Frontline plc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2024 frontline PLC earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Lars Barsted, CEO of Frontline Management AF. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for that introduction, dear all. Thank you for dialing in to Frontline's quarterly earnings call. The second quarter of 2024 ended up very much in line with the first, with volatility, but ending up on a softer note as we entered the seasonal summer lull. Complications around war risk in the Middle East and tightening sanctions against Russia has regretfully become the norm, and I will be touching on that later in the call. It's important to remember, though, that we are at the seasonal lows, and I would like to say that all shareholders have a very exciting fall ahead, as Frontline has not had this number of potential money-making days going into the winter for decades. Before I give the word to Inger, I'll run through our TC numbers on slide three in the deck. In the second quarter of 2024, Frontline achieved $49,600 per day on our VLCC fleet, $45,600 per day on our SUSEMAX fleet, and $53,100 per day on our LR2 slash AFRAMAX fleet. So far in the third quarter, 79% of our VLCC days are booked at $47,400. 85% of our SUSE max days are booked at $49,900. And 65% of our LR2 slash AFRA max days are booked at $50,100 per day. Again, all these numbers are on a load-to-discharge basis, meaning they will be affected by the amount of ballast days we end up having at the end of the third quarter. Although Q3 bookings came in somewhat short of market expectations, please do keep in mind the binary characteristics of our market, especially as we come out of the seasonal lows. And then I'll let Inger take you through the financial highlights.

Thanks, Lars, and good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let's then turn to slide four. and look at profit statement and highlights. We report profit of 187.6 million or 84 cents per share this quarter and adjusted profit of 138.2 million or 62 cents per share. The adjusted profit in the second quarter was comparable to the first quarter as you can see from the slide. And the decrease in our TCE earnings with 12.4 million as a result of the disposal of two VCCs and two Susmax tankers was offset by a decrease in ship operating expenses, administrative expenses, depreciation and finance expense, as well as an increase in interest income of 12.6 million, making up the 0.2 million increase in the quarter. Let's then move to slide five and look at the balance sheet. The balance sheet movements in this quarter are mainly related to sale of four vessels in the second quarter, of which one we will see was held for sale in the first quarter. and also to re-leveraging part of the existing fleet used to repay debt drawn to partly financed acquisition of the 24 BCCs from Euronav. Trompe l'Ile has a strong liquidity of 567 million in cash and cash equivalents, including undrawn amount of the senior unsecured revolving credit facility, the marketable securities and minimum cash requirements to the bank as per June 12th, 2020 to 24th. We have no remaining new billion commitments and we have no meaningful debt matrices until 2027.