FLEX LNG Ltd.

Hi, welcome everybody to FlexLNG's first quarter results presentation. I'm Øystein Carle Kleve, CEO of FlexLNG Management, and I will be joined by our CFO, Knut Råholt, who will walk you through the numbers a bit later in this webcast. As usual, we will conclude with our Q&A session, where the best question can win a Flex on the Beach summer kit, which I will be presenting a bit later in the presentation. Please use the chat function. to post a question, or you can also send an email to ir at flexlng.com. So before we start, just a friendly reminder about our disclaimer in the presentation. We will be giving some forward-looking statements, and there are also limitations to the completeness of details we can provide in such a presentation. So with that, let's review the highlights for the quarter. Revenues came in at 92.5 million, which was in line with our guidance of 90 to 93 million. Average time charter equivalent earnings for the ships were slightly above $80,000 per day, also in line with the guidance for the year of about 80,000. This resulted in strong numbers with adjusted net income of 35.2 million for the quarter, translating into 66 cents per share. During the quarter, we completed the balance sheet optimization program where we have refinanced all the 13 ships in our fleet with attractive long-term financing. Through this process, we have also released $387 million of cash proceeds in total, and this boosted our cash balance at quarter end to $475 million, an all-time high, which translates into about $9 per share in cash. We have also recently carried out the first two dry dockings of Flex Endeavor and Flex Enterprise, both according to schedule and budget. During Q2, we will do another two dockings, so in total three dry dockings for Q2, and this results in revenues for this quarter being guided at 85 to 90 million. Once we have completed the dry docking program in June, our quarterly revenues will pick up in Q3 and Q4 with quarterly revenues of around 90 to 100 million. for these two quarters. So, we are also reaffirming our revenue guidance of 370 million for the year, which should translate into an expected adjusted EBITDA of around 290 to 295 million. So, with a very strong financial position and minimum 57 years of contractual backlog, our board has decided to once again pay out a quarterly ordinary dividend of 75 cents per share. During the last three months, we have just paid out $3.75 per share in dividends, and this has given our investors an attractive yield of around 11%. So that's the highlight. Let's continue. So as I mentioned, we are reaffirming our revenue guidance of $370 million for the full year 2023. As you can see here in the graph, Q1 revenues this year was significantly stronger than last year as we had limit or spot exposure to one ship on variable higher time charter and actually spot market was pretty firm during Q1. For Q2 as I mentioned, we have three ships which will be doing dry docking during this quarter and Q2 is also usually the softest spot market and this will affect the one ship we have on variable TC. Once we are done with June, and getting into Q3 and Q4, all these 13 ships will be in operation, and usually we will see the seasonal uptick in charter rates during Q3 and Q4, which is also evident from the forward prices, and those revenues will grow to closer to 100 million for those quarters. So, as I mentioned, dry docking, we have been doing our first dry docking. The two first ships, Flex Enterprise and Endeavour, was delivered early 2020, and we are now due for the five-year special survey. Flex Enterprise carried out this in March, while our sister ship, Flex Endeavour, carried out her five-year special docking in April, both in Singapore. In our last presentation, we guided that in total, these four dry dockings would take out 80 to 90 days of operations, or 20 to 22 and a half days, On average, we have managed to do this within 18 days, so we are slightly below time, and we are also on the low side of the budget. CapEx in total for each ship, $4.5 million, versus guided $4.5 to $5 million. So in Q2, as I mentioned, Ranger and Rainbow will also be docked, and these are to be completed within June, and the ships will then be in operation for the full Q3 and Q4. So as I mentioned, high contract coverage, 57 years of minimum contractual backlog. This slide is the same as we had in our Q4 presentation. During last year, we did extend the contractual backlog backlog on several ships, as you can see here with Rainbow being extended 10 years, Endeavour, Vigilant, Amber, Enterprise, and Ranger. All these ships were extended for longer durations, and the first fully open ships we have today is Flex Ranger, early post of 2027, and Flex Constellation, middle 2027, if the charter is electing to extend her for the three years which they have an option to do. so I think in terms of these durations we have a good coverage now in their term when export growth is to be expected to be muted and then we have open shifts from 2027 once a lot of new LNG is coming on stream and where we are also competing against new buildings at very high prices as I will come back to in the market section of the presentation and once again our dividend Decision factors, as you can see here, for this quarter, we are paying out the $0.75 of ordinary dividend per share. We have paid out two special dividends the last year, $0.50 for Q2, $0.25 for Q4. So in total, the last three months, we have paid out $3.75 of dividend, which gives a yield of 11%, 12%, depending on where the share price is. So we think this should give our investors an attractive yield. All the parameters here are green. We have good earnings. Market outlook is good. We have this big contractual coverage. Liquidity at $475 million is super strong, and then we don't really have any debt maturities before 2028 as the earliest. Other considerations, right now I think most people are a bit focused on the aggressive Fed. ramping up interest rates on the short-term side, where we do have a very inverted yield curve. And Knut will discuss a bit what kind of opportunities this has given us in the swap market. So with that, Knut, I hand it over to you too. Thank you.

Thank you, Sten. And as already mentioned, revenues for the quarter came in at 92.5 million. That gives us a time-cutter earnings average for the fleet of close to 80,200. OPEX, another strong quarter where we maintain the OPEX control, where we have OPEX per day of 13,400. If we look more into the details on the revenues, we have 5.5 million lower than last quarter, and that is driven by lower seasonal earnings on the variable hire contract and the off-hire days related to dry docking of the flex enterprise. Then we have some more non-cash item on the income statement. The net loss on derivatives is 2.8 million. As you can see in the notes on the side, it's 7.8 million in unrealized market-to-market loss from the derivatives. And then we have realized gains of 5 million from the swap portfolio. which is sort of our carry cost. With the completion of the balance sheet optimization program, we have exit cost of our debt is 8.8 million of write-off of debt issuance cost and then a termination fee of 1.4 million. That gives us a net income for the quarter of 16.5 million or earnings per share of 31 cents. Adjusted for the non-cash items, we have adjusted net income of 35.2 million and then resulting in adjusted earnings per share of 66 cents per share. So let's have a look at the details on the adjustments that we have made to arrive at the adjusted net income. If we look at the quarter-and-quarter differences on the net income, operating income is $6 million lower. driven by the off-hire in connection with the dry docking of Flex Enterprise and the seasonal lower revenues under the variable higher contract for the Flex Artemis. Quarter-and-quarter adaptation cost is 8.5 million, which is basically driven by the completion of the refinancing under the balance sheet optimization program. And then derivatives, where we had a mark-to-market loss, were here on a quarter-on-a-quarter basis, 7.7 million. With the smaller order effects, we arrive at a net income of 16.5 million. And when we then reconcile to adjusted net income, we add back the non-cash items, which are the debt issuance cost, write-off, In total, together with the termination fee of 10.2 million. And then we have the unrealized market loss on the derivatives of 7.9 million. And then a smaller FX effect on our NOC portfolio. So in total, we adjust them back and arrive at an adjusted net income of 35.2 million. The balance sheet remains robust and clean with an all-time high cash position of 475 million. And we have an equity of 871. That gives us an equity ratio of 31%. If we look at the cash movements for the quarter, we increased the cash balance by 143 million, which is mainly driven by the completion of the balance sheet optimization program, where we have a net proceed of 196 million. And then net of the dividends paid last quarter, 54 million, we end up with the all-time high of 475 million. During the quarter, we have been active with our hedging portfolio. We have utilized the market when the interest rates have been high to lock in the market value on some of our swaps. Here we have, for those who recall, we had a two and a half year $181 million swap where we are paying fixed 0.9%. When the market rate was high at 4.8, we locked in that market value by doing a so-called mirror swap. where we will receive 4.8 fixed and pay the 0.9% to the bank. And that locks in 15 million of market value, which will be distributed back to us over the remaining period of that swap. We have also increased our hedging portfolio. When the short-term interest rate dropped in total, we increased with $260 million. And then we also added $50 million of 10-year swaps. That gives us a total swap portfolio of $820 million. And as you see, at very attractive rates. And in combination with the fixed rate elements of our leases of in total here $205 million, we have a net hedge ratio of 62% and then remaining there around 60 to 65% for the coming quarters. So this is net of the 400 million dollar RCF capacity we have. So by increasing the RCF capacity we have also effectively increased our hedge ratio. So if we look at our financings, we completed the refinancing exercise last quarter with in total six vessels. That gives us now a debt funding portfolio where about 50% are long-term leases and then 441 million of amortized term loans. And then we have the RCF of 400 million, which is a bullet for the full tenor of the loans. And by that, we have pushed out the debt maturity profile. So it's already mentioned by Einstein, first maturity is in 2028. And if we utilize an extension option at no cost for two of our leases, the latest one are then to be refinanced in 2035. So with that, I hand it back to Øystein.

Okay, let's have a look at the market. LNG export change in the first four months of the year, the period January to end of April, we saw about 5% growth in the market. And for the first time in a long time, actually the biggest driver was not America because of the The outage on the Freeport export terminal in the US, so the growth came from Qatar and Australia, the two big other players in the LNG export market, and then actually Norway as well, where we had the Hammerfest plant running now for the full quarter. Other countries contributed by about 2.5 million tons. On the import side, we do see the same trend we saw last year, where Europe is really gobbling up spot cargoes in order to replace the lost volumes from Russian pipeline gas. And in Asia, it's been a bit slow start for China. Growth was flat during January and February. And then we did see that growth in the Chinese market started to fire up from March and onwards. They have been lessening or basically scrapping the COVID policies they've had in place for some time now. If we look at the gas prices, it's been a very volatile ride. During the summer of COVID, European gas prices was as low as a dollar per million BTU, translating into, let's call it, six dollars per barrel of oil. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, really, we saw a big rally in in the global LNG prices, where Europe bought up a lot of spot cargoes, and we saw a peak of European gas prices at about $100. So we had a run from $1 to $100 on the gas prices. This equates to about $600 per million for a barrel of oil. But now we have had a big slump in gas prices. We have had a mild winter. here in Europe, and we have also seen the high prices have really incentivized people to cut down consumption, and prices have now balanced down to around $10, $11 per million BTU, where actually LNG becomes competitive towards oil. Basically, we are now being traded at, let's call it $60 per barrel of oil equivalent, And that is also feeding up demand from Asia, where we've seen more interest now to buy LNG in the spot market, as prices have come down. Henry Hub is basically flatlined. It's also been quite volatile, but now the prices have really come down in America, which means that it's still with $10, $11 for the spot prices. It's immensely profitable to sell these cargoes into the global market. from the U.S. market. So, in terms of America, we do see here the growth in exports. We had during COVID, of course, we had a lot of voluntary cancellations. We had some cancellations during the big freeze in February 2021. And now, last summer, when you had the explosion at the Freeport terminal in U.S., we have had significant Downtime on the plant, it's now bounced back. But in total, 128 cargoes assumed by S&P Global that has been cancelled, or 9.5 million tons. But now exports are ramping up again. And we do see and expect that U.S. will become the biggest exporter of LNG in 2023, with pretty healthy growth, 14% according to EIA for the year. The other big player in the LNG market is, of course, China. China became the biggest importer in 2021, so passing Japan at about 80 million tons, equivalent of imports, which is basically the production of US last year. So far, this is something we follow closely to see how the reopening of China is affecting demand, and I guess it's a big million-dollar question for most investors these days. We saw flat growth in January and February, as I mentioned, but then we saw LNG demand picking up March and April, which have, you know, on average, 17% growth. for those two months. So it's a bit too early to conclude, but there are some positive sentiments towards Chinese imports, and especially when prices are at these kind of levels. EIA and energy aspect expect Chinese energy demand to grow 10-15% this year, which will then result in China going from about 64 million tons of exports last year to about 70 million tons But this is still 10 million tons below the imports of 2021. So we do expect to see continued growth of the Chinese market. And the Chinese buyers are signing up to a lot of SPAs. China has contracted LNG volumes of around 70 million tons, but they are big buyers of new volumes as well. So the story about the Chinese LNG import growth is far from over. As I mentioned, European gas market has had a lot of focus with the situation in Ukraine and with the Russian pipeline gas flows tapering off. We have in Europe this year been incredibly lucky. It's been a very mild winter, and this together with the high prices have resulted in a lot less gas demand in Europe, which have then resulted in storage levels keeping up at a pretty good level. We have seen storage levels above historical range. The injection season now is a bit slow, so we are getting into the customary range for development of the gas storage level. So, you know, the big question this year is how strong will the imported man be from Asia? How fierce will the competition be in terms of prices? Will Europe then be able to get these inventories levels up to a satisfactory level before winter? And as I mentioned, again, the drivers here in the market is the competition between Asian and European gas demand. Let's see. Spot rates or the freight market, we are not really that exposed to the spot freight market any longer. 12 or 13 ships are on long-term charters with a fixed rate. We have one ship which has been on a variable higher TC, or which is on a variable higher TC, Flex Artemis. Q1, pretty good levels there. You can see on the light blue line on the left-hand side that the market during Q1 was pretty good, but has followed the seasonal norm where usually rates come down to earth during the spring. Right now, we are basically on average level for the last couple of years. And then this dotted line is where the future market is. So as I mentioned, when we have been guiding our revenues for Q3 and Q4, we do expect that reality will follow this path where rates are expected to be in the $200,000 plus at the end of the year. Another thing to note, we have mentioned this also in the past, is the fact that A lot of the big players here, they have chartered in ships on longer-term contracts, and there's really few independent owners left in the spot market, which means that most of the fixtures, which there are fewer of, but the ones being concluded is mostly of relets, where people with, or players, traders, portfolio players with the gap in the program are subletting out ships for shorter duration voyages, while while the independent owners are very limited involvement in the spot market these days. So another reason why we are upbeat about the long-term outlook is new building prices, which have just keep on moving upwards. We are at around $260 million for new building prices for LNG carrier today. You are quite lucky if you manage to get still a ship for 2027. The window is now closing in on 2028 deliveries. So these ships that have this price tag for delivery 2027, 2028, those are the ones we are competing with. And in order to get a reasonable return on your capital when making such a big investment, you need higher rates. And that's where rates have gone. The five-year time charter rate has stabilized at a very attractive level of around $135,000. But actually, to be fair, most people who are ordering ships at 260 million, they are not looking for five-year time charters. They are looking for time charters of 10 years plus. So that's the one we are competing with, and that makes us upbeat about being able to extend our ships for longer duration at higher rates eventually when they come open, as we have demonstrated our ability to do also in the past. So if you look at the order book, it's huge, and it's been keep on growing. We have seen some slower activity now on ordering, given the lack of available slots and given where prices have been going. But a positive sign is at least that there's not a lot of speculative orders. Most of the ships, about 90% of the ships under construction, are committed to long-term contracts. And as I mentioned here, you can see that the order book for 2028 now is already filling up. So if we look at the product markets, the installed capacity of LNG export at the end of March was about 465 million tons. We are not utilizing the full capacity. We do expect total export for 2023 to be around 415 to 420 million tons, so there are some downtime on installed capacity. There is also a lot of capacity being constructed, especially in North America, and then of course in Qatar, where they have a huge expansion So if you look at projects being under construction and coming on stream near term, this volume goes up to 621 million, and we do expect more projects still to be sanctioned. So we are looking here at the market of, let's call it around 770 million tons in 2030, and this growth of liquefaction capacity together with the phase out of older steam tonnage is what is affecting demand for modern ships like we have in our portfolio. So that's it. I think we can then conclude by going through the highlights just shortly. Mention revenues in line with our guidance, 92.5 million. average time charter equivalent earnings of about 80,000 also in line with our guidance this resulted in adjusted net income of 35.2 million or 66 cents per share we have completed the balance sheet optimization program it's been a process now going on for about one half year where we refinance all the 13 ships and boosting our cash balance as I mentioned at 475 million of cash at hand at quarter end or nine dollars per ship we have started our dry docking schedule everything is going well both two first ships have been been completed according to schedule and budget and we are now planning for the two last dry dockings for the year we're expecting to take place in June We are reaffirming our revenue guidance for the year, 370 million. Revenues next quarter will be a bit softer because of these dry dockings, but all ships will be in operation again, full capacity from Q3, where revenues are expected to pick up again. So with good financial position and our big charter backlog, we are pleased to once again pay out 75 cents per share in dividends. or $3.75 per share the last 12 months, which I hope give our investors an attractive yield investing in Flex. So with that, I think we take a short break before we come back with our Q&A session, where, as I mentioned, you can win our Flex on the Beach summer kit. Thank you. Okay Knut, I think before we start with the questions, maybe we can show the gift we have this time. This time we have our summer team, as I mentioned. Flex on the beach, beach towel. Together, of course, you need some protection with Flex on the beach, sunscreen or cap, of course. You have to include the I Love Dividends t-shirt this time as well. And lastly, sunglasses so let's see who will win the this nice summer package and I think we have a lot of questions today yes thanks a lot for the questions coming in there's a lot of questions and we'll try to take them in in order and sequence and

But maybe we can start off a question forwarded from the investor Jenny Harrington. She was on CNBC and put up a couple of questions, and they've been forwarded. Okay. And that starts off with, how does the low natural gas prices in the U.S. impact FlexLNG? Okay.

Yeah, it's a complex question. There's more answer than just one. It's short term and long term. Of course, in the long term, if prices for natural gas stays very low in the US, of course, this will disincentivize new drilling activity, which is, of course, crucial in order to hold production up. This has not been a problem so far. We set new records all the time on US gas production, and one of the reasons is that wells are becoming more gaseous as you're drilling. But you need to have a sustainable return on equity or capital in these projects, so we don't really like that prices are this low. Of course, short-term wise, that means that exporting cargoes out of US is very profitable because the price difference between US gas prices and international gas prices are bigger, which means that those people exporting cargoes are making more money on LNG, and this is also the case actually on LPG. So, you know, it's a bit like this story about Goldilocks, you know, you don't want it to be too hot, you don't want it to be too cold, so you need to find some kind of sweet spot. I think luckily, of course, a lot of the wells, you're not really drilling for gas. Some wells, you're also drilling for oil, and the gas is just associated gas. So you also have to see it in connection with the oil prices, which have been pretty firm. So as long as the oil price is pretty firm, you will be drilling for oil, and usually then you will find associated gas. But where you are looking for dry gas, you need probably to have higher prices in the US than what you have had today. But keep in mind, gas prices in the U.S. has also been quite volatile, where there have been periods of time where people have been raking in also on selling gas domestically in the U.S.

And then there's the question on shipping, and shipping has historically been a volatile sector, or there are different segments into it. But you mentioned that historically investors have been burned on shipping companies. What's the difference with flex? Does the charter agreements make it different than other shipping companies?

Of course, shipping has always been volatile. So it's a derivative of the global GDP and usually trade historically at least have been growing quicker than GDP. But this is also a problem on the downside when GDP growth slows less. shipping activity. I think what makes Flex different from most commodity shipping segments is of course the fact that we have taken out a lot of this commercial risk by fixing our ships on long-term charters where we have very high level of earnings visibility and this you can also see in our earnings and revenues. If you look at the revenue graph we're showing for the guidance for this year. There's very small changes in the revenues from one quarter to the next because of this stability we have through long-term charters and also actually revenues are quite stable over the years, not only the quarters. So I think we are different in that regard because we have a bit different commercial strategy than most commodity shipping companies.

And that brings us into the dividend and how secure it is. With the U.S. Treasury yielding 5%, is flexing an alternative for people looking for higher yield?

Yeah, you know, savers have had a bad time since the global financial crisis because, well, actually they have had it pretty bad the last 40 years or so because interest rates have been going down. The yield you are getting on your savings can become less and less more or less every year. Now the last year or so it's been picking up, but real interest rates have still been pretty low because of the high level of inflation. Yes, 5% is the short-term interest rate today, but markets don't really think that yields will stay at this elevated level short-term. While one-year treasury yields is 4.8% today, two-year is 4%. And then if you go all the way to 10 years, you're back to 3.5%. So I think, you know, if you're investing, you know, for income investing, what you're getting in a safe asset today, let's see, we have a debt ceiling coming up, but it's a fairly safe investment, 10-year government bonds in the U.S. That gives you 3.5%. we are giving a much better return. As I mentioned, about 11% yield here the last 12 months based on the dividend. Of course, this dividend is also safe in the fact that we have no ships open this year. The earliest possible ship is next year where we have just 95% coverage if you assume options will not be exercised. We think it's more probable than not. And actually then the first open ship is 2027 so that gives us a very visible cash flow of income which as we have also said in the presentation these earnings belong to the shareholder and we are motivated to pay that out as dividend and that should give you a much better yield than what you are getting on government bonds these days.

So then let's turn to the questions on the market. What's your outlook for LNG transport out of US for 2023-2024?

I think last Q4 report we had a graph on projected supply situation for 2023. We are assuming 16 million tons of growth, global exports growing from 400 to 416. This might be a bit low when we see the EIA numbers, but half of that is U.S., so kind of the free port coming back on stream is most of this effect, and then the remaining growth is from the rest of the world. 2024 will be a year where we will have very muted export growth, but then from 2025 and onwards, there will be more exports. That's why we feel it's been a good strategy for us to fix our ship in this window where global growth in exports will be low before this growth takes off again from 25, 26, 27 onwards when our ships are coming open.

And we then look at the import regions. Last year and this year there's been a lot of imports to Europe. Is Europe and EU an important market for FLEX?

It's not really we who decide where the cargoes will be flowing. We charter also ships on time charter, so the charter will then have the opportunity to trade the ship worldwide, including Europe, and they actually instruct us where the ship will be going. So we don't really have an impact on that. They are deciding where. they find the best price for the cargoes but of course with all the Russian gas coming through pipelines which has been shut down this means that Europe has a large deficit of gas and basically what they have been doing now for the last year or so is to replace some of that Russian pipeline gas with LNG of course there are not enough LNG to fill the whole gap and that's why Europe needs to be a bit patient here until new LNG is coming on screen. And until that, you will have a pretty tight market where we have seen prices at a level which has been demand-destructing. Right now, prices come down to fairly normal levels, but expectations is for higher prices when we're coming into the peak winter seasons.

And now with LNG pricing being more moderated, have you seen Asia return to the import?

Yeah, we've shown it in a couple of graphs here that we see some more growth from Asia. We do see this also in the routing of our ships. We see more ships going to Asia than have been the case recently. And of course, suddenly then when LNG now has, let's call it 20-25% discount to oil, And coal prices are pretty elevated as well. That is stimulating demand. And I think it's stimulating demand at a good time also because inflation has been high in Europe because of the high gas prices with the energy prices coming down now. That will put less pressure on the inflation. And, of course, with China reflating their economy, having actually cheaper energy prices will probably help in the recovery of the Chinese economy as well.

Then we have a question from Mike Otten, which goes more on the fleet and the steam tankers. It's a topic you've covered over the years. But it's been mentioned that these will be uncompetitive and scrapped, and that has not materialized yet.

There's been some scrapping, but it's been very low. And, of course, the reason for that is that the shipping market has been tight. there's been to solve in Paris been a total lack of ships available in the market so when we have such high rates people are trading their ships longer because still even a steamship which has a lot of disadvantages compared to modern ships they can still make a decent return and I think as long as As that is the case, people have been trading them. And also keep in mind, a lot of new regulation came in force from 2023 and onwards. So eventually, as this regulation is tightened in terms of the CIA requirements, also the European carbon taxation, which is becoming increasingly more expensive to comply with, that will reduce the fleet of steamships going forward. So it's taken maybe a bit more time than some people expected, but this is mostly due to the very favorable freight economics, which then results in those ships living a bit longer than maybe some people anticipated.

Then we have questions on the open vessels in 2027. So if we start off with more timing of securing a contract, is it more realistic that these charters will be signed in 12, 24, 36 months?

Oh, yeah. I think we evidenced it last year. When I went through our fleet list, we showed several of our ships. We extended quite a lot of ships. Last year, most recently in November, we extended ships which were not coming open before 26 for longer durations, all the way possibly to 2033. So we do see people now looking for ships for 27, even people looking for ships for 28. There are tenders, there are discussions in the market, so I think we are well positioned to to participate in those discussions. And as I mentioned here, we are competing against very expensive ships that need a high charter rate and probably a duration in order to defend that investment. So I think I wouldn't rule out that we will be able to also this year add more backlog to the fleet. Let's say we have 13 ships in operation, so every year we are losing 13 years of backlog. Hopefully, we will be able to add more than 13 years of backlog so that actually we are not eating off that backlog, but rather expanding our backlog. That, I would say, would be the and I don't rule out that happening within 12 months rather than the 24 or 36 months.

And a question from Min Nguang. Considering the age and technology gap between the 2027 new building and the two strokes in the Flex fleet, will the vessels achieve the same market rates as the new building?

Yeah, I think so, because kind of the change in technology that has happened has of course happened abruptly we had from steam to four stroke medium speed diesel electric ships and then eventually to the direct drive slow speed two stroke ships as you can see from the pictures here we have both on the front page and on the docking slide these ships are in prime condition when they come out of the yard they look brand new and the propulsion system is actually the same you have in the new builds it's a slow speed two stroke engine there might be some more gadgets on a new ship for delivery 27-28 maybe they have air lubrication system but so far the effect of the air lubrication systems have been you know not everybody is as happy with it as the poster promised some ships might have a shaft generator but that doesn't really affect the much on the fuel consumption, it's really more effects on the OPEX cost or the maintenance cost. So there's not really any change in fuel cost in that sense. So three of our ships have full relic systems. Four of them have partial relic systems. So I think these are comparable to the new modern ships that are being built now to 260 mil. And also, actually, there is a benefit to the fact that most of our ships are sister ships. They have been trading on most import and export terminals, and they are already cleared. So every time you go to a new terminal, you need to do a ship shore compatibility study. We have done a lot of them, so all our ships more or less are kind of already vetted and improved for most terminals around the world. So maybe there might be a small discount given the fact they are not as brand new, but the technology is basically the same.

And then we have moving on to the more on the balance sheet and the financing. Scott McFadden has been looking at our long-term debt and total liabilities. It's been rising over the past quarters. He would like us to discuss our attitude towards the total debt levels and if we have any plans to reduce that.

Maybe you should answer that. Yes.

So we've completed this balance sheet optimization program, basically refinancing the full 13 vessel fleet. The background for that was the transition for Flex both on the backlog of contracts that's been building up and increasing over time that gives us access to new capital or to new debt at better terms. So we have increased our repayment profiles, reduced our credit margins, improved the maturity profile So that's the argument for us for refinancing the full fleet. And then we have not really pushed for higher leverage, but we have released nearly $400 million of cash. And that has been structured as a bullet RCF. So if we have access cash, we can reduce the RCF and thereby also implicit the debt level as long as we don't need the cash. But it gives us the flexibility to act and support the business going forward.

So Bullitt means it's non-armortizing for those who's not into the finance industry. It means really we have like a big 400 million credit line available at basically three days notice. We pay only around... 0.7% interest rate per annum in commitment fee to keep it around, and it gives us a lot of financial flexibility. We don't utilize this at all time. We utilize it at quarter ends to show that we have this cash available, but it's low cost of having. And also another factor is that we have had the best financing market, I would say, since 2007. I was... doing ship financing back then. Last time we had something similar good financing market, I would say, was 2014. I was CFO then, and I did about $2 billion of financing that year. I think actually 2022 has been a better financing market for us. So Knut's been doing then basically $2 billion of financing, and then we have secured that financing for a very long period of time, from 2028 to 2035. So that in locked in on very good terms, terms which I don't think is replicable today, given where funding costs from banks have gone up since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, First Republic. So I think we are in very good shape. You should get financing when it's cheap and lock it in, and that's exactly what we've done.

And on the graph we have on the – or the slide we have on the balance sheet, You see there that the book values on our balance sheet is based on nearly all-time low vessel values when they were acquired. So if you look at the leverage levels on the book values, they are rather conservative compared to the market values and also considering the contract backlog that we have.

Yeah, we contracted chips when they were cheap. We tried to, as good as we can, lock them in on long-term charters when rates are high and then finance them when liquidity is plentiful and cheap. So, yeah, I think we've done a pretty good job so far.

And that comes back to the recurring question about how to spend it. What's the plan for growth? How do you plan to spend a large pile of cash? Is it reduction of debt, acquisitions, buyback, fleet growth?

I think, of course, the biggest item here is dividends. We paid out... $200 million of dividend the last 12 months or the last four quarters. So that is, of course, the main source of spending money. We think new buildings are pricey these days. If we ordered, I'm not sure whether we get a 27 slot. Maybe it would be 28. You know, we have two ships coming open in 27, two ships early 28. We do think it's better business for us to fix those ships on longer-term contracts rather than building new ships and try to compete with those ships with our existing fits. So we try to be disciplined, and we structure the financing, as Knut mentioned, in a very flexible manner where the cost of having that debt is low. And then we will see. You know... LNG is a long-term business, so we just try to be disciplined when new billing prices are high, and then we have access to capital very cheaply where we can act on opportunities if we see opportunities. If not, we will just keep on doing what we're doing, fixing chips and paying dividends, and I hope that is appreciated by most investors.

I think we'll round off then. Here's a contender for the bat hours. Do you ever get tired of winning?

Well.

You don't have to answer, but I think we've rounded off, and now it's time to disclose.

Let's talk about the winner, because that's going to be Minh Nguang, who had a good question about technology on Twitter. on new buildings today versus the ships we have in our fleet? I think that's a good question. It's something we talked about in the past, but it's been a while since we touched on the topic. So congratulations to you. You will have the full summer kit. And then before we adjourn, I just think I want to say thank you to all our seafarers, to all the people in the docks who have done a fantastic job on Flex Endeavour and the Flex Enterprise dockings, which has been perfect in terms of budget and timing, and the ships are back with their charters. We are happy to trade them again. We have two more to go this year. Next year, we will only have two dry dockings. So with that, I also would like to thank, or I would like to extend to our Norwegian viewers that I hope you all have a happy Constitution Day here tomorrow, May 17th. It's the biggest day in Norway. We have a lot of celebration. So with that, thank you, everybody. And we will be back in August with our second quarter presentation. We will also be in New York on June 20th and onwards for presentations. So for those who are interested, maybe you can join the Marine Morning Conference and we will do some presentation there as well. Okay. Thank you.