Frontline - Q2 2023
August 24, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Today, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2023 Frontline PLC conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one and one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Lars Barstad. Please go ahead.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you. Dear all, thank you for listening in to Frontline's second quarter earnings call. In the second quarter, we had a very untypical spike for VLCC and Suezmax towards the end, and this put us in a position to make some extra cash and also to carry some value into the third quarter. Most interestingly, this spike was caused by minor weather delays, telling a tale of how narrowly balanced our market is. The macroeconomic headwinds seem to have a very muted impact on our little part of the global macro puzzle, and we'll get to that later in the presentation. I think it's worth mentioning that in the markets like these, Frontline's efficient and transparent platform comes to shine in effectively turning revenues to shareholder returns.
Our running costs remains fairly stable, as expressed in our cash break-even levels, and all the incremental income goes straight to the bottom line and back to you, shareholders. Before I give the word to Inger, let's look at our TC numbers on slide 3 in the deck. In the second quarter, Frontline achieved $64,000 per day on our VLCC fleet, $61,700 per day on our Suezmax fleet, and $52,900 per day on our LR2/Aframax fleet. I hope you're all fairly comfortable with these numbers, and we are back to a somewhat reverted earnings relationship between our segments, where the VLCC makes the most.
We have secured quite firm numbers as we progress into Q3, with 74% of our VLCC days booked at $53,200 per day, 67% of our Sumax days fixed at $48,800 per day, and 57% of our LR2/Afra days at $40,500 per day. And again, to remind you, all these numbers are on a load to discharge basis, and they will be affected by the amount of ballast days that we end up having towards the end of Q3. Now I'll let Inger take you through the financial highlights.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Thanks, Lars, and good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let's then turn to slide four, profit statement, and look at some highlights. In the second quarter of 2023, we recorded the highest second quarter profit since 2008 of $230.7 million or $1.4 per share. Adjusted profit came in at $210 million or $0.95 per share. Revenues came in at $513 million. We declared a cash dividend of $0.80 per share for the second quarter of 2023. I will mention that following the transition to IFRS, dry docking costs will be capitalized and subsequently depreciated over the period to the next scheduled dry docking, which is 2.5-5 years.
In the second quarter, dry docking costs of $1 million have been capitalized, and one vessel was dry docked in this quarter. In addition, I will mention that the company revised the estimated useful life of its vessels from 25 years to 20 years, effective January 1, 2023. Let's then look at some balance sheet highlights on slide five. The company has no remaining newbuilding commitments, as the company took delivery of the 2 last VLCC newbuildings from Korea and sometime in January 2023. The company has strong liquidity of $719 million in cash and cash equivalents, including undrawn amount of unsecured facility, marketable securities, and minimum cash requirements for bank as per the 30th of June, 2023. We have a healthy leverage ratio of 51%.
Then lastly, let's look at the cash flow potential on slide 6. We estimate industry-leading cash break-even rates of $22,700 fleet average, including dry dock cost for 8 Suezmax tankers in 2023, 4 in the third quarter and four in the fourth quarter. The Q2 2023 fleet average spot, excluding dry dock, was $7,300 per day. We noticed from this graph on the right-hand side that free cash flow indicates strong potential return. If we assume VLCC TCE rates of $75,000 per day, with 5.5-year historic spread to VLCC for Suezmax and LR2 tankers, the annual free cash flow potential is $1.4 billion or $6.34 per share, which translates into a free cash flow yield of 36%.
With this, I leave the word to Lars again.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you, Inger. So let's go to slide seven and look at, you know, what's going on in the current market. So, we've just been through a very volatile summer market. Hopefully, it's coming to an end. The key themes have been Asia Pacific continue to pull volume. We're seeing increased supply from what I refer to as new exporters, as you can see on the bottom right-hand side chart. This is United States and Brazil. They're not really new, but they are kind of growing at least. And then Guyana, which is like the added spice to the mix here.
As OPEC cuts production predominantly around the Middle East, and with the continuous pull from Asia Pacific, we've seen ton-miles increase, and benefiting, we also see ton-miles in particular. Year-on-year or quarter Q2 last year versus Q2 this year, demand in the Asia Pacific region is actually up 1.8 million barrels per day. That's quite significant, considering most of that oil is being freighted on tankers, and it represents about a 5% increase in tonnage or volume for going on shipping. And that's those 5% is not taking into account a ton-mile effect. We started to see that the Russian price cap started to bite in Q2. I'll come a bit back to that later.
We are also seeing refinery margins improving as we move towards the end of, of maintenance season. And, we have the background music of, basically every, analyst under the sun expecting oil demand to grow by about 2 million barrels per day for the second half. Let's go to slide eight, and, I'll go through the Russian price cap and, what effect that has had on, our markets. So the G7 oil price cap came into effect in, December 2022, and it was set at $60 per barrel for Russian crudes. We're using, on the bottom left-hand side there, Urals as a reference oil price, and it's predominantly the quality one discusses, around Russian supply. With the price moving above the price cap, it's become increasingly complex to freight Russian oil.
We've seen various kind of policies amongst owners, whether if they're willing to service the Russian market or not, year to date. But what we have seen now recently is that some of these owners are less lenient to lift Russian barrels, basically because it's very hard to argue you're doing it inside the framework of the current sanctions. These vessels are then returning to the non-Russian market or the plain vanilla Suezmax and Aframax market, and this has put pressure on rates as obviously the capacity then has increased, particularly in these fleet sizes. Product exports has been less affect, it hasn't yet kind of traded above the price cap. It is actually flirting with the price cap now, where the price cap is actually at $100 for gasoline.
Not that gasoline is a big product for Russian exports, but it's a kind of you know, it's a product to represent where product where it is. And gasoline in Singapore is now trading very close to $100 per barrel. We've seen Russian exports kind of falling quite rapidly due to this. We've lost 1.7 million barrels per day of Russian exports since the peak in April. Four hundred thousand barrels of that is products, and we see that the fall there is less pronounced. But 1.3 million barrels per day of crude or fuel oil has been lost during the last five, six months. It's gonna be very interesting to see how this develops further.
We're starting to see analysts arguing for the Russian-controlled fleet or the Russian owned fleet struggling to maintain volumes, which is evident looking at the export statistics. The only way they can kind of replace the capacity there now would be to actually go into the non-Russian trading fleet and purchase more assets. There are actually, in fact, fairly high numbers of vessels that's needed in order for them to maintain their export levels, you know, should they want to do so. They're obviously a part of OPEC plus, so the official argument will always be that they're working in line with the OPEC strategy, with the voluntary cuts.
But we believe that it can be very interesting to see what happens in both the market for older purchases - older vessels in you know in the asset classes we trade, particularly then Aframax and Suezmax, as this progresses. Let's move to slide nine and look at what's going on in the refinery world. I think it's important - we almost forget because we've had so many black swans and whatnot in the tanker industry for the last few years. But the seasonal summer slowness or softness is, in fact, caused by the scheduling of refinery maintenance. On the bottom left-hand side there, we see kind of global refinery outages. These are basically refining volume that's been taken out due to maintenance work.
We see it's a very distinct kind of highs in April, and you know, likewise, there's also a distinct high in September, October, where refineries are shut in, basically, to do maintenance work so that they can run effectively, either for the summer season or for the winter season. This has you know, fairly, fairly significant effect on demand for oil, and also demand for tonnage then. What we see now is that we're heading in towards kind of on the refinery turnaround side, we're actually fairly low. But we're going you know, we are going to go into the high turnaround season in September, October. So it actually you know, looking at it on face value, it looks you know, fairly bearish for tanker demand.
One has to remember that the tankers are fixed ahead. We'll see now it's being fixed for mid-September, and the oil will land, you know, in the various refining regions by end September. If you look at West African crude, that's being fixed today will actually land in the beginning of October. Then U.S. Gulf, we're actually already fixing for oil that will land in the mid-October. So basically, it's over the next few weeks, we will start to see kind of the purchasing managers on behalf of the refineries starting to plan to bring more oil into the refinery as they come out of turnaround. Looking at the refinery margins, they are firming.
This is obviously a result of refinery outages, but is also a fairly strong signal of demand, kind of, expected to look fairly okay. The diesel margins are leading the pace, and this is typical for the season. The winter season is kind of predominantly a diesel market, at least historically, due to heating. Whilst the summer market is more a gasoline market due to driving. We had a very mild winter last year in the Northern Hemisphere. Well, the jury is still out, but will we have that occurring again? Let's move to slide 10, and this should be known to everyone who's been on a Frontline call before. Basically, the fleets and order books.
It's kind of the notable thing to comment on in this quarter is actually the increase in ordering for LR2s. We've seen 50 new LR2 orders being placed in the first half of this year, and that's bringing up the order book to close to 20%. We also use a measure of, you know, a 20-year effective lifetime for trading a tanker. This 20-year is actually more like a 15-year for an LR2. LR2s have coated tanks, and the coating in these tanks will kind of lose its quality over years. So, charters are very hesitant to book a clean LR2 above 15 years.
If you use that as a measure, about 22.9% of the LR2 fleet is above, is going to be above 15 years this year, then the order book actually doesn't really look that, that worrying. What is worrying is the lack of order books for VLCCs and Suezmax. We have the highest percentage, of kind of the population above 20 years, we've ever seen. You know, 108 VLCCs will be either above or past 20 years, this year. 85 Suezmaxes will be above or past 20 years this year. And on the order book side, if you go into the market to book a tanker now, and particularly on the VLCC, you're looking at a second half 2026 delivery.
That's three years from now, and it doesn't really add up to the, the, to the overall expectations of oil demand remaining fairly firm for the next 3-4 years. With that, I'm gonna move into the summary side on slide 11. We're very happy to report the highest second quarter profit since 2008, $210 million, and a cash dividend of $0.80 per share. In the last 4 quarters, if my record is correct, Inger, we've paid out $2.72.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
That's correct, yeah.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
With an average share price during that period of $13.9, that's a 20% yield. So, quite impressive, I believe. Asian demand continues to be supportive and OPEC cuts are driving ton miles. The price cap on Russia crude is starting to bite, and what's gonna happen next there? Seasonal refinery maintenance coming to an end, and margins are improving, and this is what we're gonna kind of see reflected in the... particularly the VLCC, and then secondly, the Suezmax market over the next few weeks. Ordering is still muted for the bigger vessels, for the 1 million barrel and the 2 million barrel vessels, but LR2s, we've seen a lot of activity in the last couple of months.
How the big question is obviously how the winter will play out this year. But then I think kind of the background music and the absolute biggest question in the tanker industry going forward is represented by the chart at the bottom here. The tanker order book as a % of % of fleet. I've just taken it from 1996 to show kind of a little bit of the history behind us. We see the dark kind of blue line, which is the product tankers that started to react, but not to any extent so far. And then we see the gray one being difficult to see, which is supposed to be the pipeline of the world on crude oil. Virtually nothing on order. So with that, I think we can open up to questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by, we will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. The question comes from line of Jonathan Chappell from Evercore. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Jon Chappell (Senior Managing Director, Transportation Equity Research)
Thank you, and good afternoon. Excuse me. Lars, you mentioned in this closing slide, the question about the winter. Everything seems cued up pretty well from, you know, the inventories to the refinery maintenance coming to an end, to the IEA's outlook for the second half sequential recovery. What can go wrong this winter? Is it just a macro event where oil demand continues to disappoint? Is there something related to Russia? Do the, you know, Saudis become more emboldened and keep more oil off the market so there's a bigger inventory draw, but the tankers don't see the demand? Where can we miss, you know, the typical seasonal recovery that seems set up so well?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
I think there's two key factors there that needs to be watched. One is obviously China. You know, there's mixed signals coming from... So in our little part of the world, as I mentioned, which is transport of oil, China looks to run on all cylinders. Their import numbers are kind of record high every month. And that doesn't tally up with kind of all the other macroeconomic data coming out of China.
So if they're building, you know, building a lot of inventories into the winter here, they have, at least historically, they've been able to kind of, you know, kind of take the foot off the gas pedal and suddenly disappoint by 1 or 2 million barrels per day in their import program. And if that happens, we'll, you know, that's obviously not gonna be very, very bullish. So I think that's the big question, you know, are they running in preparation for other stimulus that will stimulate their economy to need basically all this oil? Are they importing in order to have the ability to export into the winter season?
Or are they basically trying to hoard crude oil before an expected, you know, price increase on crude oil or others? You know, it's very difficult to know, but I think that's the thing to watch. And, you know, kind of with the imports next to all the economic news we're getting out of China, it's, you know, one tends to become a little bit worried. Secondly, it's obviously the weather, and the weather we can't really control. You know, whether if, if, you know, we're gonna have a repeat of last year, which was fairly warm, or if we're gonna, you know, have a proper full-on winter, which is gonna kind of affect demand on the positive side.
So I think those two are the key factors that at least I'm a little bit concerned about.
Jon Chappell (Senior Managing Director, Transportation Equity Research)
Okay, that makes sense. Just a follow-up question on strategy. I thought it was interesting you noted the dearth. I mean, we all know that there's not much of an order book, but you said it's even a concern that there's not enough ships to offset some of the older ships. You know, it's kind of rare to see Frontline without anything on your new building plan. You know, given that give and take of not getting a ship for three years or, you know, the economics of it versus maybe a need at some point in the back of the decade, how do we think about your capital investment on new builds or secondhand ships going forward?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Well, I think on the new build, we are definitely sitting on the fence. We've been kind of commenting on that before. You need flat out north of $50,000 per day in 20-year, you know, every day for 20 years, in order to make sense of going and ordering a new build at these levels. And then obviously, you have the technology discussion kind of adding to that. So we don't see that as a you know, good proposition. On the secondhand market, yes, we will always be looking, but I think, as you also know, there's been extremely little modern tonnage out offered.
You know, there has been a couple of deals done, but it's been, you know, very, very slow, so it hasn't really been a big option. So, and this is where I've kind of alluded to in previous calls that, you know, maybe we are in a harvest period. It's-
Jon Chappell (Senior Managing Director, Transportation Equity Research)
Mm-hmm
Lars Barstad (CEO)
... it's difficult to say.
Jon Chappell (Senior Managing Director, Transportation Equity Research)
Would you harvest by selling any more older tonnage, or are you just happy with the, with the fleet as it stands today?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
I think we're fairly content with the composition of the fleet. Of course, we have some units that kind of further down the line we'll probably look to let go of. But we you know, we're fairly comfortable. You know, the you know some of the older vessels we hold are modified or derated and so forth, so they're actually holding pretty well into the to the you know the things to come on the regulatory side. And so we're fairly content.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Great. Thank you very much, Lars.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thanks, John.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank. The line is open. Please ask your question.
Chris Robertson (Research Associate, Shipping)
Hi, good morning. Good afternoon. This is Chris Robertson on for Amit.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Hi, Chris.
Operator (participant)
Hi.
Chris Robertson (Research Associate, Shipping)
Hi, Lars, I just wanted to go back to the discussions around the supply coming back into the market from the Russia trade. So as these ships come back in, are they in the penalty box at all in terms of returning to the quote-unquote vanilla market? Are they trading normally? How much of that supply, you know, just won't ever come back? Can you talk about that a bit more?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Yeah, it's, you know, we've been kind of previously talking about the dark fleet, which is obviously the Venezuelan and the Iranian trading vessels, and they are, you know, kind of in a penalty box forever. And then we have the gray fleet, which, you know, maybe kind of have questionable trading history and will struggle to get accepted by kind of compliant charters, put it that way. And then, you know, we have the non-trading Russian fleet or the, you know, just touching the Russian oil, you know, on a few occasions fleet, and whatnot. And it's, you know, it's, it's shades of gray, if that makes sense.
What we've observed when some of these units come back to, say, the West African TD20 market, is that, they might have to discount a little bit, in order to get going. But we haven't seen a huge resistance from charterers to, you know, as long as they don't have kind of shady, SDhistory in their, kind of, papers or have kind of activity that, can't explain, they're actually, fine to get back. And I think we need to remind everyone of, you know, transport of Russian crude that, you know, is legal as long as it's within the sanctions.
Chris Robertson (Research Associate, Shipping)
Right. Yeah, that was good color. My follow-up question is related to your comments around the order book and then the lack of scrapping. As you think about twenty-year-old vessels, could you give some commentary around how much of a discount those vessels are currently earning in the market compared to the average? Because if it's at a shallow discount, it would imply these ships might stick around for longer.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Yeah, no, I think it's a question of that portion of the fleet is not really engaged in the, you know, normal freight market that we at least compete in. It's been a long while since we've seen a +20 vessel fixed by any commercial party. I think the last one was IOC last fall. So, you know, I think it-- the way we measure it is not the discount they have to accept, but it's more the efficiency they're able to offer. So this is why we kind of, in our S&D model, tends to cut their efficiency in half the minute they pass 20 years. But-
Chris Robertson (Research Associate, Shipping)
Got it.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
I think this, you know, just to... That question is probably coming, so I'm gonna put that in there. You know, as we proceed here, I think, yes, there is a scenario where ships will have to actually service the market for a longer period of time. And although not, you know, what we want, you know, but we will potentially see more and more charters having to accept 20-plus vessels as a part of their, you know, to service them and to get oil moved. But that can only happen when we have a firm pricing.
You know, we need earnings to get to a level where, you know, the charters, like Chevron, BP, Shell, Total, and all these guys, and their vetting departments say, "Hey, okay, you know, well-maintained 22-year-old vessels, we can use that." But they're not going to use that until we have rates up in the $100 thousand, $150 thousand, $200 thousand dollars per day, I believe.
Chris Robertson (Research Associate, Shipping)
Okay. Yeah, thanks for that color. I'll turn it over.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Our next question comes to line of Omar Nokta from Jefferies. The line is open, please ask your question.
Omar Nokta (Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst)
Thank you. Hey, hey, good afternoon, guys. Lars-
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Hello.
Omar Nokta (Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst)
Hi, I have a couple of questions just as a follow-up, I think, to John's questions at the beginning, and your comments, maybe first just on the order book and your thoughts about... Your disinterest, I guess, in ordering VLCCs given the timeframe and the cost. Is that commentary just based on the VLCCs, or does that also hold for the Suezmaxes and LR2s?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
I think kind of for the VLCCs, that's more us, because, you know, we're quite content on the Suezmax, the size we carry. And we also have very modern Suezmax fleet, predominantly very modern Suezmax fleet. So for us, it's been looking into the VLCC space. And I think also we've communicated quite clearly that we believe that VLCCs over time, basically due to the benefit of the size, you know, kind of offers our investors more bang for the buck. But I think you could say it's the same for the Suezmaxes as well.
The challenge we have actually in this market, if you look further into the shipyard industry, is that, you know, one thing is that the owners are not really interested in ordering them, but yards are not really interested in taking the orders either. You know, as long as there are higher margin kind of ships to build, they will prefer that. So it's kind of a little bit twofold. I also had a look at, you know, kind of the overall yard capacity in the world. You know, it's probably anybody's guess, but it's somewhere between 150 and 200 shipyards in the world servicing, you know, kind of commercial segments that we care about.
You know, you have, I think currently, more than 100 yards building dry bulk vessels. You have more than 80 yards building container vessels. You have 13 yards, I believe, that currently has a tanker in the order book. So it's quite peculiar. The other thing is that if you take off those 13 yards that build a tanker, there's actually very few that can build a VLCC. So it's a structural kind of issue we have at hand here, as long as the Koreans are completely absent from the VLCC building side.
Omar Nokta (Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst)
Thanks, Lars. That's, yeah, interesting. Something has to give at some point. Maybe just one follow-up and also kind of what John was talking about, and maybe the inverse of the question of, you know, what could go wrong? You know, maybe what could go right in terms of this market over the next few months? Clearly, you laid it out in your opening remarks, but just in general, we've seen, as you mentioned, the refining margins have gone up. We've seen LR2s push higher. And so when we think about both crude and products here over the next few months, should we think that LR2s will outperform for now?
And then, what are you looking for in terms of, you know, laying the groundwork for crude tankers to start to get a bounce?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Well, I think kind of at the end of the day, we need, you know, if we get oil demand, you know, anywhere near where EIA or IEA, OPEC or whoever you ask, put it, that we're gonna consume 103, 103.5 million barrels per day in December, I think that's basically all we need. If that trajectory is true, I think we're gonna kind of gradually come out of here. And also, you know, Russia is obviously a big X factor in addition to China. It's quite likely that with that demand projection, oil prices will behave fairly okay.
Then I think there will be initiatives to start to get hold of assets that can actually transport their products. And that will kind of be the reverse of what we've seen just now, where a lot of Russian or former Russian trading vessels have started to compete with us in the Suezmax and Aframax markets. They're basically gonna go back. I saw someone headline from a broker that, you know, this fall, if that plays out, is gonna be, you know, very good for S&P brokers that deal with the kind of tonnage going in that direction, to put it that way. And this is obviously gonna be the older tonnage in both the Suezmax and Aframax fleets. So...
Then there's also an alternative story starting to develop on all the kind of headwinds coming out of China, because you know, you can speculate, what will they actually do now? You know, will they allow the country to run at half steam until kind of they get to some sort of natural recovery? Or will they actually start to stimulate in order to carry kind of their economy over this gap? And if they do so, I think we'll get the same result. You know, we'll have the 2 million barrels extra of demand, and we will have a healthy and a continued healthy import into China.
So I think it's very easy to paint a bullish picture here, I think. But I think it's more important to try and look for the cracks, because it's almost too good to be true.
Omar Nokta (Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst)
Yeah, no, it certainly looks like it. The script is written, and we just have to follow through on it. Great. Okay. Well, thanks, Lars. I'll pass it over.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes through the line of Chris Chung from Barba Research. Your line is open. Please ask the question. Excuse me, Chris, your line is open. Please ask your question.
Chris Chung (Equity Research Analyst)
Hello, did you say Chris?
Operator (participant)
Yes, Chris Chung, your line is open.
Chris Chung (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, sorry about that. Hey, Lars, Hey, Inger, how are you?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Hi, Chris.
Omar Nokta (Managing Director, Senior Equity Analyst)
I'm fine, thanks.
Chris Chung (Equity Research Analyst)
I just have a quick question on your fleet. What are your plans for the two 2010-built VLCCs without scrubbers? Would you look to install scrubbers, or could those vessels be sold, and what would the timing be for those decisions?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Well, that's a fairly specific question. I think it's very likely that they will have scrubbers, you know, in accordance with the dry docking schedule. But we don't have any, you know, apart from that. You know, it's funny how some ships are lucky ships, so they actually make money literally around every corner. And these have been very, very good operators. So, for now, they're in our fleet and are gonna remain there.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Okay, fair enough. And one for you, Inger. Sorry, I missed the part earlier where you provided dry docking guidance. Can you repeat how many vessels you plan on dry docking for the rest of the year?
For the next year?
For the rest of the year.
Rest of the year. For the rest of the year, we plan to drydock 8 Suezmaxes. 4 is in the third quarter and 4 in the fourth quarter.
Okay. That's it for me. I turn it over. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Now we're going to take our next question. And the next question comes from the line of Lo McGibbon from Frank Winnie. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Hi. Two questions. The first is, when you went from 25- 20 years on your depreciation, how much did that reduce the earnings per share?
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
It was about for a year, it totals about $60 million. So that means, yeah, that means divided by 222 million shares.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Yeah, whatever, just a moment.
Operator (participant)
Excuse me, Lo, do you have any further questions?
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Yes, the second question. This deals with the advantage-
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Sorry, 36, 36 cents. That's the answer.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, thank you. It's a conservative mood, and I applaud you for taking that.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Mm-hmm.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
The, the premium on the modern vessels, I was wondering if you could discuss that, and in particular, the IMO guideline, the regulatory side that you've mentioned. When does the next major change kick in? And I was curious, what makes up the, the premium that Frontline gets such a benefit on because it has the world's youngest fleet?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Yeah, it's, you know, it's, you know, that's like, five questions in one to be quite honest, or, five answers, at least. Now, first of all, I think kind of the biggest, Well, it's actually not really an IMO, change that's gonna happen. It's, the EU ETS. That's, that's the next in line for, for us, or for everyone in the, in the industry. It's basically the, you know, that, we, we need to start to pay carbon tax in, in, Europe, trading in Europe or trading into Europe or trading out of Europe with the, with the carbon emissions related to, to those voyages. That comes in, in. It comes into effect, next year.
And I think it's gonna maybe not so much for, for the bigger ships, because it's, it's, they're not that frequent inside the EU zone. But, for Suezmax and Aframax, and LR2s, it's, it's gonna have an impact. And there, you know, we do believe that having efficient, vessels, help a lot. Also, I think kind of the discussion around alternative fuels is gonna become more and more, important. Right now, you wouldn't really willingly, you know, put, use, kind of partially biofuel in your fuel mix, basically because it, it costs more. But obviously, if you put it against buying carbon credits, you know, then, then it, it becomes kind of economically, economically effective to, to do so.
So I think that's kind of the biggest headline on, say, the regulatory framework, going forward. I think your question was around the premium we achieve on our vessels, due to having the modern ships. Was that correct?
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Yes. In particular, I was curious if interest rates have an effect, because on a shorter vessel, it's less costly to hold, you know, $200 million worth of oil. And also the insurance rates, how that would have affected, you know, because your shorter timeframe.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Okay. So that's more like the trading side of it. So, if kind of our charters are being limited by the high interest rates, because they're the ones who own the cargo, and they're the ones who we basically have to then finance themselves from A to B. We haven't really seen that having an impact, kind of in the stock market, to be quite honest. I think it's more a discussion for, you know, had we been in a carrier market, so meaning that oil was going to be stored on ships, it would have had a huge effect. You know, the difference between having a 0.5% interest per day and a 7% interest per day has a huge impact on the economics of storing oil.
But I think in general, you know, kind of the financing cost has affected, you know, the world in general willingness to keep inventory. And I think that is probably partly why we see inventory levels fairly low across the globe.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, one, one final comment. What percentage of your business is European that would be affected by that regulatory side change?
Lars Barstad (CEO)
It varies. So it's... And it also varies a lot among, you know, between asset classes. But I think our kind of the headline number would be 10%-15% of our voyage days would be affected by the EU ETS.
Lo McGibbon (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you, and I congratulate you both for running the most efficient vessel tanker fleet in the world.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you very much.
Inger M. Klemp (CFO)
Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions, and I would now like to hand the conference over to Lars Barstad for any closing remarks.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you very much, and thank you so much for listening in. You know, the markets are a little bit kind of in the doldrums right now, but I'm hearing bottoming kind of from various sides of the marketplace. Over the next few weeks, we're gonna hopefully start to chew into the winter season, and we're looking forward to see what comes. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.
Lars Barstad (CEO)
Thank you.