CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Good day and welcome to the URNAV fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Gallagher, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining Euronav's Q4 2021 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, the 3rd of February, 2022, 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 statements of 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 SCC, which are available free of charge on the SCC website at www.scc.gov.uk. scc.gov and on our own company's 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 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 harbour statement on page two of the slide presentation i will now pass over to chief executive huger stoop to start with the agenda slide on slide three. Over to you, Hugo. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Welcome to our call today, wherever you are. In terms of the agenda, I will firstly run through the Q4 highlights and some comments on what was, in the end, another challenging quarter after an encouraging start. I will then turn over to Brian Gallagher, our head of IR, to run through some market slides before Liv Logger, our CFO, highlights some important accounting changes we are announcing today. I will then return to outline how the Euronav platform is positioned for the coming cycle, not only on a standalone basis, but how we compare with our peers before finishing off with our traffic lights and a Q&A session. So turning on to the next slides, the highlight slides. We stress in our Q3 call that we felt we had reached the trough in this cycle during the late summer month of 2021. We stand by that view. The recovery we saw from late August into when we reported in early November was tangible and reflected in better freight rates. However, with a rapid spread of the Omicron variant from late November, the associated rapid restrictions in economic activity and the lack of confidence in the business cycle, we saw this recovery of storm in what seasonally is the most important period of the year. This was very frustrating, and overall tanker activity has yet to really recover. However, freight rates, whilst under pressure, have not revisited the low levels of late summer, and we remain with the conviction that a recovery has only been deferred. Unlike the situation 12 months ago, we face the coming year with strong oil supply growth forecasted by the leading agencies, a further rebound in demand, and a pressing requirement to address low crude inventories level at some point in the future. Our low cash break-evens, coupled with our strong balance sheet, enable us to manage through the current market, and we are positioning for the next structural phase of the cycle, as we recently took delivery of two new super eco-sewers max, the Cedar and the Cypress, at the same time as re-delivering four non-eco older VLCCs. Don't get me wrong. We, along with all of our stakeholders, remain extremely frustrated with this pause the tanker market has taken on our recovery journey. But we continue to expect the freight market to improve to healthy levels, even though this is no more likely focused on the second half of 2022. I will return to this later and now pass it on to Brian. Thank you.