routes or expanding ones replacing others. Just kind of curious what you're seeing there.

Lars, would you like to take this one?

Yeah, sure. I'll start off. Yeah, that's for sure. We have seen a lot of what you would consider to be genuinely unique voyages and instances. Ton-miles have obviously elongated across the board. We have seen a huge amount of increase in the U.S. Gulf Coast exports going much further afield than what we would have seen before. You know, from a pre-conflict, inter-conflict level being the, you know, the stuff with Iran. I mean, we had ships that were trading, transporting towards the West. Before they even came to the Cape of Good Hope, they were asked to will you go to the Middle East? You know, one day later, can you please go back to Asia, where they actually had loaded from.

The fact is that, you know, the price of oil and price of product has made such that, you know, the price of freight has become insignificant. You know, we're not seeing any issues of freights being curtailed because of the price of freight, because the oil underlying is so valuable, and it's also so important for the security of supply. That also obviously goes into the structural reshuffling of product in the United States. We've seen obviously the headline of the Jones Act being waived for a brief moment in time. That has obviously also kind of moved your needle to anything that we've seen in the past. Yeah, there certainly has been a lot of change.

Super helpful. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Omar Nokta of Clarksons Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hey, guys. Morning and good afternoon. Clearly, you know, things are moving in a really nice direction for Scorpio, certainly from a financial perspective. Going deeper into net cash, you just re-upped the buyback to $500 million. You know, just wanted to get a sense from you, does this signal a pivot in how you're viewing use of capital from here? Is there any preference at this point in terms of the interest at looking either at the shares or the unsecured notes or the converts?

I don't think it creates a pivot in strategy. I think this creates a point where we feel ready enough to give ourselves a, you know, the largest ever buyback company has ever had if it decides that that's the right thing to do. There's no pivot. The idea is just developing strategy. The first thing is to de-leverage it. The second is to start to renew the fleet and take advantage of backwardation in the curve. The third is to, as Chris says, then start to use that balance sheet in getting very effective cheaper finance and being able to put up a, you know, the largest ever buyback the company has had, which is a continuation of strategy, which is, you know, we'll watch and we'll act, and we'll react when and if we see the opportunity.

To me, you know, we kind of, in a funny way, seem to sort of develop like a hammer and an anvil here because we got the tremendous cash position that the company has in one sense, in its ability to get debt cheaply. Underneath it now, we're developing the anvil there so that, you know, if you had a wobble in the stock or we just see a continuing lack of dislocation between NAV and stock price, that we can come in and, you know, take advantage of that because we believe very much in the long term, development and continued health of the company.

Thanks, Robert. Yeah, no, makes sense. Maybe just to follow up and touch on, I think you were mentioning the fleet and taking advantage of the backwardation there. Just wanna get a sense from you on how you're thinking about the fleet as it is now. You sold a bunch of vessels this year. You've got $500 million or so coming in in the second quarter from those vessel sales. Are we getting to a point where maybe the act of selling, if you wanna call it that, slows down? Is it more about fine-tuning the fleet? Is it looking at new buildings? How are you thinking about the fleet position from here?

I think we haven't changed on that. I mean, we're there to continue to take opportunistic sales, take opportunistic. You know, we're working longer term time charters too. At the same time, you know, we might continue to gently and responsibly, where it's so clear that their financing is not changing our, you know, our hammer, as it were, to, you know, engage in the renewal part of it. It'll be done gently. You're not gonna see some massive, great big order. You're not gonna see some acquisition of a, you know, a competitor. It's just going to be continuing to gently move each of the parameters we're looking at along the way here. It'll be much of the same.

Very good. Thanks. Understood, Robert. That's it for me. I'll pass it back.

The next question comes from Jonathan Chappell of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. James, appreciate the presentation regarding the disruption. A lot of it seems to be focused around once the flow is normalized. Can you help us just kind of with scenario analysis here? There's still a lot of uncertainty. Feels like the path may be changing by the week, if not the hour. What are some of the other kind of upside opportunities, but also downside risks, as this unprecedented situation continues to evolve?

Thanks, John.

Maybe I could, James, maybe I can, I'll take a start at that one, if I can.

Sure.

You know, I'll say this very clearly. I just don't think we're in control of that. We don't spend much time in, you know, going through the hypotheticals or working out if A happens, if B will happen, or even whether A will happen because, you know, it's, you know, information changes to whether or not the Hormuz is open, whether or not the Iranians are still shelling international ships about three or four times just yesterday. We'll pass on the hypotheticals, if that's okay, John.

Okay. Well, how about how your operations have changed? You know, we see these headline rates. Are you fully absorbing them? Have you had to move the fleet around? Maybe do you have imbalance or maybe even better exposure to certain regions? Just how do we think about these headline rates that we're seeing, how it translates to you both from a top-line perspective, but also from a potential disruption or a cost/bunker perspective?

Lars?

I mean, I think this is part and parcel of what we do every single day. We need to kind of assess where, you know, we anticipate the market to kinda react as the fleets are deployed. There's no doubt that when this happened, we made a conscious effort to move our ships west, where we could see that the market dislocation was being kind of the greatest, and there was clearly at the margin, stronger market movements taking place. We moved ships a lot, both through the canal and also around the Cape of Good Hope, but we also made sure that the ships that we had opening in kind of New Zealand, Alaska, North Asia, making decisions to move these ships across.

That obviously took a little bit of time, but it kind of, you know, paid off. You still see today, even with the high volatility that is in the markets, you know, rates are moving, you know, 15%, 20% intra-week. Structurally, it has been such that the West market has been benefiting from a rate perspective greater than you'd seen vessels trading East of Suez.

Got it. Thank you, Lars. Thanks, Robert.

The next question comes from Ken Hoexter of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, great. Good morning and good afternoon. Are you maybe can you talk about any increased interest in multi-year charters given the environment, maybe your thought on that? Do you wanna keep same exposure to the spot market? Then any incremental developments from Venezuela? You know, we've talked about that a lot in terms of short-term short-haul moves.

I'll just take one of the bits first, Lars. I think when it comes to looking at look up our reduced breakevens in all senses, the lack of debt, the low borrowing cost, is now opening up the situations where, you know, you can really look quite favorably at, you know, five-year charters, six-year charters, seven-year charters, as just very, you know, locked in simple, profitable, secure returns, adding to, you know, let's say, stability of income, which has always been, you know, lacking really in tanker companies. Yes, we're not only, you know, looking at opportunities that arise, but also favorable to it because the dynamics in terms of our own financial breakevens. Lars, would you like to go through the details as you were?

Yeah, I mean, well, we obviously reported a couple of them within the quarter that we have done. Certainly, in my experience, in the market, it's generational highs in terms of long-term charters. This is long-term charters to a very bankable first-class end users, which we have not seen before. We would always have a balance between spot and time charter, but we certainly have a, still a very large proponent towards spot. Clearly, the ships that we have on time charter all reflect the quality of the paper, and also people that we strategically have aligned ourselves with in terms of the spot business that we also do for them so that the relationship goes up to a different level.

That has, over the years, been something that we can see has benefited the business. In terms of looking at period charters for the future, we continue to look at charters every single day. There has been continued interest both in MRs and also in LR stroke Aframaxes. As everybody on the call will probably appreciate that we today look at LR2s and Aframaxes as one segment. There certainly has been a substantial interest in that market. Indeed, you know, we have seen one-year deals at extremely high and elevated numbers. We've seen three-year deals, interest, five-year deal interest. Clearly, when it comes to eight-year deals that we have done one of, that's are not that frequent to see.

It's clear to me that it's not only the ship owner that considers the market to look pretty good, but a lot of the people that we do business with are willing to put pen to paper and kind of expose themselves for long-term charter.

It's great insight. Thanks, Lars. If I can get maybe two rapid ones, right? Is just the, are you seeing any shortages now at this point yet on some of the products? I don't know, jet fuel in different areas. I think you were talking about, you know, New Zealand. I was there not too long ago. It seemed like Australia was starting to ration some fuel. Maybe thoughts on where we are? James was talking about inventories. I think you mentioned the $2 billion in cash by this summer, but the $500 million buyback plan, thoughts on the other billion and a half usage plans?

I'll start with the shortages. I think what we've seen in Southeast Asia is obviously methods to reduce travel. What I think at a high level we've seen is so far it appears that it's more inefficient supply to meet demand. Demand's been quite strong. When you look at the issues that are currently happening, a lot of it falls to this, there's not a lot of spare refining capacity in the world. You know, we've been talking about this for years on the call, but, you know, you've had closures around the world, refinery capacities moved further away from the consumer, and what you're seeing as a result of this is that. I think going forward, you know, you're gonna see, like I mentioned, a lot of restocking.

You're still gonna see this refinery dislocation just because of how long it takes to build a refinery. We'll see how, you know, the situation develops, but I think it's very constructive in the short to medium term based off this refinery dislocation.

Thanks, James.

As to, you know, the future, I think you want to see us continue to maintain a very healthy overall cash position. I think that we, you know, we've said that we would even consider doing, you know, doing further sales of the old tonnage. That would actually result in an even higher cash position than any forecast you guys could make at the moment. However, we've also said that we'd be willing to explore opportunistically continuing our renewal, which would indicate that you might get, you know, a few new building orders, not many, but just a few to keep a sort of steady position.

Where you're keeping the vast majority of cash generated, but you're, you know, giving some of it out on buyback like you've seen so far this quarter, dividend and new building orders. We didn't raise the dividend this quarter, but not for any other reason. Look, it was a knockout quarter, it was fantastic and we'd like to have a look at things when it comes in, you know, later in the year, July, September, whether, you know, we're likely to increase the dividend again, you know. As to how much, whether it continues to be in little smaller steps or whether we feel we could do, you know, one slightly bigger step will come.

Overall, it's just a continuation of what we've been doing in the last six, nine, 12 months, sort of, you know, steadily going along, taking advantage of the arbitrage on the curve, taking advantage of some great secondhand prices, which in fact, there are indications that those prices are still increasing. We're seeing that, you know, in the market. That's it. Just a continuation. Seem to be working well so far.

Wonderful. Thanks, Robert. Thanks, team. Appreciate the thoughts.

The next question comes from Stephanie Moore of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to touch on fleet renewal. If you wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, if you have a preference, whether it's more LR2s or medium range exposure in the fleet, maybe just any general commentary you can have on general fleet exposure and fleet renewals would be helpful. Then I do have one follow-up. Thanks.

Sure. Stephanie, first of all, welcome.

Yeah.

Secondly, you've sort of seen us, and we'll continue again, that we backed off the VLCCs in terms of expanding there. The recent renewals have been in the product tankers, both in the MRs and the LR2s. My expectation would be that that's where we would continue to concentrate and find opportunities.

Understood. I appreciate it. Thank you. I wanted to follow up actually on the prior question on the dividend itself. You know, I guess, just given the favorable financial position that you are in now, and I appreciate your stance on flexibility, but wanted to know if you did have any kind of quarterly targeted payout that we should be looking at. Thanks.

We haven't yet reached that. I can tell you what we won't have. We won't do extraordinary dividends, and we won't do these high payout dividends. We're all for, you know, what we would call a permanent, you know, a dividend that can be met through good times and bad, and that ideally can be improved on in good times and bad. The payout dividends, high payout dividends, particularly, that are tied to percentages of income or whatever, historically are, you know, they work great in good times and are quite tragic in other times.

Understood. Well, thank you, everybody.

The next question comes from Chris Robertson of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. This might be one for Lars. This is just a question related to the bunker fuel market. I know initially there was quite a bit of disruption, a huge spike in prices there. Can you talk about how is that availability going, and is it, having any impact on where are you thinking about positioning the fleet, which voyages you're taking? Has that situation gotten any better over the last few weeks?

The short answer is that we do not see issues today in terms of securing bunkers on any of our ships around the world. Prices certainly went very high and elevated place, and there was a lot of questions just as this conflict started, we were obviously looking at this. To be honest, this is kind of what we do every single day anyway. Bunker planning is a very important part of any voyage planning that we do. These things are looked at at any given time so that we can reflect the pricing of the bunker input to the output or the time charter equivalent. That continues to be the case. Right now we do not encounter issues that create additional issues for us in terms of supplying bunkers.

Got it. Thank you. This is just a follow-up to the many questions here related to the dividends. Apologies for retreading similar ground. Realizing this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, Robert, if maybe you could talk a little bit more about the philosophy around the dividend. Is it a situation where you're looking for a certain amount of balance sheet strength or a certain break-even level or a certain market type of environment and rate sustainability? What kinda would drive an increase to the dividend, realizing that the ultimate goal is to be at a sustained level throughout various parts of the cycle?

No, that's not the ultimate goal, isn't to be a sustained level. What I hear from that is the same sense of stock price, it's the same percentage of earnings. That's not what it is. What we'd hope to be throughout the cycle is to be able to raise a regular dividend. A dividend is not just being raised and regular and sustainable by us, but it's clear to, you know, the most conservative of long-only large institutions, you know, but hopefully the income growth side too, that we would like to develop, that we can pay it under any circumstances. That's where you're starting to see in the actual presentation, a lot of concentration by Chris on cash breakeven.

A lot of, you know, slides related to, well, what happens if we relive the worst market that we've ever lived in, which is COVID. You know, can the company continue to pay and grow the dividend through that cycle? That's how we're evaluating it. I think at the moment, things are moving. You know, we raised it in the last quarters gradually. I think this was just an unbelievably knockout quarter that we felt. You know, what do we do? Do we raise it $0.01? Do we raise it $0.05? It's sort of fairly unclear to us. We just left it aside knowing that, you know, we had an incredible quarter. We put steps into the balance sheet, a terrific guidance for the second quarter. I mean, extraordinary. It even surprised us.

No one out there can possibly say they expected the guidance that we've given. That will then later in the year, we can sit there and see what the next level is to, that we're happy to move to on a sustainable basis. That's all.

Got it. Thank you. It's very prudent, and we appreciate that commentary. Thank you, Robert.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Liam Burke of B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Even prior to the tensions in the Mid-East, the rates in the Aframaxes were higher, and there had been a lot of shift from clean to dirty. As we post tensions, is there anything that would flip that situation where the Afras would move back to the LR2s or start trading clean?

I mean, you know, we're in the perfect situation where you've got LR2s in a north of $100,000 per day market, where the alternative and Aframaxes is trading north of $100,000 per day as well. You know, if you look at the numbers themselves, you know, we only have to go back a couple of years, I think, and we were trading 256 LR2s in the market. Today, we're trading around 170 LR2s in the market. Obviously, you've had a huge proponent of the LR2s back in the time. They had gone into the sanction fleet at the age part as well. You know, you suddenly have the element of crude also transporting itself longer afield, further afield.

You know, you have a very strong Aframax market, which is not only now in the Atlantic Basin, you also have a strong Aframax market East of Suez as well. TMX, which is the market that goes from, you know, the Pacific Northwest to Asia, has been extremely strong. The market that goes down to the Pacific lightering area has also been very strong, in particular because of the VLCCs being very strong. You've got the Suezmaxes being very strong. You know, you have every element within that kind of framework that is extremely strong. To the question about, you know, switching.

You know, the last time we saw switching in going the other way was when you had a very weak crude market, which had been going on and persisted for a while, and the LR2 market in particular had ramped up. At that point in time, you had a delta of, I think it was about $8 million between one to the other, and you started seeing a huge amount of vessels going into the clean market. Today, you know, whichever way you look at it's very strong. Well, what about Venezuela? You know, that's also a Aframax market. TMX is 100% Aframax market. The stuff that goes out of Australia is 100% Aframax market.

You know, the story is good in terms of where you are on a supply-demand perspective when you, in aggregate, look at LR2s and Aframaxes together, which is of course what you had to do today. The argument that was the case a while back saying, "Well, you know, you've got all these ships being built," it doesn't really hold that much when you consider where the average ages of the fleets and also what ships are actually able to trade. Structurally, I think we're looking at a very decent supply-demand story on both Aframaxes and on LR2s.

Great. Thank you. I think this would be for James. James, you always highlight for the last several years the redistribution of global refinery capacity. Post-conflict, a lot of that has been Mid-East refinery. Would you anticipate any modification of that redistribution?

Liam, thanks. Good question. It's a challenge. I think the quickest you can probably build a refinery is seven years. If you're not starting today, it's not coming in that timeframe. One of the things that I think we feel that's likely is people will view storage differently coming out of this. How much crude and how much product are you keeping domestically? I think that's gonna be great for refinery runs. In terms of major changes, I think it's gonna be a challenge to do anything, you know, in a short timeframe. I'm sure certainly that people might look now, and they might look at new pipeline opportunities.

Great. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Emanuele Lauro for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, operator. No closing remarks of any substance apart from thanking everybody for your time and looking forward to connecting in the near future. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect.