CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Hello, and welcome to the URNF Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be on the Sonomi 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 touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host today, Brian Gallagher. Mr. Gallagher, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining Euronav's Q1 2023 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 11th of May, 2023, 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 facts. 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.sec.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 2 of this slide presentation. I will now pass over the Chief Executive, Hugo de Stoop, to start with the content slide. On slide 3, Hugo, over to you.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning or afternoon to wherever you are, and welcome to our call. I will run through the Q1 highlights before passing on to Liv Log or CFO to give you the key financial figures. Brian Gallagher, our head of IR and research, will then run you through three key factors within the current tanker market trends before I return to summarize the outlook. Moving on to the next slide. It was a very good quarter for Euronav and one where the freight market was especially strong. What was unusual is that the market got stronger as the quarter developed, which is counter-seasonal drive compared to what we are used to see in the first quarter, where typically the market starts to abate as the spring is approaching. Indeed, the month of March brought the highest US max and second highest rates for VLCCs since 1990. This combined to drive Suezmax rates higher than VLCC rates underpinned by strong demand from China and better ton miles across the tanker spectrum. This situation has reserved somewhat in Q2 with rates softening now and VLCC rates superior to those in Suezmax, but averages rates in Q2 are highly elevated in both absolute terms and for the time of the year when we would have expected seasonality to pull rates downwards much earlier. With a new supervisory board shortly in place and looking at both the strong company balance sheet and visibility on positive medium-term fundamentals, a higher return to shareholders payers has been proposed, which will see Euronav investors benefiting from a final dividend for the full year 2022 of $1.1 and a Q1 dividend of $0.70. Both payables in Q2, which means that a total of $1.8 per share will be distributed to our shareholders in the coming weeks. I will now pass over to Lieve to run you through the financials. Lieve, over to you.