CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

And welcome to the CMB Tech Earnings Conference Call for the fourth quarter of 2025. My name is Alexander Severis, and I'm joined here by my colleagues, Joris, Enya, and Ludovic. We will touch upon our classic topics. We'll start with our financial highlights. We will then give you a market update and finish with a conclusion and a Q&A. And for the financial highlights, I'd like to hand it over to Ludovic.

Thanks, Alex, and good afternoon, everybody. As usual, we start with a snapshot of our company, where here we've shown you the key metrics of the fleet, roughly 40 ships with about a $10.7 billion fair market value. This is excluding the vessels we have sold already. Our market cap sits today at $4.2 billion after a nice run-up on the share. We have $1.5 billion capex remaining as from end of January and operate a modern fleet of 5.9 years. Drywall today is predominantly 60% of our total fair market value, with the other divisions showing the rest of the value of the fleet. zooming in on the highlights of the q4 we had a net profit of 90 million dollars that bring the full year profits to 140 and the evda of this quarter was uh 322 million to end the year on a 943 million uh evda our liquidity sits at a pretty strong 560 million And our covenants for the bonds on the equity on total assets is at 31%, and for the rest of our loan agreements at 44%. We've had a pretty remarkable Q4 where we were able to deliver the company at the same time, pay dividends again, which we'll discuss later, and strengthen the balance sheets with a couple of actions that we've performed in the company. Running through it, the result I mentioned, 90 million, we had some non-recurring one-off and sometimes even non-cash impacts on the results. which are mostly related to the finalization of the integration of the merger with the Golden Ocean. There's IT costs, but there's also, I would say, refinancing costs that we had to take as a one-off on arrangement fees, success fees in Q4. On top of that, we had roughly 15 million, 1.5, of non-recurring costs on the SG&A, which is tax reversals and other, again, integration fees from the Golden Ocean merger. The liquidity stands at 560 million, which is quite strong with the good markets, with the sale of assets, and we'll discuss later, gives us a lot of capabilities to further strengthen the balance sheet in 2026. The acquisition, if you recall, the first 50%, 49% of GoldenOcean we bought through a bridge facility. I'm happy to inform that it was fully paid back at the end of January. There was also some costs related to that of acceleration of arrangement fees. But this will give an interest saving of roughly $42 million for 2026. So quite happy to say that we were able to do this, but also we were able to repay it out of home cash, but also some re-leveraging on other dry block chips. The contract backlog sits at $3.05 billion. Alex will go into further detail, but we added in Q4 roughly $304 million, primarily on CAPE sizes and on one CSO feed. Happy to tell that there is an interim dividend declared of $0.16. This is roughly $45 million of dividend being paid later in April. We feel that the balance sheet has strengthened good enough. to increase from the $0.05 we previously paid in the quarters to a somewhat higher dividend. This dividend is not yet the dividend that we announced in the press release on the sale of the six VLCCs of 50%. So the capital gain on those ships will be taken in Q1 and Q2, and the board will decide on the dividends at that moment. We've had a very active delivery schedule in Q4, six new buildings, but Alex will talk about it later. But more importantly, for our balance sheets, we were able to, in Q4, Q1 and Q2, already secure more than $420 million in capital gains. That's profit that is locked in. $50 million was booked in Q4, but in Q2 and in Q1, we have already a guaranteed $370 million profit, which gives us a lot of opportunities for the rest of the year. We have a large spot exposure still on tankers, but predominantly on dry bulk. If you look at 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 44,000 are spots. And if we zoom in into dry bulk, where we have a pretty strong feeling there will be a good market in 2026, we have 36,000 days from which 27,000 on Cape sizes and Newcastle maxes. This means $10,000 up on our break-evens brings in $270 million in cash flow. When we look on the right side, we always like to position on the segments we are active in compared to the order book to fleet ratio. The bottom segments are compared to some of the other shipping segments on the relatively low side on the order book. When we look at Cape Sars and Panamax, I think we're very well positioned to look for better markets in 2026. Looking at the CapEx program, it's a recurring slide we like to show. As of end of January, we have roughly 1.5 billion remaining CapEx, from which 216 will come from our own cash. You can see in this slide, which is quite interesting, is that the next 12 months will be a heavy delivery schedule. Roughly $1.2 billion will be paid to the yards. All the financing has been secured, and if we look at The cash from the sale of the VLCC and CAPE size were already done. The whole CAPEX has been taken care of. This also shows that within 12 months, every sale, every cash flow generation we'll have will give us the opportunity again to look at dividends, deliver further in an even more accelerated way. Free cash flow, we've given an estimation based on hypothetical rates that you see on the bottom right. I think we're still pretty conservative if you look at today's markets. But should we have the estimated rates, even with 20% where we're already in today, this would create a $700 million free cash flow. on top of the normal debt repayments this gives ample capability to pay back the nordic bonds which we anticipate just to pay out of own cash continue to fund the capex and deliver the company in an accelerated way this was the financial highlights i'll move on to the market update and give the floor to alex thank you ludovic i want to update you on the various markets where cmb tech is active

You see our overview sheet where we put all our markets and zoom in on the demand side, supply side and where we see the balance. This slide has fundamentally not really changed compared to three months ago. We are still positive on dry bulk tankers and offshore. We are cautious on the container side and on the chemical side. If you look at Dry Book specifically, you see that we see very nice ton-mile growth for iron ore and bauxite in 2026, which is a positive. On the supply side, the order book to fleet has grown a bit. There's been some more orders for Cape Sizes and Newcastle Maxxis for delivery in 2028 and 2029, but we still believe it's a manageable 12.4%. The fleet growth this year in caves specifically will only be 2.3% and we see the trade growing by more than that. So all in all the balance is positive. On our dry bulk side in Bosimar, we have 87 spot vessels. There's another nine vessels that will be delivered to us that will also be traded spot, unless we have fixed a charter. And with the addition of the recent charters that we concluded, we have now 16 ships on charter. And that's another three new buildings on charter as well, coming later this year, beginning 2027. On the tanker side, the figure in pure supply demand is a little more muted. There is more fleet growth than demand growth, at least on paper. But there's a big element of sentiment, and I'll zoom into that when we speak about Euronav, that it has propelled the markets to very, very high levels. All in all, sentiment is good. Earnings are good. The tanker market is still very positive. Our tanker fleet, with the sales of the eight vessels recently, has reduced a bit. We still have 12 vessels on the spot, another three new buildings coming, and then we have 10 vessels on time charter with another two new buildings that will also be on charter, but I'll talk about that when we talk about Euronav. Tains and chemicals, I'll handle a bit later. And then just on the offshore energy, which is both on the offshore wind and the offshore oil and gas, specifically on the winds, we are seeing a slight acceleration again of the installation of capacity, which should support our CTV and CSOV markets. And on the supply side, we have seen basically a slowing down of ordering new vessels. The order book to fleet for CTV stands at 13%, which we think is very manageable. Order book to fleet for the CSOVs is much higher. But again, there is also a lot more demand for that type of vessels, specifically from the offshore oil and gas markets. I want to run you through a couple of slides for BOSIMAR and Drybulk, starting with the overview of what BOSIMAR has done in Q4 and Q1. We have 36 Newcastle MAXs on the water. We have another 10 new building Newcastle MAXs that will all be delivered by the first quarter of 2027. In Q4, we achieved actuals of close to $35,000. Q1, quarter to date, we are at slightly more than $30,000 a day. We have 37 pips on the water. There the results in Q4 were $30,000 and Q1 to date we are at $26,000. These are strong rates, definitely for the first quarter of the year. We are seeing rates that have not been as strong over the last 15 years. So we are seeing a very strong Q1. We have sold the Golden Magnum and the Belgravia. And we'll record a capital gain of $8 million in the first quarter. Our 30 CanSamRaxes and Panamaxes are all on the water. We achieved rates of $17,300 in Q4 and $13,200 so far in this quarter. You can see the break-even levels and what we have achieved on the right side. Just a couple of important indicators on the right side. We see that there's a lot of green indicators, so a lot of support for dry bulk demand. Just the inventories on iron ore in China are up, the coal imports in China are down. These are slightly more negative indicators, but all in all, we see more positive signs than negatives for dry bulk. Here on this slide, we look at the order book to fleet ratio for Cape sizes and why we believe that vessel values could well be supported for the next two or three years. We basically have put on the right side of the slide the recent number of vessels that have been delivered, including the new building prices that have been quoted by brokers, and compare that to the last time we were in a dry book boom. Here, basically, we want to say that as long as the order book is around the levels that we see, this market still will be supported on asset values. We don't see an oversupply coming. The fleet profile for capes and for Panamaxes, again, is a recurring theme. There's very little scrapping going on. We see that vessels are aging, aging rapidly. We are now at close to 150 capes that are over 20 years of age, close to 600 capes over 15 years of age, and the numbers on Panamaxes are even more important. So if the market one day would correct and scrapping would start, this would definitely be something that can balance the market. When we look at Q4 and Q1, the two big themes for us, definitely for our capes and yukes, have been iron ore and bauxite. You can see on these graphs the rainfall and then the volume of iron ore and bauxite that's being loaded in the Atlantic, in West Africa and in the Pacific. What we have seen specifically with West Africa on the bauxite side, but now also the iron ore will start playing a very important role, is that it is a bit counter-seasonal compared to the weaker seasons that we used to be seeing in the Pacific for Australia predominantly and the Atlantic. for Brazil. So it is helping our markets. It is balancing the markets. There are more opportunities for large bulkers to load cargo even in the first quarter of the year. And as you can see, the rates have reacted very positively to these volumes. Cave size market fundamentals this year are positive. I mentioned it when we spoke about the overview. We see a ton mile increase in demand of 2.7% and a feed growth of 2.3%. So we expect the utilization to creep up. We are already around the 90% utilization mark. This could go to 91, 92% in the coming months. The big market moves in dry bulk and then specifically for iron ore is, well, you can see them on this slide, all the volumes coming out of West Africa, Brazil, Australia. We see that iron ore, according to the forecasts, will continue to grow, so seaborne iron ore will continue to grow. It will come from areas that are far away from the main customer for these goods, which is China, which is good for ton-mile demand. And you can see that the same story can go for bauxite. We have been very surprised by volumes of bauxite in January. So the number of 184 million tons could well go higher if this trend continues this year. So very supportive, these two commodities, both in volume and in ton mile for 2026. I want to say a few words about Euronav and the crude oil tanker market. Starting with our fleet of VLCCs. So the fleet has been reduced. We have sold eight of our older vessels as we have announced last month. We are left with three VLCCs on the water. That's one 2016 built ship and two new buildings. And then we have another three Eco VLCCs coming in the next couple of months. So our fleet of VLCCs is six ships in total. You can see what we have achieved in terms of rates, around $75,000, both in Q4 and in Q1 quarter to date. The Suez Maxis, we have 17 Suez Maxis on the water. We have another two vessels delivering very soon. These two vessels, these two new buildings, have been fixed on long-term time charters. But for the spot fleet, we achieved rates around the $60,000 to $65,000 mark, both in Q4 and in Q1. The markets there are very, very supported. Watch the space because the numbers that we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks are way higher than the numbers that we are reporting here. If you look at the key indicators, a lot of green indicators, the market is supported. We are seeing the tanker fleet growing a bit, but all in all, both in sentiment and in fundamentals, we see that the tanker market right now is very supported, and that's probably the understatement. It is more than supported. It's actually very high. The sustainability of the expanding crew tanker order book will depend a lot on the durability and the potential uptick in scrapping. The order book has risen. We are seeing more orders for VLCCs and Suez Maxis. These orders will not come through this year or next year, but as from 2028, this is something to watch because the market balance will depend a lot on how many vessels we can scrap to make sure that the amount of new buildings that are coming to the market will not distort the market to the downside. Demands, durability of crude tankers, all the different agencies have different numbers. It's not always easy to follow. It looks like we are producing more oil in the world today than we are actually using. And so the only big explanation for that can be that someone, particularly the Chinese, are probably stockpiling oil in great numbers. That, as long as this continues, it is, of course, very supportive for the oil tanker markets. Depending on what will happen in the next six months, both with the oil price and on geopolitics, of course, all these scenarios can be rewritten. But for the time being, what we're seeing is an oversupplied oil market, whereby the oversupply is absorbed in stockpiling. Sanctions remain a very important theme. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, what's happening, what will happen in Iran, and of course Venezuela. We just wanted to highlight one interesting graph on the right side. Whereas we see that the Indian crude imports from Russia have gone down after the sanctions that the US imposed in December, we see actually that probably China has picked up some of that slack, as you can see on the graphs to the right. A few words about Delfis and our container vessels. As you know, our four container vessels on the water have been fixed on long-term charters for 10 years. We have one more new building delivering this year, which will be under a 15-year time charter contract, so we are not really exposed to the spot market. If you look at the spot freight market, it's a downhill slope. We see that the SEFI is actually trending downwards, so spot freight rates are down. Interestingly, the charter market is still quite supported, so not a lot of charter vessels available. Some big liners still fighting for market share and chartering vessels. We expect this actually to go down going forward because there is still a very significant order book to be delivered both this year in 27 and in 28. Bokem and our chemical tankers, we have eight ships on the water. You can see the performance in Q4 on the right side, so there's a mix of time charters, mostly, but we also have two vessels operating in a spot pool. Bokem still has an order book of eight vessels. We have two product tankers coming this year. We then have another six chemical tankers in 28 and 29. All these vessels have been fixed on long-term time charters, so our spot exposure is relatively limited. And what we see on the spot market is a slightly declining market, nothing dramatic, but definitely the rates are not what they were in 2024. So still seeing okay rates, but definitely things are going down a little bit. Another one ends with a very good performing business unit recently, that's Windcat. We have taken delivery of two of our CSOVs last year. One CSOV has been trading for the last four to six months on the spot market, but earning very good rates, as you can see on the right side, the equivalent in Q4 of $108,000 a day. The other one has been fixed on a three-year agreement for work in the North Sea. We still have another four CSOVs coming and one larger CSOV, a CSOV XL, this year and next. But the market is very supported. And it's supported because the oil and gas market requires good modern offshore supply vessels. And these good modern offshore supply vessels, in some instances, were earmarked for the wind business, but actually can now earn better rates in oil and gas. And that is where they are going. On the wind market, we're actually seeing some positive evolutions as well. Last year was a bit slow in terms of delivery of new projects, but in North Sea in Europe, we are seeing new projects coming on stream this year and next, which will necessitate demand for CSOVs and CTVs. CTVs, we have a large fleet of close to 60 vessels on the water. You can see the rates that we achieved. We definitely are satisfied with the race that we achieved and are looking forward for probably a better 2026 than 2025. This ends our market update. I'd now like to hand it over to Enya for the Q&A.