d'Amico International Shipping S.A.

Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the D'Amico International Shipping first quarter 2025 results web call. All participants are on listen-only mode and after the presentation there will be a Q&A session. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Federico Rosen, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello everyone and welcome to the MIGO International Shipbuilding Conference call presentation for Q1 2025.

Sorry, let me finish the presentation. So as usual, I'll skip the executive summary.

Snapshot of the fleet as at the end of March 2025. The Amico International Shipping had 32 ships, 32 for the tankers, of which 28 were owned, three were variable chartered, and one was time chartered. As we speak, one of the vessels, the only vessel that is time chartered in, that was time chartered in at the end of March, was actually exercised. The purchase option on this vessel was exercised, so now it's an owned vessel. Still young fleet, 9.4 years of average age against an industry average of 14.1 years for MRs and 15.7 years for RO1s. 84% of our fleet is eco-design against an industry average of 37%. Moving to the next page. Our bank debt situation, very straightforward for Q1 2025. We repaid $6.7 million of bank debt in the quarter. We're expecting to repay further $20.1 million in the rest of the year of 2025. We have no refinancing needs for 25 and 26, apart from a small residual amount of $3.2 million at the very end of 2026, in December 2026, that is expiring, that we're assuming here in the graph to refinance for the same amount. Slightly different situation in 2027, as we are going to have approximately $66 million of debt to refinance. In addition to that, we're assuming currently to refinance our new building vessels, the four new building vessels that we have ordered, for a total amount of 86.8 million dollars. On the graph on the right, you can also see, as usual, our daily bank loan repayment. which as you know, drops significantly from the $6,150 a day of 2019 to $2,540 a day in 2025. Moving to the next slide, here we give our usual rough guidance on how the second quarter of the year looks right now. So we have already fixed 51% of our days are in time charter at an average daily rate of $23,816 a day. Also, we have fixed 27% of the days on the spot market at $23,000 a day. So we're talking about currently about 78% of our total days for Q2 fixed at an average blended daily rate. So the sum of the spot and the time charter exposure that we have at an average of $23,500 a day. As always, you find on the right the sensitivity on the unfixed days that we have for Q2. So should we make $18,000 a day or $20,000 a day or $22,000 a day on our fixed days? then our blended BTC would rise to 22,321 or 22,754 or 23,188. So we're expecting another profitable quarter for DIS. Next page, estimated fleet evolution. We're expecting to have a stable fleet of around 32 ships, but with a much higher proportion of all shifts, given all the options that we have been exercising. On the right, you see also our potential upside to earnings. So our sensitivity relative to the spot market. So as we speak for every $1,000 a day, rate that we make on the spot market, our bottom line sensitivity is of 3.4 million dollars for the remainder of 2025. And if you look at the bottom, should we run all the unfixed days, all the free days that we have right now at a breakeven level, then our net result for this year would be slightly less than 60 million dollars. And should we run the unfixed days for 2026, also break even level, then our profit for next year would be already of almost $19 million. And again, if you still look at the bottom, but on the right-hand side, if we ran the unfixed days, our unfixed days for 2025, $80,000 a day, or $20,000 a day, or $22,000 a day, then our net result would rise to $70 million, so 76.6, or 83.4 million should we make $20,000 a day as an average on the MTCs that we have at the moment. Temporary cost pressure. On the cost side, We have been exposed, as you know, to some inflationary pressure, both on OPEX and GNAs. The GNAs are obviously, as we discussed in our previous conference calls, has been impacted by the variable component of our personnel costs, which are also obviously the reflection of some very good years that we have had. On the OPEX side, We had a daily OPEX of $800, $462 a day, which is approximately 8% higher relative to the same period of last year. However, we expect this to be mostly timing related. We had some exceptional items that negatively impacted this number in the quarter. Partially also due to the training pattern of some of our vessels, which were employed in South America on some profitable voyages, where, however, it's a little bit more expensive, for example, to do crew changes, which we have to do for our normal crew rotation on board of our ships. So overall, we're still expecting some. We're still seeing some inflationary pressures on our OPEX costs, but we don't expect at the moment this impact to be of 8% relative to the previous year. We're expecting on a four-year basis currently approximately 3% higher cost on a four-year basis relative to 2024. Net financial position. A very strong financial position for DIS. At the end of the quarter, we had $114 million of net financial position. If you exclude the small impact that we have right now arising from the application of IFRS 16, our net financial position is of only $111.7 million. compared to a fleet market value at the end of the quarter of over $1.1 billion. So our net financial position to fleet market value ratio was of 10% at the end of Q1 2025. So substantially very much in line with the figure at the end of 2024. And of course, if you compare this important ratio, this important financial leverage ratio, to what it was a few years ago. I guess the trend here is pretty impressive. It was 72.9% at the end of 2018. And this is obviously due to the very good cash flow generation that we had in the last years, together obviously with the significant, the leveraging plan that we have implemented. Q125 results. We made a net profit of $18.9 million in the first quarter of the year, still strongly bid out $34.4 million against the total net revenue of $64.1 million, so very good margins. Of course, the results of Q125 are much lower than what they were in Q124, where we made a profit of $56.3 million. The market obviously is still extremely profitable for us, as you can see, but of course, it's not at the same level where it was a year ago. Excluding some small non-recurring items, our net result would have been of $19.2 million. against $56.7 million in the same quarter of last year. Going to our key operating measures, we operated in the quarter an average number of vessels of 32.7. We had a contract coverage of almost 40% at a daily average of 24,567. We made on the spot market an average, a daily average of $21,154, which obviously compares to an average of $38,200 a day that we made in the same quarter of last year. And our total blended daily TCE was of $22,500 a day for the first quarter of the year. And I pass it on to Carlos for the rest of the presentation.

Yes, thank you, Federico. So as usual, we start this part of the presentation looking at CAPEX commitments. In the first quarter, we exercised the TCN option on the one vessel which we had time charted in since delivery from the yard, the Japanese vessel, very good vessel, for $34 million. And in April, We took delivery of another vessel. Also, we had time charted in since delivery from the yard, also Japanese for a similar amount, $33.9 million. The investments we show here for 26 and 27 relate to the last installments for the four LL1s that we ordered in China and that will be delivered to us in the second half of 2027. Going on to the following slide, we have been very active over the last few years exercising options on leased vessels. This year we exercise the option for the Charter de Heusen, which, however, will be delivered to us only in September. And we still have two options to be exercised. One, the discovery can already be exercised since September last year, and the fidelity will be exercisable from September this year. As mentioned in the past, these transactions are at very competitive cost of funds for us. very long-term financings with no financial confidence. As long as the interest rates continue being relatively high, we are happy to keep these transactions going. If we were to replace them with bank debt today, even taking into account the fact we can access very competitive terms today, we would still be paying more than what we are paying for these leasing deals here. But of course, if interest rates were to come down more decisively, then things might change and we might decide to exercise these options. In terms of the time charted in vessels, we have exercised all of them. We include in the two columns here the difference between the market value and the exercise price at the exercise stage.

And for those that were already part of our books, as of 31st of March, the difference between the market value and the book value as of that date.

And vessel values did come down in the first quarter of this year, especially for older vessels. But there's still a positive delta there between the market value of the vessels and the book value. of the same vessel. So looking at our coverage, we now managed to execute on our plan of increasing coverage for the second half of the year to reach 50% at least, and we're now just above that level. 51% in Q2 and then rising to 53% in Q3 and then once again 51% in the last quarter of the year at an average rate of almost $24,000 per day. So very profitable contracts, which as Federico illustrated previously, provides us some secure profits for the year, which we expect to be able to build on to generate even further profits through the spot employment of the remaining vessels and eventually by taking more coverage during the course of the year. more with the objective of covering a larger portion of 26 than of increasing coverage of 25. We are quite happy where we are today without coverage in 25, but of course it is very difficult to take forward coverage for 26 without also taking coverage for 25. And in that respect, we have this year When we did take coverage, it was much easier to cover for periods of one year or six months than it was for longer periods. There are here and there opportunities to take longer contracts. If they were to materialize, we would look at them quite seriously. That does not mean we have a bearish outlook on the market, to the contrary, we're still very positive on the market's outlook, but we recognize that there are a lot of variables which are outside of our control. many of them of a geopolitical nature, which are affecting the market. And over the last few years, they have all gone in our favor. That will not necessarily continue being the case going forward. Some of the variables which we have benefited from could not be there in the not too distant future and other variables could affect our market which might not be as positive and we will cover more of that in the following slides in the presentation. If we look here at where the charter rates are today and that's all values charter rates have corrected since the peaks reached over the last few years, but they are still at very high levels relative to historical averages and very profitable levels. Asset values have been more resilient, stronger correction for all the vessels on a percentage basis as is to be expected, whereas instead new building prices have held up quite well. We expect that to change in relation to new building prices. We expect that there's going to be a stronger correction in the coming in the coming quarters. However, we might need to differentiate in that respect when we talk about Chinese new building prices and Korean new building prices, as we will cover in some of the slides in the presentation. Here we look at what happened to Russian exports of refined products. We covered this slide several times already over the last few years. Russia used to be a big exporter to Europe of refined products and now they are selling these barrels further away and Europe has replaced the Russian barrels with inputs also from more distant locations helping significantly the ton miles for the sector. We have no idea when the conflict in Ukraine will terminate. However, there seems to be some pressure within Europe and a recent proposal by the Commission to become totally independent from energy exports from Russia. So irrespective of what happens in Ukraine, Europe might decide, of course, that would be expensive thing to do, to refrain from importing energy from Russia, even after a peace agreement, because Russia cannot be considered anymore a reliable trading partner. With regards to the Red Sea, a lot of uncertainty here too. The peace agreement that there was in Gaza led to a gradual resumption of trade flows through the canal after bottoming in around December last year. but the end of this truce led to a decline again in April of the volumes transiting through the canal. To what extent the product anchor sector is benefiting from these longer saving from product tankers having to sail the longer route through Cape of Good Hope. I am unsure of. In the beginning, it definitely was a very positive element, which contributed to the very strong markets we saw in the first half of last year. Nonetheless, the additional cost of having to sail the longer route meant that larger vessels became more attractive. And when we're talking about larger vessels, we are talking here about vessels which are usually transporting crude, like Suez Maxis and VLCCs, as a means of transporting clean, refined products. It was something extremely unusual, these vessels cleaned up, It's very expensive and time-consuming for these vessels to clean up, but they did clean up last summer, and it was quite a widespread phenomenon. And they did transport large quantities of clean, refined products. Therefore, the volumes transported on vessels which typically transport these products fell as a result of this disruption. And so the overall effect is definitely uncertain. a reopening of the Red Sea could increase the competitiveness again of the smaller product tanker vessels, or product tanker vessels generally, and because the flexibility might again become more valuable than the mere economies of scale offered by the larger vessels. And the following slide, covers the same topic, and here we see what happened in the summer. The yellow line is the unquoted share of long-haul of CPP trade, which went above 12% last summer, since then declined significantly, although it has risen slightly over the last few months. And on the right graph, we see that Suez Maxis in particular continued transporting substantial amounts. of gas oil around the Cape of Good Hope, cannibalizing the market for product anchors. VLCCs there was much less of, and that is not surprising. I'm talking with companies which were involved with such trade. Those that did use VLCCs said that it was quite complicated to clean these vessels and there were contaminations. However, some players, they do control the whole chain and they are also the receivers of the product. So for them, it's much easier, much less risky to engage in such activities. And we are seeing some important companies which are still transporting, cleaning up Suez Maxis to transport refined petroleum products. On the sanctions, now this is an increasingly important element affecting the market. Before Biden left office, he sanctioned an important number of tankers and Since Trump became president, he continued doing the same, targeting, in his case, more vessels which have been involved on Iranian-sanctioned trades. Nonetheless, we see the blue line, the vessels sanctioned by U.S. authorities, and then the red line, the vessels sanctioned overall number of vessels sanctioned by US authorities, EU and UK authorities. It's a very big number of vessels, which represents a big chunk of the total tanker fleet. And there's scope for more vessels to be sanctioned, especially when they are sanctioned by the US authorities, it becomes very complicated for them to continue trading and many refrain altogether from doing so. The US port fees. This was a big threat for the sector, big uncertainty relating to these threatened fees. Fortunately, following consultation with industry, the proposal was streamlined and is much less impactful than initially. There were some important exclusions which were included, some of them which are very important for us, namely that vessels which are of 55,000 deadweight tons or smaller are excluded, and that covers most of our fleet, with the exception of the other ones. But, however, there is also another part of the proposed regulation which seems to exclude also vessels with an individual bulk capacity of up to 80,000, that way, tons, where it is not clear whether that relates only to dry bulk vessels or also to liquid bulk vessels. If it were to relate also to liquid bulk and therefore tankers, also LR1s would be exempted from paying such fees. And if that were to be the case, since there are imports into the US which are transported on LR2s, This could be quite beneficial for the LR-1 sector because the LR-1s would then become the largest vast product tanker vessel size, which could call US ports without having to pay such fees. And so some of these cargoes today transported on LR-2s could migrate to LR-1 vessels. Furthermore, the uncertainty created by these fees and the risk of a landscape which is always evolving and which could further impact the Chinese shipyards is reducing the appetite from ship owners for new orders at Chinese shipyards. And we expect that to continue being the case going forward. And Chinese shipyards today control the bulk of the shipbuilding capacity for tanker vessels. As we see on the graphs on the right hand side, at the top, 71% of the tanker fleet on order today has been ordered at Chinese shipyards. So it's going to be very difficult for Japanese or Korean shipyards, which are the let's say the competitors, China and Japan has very limited production capacity today for product anchors. It's really mostly Korea, and some other yards here and there.

For example, in Vietnam, there are some yards we order that are controlled by Korean shipyard.

it would be very difficult for them to replace the lost output from the Chinese shipyards, which could bode very well for fleet growth going forward. And going on to the next slide, oil demand. The International Energy Agency downgraded its demand growth forecast for this year by around 300,000 barrels per day. to $700,000 per day. The main reason for this decrease is the uncertainty created by the threatened tariffs and already imposed tariffs by the US, which is dampening consumer sentiment. business sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic, and that is very worldwide. So it is unfortunately creating some real tangible economic damage as we speak, irrespective of what will be the final outcome of the negotiations which are taking place or will be taking place in relation to these targets. Refined throughput also should not be growing substantially this year. We estimated increases of only 300,000 barrels per day. The good news here is that this low figure masks some very different trends between OECD and non-OECD countries. refined throughputs in non-OECD countries is expected to increase by over 800,000 barrels per day, whilst throughputs in OECD countries is expected to decrease by around half a million barrels per day. These decreases are mostly concentrated in Europe and in the US, whilst the additional volumes are coming from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. creating room for more inputs into Europe and in particular into the U.S. The closures of refinery recently announced in California especially could be quite positive for the sector because of the U.S. Jones Act. It's very expensive to transport them from other U.S. ports to California to import from the U.S. Gulf. So the additional import needs of California are likely to be met with more imports from Asia, so products which will be transported over very long distances. So it should be very positive for the market. On the oil supply here, the market is looking increasingly oversupplied. going forward. Not only we have quite strong growth now expected from non-OPEC countries. Of course, this growth now is being also downgraded because of the decrease in the oil price, which we already have experienced and which is affecting investment plans, breeding plans of US oil producers. But we are also now expecting a faster, more aggressive increase of output from OPEC. The gradual increase of around 190,000 barrels per day, which was initially anticipated from OPEC+, has now instead increased has been accelerated and already in May we saw an increase of over 400,000 barrels per day and a similar increase now was announced last weekend for June. This of course our increase in production quote does not increase in output, so the actual increase in output is going to be much smaller than that. The additional output is going to be coming mostly from Saudi Arabia because a lot of countries were already producing above why such increasing quotas was approved is to penalize these countries which were not respecting the agreements and which upset very much Saudi Arabia. There might be a second reason why a faster increase was agreed and it might be linked to the tougher sanctions which the US has been imposing and will most likely be imposing on Iran. And therefore, this additional oil might compensate for the lost Iranian barrels going forward. So in that case, overall, oil output will not be much higher than anticipated initially. But the positive news here would be that we will have less oil from sanctioned countries, more oil from non-sanctioned countries, transported on non-sanctioned vessels, so tightening the market for the non-sanctioned vessels. Finally, there is speculation that Saudi Arabia might have, and OPEC generally might have agreed to this increase in quotas to penalize the shale oil producers as happened in 2015 and 2020. Again, already to break their back so that they reduce production and then later on they can often can then increase production again and sell their oil at a higher price. On the inventory side, we entered this possible scenario of oversupply of oil, fortunately with very low stocks, and that in the press release issued by OPEC is one of the reasons why they mentioned they agreed to a faster pace of increases because they said that the market fundamentals were good because of the low stocks. of the low inventory so that is positive um what has happened so far has already affected significantly the oil price curve it did the front end of the curve is still in backwardation but from december onwards the curve is uh in contango this curve here is a few days old and it's moving very fast but the shape should be more or less this one And if the front end comes down more aggressively, we could have the entire curve in contango. If this contango is steep enough, it could create some incentives for the buildup of stocks. We could create incentives for vessels to slow down because of course you're also stocking the oil during the sailing and you are able then to sell the oil later at the higher price. Eventually once the onshore inventories are full it will also lead to higher floating storage of oil as we have seen in 2020. So there is here, depending on how this plays out, to what extent the OPEC continues pursuing this accelerated pace of increases, there is a good chance that the market can really go fully into contango, and that can be very short-term positive for the market. of course, would not be long-term a positive thing for the market because eventually these stocks will then have to be consumed, absorbed, and that would then dampen, at the latest stage, demand for sea-borne transportation, as we saw, for example, in 2021. Refining margins. They are moving finally again in the right direction, so they were very strong in the first half of 2024, and then they declined substantially from August, reaching a low around September last year, but then they have been moving up since. And U.S. golf refining margins in particular are very strong today. And at levels last seen around the summer, July, August last year, even slightly higher. And in terms of breakdown of demand by product, NAFTA is still expected to be the biggest contributor to oil demand growth this year. uh although uh there was a reduction in the estimated uh consumption growth of nafta a slight increase in the estimated consumption growth of motor gasoline quite a strong decrease in the production growth for consumption growth sorry for jet fuel and a very strong also contraction in the expected demand growth for diesel oil. Especially diesel oil contraction is not surprising given the effects on the real economy of these tariffs and threatened tariffs. one positive aspect on the demand side we have seen again is the uh quite healthy imports of nafta by china china is has invested over the last few years and is expected to continue investing in the coming years to develop its petrochemical industry so it's importing higher amounts of feedstocks for the industry NAFTA competes with LPG as a feedstock for the petrochemical industry. The tariffs recently imposed by China as a response to the tariffs imposed by the US on LPG makes NAFTA more competitive as a feedstock. And that probably explains the surge in imports we saw of NAFTA in the months of March and April into China. And this is a trend which should continue going forward if these tariffs stay in place. And We also have very good prospects for the crude tanker market. The order book did grow a bit since reaching a low at the end of 22, but it's still at very low levels. And the vessels which transport crude tankers have been doing relatively better than the product tankers in the first part of this year. as was anticipated. There is quite a big discrepancy in earnings today between the Aframax vessels and the LR2 vessels in favor of the Aframax vessels. This has led recently to a migration of LR2 vessels into dirty trade. So after peaking at 63%, of the LR2 vessels trading clean in July 24, this percentage has come down to 60% in April this year, and it could decline further in the coming months if this discrepancy continues. There is good reason to believe that the crude tanker markets should continue doing well. in the rest of the year, especially with the additional supply coming from OPEC and the increasing number of vessels being sanctioned and the tougher sanctions we refer to being imposed on Iran. Uh, and, uh, on the terms of refinery landscape, that's not much new here to add to what we have already presented several times. But we do see, we continue seeing that the growth is going to be. Coming mostly from the Middle East, Asia, and, uh, well, in particular. last year and the beginning of this year, also from Africa and Nigeria in particular. And we see reductions instead in refining capacity in Europe and in the US, as we referred to previously. The fleet continues aging quite fast. Good news here, looking at the graph on the top left, the order book after peaking for the MRs and LO1s at 15.4% has been coming down, and now it's at 15%. whilst the vessels continue aging. So whilst at the end of 24, 16.2% of the fleet was more than 20 years, this percentage has reached 17.2% at the end of March. So now we have this 2.2% delta between these two figures, and we expect this delta to continue growing in the coming quarters. We also have a very high percentage of defeat, which is already over 15 years of age. We are more than 50% and rising. Across all tankers, the picture is quite similar. The order book is slightly smaller, it's only 13.7%. But the percentage which is over 20 years is even higher, it's 17.5%. There's a Delta there of 3.8%, which is quite big and which is a very good indicator for the future markets. And vessels also starting to turn 25 years of age. I mean, these are the vessels which were ordered in the last super cycle. And starting in 2027, the vessels which were delivered in 2002 and then 2003, so forth, will reach that 25-year mark. And so there's an increasing potential for demolitions. In 2029, for example, 6% of the MR and LL-1 feet will turn, almost 6% will be turning 25. So there is... unless we see sustained ordering potential for the fleet actually to go into contraction from 2029. And similar picture if we look across all tankers. And here we see instead the deliveries on the top. which are accelerating during the course of this year, which is not good, but at the bottom we see how demolitions were minimal over the last few years, but they are finally starting to pick up. You see slightly more vessels which were demolished in the first quarter of this year, and we expect this trend to accelerate going forward. Also positive to highlight here that only 10 vessels were ordered in the first quarter of this year. So if you analyze that, that is one of the lowest figures on record since 2007. So that is not surprising. There are many reasons for this. One, the building prices are still very high. Two, deliveries are very far out. Three, the market is profitable, but not as exceptionally profitable as it was a few quarters ago. 3D order book also has already grown, so there is, of course, that also forces ship owners to think whether other vessels are really required and that dampens their appetite. And also, as we mentioned, the port fees announced by the US on Chinese-built vessels is reducing appetite for orders in that country in particular, which, however, controls the bulk of the shipbuilding capacity for tankers today. If we look at fleet growth, it is... for MRs and LR1s accelerating in 26. But if we look at across all tankers, it's still accelerating, but it looks more manageable. And so here in these graphs, we are not expecting many vessels are going to be demolished, but If demolitions pick up substantially, then there is a possibility that this fleet growth figures here could actually be even smaller than what we are showing. So that covers the market. Finally, we go on here to the NAV evolution. We show our overall NAV, which has declined slightly after peaking in December, but stays above $1 billion. We are not accounting here for the value of the time charter contracts that we have signed as NAB. Some analysts do take that into account in their NAB calculations. We are not taking that into account today. Today we do have contracts which on average are higher than where vessels could be fixed today for similar periods. So there is a value to such contracts. It must be said that, you know, this picture is as of 31st of March. I would expect if we were to take a picture today of our vessel values, they would be slightly lower than what we are seeing here today. So because there were some transactions on the second-hand market. which were done at lower levels than the valuations we received for our vessels as of the 31st of March. We are, however, according to this picture here, trading at a very big discount to NAV, and also we are trading at a discount to our book value, which consists mostly of vessels acquired at the low point in the market. The 22 new buildings that we ordered in the last cycle, which were delivered to us between 2014 and 2019, they were really bought at the very bottom of the cycle. And also the options that we exercised, we were exercised at very attractive prices. So we only have very few expensive vessels in our fleet. And therefore the fact that we are trading at substantial discount also to our book value, I think, highlights the extent to which our shares are undervalued today. And here on the investment front, I don't think I have much more to add. We covered that in a previous slide. And on the payouts, well, yes, we have been quite generous on the dividend payouts. We did mention throughout last year that the intention was going to, although we didn't have a dividend policy, was to pay out dividends to have a payout ratio of around 40%, including the buybacks out of the 2024 profits, and we did respect that. And we have managed to do so well, significantly lowering our leverage, as mentioned by Federico with this ratio now between net financial position to free market value, which is 10%. So I believe that covers the main slides of the presentation, and I pass it over to you for the Q&A.

Thank you. This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. To enter the queue for questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen. When announced, please click continue on the pop-up window. If you are connected in audio only, please press star and one on your telephone. The first question is from Matteo Bonizzoni of Kepler Chevrolet.

Thank you and good afternoon. I have two questions. The first one relates to your attitude to leverage up a little bit your balance sheet, which is currently very healthy with the 10% loan-to-value. So my question is the following one. You have basically completed all the chartering activity. You have repurchased all the chartering vessels and you have only one left verbose vessel to be exercised this year. Then it's true that you have material capex mostly in 2027 for the completion of the capex for the 4L1. What's next? I mean, in relation also to the market situation, which is currently a little bit softening, are you, let's say, available to consider more activity for vessels maybe for delivery beyond 2027? Or maybe you are in a standby and wait-and-see situation as regards fleet expansion and renewal. That's the first question. The second one is a clarification on your expectation for the fleet, the net fleet growth, which is the slide 37. I was also reading the Clarkson report published in April, but if I am correct, and correct me if I'm wrong, they were pointing to sort of 5% growth for the fleet. Now, while here I see more 2.7% this year and 3.8% next year for MR, MR and LR1. So it's lower. Can you clarify a little bit the difference between the opioid projection and that projection? Maybe it's coming from removal, maybe from other factors. Thanks.

Thank you, Matteo, for both questions in relation to the first one on the investments.

Yeah, we have been quite active, I must say, you know, in terms of investments and we do have still quite a lot, quite a lot of capex ahead of us. in relation to the new building vessels as we see here, the 16, almost 17 million in 26 and the 174 million in 27. And we do have still two vessels actually on leasing, which we can exercise. One which we did exercise, but which was still not delivered to us. And so, there's still a substantial amount of investments in that respect for us. So we are not really in a hurry to make other investments at this stage. We will monitor, continue monitoring the market. If particularly attractive opportunities arise, we might take them. It might be investments linked to long-term contracts. if we are talking about new buildings, or it might be also outright speculative investments on new buildings, but I believe at lower prices. I mean, we still have to see a correction in the new building prices, As we highlight, very few vessels were ordered in the first quarter of this year. So yards are still sitting comfortable because they have a big order book. But by the end of this year, if they don't see new orders coming in, they're going to start becoming a bit more nervous. And they are very profitable today, the yards, right? So there is scope for them to reduce prices to entice new orders, especially the Chinese yards, which I think are going to be facing more difficulties given the US port fees. so so there might be an opportunity to do something there let's see i mean we we monitor we monitor also the second hand market but we are we we are not in a hurry uh to do anything we would only do something if we if we uh strongly believe on it otherwise we we have a very competitive fleet uh for still quite a number of years and when we are happy with what what we have today that is um On the new building front, on the fleet growth, I believe the difference you are referring to, although I don't have the Clarkson figure report in front of me, it refers to the fact that Clarkson is looking at growth across all product anchors. We have two different figures here. We were showing one, which is only MRs and LR1s, which is the sectors we operate in. So it doesn't include LR2s. and most of the growth in the product anchors is in the LR2 sector. And the reason we decided not to include the LR2 is because As we explained in the past, these LR2s, they do trade between the two sectors, the dirty and the clean, and they move really quite often according to convenience from one target to the other. And a lot of the LR2s that were ordered in this cycle were ordered we believe to trade uh dirty so we're already seeing that the number of other tools trading dirty has increased uh over the last few months we expect more uh and that trend to continue going forward so so if we do include the other tools in the picture then we believe we should include all tankers so that's why we have these two pictures one for the MRs and LO1s and one for all the tankers. And then if we look at all the tankers, then the fleet growth is actually smaller than if we look at only the MRs and the LO1s. But I think looking at only the product tankers today gives a false picture of the market fundamentals.

Okay, clear. Thank you.

The next question is from Massimo Bonisoli of Equita.

Good afternoon, Carlos and Federico. Two questions. A question about the old fleet in the market. There has been a general aging of the fleet in the recent years. Is it reasonable to assume that the service life of the older fleet is unchanged from the previous period, has maintenance allowed to improve the service life of the vessels? And what is the reasonable breakeven spot rate for these old vessels? And the second question on ship values. In terms of ship values, clearly there has been a significant disconnect between where the equities are and tanker values. Obviously, not only for D'Amico, but across the board. in second quarter we are seeing tanker rates rising as already evidenced by your slides how are you thinking about where ship values are and why in your opinion asset values continue to decline in q2 thank you yeah no good questions massimo service life uh

Well, a lot of the older vessels, they are actually sanctioned. A lot of them have been involved in the Russian trades, in the Venezuelan, Iranian trades. So they have been very, we suspect they have been very badly maintained. They have chosen often very flex registries, which are very undemanding, and they have not been subjected to the same level of port state controls that vessels which are trading normally would usually have to comply with. And not all of them have been sanctioned already. I mean, the shadow fleet is estimated to be anything between how, depending on how you classify between 700 and 1000 vessels. And we saw just over 300 vessels that were explicitly sanctioned. So there is the sanctioned vessels, a lot of them will have to go for demolition, especially if there is a contraction in these sanctions trades, right? And because, for example, the war in Ukraine were to terminate. And the other shadow vessels which are not sanctioned and which should not be sanctioned, they would still have a hard time many of them potentially continuing to operate for a longer period. And regulations which are coming into force are increasingly penalizing the older vessels, which is also making them less competitive because they now already within EU waters have to pay for their CO2 emissions, Then there's the fuel regulation, which has less to do with the consumption, more with the fuel type, which is burnt. But of course, if you consume more, you're more penalized than if you consume less. And then you now have the new regulations, which are probably going to be coming into, are going to be finally approved in the autumn this year. which were discussed at the MEPC83, which would introduce a similar system. It's a hybrid system. It's in between the fuel EU and the EU ETS. It's more similar to the fuel EU, but at the worldwide level. So our expectation is that, you know, for some owners, who maintain their vessels properly, there's going to be an opportunity to continue trading them for quite a long time still, even longer than they usually would have. But generally speaking, if you look across the whole market, then that is actually not the case, and a lot of vessels will have to go for demolition possibly even at a younger age than they would otherwise go to because of the very poor maintenance that they have experienced over the last few years, which means that the upgrade required for them to then be able to continue trading normally once these sanctions trades are removed would be extremely demanding. So that is to answer your question in relation to the service life. The breakeven of these vessels is difficult to know because often they don't have any bulk debt, which lowers their breakeven, but uh they do have very high optics uh and uh we across our fleet already i mean this quarter was a bit exceptional but i mean you know over the full year we are expected to be around eight thousand dollars per day and so you know i think these older vessels i wouldn't be surprised if they were 10 or more and they have to stop every two and a half years for special surveys. So if you include also the cost of these special surveys, then definitely they should be above 10, possibly approaching 12, if they are properly maintained, of course. So asset values, why are they continuing to move down? Well, I mean, you know, rates have improved a bit. They have bounced back from a low, but still they are much lower than they were, than they were, a few quarters ago and asset values they take longer to correct they are they have there's an inertia because transactions take longer just to execute there is you know expectations take longer to readjust on the asset market also and And so we saw very little liquidity actually over a number of months. There were a few transactions here and there, but very little actually happening. Now we are starting to see more liquidity. in the market, which seems to imply that the second hand values are starting to maybe find a floor, becoming a bit more of a reliable indicator than the second hand values we were seeing a few quarters ago. But yeah, that is my take on why the asset values continue moving down. What would stop asset values coming down? Well, we would need to see rates move up even more and then find some footing at that level. Not a small spike that goes up for one or two weeks and then it comes down again. If we were to see rates go up and then stay for a few months at a higher level, then I think the asset values could actually turn again and start increasing again.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen or press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen or star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I'll turn the call back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you to everyone who participated in the call today. Looking forward to meeting you again when we present our Q2 results. at the end of July and maybe before one-on-one meetings. And thank you also for all the interesting questions. And good afternoon to everyone.

Thank you.