Cmb.Tech NV - Earnings Call - Q1 2020

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good morning, and welcome to the Euronav Q1 twenty twenty Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brian Gallagher.

Sir, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining Euronav's Q1 twenty twenty earnings call. Before I start, I'd like to say a few words. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today, Thursday, May 2020, and may contain forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward looking statements reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance and may include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events, performance, underlying assumptions and other statements, which are not statements of historical fact.

All forward looking statements attributable to the company or to persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by reference to the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in the company's filings with the SEC, which are available free of charge on the SEC's website at www.secgov and on our own company's website at urinage.com. You should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. Each forward looking statement speaks only as of the date of the particular statement, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward looking statements. Please take a moment to read our safe harbor statement on Page two of the slide presentation.

I will now pass on to CEO, Hugo Stoop, to start with the agenda slide. Hugo, over to you.

Speaker 2

Hugo Stoop:] Yes. Thank you, Brian. We're going to do something a little bit different and more in-depth with today's quarterly call given the number of factors which are impacting on Tankers markets currently. So firstly, I will run through the Q1 highlights before passing on to Liv, our CFO, to provide a full financial review of the income statement and balance sheet. Then we will look at the current themes in the tanker markets and Euronav's outlook before we take questions.

So if we move to Slide four, the highlights page, I think it's fair to say that the first quarter was an extraordinary quarter for many different reasons. Q1 was a very strong quarter, building upon the solid foundations we experienced in Q4. But of course, it was also a very volatile quarter with events such as the COVID-nineteen pandemic and the oil price war between the OPEC plus members influencing dramatically the market freight rates as we've seen them. The TCE were as high as $200,000 per day, but also as low as $30,000 in the latter part of Q1. The average delivered VLCC rate was very robust.

And on average, we managed to book $72,000 or a little bit more than $72,000 per day for VLCCs and nearly $60,000 per day for Suezmax, quite a record. This outstanding rate environment has pushed so far into the second quarter to higher levels with our VLCC fleet reporting so far $95,000 per day for VLCCs, as I said, and for the Suezmax, 65,000 per day. So this allows us to pay a very strong dividend related to the first quarter of zero eight one per share. As we mentioned many times in the past, we will, as of this quarter, pay quarterly dividends to Euronav shareholders. But the good news is that we will also pay our final dividends related to 2019 after our next AGM in May.

So Euronav shareholders will receive 1.1 in June in cash dividends, which represents, at the current share price, more than 10% dividend yield, and this is within the first six months of the year. So quite extraordinary, you will admit. I will return later with more commentary on the key themes in our business. But now I would like to hand over to our CFO, Liv, to run through the financials on Slide five. Liv, over to you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Hugo. Good morning, good afternoon all. Allow me indeed to present the key figures of the first quarter. So the revenues generated are $417,000,000 while EBITDA generated was $360,000,000 But if we add the gain on sale and the income from equity indices, this is $328,000,000 This resulted in the net income of $225,000,000 As the company has touched upon the strong freight market, this illustrates clearly the operational leverage that tanker companies possesses. Namely, every $5,000 a day revenue Euronav generates over a quarter translates into $27,000,000 net income, culminating in a dividend of about €0.10 per share for Q2.

A key highlight that I want to mention is also for Q1 is related to our fuel procurement strategy, which generated gains of nearly $20,000,000 but which clearly came under pressure as the oil price and other related commodities fell as the COVID-nineteen virus and the related economic restrictions impacted. The company, we also assessed if a write down should be accounted for remaining compliant fuel inventory as the market value of the fuel that was not yet consumed was $56,000,000 lower than its book value. The company concluded that no write down was required at this time in view of the robust freight market for Q2 and possibly the rest of 2020, which will offset the higher weighted average consumption cost of the bunker oil consumed from that inventory. However, this assessment has to be performed each quarter. Moving now maybe to Slide six and the balance sheet.

So the balance sheet at Euronav remains strong. We have increased the absolute level of cash at our disposal to over $300,000,000 even though we were active during the quarter in purchasing for VLCCs resales, requiring a down payment of $100,000,000 Our leverage is now below 40%. Cash and revolving credit facility liquidity are at $1,100,000,000 in total. This contributes for sure in managing our two year liquidity runway, which remains a core philosophy at Euronav. I will now hand back to Hugo to expand further on developments in the tanker space.

Hugo, over to you.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much, Lee. We can now move on Slide seven, capital allocation at Euronav. Well, capital allocation is very important, especially when markets are so strong. At Euronav, we always make sure to be balanced, but especially consistent in our allocation. We do have some mandatory debt repayment as well as some revolving credit facilities reductions, which, as far as they are concerned, are noncash.

But as we target a leverage of 50% or less, we do not need to repay more debt for the time being. We have designed our return to shareholders policy, taking all aspects of the business into account. And indeed, we are very pleased to be in a position to pay €0.81 dividend related to the first quarter in addition to €0.29 related to the year 2019, as I mentioned earlier. During the quarter, we haven't bought back shares. When we do so, we will always try to create long term shareholder value rather than giving support to a share price that has been very volatile during the quarter.

We also bought a very, very small portion of our bond back during its March sell off. We wish we could have done more, but the value of our bonds bounced back very quickly to par or even above par as they are trading today. We also took advantage of the S and P market volatility as illustrated on the next slide. Slide eight, what seems a lifetime ago now, we picked up four VLCC resales of contract at, on average, 93,000,000, a significant discount to the advertised sales price at that time or even when compared now. This expansion, though, is part of an active fleet management strategy as we also sold three older vessels so far this year for prices as well above the index for same vintage ships.

This recycling of capital and the rejuvenation of our fleet is key to managing a tanker fleet and a feature we keep up as part of our long term strategy. We can now move to Slide nine. The progressive moves in the freight market since early March when the Saudi volume increases and price cuts were announced have allowed tanker operators some optionality to lock in high rates for the upcoming six months. We have fixed a number of ships taking advantage of these opportunities and have now 19% of our fleet, which is on time charter for various durations. You will remember that at the end of last year, we only had 10% of our fleet under fixed contracts.

It is important to know that when we take a decision to fix a ship for a six months time charter, we will always compare the rate offered to what we can do in the spot market for Often, a shorter spot voyage offers you more than a six months time charter fixed contract. Moving on to Slide 10, the fuel procurement strategy. When we look back at IMO 2020, our approach has been to purchase compliant fuel ahead of January 2020, primarily to reduce any potential risk on either the quality of the new compliant fuel or to avoid the big spread that was foreseen between LSFO and HSFO in the early stage of this new market regulation. This approach benefited our operations initially and in the first quarter, as indeed upon the implementation of the regulation, the LSFO jumped to much higher levels than what we had procured over the course of 2019. And we have consumed a little less than half of our stock of roughly 420,000 tons inventory that we purchased indeed in 2019.

However, as Liv mentioned, the market has not developed as anyone expected in terms of fuel pricing or in terms of spreads between LSFO and HSFO during 2020 and certainly recently. And the prices as well as the spreads between those two products have now fallen to a level below our entry cost. We have not taken an impairment in the first quarter, as Lee explained earlier, and we will continue to look at opportunities around the ULCC Oceania, where the fuel is being sold to create value around this operation. Let's all remember that if we had chosen a strategy of retrofitting scrubbers on our fleet, we would have had to deploy more than $350,000,000 I will now hand over to Brian Gallagher, our Head of Research and Investor Relations to talk about current market themes, and I will be back for all the questions. Thank you.

Brian, over to you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Hugo. Slide 11, as Hugo says, looks at a number of different features and illustrates, in particular, why the storage of crude and ships has come into play and come into play so quickly. With 90% of us on, some form of lockdown over the past forty five days in March and April, the IEA forecasted demand for crude has fallen by around 25,000,000 barrels per day during that period. Yet during that same period, we've seen production actually be maintained at similar levels. This disconnect, we believe, has produced somewhere around about 1,100,000,000 barrels of excess crude, the same level of the EIA and others estimate is the global onshore capacity for storage.

Indeed, earlier today, Reuters reported that the storage facilities onshore in Europe are already full. This is reflected in the recent move to use ships to store oil, in particular, over the last three to four weeks. We believe then that despite the OPEC cuts, which have started to bite in the last week or so, and production shut ins by commercial players, any additional excess production from here is likely to have to find some form of home and storage and most likely on ships. This will be a key driver for our market over the summer months, but we believe that slide 12 shows that not all storage is created equal. On slide 12, we believe it's important to take a step back and look that this process has only just begun.

It's important to remember that we've got the Iranian fleet with around 38 VLCCs and a permanent number of around about 20 to 22 VLCCs, which are always storing oil and as part of the infrastructure chain. This has nothing to do with the current COVID nineteen related issues. Therefore, around about 8% of the VLCC fleet on the world has always been otherwise employed before this disconnect between consumption and production started. What is also interesting from slide 12 is that unlike other periods when we've had storage requirement, this is not just the VLCC show. Furnace, for instance, estimate that 61 Suezmax are currently used for what we would term market storage reasons.

That's already 11% of that particular fleet and that there are 65 VLCCs in market storage at the April. The true store scale and impact of storage, we believe, therefore has not yet fully been revealed given the speed and scale of the changes that are going ongoing in the disconnect between production and consumption.

Speaker 4

So how do we see

Speaker 1

this developing? Look at this on slide 13 with a very simple schematic. We look at the demand for storage that is not just driven by those seeking to to derive profit by a contango, but also increasingly by logistical players who are forced either involuntary or voluntarily to use ships in order to, transit oil or store oil. We believe that this phase will persist well into the second half of twenty twenty. Clearly, and the market focus has been very acute on this, there will be a transition phase in the midterm, as we say on slide 13, into a different phase.

As the inventory draw starts, if it's slow, then we believe the disruption to shipping will also be slow. If it is more rapid and accelerated, then past experience suggested that the contango price structure can remain in place for a prolonged period of time. In 02/2015, for instance, we still had 20 plus VLCCs used for storage even when the market went into backwardation in 02/2016. Many commentators believe that this midterm phase will kick in sooner rather than later and that the inventory drawdown will be rapid and therefore will impact on shipping much quicker. We find it difficult to envisage a shipping sector that works in real time, however.

Our voyages take off in days, months, and are often spread over quarter end periods and often take longer than the simple, calculation of how long those voyages will take. There is planning, there is congestion, and there are a lot of external factors that impact on our business. However, we are not complacent. Management at Euronav do recognize that this middle phase will provide challenge for the tanker sector. And when the inventory drawdown starts, that is likely to accelerate and bring pressure on our business in terms of freight rates.

But it will also bring what we believe is the last phase in slide fourteen and fifteen, sustained pressure for a resizing of the global tanker fleet, which we've looked at in the last couple of slides. Slide 14 shows the large tanker fleet we believe is right for resizing. Financing is becoming ever harder, and with increased regulation from areas like Basel IV and environmental pressures from the EU and the IMO, this is only going to intensify. Contracting of new orders is prevented by the requirement for the new new propulsion system in order to meet these new stringent environmental requirements. And with an eighteen to twenty year life on average for a VLCC or Suezmax, ordering a new vessel is also having the additional challenge that the likely medium term trajectory of oil demand is also gonna be a negative pressure.

All of this is just barely restricting the new supply of tankers reflected in the twenty three year low that we see in the order book. On slide 15, to sum up, we look at the the the continued grounds for optimism that the existing fleet in which the, large end of the tanker space in terms of VLCCs and Suezmax has an awful lot of potential change coming. On average, for every quarter between now and the end of twenty twenty one, there are 27 VLCC equivalents due for special survey on vessels aged over 15 years of age. Why does this matter? The surveys will require several million dollars worth of investment to be spent in order to give your ship certification for the following thirty months.

Owners will have to have confidence and visibility that they'll be able to make a return in this time frame, which with low freight rates is gonna be harder to justify. For one of a better phrase, this pinch point is critical and has has historically often been so. This is usually a catalyst for ships leaving the fleet to an alternative use or to the scrap yard. To put this into context, though, if two thirds of the vessels that we see on this final slide were to leave the fleet on slide 14, the global tanker fleet would resize almost instantly to an oil consumption level of 95,000,000 barrels a day, which is where a lot of commentators believe that even on a bearish scenario, that's where the consumption levels will move off. Time now probably to move on to some questions.

That concludes the end of the prepared remarks, and I'll now pass it back to the operator. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Star and then one. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and 2. In the interest of time, we do also ask that you please limit yourselves to one question and a single follow-up.

Our first question today comes from Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 5

Thanks, operator. Hi, Hugo. Congrats on the good quarter. I wanted to check your temperature on the commitment to the dividend in the event that, you know, the public equity markets don't give the company full credit for what you guys are paying out. I mean, the strategy itself is quite clear.

I I believe it also gives you a little bit of wiggle room to reallocate or repurpose the funds for share repurchases. And then, obviously, you have that AGM meeting coming up on on a on a vote on that aspect. So I just want you to talk about under what circumstances the company will not pay at least 80% of its net earnings. I think that would just be helpful trying to understand where your mind is at with respect to that specific item. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Amit. Very good question. You're absolutely right. I mean when we were thinking about our return to shareholders policy initially for more than four years ago, and then when we put the guidance out in January, we were thinking about when to apply dividends and when to apply share buyback. I think that in the first quarter, our line of thought was very much geared towards dividends because we wanted to show the market that we can distribute 80% of our earnings and dividends.

I think that we heard that some people were skeptics about it, and I think it was important to demonstrate that when we see something, we will follow that policy. Obviously, we're not satisfied with the share price where it is right now. That doesn't say that we have not been satisfied with the share price throughout the quarter. It has been a very volatile quarter, not only in terms of rates, but also in terms of share price. And as I said in my prepared remarks, our goal is not to chase the share price and not to support the share price at every single point in time.

So if we feel that the share price is weak for a prolonged period of time, then obviously, we will prefer share buybacks than dividends. I don't think that you will ever see us cutting completely dividends. That's not something that we will ever do in any way. We have a policy for a minimum fixed dividend. But the balance between share buyback and dividends will very much depend on share price weakness.

And as I said, at the moment, it doesn't look good. I mean, I don't think it's normal that we are distributing a dividend which represents only for the first six months of the year. In fact, only the first three months and then a little bit from last year, 11% yield. I mean, this is crazy, clearly abnormal.

Speaker 5

Right. Okay. I appreciate that. That's pretty clear. I wanted to just pivot on my follow-up to just maybe a more fundamental question about just the oil markets.

And I want to understand from your perspective, what the eventual the impact will be from kind of the eventual destocking of of inventories and how you think that plays out in terms of absorption of the tanker fleet. Obviously, it's right to assume there's gonna be some weakness in rates as as vessels are kind

Speaker 1

of released from floating storage.

Speaker 5

I think we're already kind of starting to see that in some respects. But how quickly, you know, after that, do you think the tanker market rebalances? You talked a lot about an aging fleet, but, typically, you know, fleet fleets aren't scrapped unless, you know, rates are below OpEx levels. And obviously, there's a quite a bit of leg down to get there. So if you can just talk to us how quickly do you think the market can rebalance?

How how how long do you think the the weakness in the tanker market could last if we do get a bigger destocking of inventories? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. We've tried to explain that on Slide 13, I believe, so future market developments. And we have split that between short term, mid term, long term. Short term is clearly what we are living through now, and we see that we have continued demand for both trading transportation but also storage. And as Brian said, we believe that storage demand will continue to increase and influence our markets, certainly support our markets.

It's a little bit of a pity that when people say, yes, the rates have halved in the last two weeks. Yes, right. But you know what, We're still fixing vessels between 60,000 and $75,000 a day. You look at the TI app, and I think a vessel was just fixed at $90,000 a day. It doesn't mean that's the average, but I'm just trying to say when we're making good money, but we are coming from extraordinary territory, then people are not happy, and I wonder why because personally or at Euronav, we are very happy with the market at $60,000 65,000 or $70,000 a day.

When it comes to specifically your question of destocking, I think that there are two scenarios. There is a quick draw and a slow draw. The quick draw is basically where people are just dumping the oil that have been stored on board the ships and ships are returning quickly to the market, which will lead very quickly to the column called long term. I'm going to come back to that in a minute. What is likely to happen is the slow draw.

And why do I say that? Well, simply because the last time we had contango, it took about twelve months for the ships that had been taken on storage and potentially prolonged in their contract to come back fully into the trading fleet. But when you think about it, there is a reason for that. If tomorrow, all the oil that has been stored is coming back to the market at a point where the market is demanding 95,000,000 or potentially 100,000,000 barrels of consumption per day, well, obviously, oil price will be negatively impacted. And if it's negatively impacted by the draw on the inventory, it means that there is a contango being created because the oil price will be at $15 or $20 But everybody knows that when the draw is done, the oil price will be higher, creating the contango curve.

When you create the contango curve, you obviously ask more ships to play that game and to store the oil for that contango story. So that's a little bit what we believe is going to happen. It's not going to be as supportive as what we have seen in the last month and what we are expecting to see probably in the not too distant future. But it will not be a catastrophe. I think that when we will hit weakness in the market is probably when all the ships are coming back to the market.

And again, it could be quick, but we don't believe that. And when they are all back, we will need to see what sort of consumption there is out there because many predictions are set for below 100,000,000 barrels of consumption, which is the consumption we had prior to COVID. As Brian said, what is interesting is then to look at the older part of the fleet. And people will take the decision to scrub their ships way, way, way before it hits OpEx level. As a matter of fact, you cannot find one tanker market, I'm talking here VLCC, which on average has printed less than $18,000 per day in the last twenty years.

And nevertheless, we have had incredible years in terms of scrapping, the last one being 2018. So it's EUR 17,000 above OpEx, and nevertheless, it motivates people to scrap. And why is that? Because people need to spend a big amount of capital and nowadays even more because of the ballast water treatment system, which is costing EUR 1,500,000.0. So you will need to return in the next two point five years when you are taking a ship to dry dock, which is more than 15 years of age.

In the next two point five years after your dry dock, you will need to get $4,000,000 $5,000,000 sometimes $6,000,000 back before you even contemplate the first cent of profit. So I don't know a lot of owners who will do that, especially after a period where we have earned so much money. Do you think that we are earning money only to waste it in older assets and passing dry docks? I don't believe so. So the minute the feed is oversupplied, we have the perfect solution.

And as you can see on Slide 15, every single quarter, there's a collection of ships that will need to face that critical question of do I spend capital or do I receive $1,551,000,000 dollars whatever the scrap is giving you, dollars million. I think I know the answer.

Speaker 5

Right. Okay. I'll leave it there. Thank you so much everybody. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Hugo.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Amir.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Randy Giveans from Jefferies LLC. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 6

Howdy, gentlemen. How's it going?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Great, Randy. And you?

Speaker 6

Good. Good. Yeah. You know, I think we can all get bogged down on some details, but congrats on the record quarter. It's clear that the second quarter will be another record quarter.

So, keep the good work going. Now looking at slide nine on your charters, can you give a little more details around that? How many VLCCs, average duration, average rate, when do they begin? We need some details here.

Speaker 2

Well, it's obviously on purpose that we didn't give too many details. I can tell you that it's both VLCCs and Suezmax. I can tell you that it's not only a contract for six months. As a matter of fact, the last one is a two year contract on non equal vessel. And we will continue to look at opportunities.

I think that when it's a six months contract, quite frankly, we shouldn't differentiate between spot and six months contract because you will look at the spot, you will look at the next voyage. You are being asked to deliver the ship promptly, which means that you can completely compare and assess what is more lucrative, leaving it into the spot market or putting it on six months charter. So of course, in that percentage, we have three or four vessels that are on six months charter, but we only accepted to book them because at that time, there might have been a little bit of weakness in the spot market. And at that time, the six months contract was paying more. We've had plenty plenty other opportunities that we passed on because when you compare $75,000 a day, which is on average what we were offered for six months and a voyage that can give you $130,000 then obviously, you take the $130,000 for ninety days.

So that's a little bit how we have assessed this. We have doubled the number of ships under time charter. That's correct. We are hopeful that we will see more opportunities for longer duration than six months because, as I said, six months is very much like the spot market. And whenever we see those opportunities, we are likely to try to grab them, because it's good to have a sort of a balanced approach.

Speaker 6

Okay. And I guess touching on that, we saw some one year time charters above 70,000 a day a few weeks ago. Where is that market now? How robust or liquid is that market for the one year? And then any inquiries for three years?

Speaker 2

No. We just did two years option one, and that was something, I would say, unrelated to the current environment. It's an all major that has a program, and every year, they come with inquiries for two years, option one or even three years. So we just participated to that tender, and we happen to have a good relationship with them, and we have serviced that contract already. So I would say we had a head start.

The rest that we have seen was more like six months. We've seen that others have picked up one year contract. At that time, we decided to pass on either because it would have meant for us committing an eco ship vessel, and we didn't think that there was value into doing that, I. E, we had no other ships in position to do it or because we saw that we thought that the rates was a little bit weak for that matter. At the moment, we're not seeing many one year contract, and the majority of the contract that we are seeing is indeed six months.

The difference with maybe maybe five, six weeks ago is that what we call the Phase one of the contango was very much the traders. They were just buying physically the oil, storing it on a ship, hedging themselves on paper, and they are usually the first movers. What we are the inquiries that we are receiving now is really from people lacking space. I don't know where to put my oil. I need to rent the ship, and and that's what I'm going to do.

It is always a time charter contract for trading with an option to store, but there is the way they're going to use a ship is very much as a storage. And you can see there are different functions on Bloomberg, where you can see the number of ships that have been completely standstill for more than two weeks. That's how you can identify the number of ships that have been taken for storage. And you can see that it's growing by the day. And in fact, that's what brokers are reporting also on a daily basis.

Last but not least, and Brian mentioned that, we're seeing Suezmax being taken as well. In other contango cycle, it was very rare that there were so many Suezmax being taken. That's a demonstration that clearly people are looking for spaces.

Speaker 6

Okay. And then just quickly in terms of the six month charter that you mentioned, you're getting a lot of that market is very liquid. What kind of rates are you seeing for six month inquiries?

Speaker 2

Anywhere between 65 and still 80. It depends a little bit where you're doing it. It depends if the ship is going to move or if you believe that the ship is going to move at the start or at the end of the voyage. So there are a couple of details that will influence the rate. But I think that it's maybe a little bit weaker than what we saw in the first phase, but not that much for the time being.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Sounds good. And yes, just a public service announcement for the shareholders. They have to hold the shares on May 28 and I guess June 15 to get these dividends. So selling this month is not going to get them any dividends.

But thank you so much.

Speaker 2

That's for sure. Thank you for the reminder, Randy.

Speaker 1

Got you.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 7

Hey, good morning guys. It's actually Mike on with Greg. How are you doing?

Speaker 2

Hi, Mike. Hi, Greg.

Speaker 1

Hey. So if you could just

Speaker 7

go to Slide 11 in your deck, I think this kind of sums up where the market is in a pretty concise way. And so obviously, want to dig into storage a bit. First and foremost, if you look at the demand recovery that's implied by the IA numbers, are you talking about a 20,000,000 to $25,000,000 spike in demand between now and July? Given the lead time associated with international transport. Are you guys seeing the green shoots of that kind of demand recovery yet considering that based on most of the published international estimated recovery data, it would have been starting at this point?

Speaker 2

No. But I don't think that we're the best people to see that because indeed, if there is a recovery in demand, I mean, let's not forget that there's quite a lot of product that have been stored. That's very much where you see the demand. So the demand will come from the consumers of petroleum products,

then send a signal to the refiners, and the refiners will then take more crude oil. And if they take more crude oil, they will probably process the stuff that they have put on storage themselves nearby their facilities before touching either strategic facilities or even what is on board of vessels.

Speaker 7

Yes. Maybe I can frame it a bit differently. Like we can use rate as an indicator there, but there can be a lot of momentum when you get into rates that are two and three times your reference rate, right? When you're getting into that closer to $100,000 a day, lot of that is based on owner momentum and frankly kind of individual negotiating.

Speaker 8

So I was just

Speaker 7

curious whether you've seen anything from an operational standpoint was adjusted. If I look at the data implied here shows kind of a peak in June at about 300 to 400,000,000 barrels of storage. Based on what you're seeing right now, do you think that's the right month we see a peak in storage? And obviously, this can change quite a bit, but where would you peg a cumulative floating storage peak for the market right now? I think that would help everybody quite a bit.

If you could just weigh in knowing everything could change very quickly, not holding you to it, but where is the peak?

Speaker 2

I don't think that when we when Brian was kind enough to read the forward looking statement, although the few words that we always say at the beginning of this call, was thinking this has never been so true. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today. So absolutely right, things can change very quickly. I think that the reason why we put this graph on Page 11 is because we believe that's a very likely scenario. So yes, indeed, we see the storage on board of vessels peaking the storage everywhere, but certainly on board the vessels peaking in June 2020, whether it's at the start of the month, middle of the month or the end of the month, don't ask me.

And then let's not forget that most of those contracts will last six months, and so it will take six months before you release that oil into the market. And we believe that the first oil that will be grabbed from the storage as from the land storage and the ones that are needed the facilities. But I think that it is good to monitor that and to monitor what happens until the end of this month and certainly in June. And as we've seen, the number of vessels that are being taken at the moment on storage is evolving almost every day. You see it through different reports.

You can monitor that on Bloomberg, and it's a number that continues to creep up at the moment.

Speaker 1

Mike, if I can interject, it's Brian Gallagher here. In terms of the numbers, just so everyone's clear on the call as well, I think it'd be helpful. We're taking an extraordinarily well, we we think a very extremely conservative view. The buildup we've got for May, we're assuming $14.01 4,000,000 barrels a day of disconnect. And then we see that under with pricing in a very conservative, I think, 2,000,000 additional, barrels, being the disconnect in June.

So that's why you have that flattening out. I know the work the research that you've written and others have written, would suggest that that would actually be quite a an aggressive outcome on the positive side and things were turning back to to to normal very, very quickly. So if anything, we would say the risk from the charts we're putting here are actually not trying to sort of, back our case that we believe that the storage is gonna continue to be an issue. We're not doing it because of the just the barrels. There's a there's a sense that this could actually sort of drift further to the right.

And that's before we look at what we said in our prepared remarks that we're this shipping doesn't work in real time. As you guys said just there, was alluding to, we don't anticipate that if it if this thing finishes in the June, that all the barrels will will will be redistributed in the June. Shipping doesn't work like that. And like I say, we believe there's a latent amount of storage capacity which is yet to sort of, emerge because ships are on their way to take these contracts that then go into storage. So this is gonna be a very fast moving and dynamic market as we know, but we've tried to be very conservative on this slide.

Speaker 7

Great. And I guess just kind of what I'm getting at. So there's always a degree of natural conservatism and reversion to the mean anytime you're talking about variables, so I you're stretching out for a number of quarters. What and I think that there's a lot of there's obviously a lot of ambiguity because we're in uncharted territory. So what I'm asking is if you were to overlay your estimates in terms of where you actually think the implication is that we're not your implication is we're not done building yet and that that should persist for a while and the slope of that recovery probably a bit shallower than what kind of the IEA data would suggest.

I guess what I'm asking is if you could put a vague number on where you think that peak ends up being based on what you can see in front of you right now and what month do you think that ends up being? I think a degree of clarity around that would helpful just considering we're all dealing with some pretty vague and smoothed out slopes here.

Speaker 2

We are a little bit on the same camp because who knows. But if the numbers that Brian mentioned, the 14,000,000 barrels to be built up in May, and God knows that we are early May and only 2,000,000 barrels in June, then I think that you I mean, clearly, you could see twice as many VLCCs and twice as many Suezmax being taken for storage. And then obviously, that would happen before the June. So you will clearly see that. And that would have a positive impact for the ships that are trading because there's still a lot of demand for transporting the oil.

So the spot market should be a reflection of the diminishing supply side of the world fleet. As far as the other side of the trade is concerned, I. E, when are we going to see the oil being drawn from those ships, I'm not going to repeat what I said to an earlier question on Page 13, and there are different scenarios. It seems that a slow draw is more likely to happen than a quick draw because impact on the oil price itself will mean that then you are being asked again to store just for commercial reasons, not for capacity reasons.

Speaker 7

Right. Okay. Look. That's helpful. I I think what you're using with the equities is gonna be they're trading off on ambiguity in the notion that we're rolling over instead of putting a bit of a fine point on it, which I think would be helpful.

But I can I can I can follow-up offline? I'll turn it over. Thanks for the time guys.

Speaker 2

Go ahead.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Greg Lewis from BTIG. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 8

Yes. Thank you and good afternoon everybody. Just following up a little bit differently on Mike's question. You know, I think the confusion is around the contango and the fact that I guess what you're saying is a lot of this story is going to be related more to logistical bottlenecks, which is what we saw earlier this year. I guess the way I would like to ask it is, clearly, won't be driven by traders.

It will be driven by big oil companies. Have you got any indications from them that this is happening? And and and asking it another way, if I'm a major oil company and I'm gonna take a ship and I might not necessarily have any place to put the oil, do I even have to communicate that that is a storage contract, or could I just simply charter the vessel and then lay it out on demurrage and then just kind of wait?

Speaker 2

Normally, that's not what you do because of course, when you negotiate a rate, it's between a load port and a discharge port. And then you negotiate the world scale around that and you use the rates that are being published once a year, as you know, you and negotiate a premium discount. That's what we call the world scale, which is above 100%, 100% or below 100 So it's very difficult to play a game where you say, I'm going to ask you to load the oil in the AG and then I will pretend to go to China, but I won't deliver the oil in China. So what they do is usually they ask us for option to store the oil. And then if we go to the option, then it's a rate per day.

And very quickly, the contract is being turned into a time charter contract where we're being paid in advance rather than paid at the end of the voyage. It is true that some people and I have no doubt that they didn't design that, have ended up having ships that were arriving at the discharge port and had to wait weeks, if not months in some locations. And of course, they had to wait being paid the demurrage rate. Now you have to know that the demurrage rate is usually very close to the time charter equivalent that we calculate after agreeing the freight rates. So unless your ship is waiting at a pool freight at a pool demurrage rates because the TCE was not that good, you are relatively happy about that rate as well.

So I don't think there is any design. So when you ask me the question, do we see a difference between the what we call the first phase and the second phase? Yes, in the first phase, pretty much all the people asking for a storage option were traders. And I think that we have to accept that those guys also have some limits on their balance sheet because not forget that those guys are not only trading oil, they're trading all kinds of products, and it's not pretty out there. So the amount of balance sheet commitment they can do, I think, has reached the top.

And what we're seeing today is more, I would say, the conventional oil people who are looking for space indeed, but they will be relatively straightforward about it and will rent the ship under a TC contract paying you a daily rate that is agreed between them and us.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Thanks for that, Hugo. And then just what I guess my follow-up will be around your the fleet tab on the website. I guess based on your comments, you know, a 20% of of the fleet is is is fixed. But as I look at these, you know, the new time charter vessels on this tab, it based on your comments, it's safe to should I be thinking that the incremental ones that have shown up are one year time charters, not six months?

Is that kind of the right way to think about that?

Speaker 2

No. Yes, you're right that we have this internal debate of whether we should treat six months time charter contract as spot or equivalent to the spot, and that's certainly what we do in our philosophy, in our mind, And therefore, what do we do on the website. So we're not trying to be cute about it. We're just trying to be, well, transparent if we may be and trying to extract more value out of the market. But what we have done is very much three contracts on VLCC, three contracts, six months, one of three years, option one.

And on the Suezmax, I believe that we have done one for four months and then two for eight nine months.

Speaker 0

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

That in addition would go Perfect.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Sure. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Joe Marce from Triumph. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 9

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. And as a long term Eurodav shareholder and listener of these calls, interesting nobody brings up your scrubbing decision today, but I just wanted to say I think you've shown a lot of wisdom in how you approach that issue and resisted a lot of short term pressure. So as long term shareholder, I appreciate a long term outlook. My question, if we can discuss in a bit more detail, there have been a lot of headlines about COVID-nineteen and impact on particular yards or, you know, quarantines or bringing things in and out of ports, etcetera.

And I'm wondering how that has impacted basically the special surveys, etcetera, because it seems as though it that's one of the things besides rates, which probably delays the ability of people to go back into special survey. And, you know, if you can discuss that from an operational and and and how that's played out perspective. If you have to go in for a survey now, kinda what do you do?

Speaker 2

Well, Joe, first of all, you very much for being a long term shareholder, thank you very much for your remarks. It's we are also happy about the decision that we took. As far as COVID-nineteen is concerned, in fact, you've seen three phases. You've seen the Asian phase very much dominated, at least in the news line, by China. Then it hits Europe and then it hits The U.

S. As most of the shipyards where we're doing repair and maintenance, I. E. Or special service are concerned, they are in China and sort of Singapore region. China has completely reopened for those shipyards.

But it is true that it has created a bit of a lag because for approximately six to eight weeks, it was not possible to take a ship there. We took at that time one ship in Singapore and then Singapore decided to close down. We were fortunate enough to have finished the survey and to be able to leave the shipyard, but we also know that some other ship owners had their ships just being stuck there and with no work being conducted. The same thing happened to some people still retrofitting scrubbers, and so some ships were affected there. Today, if you want to take your ship and do a special survey, you clearly can do that, mostly in China.

Singapore is a little bit more restricted or still closed at the moment, but there are plenty of yards in China that will do it for the size of ships that we have. It's still a little bit too early to assess the impact for the construction yards, building yards where you're building your new buildings. Initially, what we heard from Korea, who is sourcing a lot of things from China, is that because China had closed down for six to eight weeks, they were having delays. But it seems that the Koreans are so efficient that they have been able to recover these delays. And so they will be in a position to deliver the ships that they can or want to deliver.

Then last but not least, and that's a rumor which is unconfirmed, but we heard that some new buildings order had been canceled in China during the COVID period as the Chinese yards didn't know how long it would take to recover, and they were facing specific closing their contracts, which allowed the owner to stop the contract as it was before the start of the construction. So I don't know if it's true, but Brian, if you help me, I think we heard that about six vessels, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 10

Correct,

Speaker 2

So I mean, to be confirmed, that would be again a very good news for an order book, which already look very, very light. Great. Thank you. Our

Speaker 7

next question

Speaker 0

comes from John Chappell from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 10

Good afternoon, guys. Hi, Guido. First question first Hi, question for Hi. How are you? Thanks for squeezing me in here.

First question on, on, S and P. So well times disposals of non core tonnage, well timed purchases of of newer tonnage. Without asking exactly what the plans are next, as you see the market layout with the different possible scenarios to go out And looking at the asset values today, are you more of a buyer or a seller of assets for the next six months?

Speaker 2

I would tell you, and that's not going to surprise you, we are more of an opportunistic buyer and seller. And I think that's a little bit what we've tried to demonstrate on this slide. But quite frankly, it may be time to praise the people who are looking after S and P at Euronav because they do a fantastic job really trying to find the good opportunities, be it on the selling side, be it on the buying side. So I think that the what you see on the index, you are probably a little bit more of a seller. But again, we're not an asset trader.

I mean, we like to continue to operate a fairly large fleet. I think that's what where we're good at. But we also like to take care of our assets, and that means rejuvenation. And I think going forward, it's going to be very important to make sure that we have very, very economical ships. So swapping all our assets, which are typically consuming more for more modern assets is certainly not a bad thing, especially when you can sell ahead of the index at the time of selling and below the index at time of buying.

So if we find more opportunities there, we're going to continue. As far as growth, because this is more rejuvenation exercise, as far as growth is concerned, I think that Euronav will continue to be opportunistic, will continue to be there to try to further consolidate the market, further grow the platform. I think we have a platform which demonstrated it's working fairly well, very strong balance sheet, but that doesn't mean our operational leverage is not good. It's, in fact, as demonstrated in this quarter last quarter and hopefully, next one, phenomenal operational leverage. And at the same time, very, very solid company in case there are some weakness.

And we know we are humble enough to never predict what the next quarter will be. We can exchange views. As I said earlier, everything that we say is true as far as today's is concerned, but tomorrow may be very different. So I think a big consolidation, a big fleet acquisition, to the extent it's possible, will more likely take place in the down part of the cycle. But as far as picking up assets here and there, it will depend on what we can find and whether we see that there is value into them or not.

Speaker 10

Okay. Thanks, Virgo. And second one, I don't know if it's for Brian or for you guys. I think we've beaten the storage horse to death, and you guys did a really great presentation on it. But if we're trying to kind of figure out why the storage number keeps rising, all the probably good things you talked about and yet the rates collapsed.

I'm trying to to put those two together. And, you the producers were going, you know, full bore in April, and now it seems that they're scaling back in May. So is there any way to kinda gauge the actual transport demand and the impact that that's having as producers scale back in May, due to the, you know, the beneficial impact of, throughout the start?

Speaker 1

Maybe Parjeev, might take that

Speaker 2

one difficult question to Brian. Yeah. Go ahead.

Speaker 1

Sure. Jonathan, yeah, look. I mean, as we're all a little bit groping around in the dark a little bit, in a in a fast moving dynamic situation, we're we're no different. I think we feel there's, as as the industry does, that there's another leg to the storage play to come short term from what we see from some of the plans and what we see from some of the, the forward cargo patterns. But in terms of the the demand side of things, yeah, you're exactly, right.

There is wish I there was the one variable. I think we have to remember that roughly 50 to 55% of of oil and demand and uses in in transportation. So our view would be it's gonna be more sluggish as a recovery, but I know there are other views, and and you've been very forthright in public this week in terms of the the sentiment is obviously very important as well. And as we've seen this week with the oil price falling, or in the last week or so rather, the oil price falling and the contango coming down, that's obviously, provided a level of support, that we had for contango and and and for higher rates, has dropped materially. I think it's just we have to get as Hugo said, right at the start of this call, the volatility is something which we're all used to on this call and people that follow the stocks.

But even, you know, someone who's experienced with you in this space, it's been incredibly volatile, on on another level over the last two months. I think it's just gonna be a moving piece of dynamic, and and it wouldn't surprise us to see, continued volatility in this space. I know it's not a very adequate answer maybe, but it is just very Early. Until we get some Yeah. Until we get some tangible signs of of lockdown finishing, I don't think there's a there's a there's a model out there.

In Europe, we're seeing Germany next week making start making moves, but we're gonna have other economies like Spain and and The UK, which are gonna take longer. So it's gonna be, I think, a case by case basis, unfortunately.

Speaker 10

All right. That was helpful, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for your time. Thanks.

Speaker 0

Next question is Our Chris next question comes from Chris Wetherbee from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 11

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Maybe a short term one and then maybe a longer term one. First, in terms of the coverage that you procured in 2Q, just kind of curious how much of that spills over into the third quarter, if you could talk a little bit about sort of how that sort of short term as well as your term. Obviously, we wouldn't go with sort of the longer term charters that you've signed up, but in terms of the shorter term stuff, how much spills over into 3Q?

Speaker 2

Very little. I think that we have booked less than 5% of the third quarter at this point in time.

Speaker 11

Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. And then I guess the bigger picture question that I think is probably important here is understanding how this sort of dynamic plays out. We've all been trying to get at it different ways.

You're talking about storage and then maybe sort of the unwind of this process. But I think you bring up a very good point about the longer term uncertainty, which prevents the order book from being added to in a material way. So I guess as you start to think out beyond sort of the next impact of the storage drawdown and maybe how the fleet development looks beyond sort of that, I don't know if it's a twelve month period here that we're talking about. How do you think that plays out? What would the market look like in late twenty twenty one or 2022 in a scenario with significantly depleted order book?

I don't think we've seen that over the course of the last many decades. I guess I'm kind of curious how that plays out. And how do you think the sort of the ownership structure of the industry might look in terms of consolidation? We've all hoped for that. Is this a potential catalyst for that?

Speaker 2

JOSE Many very good points that you are mentioning or asking, Chris. Again, I'm not sure it's very straightforward for us to see where it's going to pan out, but something's got to give. At the moment, are not buying ships or not ordering ships, I believe, for two reasons. The first reason is because there is some sort of uncertainty. And you will remember that most orders are usually placed at the end of a sort of a downturn in our industry or the very beginning of an uptick.

And then people order ships and they hope to get them before the next cycle, before the uptick cycle is over. We haven't seen that. We've had a good Q4, a good Q1. We're going to get a good Q2, and yet the order book is very flat. So that should tell you something.

What it tells you is that and we've said that many times over this call, there is too much uncertainty, there is too much volatility. I think it also explains partly why our share price are not performing, and here I'm talking collectively, better given the amount of money we are creating. The second leg to that is probably even more important. It's about the technology. So are you going to order a conventional ship?

Or are you going to order a dual fuel LNG ship? Or are you going to wait for yet another technology to emerge, which clearly nobody knows what it's going to be? And a lot of people are talking about hydrogen being carried on fuel cells or ammonia or you name it. And I think that, that technology will not be ready before 2023. So people may start ordering it in maybe 2022, that's very, very early stage.

If So we try to draw a picture of what's going to happen, I think that any market weakness can be quickly resolved by a number of ships being old enough to hit the scrap yards, recycling yards. We'll continue to see relatively low order because even if the prices go down for dual fuel LNG, it is not yet demonstrated that this is a future proof ship because technology may not be the right one compared to other technology, which are supposed to emerge. And so I think that as far as our market is concerned, be it in growth in terms of oil consumption or in decline in terms of oil consumption, we will manage and any period of weakness should not be lasting too long and certainly should last shorter than what we have seen in the past. So that's the reason why we are relatively optimistic about it. We have no more clues than you guys about the future, but we know that we have a couple of recipes to fix whatever problem we may face.

So let's watch all these indicators in the future, and let's make sure that not too many orders are being placed. And the last thing I would like to add there is obviously the yards for the yards, it's going be a very difficult period of time. And I have no doubt that the yards at some point will make special offers, be it on conventional ships or on dual fuel LNG ships. And I think at that time, it would be normal that you see a couple of orders, but it's not sustainable to do too many of those orders at discounted price, obviously. So let's not be panicking or arming if we see a couple of orders being placed.

That's not going to change the market in a big way.

Speaker 10

Okay. All right. That's fair. That's a

Speaker 11

helpful answer. I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Nolan from Stifel. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks. It's been a long call and I appreciate you guys fitting me in. I wanted to ask about something that you know, hasn't been asked yet. But thinking through the decision of holding back on consuming the fuel that you are currently storing on your own ship, could you maybe walk me through the idea of doing that rather than consuming it? And specifically, maybe the thinking around the possibility of generating cash flow from that asset by storing for third parties?

You use what you have and then you can actually generate some revenue on it. How does that weigh into the calculation of using versus not using?

Speaker 2

Kevin, thank you very much for that question. It's very important for people to understand. So we have two ULCCs. We have the Europe and we have the Oceania. And the Europe is indeed being marketed for storage purposes.

And I would say it's always trading in storage purposes, and those ships are moving. But it's true that they tend to stay in location longer than conventional VLCCs. Because they are not conventional size or of a conventional size, they don't fetch the same rate. And that is explained relatively easily by the fact that you need to play a market with the way the market is structured. The market is structured for 1,000,000 barrel lot, 2,000,000 barrel lot.

So whenever you have a ship and you can offer space, which is 3.2, it's a bit of an odd cargo size. And so you need to combine it. It's not easy. And when you need to discharge it, it's also not easy because you will need to sell it in one, two or three sorry, in two or three lots or more. And when you look at historically, those ships have performed with far less volatility than the VLCC.

So yes, today, the Europe is under a contract for 50,000. The charter had an option to extend it last month for another six months at 50,000. We were expecting to do that, and it didn't. And so we have rented the ship to someone else at a slightly lower rate. So let's make sure that we don't we are not being confused with the lost opportunity on the Oceania and comparing her with VLCC because that's not the case.

Secondly, why haven't we consumed or why did we stop consuming the fuel oil that is indeed apart from the Oceania? Simply because we wanted to see whether the market was very volatile, in other words, whether the oil price and the fuel oil price was going down very, very quickly and would rebound very quickly up. And obviously, that's not what we have seen. So now what we are doing is we continue to consume a little bit from the Oceania. So we have a mix of procurement from the market, the Oceania.

We are buying wholesale in large quantities. We benefit from a discount, and then we distribute from the Oceania to our fleet. And most of it is coming from the market, but some of it is coming from the Oceania. So we are trying to blend it down. And obviously, the figure that Liv showed you, the 56,000,000, that was at the end of the quarter.

When you look at the price of gas oil or the price of LSFO, it's obviously higher than that today. So I think that we were already right in a way not to consume it directly but to wait until it bounces back, which is the case today. Will it bounce back to the level at which we acquired it? Probably not. But let's not forget that the game plan was really to assure the quality, to assure that we could smoothen out the exacerbation of the market because it was a new market.

We did that. So even if we consume it at a price that is slightly above the market, I don't think that it's that people will notice it very strongly in our P and L. And again, I don't think that it's the end of that story. We have learned a lot of things about fuel procurement. And Dutch wood, we have not had any bad stems on board the vessels, whereas we've heard a lot of horror stories of LSFO being obviously compliant, but creating a lot of problems in the engine room.

We haven't had that because we have been able to test all the material. So again, let's not focus too much on the money that is lost on paper at the moment. You can count on us to try to create value or at least limit the loss. And again, very, very happy not to have spent EUR $350,000,000 on scrubbers.

Speaker 4

Yes. I certainly would be, too.

Speaker 0

My next question, and this is

Speaker 4

just really a clarification. It might have been a missed question, but you were talking through sort of the thinking of dividend payouts. I just wanted to make sure that I understood clearly. So as it relates to the second quarter and the earnings on the second quarter specifically, investors should expect for that 80% of the net income to be paid out. Is that correct?

Yes.

Speaker 2

So the policy is actually relatively simple. The policy is that targeted 80% of the net income to be redistributed to shareholders. And you have two ways to redistribute that to shareholders. You have dividends and you have share buyback. Earlier in this call, as I mentioned, I said that we're not entirely happy with the share price, and I think that no one should be on this call even today.

It's still a discount to NAV. And the reason why we haven't done any buyback in the first quarter is because it was very volatile. And at times, it was at NAV and at times, it wasn't at the NAV. And we're not going to constantly intervene like if we wanted to support the share price on any weakness. If the weakness is prolonged and we continue to see a very big discount compared to NAV, then I think that we will use that tool in the toolbox.

So today, I cannot tell you what the level of dividends will be compared to the P and L because some of it some of those returns may come with the share buyback, which I think will create long lasting values for shareholders. But again, it's not going to be all or nothing, right? I mean, dividends are important. We understand that in today's world, very few companies are capable of distributing dividends and certainly capable of distributing as much dividends as we are doing. We had a new guidance in January.

We thought it was very important to commit to it and ensure that we are serious even in the current circumstances. We are very serious to distribute 80% of our net income after capital gains, of course, of dividend. We're showing you that this is a reality, and we hope that the market will take it as the reality. And if they don't and the share price remains weak, then we may use other tools.

Speaker 4

Okay. All right. That helps a lot. I appreciate that. I guess, I don't know if there well, at this point, I'll turn it over, although I do it's been a fun market, I'm looking forward to seeing some more traffic lights at some point there, Brian.

Speaker 7

So thanks a lot, guys.

Speaker 2

We didn't do the traffic light because we thought that it would confuse people. In the five different segments, some of it would have been green and some of it would have been red at the same time. And it can't be amber because it was two distinct causes for being red or for being green. But we like the idea, and we'll certainly come back to it when times are a little bit more certain. Apologies for that.

Speaker 12

Thanks, Ben. Our

Speaker 0

next question comes from Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 12

Yes. Hi there. I know it's quite late in the call, but just had a couple of quick follow ups. And maybe just as we think about the 95,000 a day number for the TI pool average so far for 2Q. I know Brian discussed the lag effect rates relative to the indexes we're seeing and obviously bunker prices having come off is playing a role.

When we think about also the the time charters that you've entered into, were those done in the TI pool that maybe is kind of maybe is is factored into the 95,000 and thus is making it look or appear lower?

Speaker 2

No. None of those time charters were done in the TI pool. And that's not the reason. A very good question because we were surprised when we saw most of the analysts, so you're certainly not the only one out there, thinking that the market was a lot higher than what it was. And the only thing that we could say at that time is the market is always volatile and every single fixtures is a mini ocean in itself.

But what we saw also during this quarter, and that's usually is not the case, is that the market was very fragmented in the sense that if you were doing an AG Far East voyage, it would certainly pay you way more than U. S. Gulf Far East, which traditionally or in last ten years two years has been paying a lot more. So when you assess the market as being, okay, it must be $120 a day, in fact, it was $80,000 on one side and 150,000 on the other side. But obviously, the two voyages not being the same length, the average was not 120,000.

The average was probably much lower than that. So that is certainly one of the reasons. The second thing that I would like to mention here is we live in a world where the voyages on average are taking longer because in the voyages, you also need to take into account the delays in port. And what it means is that very often you're going to have the voyage that will last more than a quarter. So you really need to combine Q1 with Q2, Q2 with Q3, Q3 with Q4 and so on to have a better average picture of what the market is.

I mean, we are all sitting here dividing the year in four, but does it make sense in the VLCC market? Probably not. So let's take a sort of a deeper view. I think that we were much stronger than what the market or the analysts had predicted in Q1. We're very pleased, but we don't call that an outperformance.

So I think that you have to mix Q1 and Q2 to arrive to a sort of average performance for the fleet. And it's the same when you compare our results with the index or the index that you're using or when you compare our results with other companies. I think that you have to take more than one quarter to differentiate between companies.

Speaker 12

Yes, that's fair. And that's a good point, Hugo. And then just finally, you and and apologies if you've answered this to an extent, but on the VLSFO, in storage, you by kind of staying away from it for some time here, one, is there any issues of it degrading? And then and then two, do you think there's an opportunity to maybe offload it, sell it into the market, and then maybe make that vessel available for floating storage contract on a commercial basis?

Speaker 2

Yes. So I partly answered the question with Ben earlier. And it's difficult to offload and sell it to someone. You crystallize your losses, whereas what we have done so far is quite frankly, well, not crystallizing the loss. And then of course, you have to look at the opportunity cost.

And the opportunity cost, as I explained, for this particular type of vessel is not that great. So we're not losing a potential $270,000 a day contract. If that was the case, we would have done it on the other vessel, the Europe, and we haven't done that. And then, of course, we would have tried to get rid of that product as quickly as possible. I think that we will continue to look at ways to create value.

And when I say create value, we certainly try to decrease the paper loss that we have at the moment. The market is helping us. Everything from oil to other products is going up. So it's okay. I would say it's okay.

Can I just add something on your previous question? Because I forgot to say that one of the reasons why the indexes are probably ahead of the physical market when it comes to time charter equivalent is also because there's been certainly in the last three months, there's been clearly an abuse of the subjects that are being put when you fix a vessel. So the subject is a concept that was invented to make sure that the vessel was technically acceptable to perform a contract and certainly not to be treated as an option to keep the vessels for two or three days in your fees. And then if you think that if see that market is going up, you take it. If you see the market is going down, you let it go.

And there's been an abuse a clear abuse in the market because of that. And I think that the indexes are much more geared towards the ships on subs rather than fully fixed. So what you see on subs has been there's been a lot of failure and on average, more failures than in usual times simply because there's been a lot of volatility. And that might be also a distortion that has created this false expectation for rates to be even higher.

Speaker 12

Yeah. That thanks, Hugo. That that's actually a very important point. And I guess it's something that, you know, really showed its, itself about six months ago after the Costco sanction. And we've been hearing more about that.

Is that something that has really developed here over the past year, or is this just something that long term has always existed and just become much more visible now?

Speaker 2

It has certainly developed far more, and the more volatility you will have in our markets, and here, I'm taking I'm speaking daily or weekly volatility, the more you will see this abuse continuing. And there's very little thing that we can do. Obviously, we like to service our customers, but there is a little bit of a guarantee that we're not seeing at the moment. But initially, as I said, the subjects were only because vessel could not be inspected physically. The certificates, the OKIMS or the vetting reports could not be done at the time of negotiating the rate.

The terminals need to accept the vessels. So you need to check a number of things. But if your paper are in order, there's absolutely no reason why you should be failed. You have agreed a rate, and that rate should be once that if your paper are in order, should be once that you fix. And unfortunately, at the moment, that's not how the market is playing this subject.

So I think that as an industry, this is something that we should address. I don't think that Euronav on its own can address it, but it's certainly something that has increased recently because the market has been more volatile and easy to drop the vessels when the market is slightly going down and to keep the vessel when the market is going up.

Speaker 12

Yes, definitely. And DHT made those same comments yesterday. Okay. Well, appreciate the dialogue. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Jay Mintzmyer from Value Investor's Edge. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 13

Hi, good morning, Hugo. Good morning, Brian. We got quite the marathon on the call today, but congratulations on an excellent result.

Speaker 1

You. You

Speaker 2

for your to ask.

Speaker 13

Of course. Yeah. Most of the questions have been fantastic. I think we've covered most of the points. One question I did have is on the Nuance's repurchase.

I get a lot of questions about that. And I know you kind of bounced back and forth between the 10% and the 20% authorization. So just to make things clear, when does that kick in officially? Are you in any sort of blackout? Or post earnings, is that repurchase available?

Speaker 2

Yes. So until the next AGM, we still have authorization to do buybacks. And those authorizations are valid for five years. So the last time we asked was five years ago, and we got authority to do 20%. As we were preparing for this AGM and we had it's not an AGM, it's an SGM, in fact.

We have asked a question because we also need a quorum. I don't want to enter into too many technical details, but in other words, we have been able to test the waters. And to our surprise, most of the proxy agencies recommend to vote against more than 10% share buyback. So when we asked 20%, it was refused with or without quorum. And we hope that the 10% will be accepted, but we believe that it will be accepted because on the one that we just organized, which where we didn't have a quorum, it was accepted.

And so on the next one, we don't need a quorum, and so we hope that the agencies will vote in the same direction. I personally believe that it's very strange that you guys, you guys being all the investors out there, are being confident that the agencies represents truly what you want us to do. And clearly, we have never said that if we do share buy back, we won't do dividends. We've demonstrated that pretty much every other years where we did both. And I think that share buybacks are there to create long term value for shareholders.

So they are a great tool in the toolbox. And I'm not sure I understand why those voting why those proxy agencies are recommending to vote against more than 10%. But hopefully, we will get that 10% by the May, and that will be valid for the next five years. And if we run out of that because we have bought already 10%, then we can ask at the next AGM, etcetera, etcetera. So I don't think it's a big subject, but it's true that I'm a bit frustrated with the recommendation from the proxy agencies.

Speaker 13

Excellent. Thank you, Hugo. Yes, they say don't look a gift horse in the mouth, but it looks like most investors are taking the horse out behind the barn. So you can get that repurchase activated. I think it will do good things for you.

Last time we talked, we looked at your leverage and look, your book leverage you mentioned on the slides is 42% book after the dividend, after the large dividend. And of course, your book is very conservative because of your depreciation policy, right, that goes to twenty years to zero instead of maybe twenty or twenty five to scrap. So if anything, your leverage is lower. Last time we talked, you mentioned that you agreed that your leverage is quite low, and you said there's actually room if you wanted to, to expand that leverage maybe up to 50% max. You have about $1,000,000,000 in liquidity.

Is that still something you would look into if you wanted to maybe, accelerate those repurchases or pick up some distressed tonnage? Or are you comfortable where you're at now with leverage?

Speaker 2

Well, you're absolutely right in your analysis that you have to take into account all those elements at the same time in order to decide what you do with dividends, what you do with share buyback and potentially what you do with acquisitions, but we already commented earlier on this call that we feel that the values are probably a little bit too high unless we see distressed opportunity or an interesting opportunity. Last year, we did share buyback, and together with the dividend that we distribute was indeed more than our target, 80%. This is a conversation that we are constantly having amongst ourselves, but also with our Board. And until the time we decide, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to tell you much more about it. So you will hear about it after the events.

But it's true that with the kind of balance sheet liquidity, so balance sheet and leverage and the liquidity that we have with the kind of outlook that we have for Q2 and let's see what how the market positions itself in Q3. We have a lot of flexibility to do a lot of things. And the idea is not to rush ourselves in one thing, but to see and analyze a little bit how things are developing. I think that we shouldn't be ashamed of what we have done so far. The fact that we are underlevered is also because the market has developed very, very strongly.

And so keeping 20% is indeed quite a lot the more the market is generous with you. But it also builds up some reserves in order to continue the consolidation game when market will be weaker. So one way or another, the shareholders will benefit from it.

Speaker 13

Excellent. I think that makes sense, Hugo. Well, thank you very much for your good leadership at Euronav, and we look forward to the next results.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thank you very much for yours.

Speaker 0

And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we will be concluding today's question and answer session and today's presentation. We do thank you for joining today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much, everyone. See you next time.