CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Euronav Q2 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Brian Gallagher, head of IR. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining Euronav's Q2 2020 earnings call. Before I start, I would like to say a few words. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today, Thursday, 6th of August 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 historical FAFSA statements. 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 a company's findings with the SEC, which are available free of charge on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. and on our own company website at www.euronav.com. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this 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 presentation. I will now pass to our Chief Executive, Hugo Stoop, to start with the main presentation. Hugo, over to you.

Thank you, Brian. Welcome to our call today. In terms of the agenda, I will firstly run through the Q1 highlights before passing on to Lee the Logger, CFO, who will provide a full financial review of the income statement and the balance sheet. Then Brian, our head of investor relation, market research and communication, will look at the current themes in the tanker market and Euronav's outlook before we take questions. So turning to slide four and the highlights page. Tanker markets continue to be very strong during Q2, even stronger than in Q1, which is surprising as usually the second and third quarter are seasonally weaker. What is remarkable is that we have already enjoyed three consecutive quarters of VLCC rates over $60,000 a day in the spot market, and this for the first time since 2008. This robust freight market has continued into Q3 with nearly half of our VLCC covered at rates just over $60,000 a day. The sales tax also performed very well with just under $40,000 per day. so far in Q2. This is a solid foundation to enter the second half, but admittedly with far less visibility than usual. We told earlier in the year that Q2 would bring a strong and sustained storage market opportunity. This was not really the case. Yes, a number of ELCC were and are still being used as storage units, but far less than what many analysts and ourselves had predicted. Nevertheless, as the figures illustrate, this has been one of the strongest markets for over a decade. With this super strong cash generation, Euronav has been able and very keen to return a lot of cash to our shareholders. We started to distribute a total of $1.57 per share in cash dividends since late May and more recently we have executed $75 million in share buybacks over the past two months, and we will do more. This brings me to slide 5 in capital allocation at Euronav, which remains an important and key focus for the board and management. Indeed, Euronav remains committed to returning capital and create value for our stakeholders, and obviously a strong freight market has given us the opportunity to demonstrate this. Given the lower equity valuation, as illustrated by our share price in the last few months, we have started to buy back our own shares. So far, we have used $75 million from the Q2 earnings to buy our shares at an average value which is very accretive to existing shareholders. In addition, today, we announced that we will use a further $25 million to buy our shares using proceeds from the earnings of Q2, and we will do this by the end of September. At Euronav, we always try to be balanced and consistent in our allocations. we do have some mandatory debt repayment, as well as some revolving credit facilities reductions, which are in cash, but given where our current leverage is, we do not need to repay more debt for the time being. We have designed our return to shareholders policy, taking many aspects of the business into account, and indeed, we are very pleased to be in a position to pay a cash dividend of 47 cents per share related to the second quarter, in addition to the 100 million I just spoke about on the share buyback program that will be returned also to our shareholders. So overall, the shareholders will receive 196 million in cash from Euronav as they relate to the Q2 earnings, roughly half of it in cash dividends and half of it in share repurchase. At the same time, Euronav balance sheet is improved by 60 million cash to reduce our net debt position. When repurchasing shares, we will always try to create long-term shareholder value rather than giving support to a share price, which indeed has been very, very volatile during the quarter. This concludes my remarks, and I will now pass on to CFO Lieve Lager to run through the financials. Lieve, over to you.