CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the CMB Tech Q1 2026 earnings call. My name is Alexandre Sévrys and I'm joined by my colleagues Ludovic Sévrys, Enya Derkinderen and Joris Daman. We will present to you the highlights of our first quarter and the title of this call is Firing on All Cylinders. We had a very interesting quarter, a very good quarter, and we would like to start with some financials and highlights, and I will hand it over to Ludovic.

Thanks, Alex. As usual, we will start with a high-level overview of our company. We're active in five different segments, from black belt crew tankers, containers, chemicals, to offshore energy. We had an interesting quarter, as Alex mentioned. Compared to last quarter, our total fair market value has increased. Our market cap has increased. We've reduced our leverage. We've reduced our CapEx commitments and increased our contracts backlog. Next slide, please. If we zoom in on the Q1 financials, we've ended the quarter with a net profit of $368.8 million. Notable in these figures are obviously our increased revenue, but we've been able to, while the quarter passed, deliver quite a bit. and reduced our margins with the banks. And so our net finance expenses decreased from $113 million from last quarter to $81 million this quarter, delivering a very nice profit. The liquidity of the company, NFQ1, stands a little bit above half a billion dollars. And our equity on total assets value adjusted is below 50%, which is our through-the-cycle target. Further zooming in, we have delevered. We are paying dividends and we're strengthening the balance sheet while we are optimizing our fleet through well-timed S&P. Notable on the contract backlog, we have signed one five-year time charter on the Suezmax vessel and extended to nine-year time charters by another year. The board of directors has decided they would like to distribute 64 cents per share as distribution. This will be managed by 20 cents interim dividends and 44 cents distribution out of share premium. That's quite interesting because there is no withholding tax on that part. So 70% of our dividends will be exempt from withholding tax. We took delivery of seven new building vessels, which Alex will discuss a little later on. And we have sold quite a few ships that were announced already on two Cape sizes and eight VLCC. One additional vessel, the Swiss Max Sienna, has been sold and will be delivered in Q2. But the capital gains of the first quarter were $267 million. And in Q2, we're expecting a capital gain of $127 million debt. We are a diversified platform. However, we have a large spot exposure on two of our promising markets, which is dry block on one hand and tankers. If you look at full 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 80% is spot. And from those spot days, we have 36,000 open dry-bill days, which is roughly 10,000 on the Kamsar MAXs and 26,000 on CAPEs and Newcastle MAXs. These are increasing markets, and hence we are favourably positioned to enjoy those in the coming quarters. On this slide, we have shown a hypothetical free cash flow for our company in 2026. This is including a free cash flow from the first quarter, but putting some rate assumptions on the right bottom side where you can see that Actually, if we take the market today, we are in the plus 20% case compared to our market assumptions, and we would have an operational free cash flow of over $1 billion. This is excluding vessel sales, but it is also excluding the remaining capex, which we will discuss a little later on. On the CapEx, we've come a long way. We have the remaining CapEx end of April of $1.2 billion, from which roughly $184 million is unfunded. If you have followed our story, you know that with the vessel sales, this is more than double covered for the unfunded CapEx. But this slide shows that 2026 will be the last heavy year new building delivery a year with the remaining $740 million to be paid to the shipyards in the coming three quarters, where after obviously our free cash flow could be used on other topics than net capex. Contract backlog. We've increased our contract backlog roughly by $200 million, as mentioned. There is a gradual repayment. The contract backlog reduces by roughly $100 million per quarter, but we've added $200 million of fresh charters. Of these long-term contracts, still $1.9 billion is on dual-fuel-related vessels, and we have quite strong counterparts, most of them investment rates, as you can see on the right side.

I'll then hand over the discussion topics to Alex to talk about the markets.

Thank you, Ludovic. I'll start with our normal overview slides in all the segments. We are, as you can see, still positive on the dry bulk market, the tanker market, and the offshore energy market. We are and have been, over the last two quarters, cautious on the container and the chemical market. High-level dynamics, we see in dry bulk ton-mile growth for major commodities that we are transporting in our CAPEs and Newcastle MAXs like iron ore and bauxite, but also on other commodities in dry, we see some growth. Looking at the supply side, We will see a growth of 1.7% of the fleet in capes today, a tick under 5% on Panamaxes. But we still believe that in balance, and we'll dig in the following slides more in detail, that the supply demand is actually positive for freight and positive for our market. The same can be said on tankers. Of course, tankers is a more complex story with what is happening right now in the Middle East. In terms of ton-mile, it's very difficult to predict. But as it stands, analysts are expecting a small reduction in ton-mile for crude oil this year, some growth next year. What is interesting on the tanker market is that the supply side, even though in the short term, the fleet is not growing that much as from 2027, and particularly In 2028, we will see a big growth in the fleet. So the order book to fleet in VLCCs and Suez Maxis is coming closer to 30%. This being said in the short term, the tanker market dynamics are positive. We'll definitely zoom in on that a bit later. On the container side, not a lot has changed. I would say that in kind of the more negative story that we have been seeing over the last quarters, the Middle East turmoil has given some support to the market. But with a large order book and an expected contraction in TU mile demand, we are cautious on the container side. As you know, all our ships are fixed, so we are not really exposed on the spot market. On the chemical side, it all feels a little bit softer. The chemical market is less volatile, but there we see there are some new vessels being delivered to the fleet. There is a little bit softer growth in demand for chemical tankers. So on balance, we are a bit more cautious. And then last but not least, we remain positive on the offshore energy markets. After two slow years of wind installation, we're expecting an increase this year and next in, for instance, the important North Sea market. But also on oil and gas, we are seeing a lot of demand for offshore energy supply vessels like our ships. And so all in all, we're expecting good markets going forward in that segment. I want to zoom in on the largest segment and the market that is most important to us right now, which is dry bulk. On the left side of the slide, you can see our fleet. We have 36 Newcastle Maxes on the water. We're adding this year another 10. Maybe one or two will deliver beginning of next year. But so in the next six months, we will have 46 Newcastle Maxis, a big armada of Newcastle Maxis on the water. We have performed very well during the first quarter, which is traditionally a slower quarter. You can see that we reached levels of $28,000 a day. But what is even better is that looking forward for the second quarter, we have fixed most of our days, 80%. already at $44,000, which is very good for that segment. Cape sizes is a big fleet as well. We have 37 Cape sizes on the water. We achieved rates of $26,000 in the first quarter, have already fixed roughly three quarters of our days at 37,000 for the second quarter. With the amount of ships, the amount of days, this is all very supportive for our results going forward. And then last but not least, our Kamsar Max Panamax fleet of 30 ships. The first quarter was satisfactory. We reached kind of a break-even level of $14,500. But we have seen in recent weeks a market uptick, and we have already been able to fix very good levels, close to $20,000 for three quarters of our days in the second quarter. When you look at the main drivers in dry bulk, it's a mixed picture, some very positive signals, some not so positive. But we will dig into some of the elements in the next slides and slides. Let's first start on the supply of the vessels, which is the new buildings, the order book, and then the age of the fleet. When you look at the new buildings, the order book to fleet has increased over the last three to six months. there have been more orders for dry bulk tonnage, and specifically on Cape Sizes and Panamaxes, you can see that we are now reaching a level of 14 to 15% of the fleet. If you put that against the age of the vessels, and you can see that we've reached kind of an all-time high average age of the fleet, there is a lot of potential for scrapping. There's a lot of potential for all these new buildings to replace the aging fleet. And actually as it stands, there should normally be more ships leaving the fleet than being added to the fleet in the next two years at least, and even going forward in 2029 and 2030. So on the supply side, we are still believing that this is supportive for our market going forward. If we look at the demand side, We are zooming in on important commodities for the CAPEs and important commodities for the Panamaxes. On CAPEs, it's of course iron ore, bauxite, and a little bit of coal. But you can see that the numbers are adding up very nicely, definitely compared to last year. We are in all segments above. Coal is a little bit below. But all in all, it's a supportive picture in the first quarter and in the month of April. The similar story can be said on the Panamaxes. The typical cargoes that Panamaxes transport, coal and grain, have been growing. And so we are seeing this being translated in, of course, better freight rates. So I would say that Q1 has surprised us to the upside, has been less slow than usually, and has underpinned the freight market. If we look at the total year, so what to expect for the next couple of months, the picture remains supported for our capes with the iron ore trade. The bookside trade is a bit of a question mark. If we see some export caps out of Guinea, then this could be a negative for our market. In the numbers, we don't see it yet, but it is, of course, something to watch. Interestingly, something that could underpin our market is the coal trade. And I'd like to zoom in on that on the next slide. We have added on this slide as well the rate forecasts for a regular 180K CAPE size for this year, including the first quarter. We are now at $31,500, which is actually a very good rate and definitely in profit-making territory. Operation Epic Fury and the gas-to-coal switching. We've tried to analyze, based on the information that is available, what the impact would be if certain countries that are powering their countries and are making electricity with oil and gas would shift more to coal. And this gas-to-coal switching is basically sketched out on this slide. Initially, on the coal side, all the analysts and including ourselves were expecting a relatively soft market for seaborne coal, definitely going into the second half of the year. And we were looking at our base case scenario of coal power generation in Europe and in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to go down. Obviously, the war in Iran and the turmoil in the Middle East, which have led to an increase in gas and oil prices, have changed the situation. And what we are now taking as a base scenario is that over the course of this year, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will increase their imports of seaborne coal by 27 million tons, so increase the utilization of their existing coal infrastructure. And on Europe, as it stands, expecting 12 million tons of coal to be added to the trade and increasing utilization from 40% to 55%. Now, there is further upside to that if Europe would import, in a high case, another 60 million tons of coal. And we've tried to map this out on the right side of the slide where you can see In green, the supply of ships, and in blue, gray, and light blue, the different scenarios on the demand. You can see on capes, we were looking at 1.7% increase in the fleet and a 3% base case increase in ton-mile demand. We have revised that to 3.5% ton-mile demand. Now, if you get this extra kicker on coal to Europe in the high case, this could go all the way up to 5.2% increase in demand. And the same goes for Panamaxes, and I think that's very interesting because obviously coal is a very important commodity for Panamaxes. We have a pretty high delivery schedule this year of close to 5% increase in the fleet. The base case, we were looking at a bit under 4% demand growth for Panamaxes. In the current new base case, we're looking at 5% growth, but in the high case, this could even go to 7.5%. So this epic fury, the war in the Middle East, could have a significant positive impact on the dry bulk markets, and we're seeing some of it already now. And then basically to conclude, what we've mapped here is the new base case, so not the high case, in numbers of volumes from Q1 to Q4. What we wanted to highlight here for those who are not very familiar with the dry bulk market is that the first quarter is always the lowest quarter in terms of volume. Usually volumes then ramp up in the second quarter, third quarter, and fourth quarter, which again we think bodes very well for our dry bulk market going forward. And of course, CNB Tech is very well positioned with our large fleet of Cape Sizes, Newcastle Maxis and Panamaxes. I want to talk about Euronav and the crude oil markets and probably where most of you have a lot of questions on what our view is on what is happening in the world. Let me first start with a quick overview of what our fleet has done. After the sales of our VLCCs, we are down to six VLCCs, four are on the water, two will be delivered during the course of this year and in January of 2027. We achieved very good rates in the first quarter and even better rates for the bookings that we have done in the second quarter. You can see we're at $180,000 of rates booked for 80% of our days. Of course, we only have six VLCCs left, but nevertheless, this will, of course, contribute very positively to our profits going forward. The sale of the eight ships, we have communicated on that already. We did a very nice capital gain of in total $360 million on the sale of these six older VLCCs, which have been reflected in our first quarter results and will partly be reflected in the second quarter results. We have 18 Suez Maxis on the water. We recently took delivery of the Cap Grace and Cap Joseph, so we have 18 ships in our fleet. We achieved rates on the spot market of $91,000 in the first quarter, $122,000 for most of our days in the second quarter. Again, excellent rates in the current circumstances. And we have sold one of our oldest Suezmaxes, the Sienna, which is a 19-year-old Suezmax, which will deliver in the second quarter. And this will give us a capital gain of $30 million. You can see on the right side all the indicators. Again, these need to be taken with a big pinch of salt because the real impact of these numbers is, of course, influenced a lot on the sea-going side with what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz. But first, before we talk about that, I wanted to show you the slide on the order book and the supply of ships and the age of the vessels. The order book has really shot up. We are now looking at a combined 500 VLCCs and Suez Maxes on order, which we believe is a lot of ships, obviously very much skewed towards the second half of 2027 and 2028. But you can see the numbers there. In 2028, already more than 200 VLCCs and Suez Maxis are on order. Even though, theoretically, the age profile of the fleet would be able to absorb these vessels, i.e., older vessels should be scrapped and the new buildings could replace them, we are a little bit concerned going forward looking at the order book. But in the short term, of course, not that many vessels are coming on stream, and this is, of course, translated in good freight markets. Average age of the fleet, you can see there, is getting to historical highs. We're at 13, 13 and a half years. Again, this is a positive as and when and if we would need to scrap some vessels. I want to talk about the Strait of Hormuz situation, Operation Epic Fury, and the impact on shipping in general and on the oil supply. On the left side, you can basically see the number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. We are talking anywhere between 110, 150 ships a day. We are down now between 5 and 20 transits a day. In terms of tankers, we see that 115 VLCCs and 24 Suez Maxis are still trapped in the Persian Gulf. Of that fleet, 40% are dark fleet vessels, so not really vessels that we would compete with. But it's still a significant amount of ships that are trapped there. On the supply side of oil, my colleague Joris Darman has made a very interesting analysis on the right side of the slide. And because it's his analysis, I want to hand it over to him so that he can explain to you what he is seeing in the numbers.

Yes, happy to run through it. So the right-hand side graph really starts by showing the baseline. The baseline was 15 million barrels per day of crude oil. This is only crude oil traversing the Strait of Hormuz, so being exported out of the Persian Gulf. Now, that's closed. The straight is de facto closed. So we made the assumption that's lost. And then we are going to look, okay, what's the actual impact on crude tanker flows? We have a selective passage of 1.2 million barrels per day. That's the actual passage over the last two months divided by 60 days. that's 1.2 million barrels per day so it's actually one swiss max a day or every second day one vlcc then we have some pipeline capacity which came upstream and is today roughly around 5.5 million barrels per day it's yambu fujaira and then the kirkuk seyan pipeline Then we had a temporary effect of floating storage release, so reversal of floating storage, and also some Russian sanctions being lifted and actually being able to be added to the tanker markets. And then the real interesting part comes, and that's, on one hand, the export growth out of the US, which is a combination of additional volumes but also SPR, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, releases roughly 1.4 million barrels per day. And then also other countries stepping up the game, for example, Brazil, Guyana, Canada, Angola, and they are additionally bringing 1 million barrels per day capacity to the market. So, if you go from the 15, we take all those steps, we end up with a loss of 5.3 million barrels per day, capacity lost to be transported on board of crude oils. Now, it's really important to see here that we're actually increasing longer mile transportation. So, we get a ton mile kicker because of the exports out of the US, but also Brazil, Guyana, are actually further away than a typical Middle Eastern China transportation, and it's two to two and a half times more. So if we take the 2.4 and we multiply that by two, two and a half, and we compare it to the 5.3, we are actually quite balanced from a ton mile perspective. And that's really the reason why the utilization of the tankers are still healthy and that the remains for U.S. Gulf China transportation are actually still quite healthy. If you go one step further and really look, okay, what could be the potential impact on the barrel price, there it's really important to understand that we started the Operation Epic Fury in a global situation where there was a large oversupply. So there was a bigger supply of crude oil to the market than a demand. So we had actually an oversupply. of 2.6 million barrels per day, meaning that in the end, today's market is only undersupplied by approximately 2.7 million barrels per day of crude, which will have an impact on demand structure or any other means to have the balance again in the market.

Thank you very much, Joris. So after that analysis, what we just wanted to add is basically the consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. is that we see a lot more balusters going towards the Atlantic to pick up the oil where it is still available. And this obviously also has an impact on rates. You can see the rate from the Middle East to China, which we think is much of a theoretical rate. Not that many ships are being fixed at these kind of levels. The more interesting one, of course, is the TD-22 route at the bottom in green, where you can see that rates were very high. But then gradually started going down as more balusters, more VLCCs were coming towards the U.S. Gulf to pick up the oil there. Now, when I say gradually going down, we are still at a level around $100,000 a day, which is very, very healthy for our market. But it shows you the disruption that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz also has on the positioning of the vessels. I'd like to finish with our three slightly smaller divisions, Delfis, BoChem, and Windcat. On Delfis, we can be relatively short. All our ships are fixed on long-term time charters. We still have one new building coming this year, delivering in October, which has been fixed on a 15-year contract. The bottom line on the container market is that the order book is very high. We still see a huge TU mile disturbance with the de facto closure of the Red Sea. If no container ships pass by there, it's basically 12% of a demand kicker. So if that falls away, including the big tsunami of new container vessels that will come on stream in the next couple of years, the market should continue to go down. But very short term, we have seen a little uptick because of the disturbance around the Strait of Hormuz. And so rates both on the spot market and also on time charter rates have gone up a little bit in recent days and weeks. But we believe fundamentally this should normally go down again as soon as certain things resolve themselves and as the order book starts delivering to the market. Chemical tankers, I was mentioning a slightly softer market that is reflected in what we are earning in the spot pool. Most of our vessels are fixed on time charters, so we're not really affected by that. But it has to be said also chemical tanker markets are much less volatile than other markets. So when we say softening and you look at the numbers that we are achieving on the spot market of $21,500, that is compared to around $25,000 last year, we still believe these rates are very healthy. Finishing off with wind cut, exciting times for our division wind cut because we have taken delivery now of our third CSOV, which is our large offshore energy supply vessels. We still have three that will be delivered plus one larger CSOV, an MPASV as we call it. So still four ships on order. We have seen very healthy rates for our CSOVs. You can see an average of $65,000 a day in the first quarter. Second quarter already fully fixed at $62,000 a day. And we have further vessels delivering and are in talks with customers for both short-term and longer-term employment. Our CTVs are doing well as well. After the traditionally slow winter period, we are now coming into the peak period of spring and summer, and you can see that our utilization is above 90%, and we are earning good rates of an average of $3,400 a day. We're expecting, as I said before, this offshore wind market, offshore oil and gas market to remain supported in the following months. This wraps up the market update, and I will now hand it over to Enya for the Q&A.

Thank you, Alexander. We will now continue with the Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Make sure to introduce yourself and unmute before asking your question. For telephone participants, if you want to raise your hand, you can type star 5 and star 6 to unmute. If in any case you can't ask your question live, you can also use the Q&A section, or you can send an email to Joris Zaman. His contact details are also in the presentation. We will now start with the first question, coming from Frodo Myrkenau. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Yes, thank you. This is Frodo at Clarksons. My first question is on capital allocation. So you basically reached the 50% net loan-to-value target. So you've been leveraging the balance sheet, you have plenty of liquidity, and the new build program looks fully funded. So basically, how should we think about... capital allocation from here, specifically on the dividend, you raised it from 16 cents to 20 cents on the interim dividend. Is this a level that you would like to maintain or should we think about dividends as variable quarter to quarter?

Let me take this one. Indeed, we are, I think, working on all sides, the leveraging the balance sheet, especially with the bridge loan that we had, which was quite expensive. We were able to repay that fully, but we also reduced our margins close to all our financings with our banks. And I think that was visible on the net finance expenses. The CapEx program is coming to an end. And I think on the dividends, which is as every quarter the board decides what to do, whether it's accelerating down payments on debt, capital, potential M&A, or distribution to shareholders. And I think we have made clear that once the leverage targets are more into play, like we are today, Then we can start allocating more of the free dollars to shareholders. Yet, we do have a full discretionary dividend policy, so we'll continue to keep that. Historically, as I mentioned on the previous earnings calls, we've always paid between 50% and 60% of the net profits distributed to the shareholders. After announcing the 50% distribution on the vessel sales, which was in December, we announced it. The board decided that we would actually rather pay 50% on the whole profit of Q1. Now, going forward, I think there's definitely every quarter analysis is going to happen. But the less leverage we have, the less capex that we have, less opportunities that could arise, like we mentioned on new builds. There's nothing really interesting in the core markets, dry bulk and tankers today. I think distribution to shareholders will definitely continue to be a full focus on our side. To your question, we didn't go from 16 cents to 20 cents. We actually went from 16 cents to 64 cents. I think the parts, the 44 cents on share issue premium, it's a different way to, a more fiscal optimized way of reducing the withholding tax for mostly the retail shareholders and then the foreign shareholders to do that. But I think going forward, we will see how the market continues. We will definitely analyze the distribution to shareholders with a full focus.

Okay, that's interesting. 50% looks reasonable. That's what I heard from you.

That's why we also, historically, we pay to the shareholders, yes.

Okay. Next question I had was, just started thinking, I mean, the Golden Ocean acquisition, that looks quite well-timed now. Clearly, dry bulk asset values have moved higher. So just I have a quick question. Do you have a sense of how much you're up on that investment so far?

Frodo, can you not do the calculation for us?

Let's say that based on the acquisition price, obviously, we've done, but you have to take the full costs because we did... a semi-level buyout. Yes, we paid 50% with shares, but we didn't pay 50% with full financing. It is true that the returns on paper today look good, But as always, I think we need to ride the cycle fully before we can claim victory on that. But the market has picked up somewhat faster than we were expecting on the medium term. And I think the spot strategy that we've entailed is definitely setting us up to reap the benefits on the short term.

Yeah, I did actually do the calculation. I think you're up at least 20%, but yeah.

Only 20%, Frodo? Or you're selling us short?

Maybe I'm wrong. Could be, could be. As a follow-up, I mean, given where asset values are today, do you still see value in further investments? Or is this becoming a more market to sell further assets?

It's a good question, Frodo. I can repeat what I told you last time, I think, or I told someone else. Everything's pricey today. Let's not lie about the facts. New buildings, second hand, everything has gone up. There will always be opportunities, I'm sure. We will analyze these opportunities. But right now, having sold most of our older vessels, we still might sell some ships. of older vintage or sell some ships if we see a very good price. But what we want to do now is really ride the cycle definitely on dry bulk and see what comes after this high cycle. Because obviously, for us, the story doesn't end when the cycle turns. That's when the story begins.

Good answer. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks.

The next question is coming from Clement. Can you please unmute and ask your question?

Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by following up on your finance expenses, which declined significantly as you reduced debt and refinanced some facilities. Did the 82 million expenses for the quarter include any one-offs due to refinancings? And secondly, is the G&A for Q1 a good proxy for the remainder of the year?

Yeah, no, it's two great questions, Clemens, on the net finance expenses. I think in the 82, there were maybe 3 million one-offs. But so it's insignificant, I would say. So it is definitely on the current balance. to optimize that situation, but not yet take into account some of the margin reductions we're actually executing on roughly $2 billion of financing, which would only come into play end of Q2. So there's more room to reduce the net finance expenses. On the SG&A, with the $51 million we had in Q4, compared to $27 million in Q1, I think Q4 was definitely exceptional. I think we mentioned it on the last earnings call. Q1 is definitely better, but we are, as management, we're keeping optimizing and looking at that. Integrating companies is often harder than we think, but we're well on the way to reach our targets on the SG&A.

Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. Could you talk a bit about whether you've had any impact on the operations of the two FSOs contracted with Qatar Energy on the back of the conflict?

Yes, Clement. We have had some operational disturbances, but we are trying to get everything back on track. As you know, the safety of our people on board is the most important one, and we are in very close collaboration with NOC. who is our customer, to make sure that we can restart the operations in a safe way.

Makes sense. And final question from me. You've got a 12 million profit from equity-accounted investees. To what does that refer specifically?

That's a good question. It's reflecting the proportional profits that we made, at least that the companies were in which we have small participations made. This is, I would say, half of it is one-offs from these companies. And it's a very diverse slew of small participations from ammonia logistics to basically Japanese joint ventures. But there is, I think, good smaller companies that deliver profits quarter on quarter. So there's definitely some of that to stay in the coming quarters.

Good to hear. That's everything from me. I'll turn it over. Thank you. Thanks.

The next one is Peter Haugen. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Good afternoon. This is Peter Haugen from ABG Sundahlkoglir in Oslo. First, I would like to put some emphasis on the jury's work on slide 25. The slide showing the shortfall and the partial refilment of what was lost is a very, I think, instructive way to think about this. And one question in this context, would it be positive or sort of if adjusted for distances, the same slide just on ton milestone, so to speak, would that be still in a negative territory or is it in positive territory?

Joris can take that question. It's fairly balanced. And that was the main message here, that if you not only look at tons, but at ton miles, the situation is actually, up until today, a balanced situation whereby the lost volumes are being balanced out by the additional distance. Of course, that only holds as long as US exports keep the same levels, and the other countries like Brazil, Guyana, Angola, keep on the, let's say, the higher volumes than what we saw in the first two, three months of the year. That's the big assumption of this slide.

Okay, so very balanced, Tom Marlweis. Thank you. Just one further question. In Q3, you ordered one CSOE, the large version, and also had options for five more. Is there any progress on those options in terms of, well, either striking them or lapsing them?

Yeah, we still have time to lift the next option. But right now, if you ask me, it looks very interesting. There's good demand for these assets. But as long as we don't need to lift the option, we will still wait. The market can still change. But it is definitely one of the segments that we are watching closely for potential new buildings because we still see value and the value at which we hold the options is interesting.

Okay, could you elaborate a bit on what sort of employment you would potentially do on a new build order and also the delivery schedule for those options?

Would be in 2028. And we would lift the option most probably without any employment attached. We have decided on the CSOVs that we would operate on the spot market. And if we see long-term business, we would go for the long-term business. That's exactly what we've done with the first two ships. what we're doing with the next vessels, always be a mix of spot employment and longer-term employment, if it makes sense. You know that in this offshore wind market, if you order some of these CSOVs with a charter attached, usually the returns are very, very low. So if we lift the options, we will most probably, I mean, never say never, we might find some customers before we're lifting the option, but it will most probably be without any employment, and then we will work on the employment as we go.

And just to add to Alex, as a spot market today, both in international winds, but also regional and international oil and gas, it's actually very good. For us to do long-term charters, it really has to be great rates. Otherwise, we just stay in the spot market and enjoy the rates we've shown on the slides.

Understood, thank you. And just then, finally, the options, all five of them, could you elaborate on when those lapses?

I think the first one is in a couple of months from now, end of the summer. Okay. And then we still have time for the following ones, which is always with a couple of months interval.

Okay. Understood. Thank you. That was all from me. Thanks.

We received some questions in the Q&A, so I will go to those questions. The first question, the premium of nukes to capes in Q1 seemed quite low. Any particular reason for this? What premium would you expect over time?

I think I'll take it from a financial point of view, Alex. You can take it from operational. It was, as we are delivering quite a bit out of the yards, there's a lot of repositioning on these ships, ballasting to Brazil, for instance. And so it's a more IFRS look to discharge. I think the Newcastle maxes on a discharge-to-discharge basis would have been higher. But since we had a relatively much higher repositioning, so balusters, that impacted the results.

Yeah, and I would say in a premium, it all depends, of course, on the height of the market. But you would be anywhere between 15% and 30%, depending on the market, and of course, depending also on the fuel prices.

Moving on to the next question. Do you have any plans for the 25 million treasury shares you hold? We issue to outside holders as dividends used for acquisitions. Retire. I assume they do not receive the dividends.

So the treasury shares, to be clear, do not get dividends. They cannot vote neither. So our company has 290.2 million shares. That's what you really have to look at. Retiring them, for us, there's part of the authorized capital. So it's at the board discretion to use them to dividend to shareholders or for M&A acquisitions or other instruments. But today we don't have any plans. We bought them quite inexpensively, if you see, over the last years. So I think this was a good investment from a long-term investor, but we have no plans right now.

The next one, with the cost per ship massively increased, when the cycle turns, the recently purchased ships will have a much higher break-even level. That could indicate what? If rates do come down, there will be a lot of forced sale signs at much lower prices.

Is that a statement or a question? It's a question. Yes, if the market comes down and if owners are under duress, they will have to sell their ships at a lower price. And it is clear that the breakeven of the whole fleet has gone up, not only because of the high new building prices, but also because of the higher secondhand prices. So it will be indeed interesting to see when the cycle turns, how the market will react and how distressed sales could potentially come to the market.

Then the next one, could you please clarify whether any CMB Tech vessels are currently blocked in the Persian Gulf? If so, how many and what type of vessels are involved?

So there's a couple of ships that are indeed in the Persian Gulf right now. We don't communicate about the details of the vessels, the vessels' names, out of safety concerns for our crew which is on board.

In the next one, what is the ambition with respect to your green ammonia terminal project in Namibia? What is the latest status? What are the timelines and CAPEX requirements?

Right now, no FID has been taken on that project. We are assembling all necessary information for the investment, and we hope to be able to say something more in the next quarterly call when we have a better view on that file. So have a little bit of patience with us, but we will definitely mention that in the next quarterly call.

And then moving on to the last question, this one is referring to slide 25. It's a slide that Joris explained. From Jornef, how much crude oil, if any, is coming onto the world market from Venezuela?

So Venezuela crude oil for April was roughly 1.2 million barrels per day. It increased with 150,000 barrels compared to March because of, let's say, the political changes in the country. Exports are being increased. It's not the increase, which is interesting. It's rather that those barrels are now being transported on compliant vessels and no longer on any, let's say, dark or gravely vessels. So it's a net positive for crew tankers.

Okay, we have one last question. Can you explain what the 20 million in other operating income booked in Q1 is?

Yes, sure. It's an amalgamation of all smaller profits we took. This goes from claims we won from lawsuits or vessel claims we have over the last couple of years. It's liquidated damages that we deliver ships, and then they deliver earlier or later with shipyards as well. So it's a whole slew of, I would say, smaller one-offs. some investments we hold in smaller companies. So nothing meaningful, mostly one-offs, but always nice to have when you can book that on your balance sheet.

And I think that concludes the questions.

Thank you very much, Enya. Thank you, all of you, for joining in this quarterly call. And I'm looking forward to talking to you either at our General Assembly on Thursday, or on the next call we organize during the summer. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.