CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to the earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2026 of CMB Tech. My name is Alexander Savries. I'm the CEO of CMB Tech, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Joris Dammann and Enya Derkindrin. We will start, as always, with our financials and some highlights. And before we do, we give you an overview of the fleet of CMB Tech. You can see that we have 206 vessels on the water with another 26 new buildings coming. Our contract backlog is stable at $3.3 billion. The fleet is young. We have an average age below six years. Our CAPEX commitments, we will discuss a bit later, have now gone down to less than $1 billion. We have a market cap of $5.2 billion, a fair market value of the fleet of $11.2 billion. And for those who might not know, but we are still listed in New York, in Brussels and in Oslo. Our second quarter financials. The title of our press release was Making Hay, Making Hay While the Sun Shines. These are exceptional times for shipping and also exceptional times for CMB Tech. The company has made a profit of $364.4 million in the second quarter. This was on the back of an increased revenue of over $700 million. and an exceptional profit that we made on the sale of assets of 127 million. You can see the other items in our profit and loss that stick out. One of them is the net finance expense, We are reducing our quarterly net finance expense to $76 million, which is a 5% reduction compared to the first quarter. This is led by cheaper refinancings and also just a general repayment of our debt. Our EBITDA stood at $552 million, our liquidity slightly below $400 million. equity on total assets book value stands at above 35% and our equity on total assets value adjusted is now above 50% at 51.5% for the highlights during the quarter I already mentioned our net profit and our EBITDA the liquidity which stands at around 400 million We have a contract backlog which is stable. We have added during the quarter two two-year charters on our CSOVs and one one-year VLCC charter. We have the intention to distribute an amount of 64 cents per share. which will be split in an intermediary dividend of $21 per share and a payment of $43 cents, so $21 cents per share and $43 cents per share out of the share premium reserve, which is exempt from any withholding tax. We have taken delivery in the second quarter and quarter to date of nine new building vessels. These were four Newcastle MAXs, one VLCC, Two brand new Suez Maxis, one CSOV and one CTV. We have sold quite a few ships so far this year. In the second quarter, we have delivered to their new owners two VLCCs, the ILMA and the INGRID, on which we booked a capital gain of $98 million. They have sold an older Suezmax, the Sienna, with a capital gain of $29 million. So total gain in second quarter was $127 million. In the third quarter, we will book a gain of $100 million on the sale of two Suezmaxs. And in the fourth quarter, we will add a gain of $130 million on the sale of the Donusa, which is a VLCC, and one more Suezmax. The sales of our tankers, we believe, are very well-timed. We are at historic high prices for VLCCs and Suezmaxs. On this slide, you can basically see the 10-year average for a 5-year-old VLCC and a 5-year-old Suezmax. compared to today's values and also compared to the last 10 years minimum and maximum. And as you can see, on VLCCs and Suez Maxis, we are well above the 10-year average. We are also well above the maximum of over the last 10 years that we have seen. We therefore believe it's a good time to sell some of our assets, particularly our older assets. And then we have put a comparison where other segments stand like Panamaxes and Cape Sizes. As you can see that today's values, even though they're at the top end of what we have seen over the last 10 years, they are still in line of that bracket. Same goes for VLGCs. Of course, on the container vessels, the situation is different and also on LNGs. We wanted to show you what we believe in 2027 our operational cash flow could be based on certain rate assumptions. So we have put the rate assumptions at the bottom right of the slide with a 10% and 20% uplift. Rate assumptions for 2027 have been based on FFAs and assumptions for next year. You can see the numbers there. What you then see is after having repaid or paid all our CapEx investments, we still are forecasting a cash flow of $700 million to $1 billion. would say that's a very powerful figure to see, that even after all our CapExes have been repaid, our operational cash flow will be between 700 million and 1 billion dollars. Of course, if the market changes, the numbers will change, but it gives you an indication of the cash flow generating potential of all our different divisions. The most important, of course, are Newcastle Maxes and Cape Sizes, our VLCCs and Suez Maxes. I mentioned the CAPEX. We still have $890 million of new buildings to be delivered, of new building installments to be made. Of that number, the vast majority has already been financed. We have an unfunded CAPEX of $119 million, which is basically spread out this year, $43 million, and then other amounts in $27, $28 and $29, which are relatively small. At the end of this year, our outstanding CAPEX commitment will be between $375 and $390 million. So we've come to the end of our large two and a half year new building investment plan. I want to give you an update on the market and talk about BOSIMAR, Euronav, Delphys, BoChem and Windcat. I always start with an overview of the different markets we operate in and what we feel is the sentiment and the state of the market. Starting with dry bulk, clearly we are positive on dry bulk. We see that demand on the major commodities we are moving is growing. That goes for iron ore, bauxite, grain and coal. The order book to fleet has increased a little bit on cape sizes, actually decreased a little bit on Panamaxes. We are around the 15% mark, which we still think is something that the market can take for the next couple of years. The age of the fleet, 41% of our capes are older than 15 years. More than one third of the Panamaxes are older than 15 years. The balance between supply and demand on dry bulk, we believe, is positive. Moving to tankers, you can see that we have colored from positive to cautious and basically kept a positive and cautious approach. No doubt the market is very positive today. We are seeing all-time high rates on secondhand numbers, on the freight numbers, on the spot market. So the market is very, very, very strong. The reason we are becoming a little bit more cautious is that on the demand side, we don't know what the effect will be of a potential solution in the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously, we don't know the timing, but that solution could lead to softer markets. What worries us a bit more is the order book to fleet. We are now seeing an order book to fleet on VLCCs and Suez Maxes of over 30%. This is not impacting the market right now. The order book for 2026 is still very reasonable. But as from next year and the year after, we will see a tsunami of VLCC and Suez Maxis coming to the market. Moving to containers and the chemical tankers, we have had a cautious approach to both markets. Actually, the container market has surprised to the upside. The unwinding of the Red Sea rerouting has been postponed with the renewed tensions around Bapel Mandep and the Houthi attacks. But when you look at the order book, we would still be quite cautious for containers going forward. But right now the market on containers is still quite good. On the chemical tankers, the order book is something we are watching closely. The market has actually performed relatively well. But going forward, we take a slight cautious approach. As you know, both in Delphi's and Bokem, our container and chemical tanker division, we have close to no spot exposure. So we are very well covered and shielded from any market fluctuations. Our last division, wind cut, offshore energy. We are seeing good rates. We believe if you look at the demand for the offshore wind energy projects, but also offshore oil and gas projects, combined with the order book with the fleet that is coming, there is a substantial fleet of CSOVs coming to the market next year and in 2028. But combined with the demand that we see in oil and gas and wind, we believe that the balance is positive. I want to zoom in on certain specific dynamics in our subsector, starting with dry bulk. First, our dashboard, what we have done in the second quarter. Our fleet today is 40 Newcastle Maxes on the water, 37 Capes and 30 Kamsar Maxes and Panamaxes. The performance in the second quarter was very good. We earned $46,000 on our nukes, close to $40,000 on our Capes. and $20,000 on our Panamaxes. The rates for the third quarter are in line with the rates of the second quarter. So far, what we have booked in Q3 is slightly below Q2 because we have positioned quite some vessels into interesting frontal positions, and we would normally see a bump on our rates towards the end of Q3 and into Q4. A lot of the indicators on dry bulk are green. Some indicators like iron ore inventories and steel inventories are slightly negative. But overall, we see that the demand side of things is looking very positive. Looking at order book to fleet before we zoom in on the demand, one can see that the order book has grown. We are now in a Cape size order book to fleet of 17%. Panamax has actually gone down slightly. We're at 14% spread out nicely over the next couple of years. So, so far, we don't believe that the order book to fleet is an issue. The average age of the fleet is actually a very positive. The fleet is aging, very little scrapping going on, so that has the potential to help the market in the next couple of years. The volumes, we are seeing iron ore, coal actually supporting the market. So on our cape sizes, it's iron ore, bauxite and a little bit of coal. On the Panamax, it's coal, grain and some of the other commodities. When you look at what has been transported, we see that there is growth. Bauxite seasonally dips in the second quarter, but we have seen a very interesting pickup recently. So strong second quarter volumes on all dry bulk commodities. When we look at the IRNR specifically, it's a China, Australia, Brazil story. And an interesting story that we are seeing is the FE content. Overall, Chinese iron ore imports and Chinese iron ore imports are reducing in FE content a little bit, and we are seeing lower domestic production in China on the iron ore. Both these elements, if you compare 2026 with what we are expecting for 2027, could add another 2.5% of extra iron ore imports into China. So something to watch the FE content and domestic Chinese production, which is going down and being replaced by higher FE content R&R coming from abroad and being imported via sea. But there's a new kid on the block. Since a couple of years, the importance of Africa is increasing. We wanted to highlight this on this slide. Here you can see the volumes from some major commodities from major export areas. Some of which have been around for a long time, some of which are new to the game, like Simandou in Guinea. You can see that the growth from 25 to 26 is massive, but is actually expected to grow even further at an average rate of 11%. Why do we believe this could be a very interesting dynamic for our markets in the next three to four years? The Simandou iron ore, particularly, is being produced at a relatively low break-even cost and could replace shorter-haul iron ore going forward. We have tried to list some of the break-even costs of some mines on the right side of the slide. If that R&R would be replaced by cheaper Simandou R&R, you could get a kick of 7% in ton miles for the Cape size fleet. So Africa is definitely something to watch, and particularly Simandou and the effects in the next couple of years. I wanted to say a word about El Niño as well. We have two slides on El Niño and I'm sure my colleague Joris can talk to you about that for a little bit longer than what I will do now. But what we wanted to do here is to show that based on previous experience and the El Niño phenomenon in 2023 and 2024, we could see a positive effect for the dry bulk market and particularly for the Panamax fleet in dry bulk. And it's basically three dynamics. On the one hand, less water in the Panama Canal could limit the transits. Typically, Panamaxes carry low value commodities and cannot compete in the auction system to go through the Panama Canal with the container vessels and therefore don't transit anymore and therefore have to reroute and have a longer distance. There is a grain kicker to the dry bulk market as well, thanks to El Nino, where short-haul grain trades, for instance, Australia, where it's hotter and drier, produce less grain, are being replaced by longer-haul grain, for instance, from South America, where better crops are being grown. And then there's another one on the call, where hotter weather Leads to higher electricity demand and obviously on call. We also have the impact of hormones. So, all combined, we think that could have a slight positive effect on the driver market and Panamax in particular. And we tried to show this and prove this with this slide here where you can basically see the effect. of the May 2023 to May 2024 last El Nino and what it has an effect on rates and basically rates doubled even tripled over the space of six months.

Moving to tankers and Euronav.

Dashboard on our VLCCs and SUISMAXs. We have five VLCCs, four on the water, one that will deliver towards the end of this year. We have 15 SUISMAXs. You can see the results that we achieved in the second quarter. Above $120,000 in Q2 for Vs, already so far fixed in Q3, the same number. On our Suez Maxis, we reached a rate of $123,000. We are slightly below 120,000 Q3 to date. So stellar numbers, very good numbers. Obviously, we have sold some vessels. The new sales are the Donusa and the Bristol, but we have delivered as well VLCCs to their new owners in the second quarter. And you can see all the capital gains that we did there, which I mentioned in the introductions. When you look at the dashboard and all the specific indicators, one stands out, of course. It's the oil supply from OPEC countries year on year, which is significantly down. But I will highlight some more details in the next couple of slides. First, I'll talk about the order book. It is big and it is growing. You can see here, year per year on VLCCs and our Suez Maxes, What is on order? 370 Vs, 250 Suez Maxes. This is a very, very large order book, which is not going to be an issue this year. But as from next year, in 2027, 2028, we will get a delivery of one V or Suez Max every two days, which eventually could lead to an oversupply, even though we know there is still an aging fleet. But when you look at the old vessel numbers, are now inferior to the order book, whereas over the last four or five years, it was the opposite. So order book, something to watch for the next couple of years. On the demand side, we have analyzed what happened with seaborne crude. What we can see between January 2026 and June 2026, we went from 31 million barrels per day to 22.3 million barrels per day. And it's very interesting to see where the reduction came from. All in all, when you look at the total lost export volumes to the different major destinations, you come to a number of 8.5 million spread out. China, 4.3 million barrels lost. India, 1.8. Japan, 600,000 barrels. The US, close to 400,000 barrels. And the rest of the world, 400,000 barrels. What is interesting is that the Chinese lost import is basically a combination of less volumes from the Middle East, but also less volumes from other places in the world. Whereas you see that the other destinations, they surely have lost volumes from the Middle East, but they have actually increased their exports from other places in the world. And the reason we're saying this is that China is the single reason that we have not seen the barrel of oil at a much higher price than we have seen. They have basically single-handedly balanced the supply and demand story in oil by controlling it thanks to their massive reserves. And you can actually see here how the stockpiles of China have been evolving and how it allows them to be picky on when they decide to import, depending on the price and depending on how they position themselves geopolitically. We believe that the power of OPEC as a producing block is now in the oil markets moving to even more to China as a big buyer, and the numbers show it. And actually, you see this on this slide as well, whereas you see that the non-Chinese Asian importers have very quickly increased their imports above the levels that we saw last year. China is still way below the levels that they had last year at the beginning of the year. And this is really something to watch because as the situation in the Middle East normalizes, it will be very interesting to see how quickly China will start restocking or whether they will wait for lower prices. Moving to the container markets, as I said, the exposure of our company on containers is not very high. I think the one thing I can say about the container markets is that it has been much better performing than what we would have expected. This Red Sea unwinding has been delayed. meaning that more vessels are rerouting via Africa, meaning more vessels are needed. Volumes have been actually also better than expected. So all in all, container markets are good. But I've said this in the previous quarters, we are cautious when we look at the supply and demand going forward because there's still a lot of ships on order. Chemical tankers, our fleet of 16 vessels, eight are on the water. Another eight will be delivered. Most of our fleet is fixed on 10 year and seven year contracts. We have two ships operating in a pool. You can see the results there. The chemical market is actually doing relatively okay. We are watching the product tanker markets, whether they will keep up at a certain level or where they will start eating into the chemical tanker market. But so far, we believe we are in an okay situation. We are watching the order book for 27 and 28. And then finishing off with a very nice picture of our wind cut Rotterdam and the offshore wind markets. We have recently fixed two of our CSOVs to the offshore oil and gas for two years. We are seeing in the CSOV market, it's a market of the wind on the one hand, which is necessitating extra CTVs, extra CSOVs, but where projects have been a little bit slow to materialize over the past two years, and a combination of the offshore oil and gas markets, which are actually needing modern vessels and are pulling away some of the wind vessels into their market. If you combine both, Even with the order books of CSOVs that we are seeing this year in 27 and in 28, the market is very well balanced and actually the market is quite strong. You can see that we achieved some very good rates in the second quarter on our CSOVs of $64,000. For Q3, we have already booked two-thirds of our days at $50,000, which, as you can see with the breakeven numbers, are very good and profitable for our Windcat division. That sums up the presentation. There is one point I wanted to mention, which we have not tackled, but we have received quite a few questions about our bonds. As you know, on the 14th of September, our bond expires. We have decided to repay the bonds from our own cash that we have available. So we intend to repay the bonds on the 14th of September. We will not refinance the bonds. We will repay it. I would hand over now to Enya for the Q&A.

Yes, we will now start with the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hands. Make sure to introduce yourself and unmute before asking your question. If you are unable to unmute, you can also use the Q&A section to ask your question. And then for telephone participants, please type star five to raise your hand and star six to unmute. And if you have any For questions, you can always send an email to Joris. His email address is here and also in the press release. So now we will take the first question that is coming from Frode Myrkedal.

You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Yeah, thank you. This is Frode from Clarkston.

Since you started with the bond just to confirm you that won't impact the dividends let's use it hopefully.

No we don't expect this to impact the dividends.

Yeah so the dividend has been two quarters right now with 50% payout so that seems like a new trend as we expected so Yeah, I guess investors should still think 50% of net profit, including muscle sales gains, is the de facto policy. Of course, I understand that you can change it, but it seems like a good target.

I think it seems like a very good target, but as you correctly say, we are not going to change our policy. But look, it's been two quarters where we have tried to achieve that level. And depending on our investments, depending on new projects that might come up, we believe that trying to reward our shareholders at this level is a thing we want to continue to do.

That's very good. Yeah, so it seems like you're a bit concerned on the tanker order book, and you have sold off ships. So how do you weigh, let's say, and you even sold this modern ship, Suezmax 2014 built, right? Or 2024 built? 2024, yeah. Yeah. So how do you weigh, you know, continue holding on to these ships that make a lot of cash flow versus selling at this time?

Frodo, there's always three things you can do. You operate spot, you fix on TC or you sell your vessel. And we believe that definitely on some of the vessels that we have sold, the price that we saw was something that we should do because of the extreme value that we could create. Does that mean that we will sell even more vessels? No, it's really on a case-per-case basis. We like the tanker market. As you know, we have some charter cover on some of our vessels. We have some very modern assets still in our fleet. But I think, you know, just look at the numbers of the past 30 years, prices we are seeing today particularly for some of our VLCCs and Suez Maxes, are an opportunity we want to take and then take some money off the table.

Yeah, makes sense. Any capital gain, that's included in the dividend. That's very good. Just like the last question I had, bigger picture, it seems like some of these Middle East companies that are buying up tankers you know to run the shuttle services and you know it can pay a lot basically for tanker assets today so how do you feel about the current let's say vessel value and potential for further increases

I think it's already very high. Can it increase more? It can definitely increase more. I agree with you that some of the Middle Eastern operators are taking a strategic view where the price they pay for the ship is not as important as having the security of an access to a vessel that can shuttle out their oil. It remains to be seen how long this will last. But for the time being, there are still definitely buyers out there that want to buy secondhand tonnage at these kind of prices.

Which makes sense, of course. If you're one of these guys that can ship out oil from the inside the Middle East, you're making more than 500,000 per day or something like that, right? So obviously, the payback on any ship is quite high. And so you have a group of people that basically sets the price for the whole market. So that's very interesting dynamics. Anyway, that's all the question I had. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Then we move on. Christophe Samar, you can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Yes, good afternoon, Christophe Samar, KPC Securities. Congrats on the results, Alexander. Yeah. It seems that the pieces of the puzzle are falling perfectly in place for you guys. I mean, you're recycling, caching and crew tankers. GoldenOcean acquisition was very well timed. This was the new build ordering of the nukes at Bossimar. And then I come back again on capital allocation because You indicate that new builds is expensive, steel is expensive. You declared a new cash return of 64 cents. The loan to value is coming down. You have an across the cycle LTV target of 50%. Could you maybe give a hint for a range at peak or trough asset values where you feel comfortable at being a diversified shipping platform? That would be a first. And then second, on bunker fuels, could you quantify the impact, if any, on vessel supply through speed reductions in the dry bulk segment that you have seen in the market over the past quarter. And then as a follow-up, concerning the situation in the Middle East, is there any risk in a certain region that there will be bunker fuel shortages that could impact your operations?

Thank you. Okay. Thanks a lot, Christophe. So, first, your question on the target on LTV. We have a target throughout the cycle of 50%. And your question is, if that significantly improves, will this change your capital allocation strategy, for instance, on dividends or on investments or divestments? I would say that today it's probably a little bit too early to say. Dividend Policy We will keep on telling you that even though we come at the end of our CAPEX program, there could be investments down the line. I'm not seeing any obvious ones right now. I've said this in the last quarterly call, new buildings are very expensive. I'm not excluding one of new buildings, you know, interesting projects that we could do. But it's too early, Christophe, to basically state something new than we have said in the past. If this changes, if we see after another one or two very strong quarters, more visibility on cash flows into 2027, then we might change it. On the availability of fuels, it's a very good question. You have the general availability in the market, I think is relatively okay. There are some places where fuel availability is more challenging, and there are certain ship owners and operators that have more difficulty accessing their fuel because they don't have the same network than we have. As you know, we are partners with TFG, on the bunkering side, and definitely on the CMB Tech Fleet, fuel availability has not been a major issue over the last couple of months. Continuing on to your question on fuel availability in the Middle East, are we expecting big shortages in certain areas? Again, I can say what I just said on the previous question. So far, we think we will find the fuels that are necessary. You never know, of course, what the future will bring, but there's no specific shortage in a specific area where we go. We normally find our fuels.

Okay. Thank you. That's all for me for now. I go back in the queue. Thanks, Christoph.

And the next person is Clement Mullins.

Can you please unmute and ask your question?

Hi, this is Clement Mullins. I'm from Value Investors Edge.

I want to follow up on Fredo's question on your stance on tankers. Should a peace agreement be reached with Iran? What do you think would happen with the Dark Fleet previously involved in that trade? In other words, to what extent would the scrapping of the Dark Fleet offset the potential impact from new wheels on your scenarios?

Okay, so I'm going to give you my opinion, which you might agree or disagree with. I don't think the Dark Fleet will disappear overnight. I think there's 50 shades of grey now. It's not just a dark fleet and a white fleet. There's very different trades going on now, from totally illegal trades to totally legal trades. All the vessels that are active in these trades will, in my humble opinion, continue to find trades even if a peace deal with Iran is achieved.

Okay, that's helpful.

And we've seen a lot of container ship owners ordering new builds in recent months, but you haven't pulled the trigger. Could you talk a bit about the reasoning for holding off on additional investments on that space despite the long-term charters attached to most of these new builds?

Very good question. We have not seen an opportunity that's interesting enough for us to move on, but we keep on monitoring what is happening.

Okay, makes sense. And last one for me. I wanted to ask about the time charter design with Fortescue. Could you talk a bit about the underlying dynamics of the contracts?

Yeah, good question, Clement. And you're not the only one asking. So what we announced, again, there's a lot of confidential items to the deal. But what I can say, it's a framework agreement over 12 ships. which is a combination of ammonia-ready vessels, fully fitted ammonia ships and ships that we will retrofit at a later stage. And we are working together with Fortescue within this framework as the vessels deliver and come on the water to see on which period we will deploy them, at which rates, and whether we will use ammonia on board, yes or no. So it's an ongoing process under a framework agreement with Fortescue.

Makes sense. I'll turn it over. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you, Clement.

Lirim, can you please unmute and ask your question?

Yes, hello. Thank you, first of all, for letting me ask my question. I'm Lirim Rachitsa. I'm 32 years old. I live in Belgium and I'm really happy to be investing in CME Tech, which is quietly a large scale business. So my question is very simple. Would there be an impact or negative impact on the numbers when, for example, Iran and United States come to a peace deal? Thank you.

Well, thank you, Liam, for dialing in. Very happy that you're an investor in our company. The impact of a peace deal between Iran and US is very difficult to assess because you would have to look at what does a peace deal mean? What are the consequences of a peace deal? Now, one of the consequences that you could see is that the Strait of Hormuz opens up. and that tankers can again freely go in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. Now, many things can happen then. You could see a very positive impact for tanker raids if suddenly China imports a lot more oil to restock their reserves, and then they would send a lot of tankers to the Middle East and ship all that oil to China. You could actually also see a negative impact If China does not do that and countries like India, Vietnam, Thailand source their oil from the Middle East because they can go through Hormuz instead of from the Atlantic Basin, The distance the oil will travel to and from is much shorter, which means that you will see less demand for ships. The answer to your question, therefore, lies, there's many different aspects to it, but I think predominantly in what will China do. If there is a peace deal between Iran and U.S., is China going to massively re-import oil and go back to the situation before January 2026? Or will they wait and hold off a little bit? In which case, I think you could see the freight market cool off.

Okay, thank you for your response. Thanks for your question.

Tolbu, you can now unmute and ask your question, please.

Hello, Torbjörg Stael from the TET.

I was wondering when we expect a lot of new build ships coming to the market for Suez Max and PLCCs. Does it mean that this is markets which will become less attractive for Euronav and that it's time to scale back operations in oil tanking markets?

Thanks for your question, Tobe. It is clear that when all the vessels deliver and if at the same time freight rates go down, Euronav will make less money than what we are making today. We are trying to counter that by selling some of our vessels at these rates that we see today and by trying to take some cover, charter cover, so that when the market's correct, we still enjoy higher rates. The big issue that we have, Tobe, which I cannot predict, is when will this happen? And as we don't know when it will happen, we want to be prudent and make sure that we have done some part of our homework in taking cover before the market turns.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.

We have also received some questions in the Q&A, so we will go to those ones now. First question, what are your expectations for the upcoming IMO meeting?

That's a very good question. Well, let me tell you first what my hope is. I truly hope that the world can come together at the IMO and agree on a clear and simple and certain framework. The uncertainty surrounding a decarbonization framework is not good for the shipping industry, whether you invest in decarbonized solutions like us or where you don't invest in decarbonized solutions. Uncertainty is not good for business. So I'm hoping that there will be clarity at the next meeting. Now, what my expectations are, I have low expectations. I don't think we should be fooled after the United States put a lot of pressure together with some other countries last year to cancel or postpone the deal. I don't think their viewpoint has changed, but we can be surprised to the upside. I do believe there's a big role for China in the discussions. There's a big role for Europe to try to see if they can make a coalition of the willing and push through some legislation. Low expectations. Let's see what happens in November.

And then we have two questions on the tanker soil. I'll ask them together. First question, if we compare the spot TCE rate you realize in Q2 on your VLCCs seems to be a bit below compared to other tanker needs. Is it because the roots you have exposure to or are there any other factors that could explain the difference? Then the second one, how is CMB Tech thinking in regards to the mix between TCE and spot exposure?

On the first question, we had some new building deliveries, we had some positioning voyages, which in the second quarter affected our results a little bit on the split between TCE and spot. It's just a financial exercise. If we can charter out our vessels at good rates, we will do so. If we think being spot will generate more revenue, then we will do so as well. We've done both. We have fixed some of our Suez Maxes on period business whilst we've kept some of our VLCCs on the spot market.

Perfect. I think this concludes the Q&A session.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Enya. And I would like to thank all the participants to the call for dialing in. As we said before, if you have any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to contact my colleague, Joris, and he will gladly answer your questions. Thank you and see you next time.