Dampskibsselskabet Ord

no one that was published this morning. In the first part of the presentation, you'll be in a listen-only mode, which will be followed by a Q&A session. During the Q&A session, if you dial in by phone, you'll be able to ask questions verbally by pressing pound or hashtag followed by five on your phone's keypad. If you're watching this webcast online through a browser, you can ask your written questions in the chat below. Those questions will not be published, but the operator will read them aloud. With that, I'll hand it over to CEO Jan Rindbo and CFO Martin Balstedt from Noon. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and hello to everyone. Thank you for joining. Let me start by just giving you a just a brief introduction to Norden. We are a leading global operator transporting the essential commodities for industrial customers worldwide. We have a capital efficient fleet strategy combining owned and chartered vessels, which enable us to navigate market cycles and deliver competitive returns. So today we will take you through our performance and the strategic positioning of the company. So let's dive straight into it. And let's do that with probably one of the most discussed topics at the moment, the conflict in the Middle East. which obviously are having big impact on both the markets and operations. So we see obviously on the tanker side strong support on the tanker rate. We've seen surging spot rates where tankers are in high demand to help rebalancing oil markets in view of the lack of the oil supply that's coming out of the Middle East. The dry cargo market reaction has been more muted and here it's probably more the additional operational impacts and costs that affects the business. We've seen obviously with higher oil prices a significant increase in the bunker costs. So they're up roughly around 50% since the start of the conflict. That does not directly impact Norden because we hedged the directional risk of the oil price, but we are seeing physical delivery premiums have spiked that cannot be hedged. Norden has, as you can see here on the map, we have seven vessels trapped inside the Persian Gulf, six dry cargo vessels and one tanker. And we have obviously suspended all new business coming into the region. But we'll obviously touch much more on the situation in the Middle East later in the presentation. If we look at the highlights, the financial highlights of the quarter, we've made $11 million net profit in the quarter, which is giving us a return of just under 8% on the return on invested capital. We have a very strong operational cash flow of $172 million in the quarter. And what is probably the most significant development overall in the quarter has been this increase in the net asset value of our business and our fleet of 11% since the end of the year. So in just one quarter, the net asset value of the company has actually gone up by 11% to now stand at 422 Danish kroner per share. and we continue to return cash to investors in this quarter we are continuing with a quarterly dividend of two Danish kroner per share and on top of that we have a share buyback program of 25 million dollars and that brings a total payout to 35 million dollars for for this quarter When we look at the group fleet overview, we continue to be very active in optimizing the fleet. We have in this quarter sold seven vessels. Four of those are from declared purchase options. We also continue to log in longer term earnings through time charter out. So we've done eight long term deals on time charter to secure forward earnings. We also continue to add ships. So we've actually added more ships than we have sold. We've added 11 vessels in the quarter, eight leases with purchase options, and then we have purchased three vessels. And we continue to sit on this big portfolio of purchase options. We have 91 in the portfolio, of which 33 can be declared over the next two years at prices that are currently 22% below current market prices. And if we dive a little bit more into the fleet and look at the fleet composition, you will notice here that we are reducing exposure mainly on the ships that are exposed to what we call the positioning margin. So that's more the ships that are dependent on directional market calls. So typically the larger dry bulk vessels, but also the MR ships. So here we have specifically sold one cape and chartered out three. We've sold two Panamaxes. On MRs, we have sold two ships and time chartered out five ships. So quite a lot of activity on these large and medium ships, but predominantly reducing exposure in those segments. And then the ships that we are adding to the fleet have all been in what we call the smaller vessel sizes. They are more exposed to the base margin part of the business. This is the core operating margin that is not dependent on the market direction. But this is where a combination of cargoes, reducing ballast time, loading more niche type cargoes at additional margin. And here we have added two handy-sized ships to the core fleet, and then nine multi-purpose ships. So we now have built a core fleet of multi-purpose ships of 22 vessels, and strategically this is one of the areas that we're focused on building. Most of these ships are new buildings. The first one will deliver later this year, and then this fleet will deliver in the coming years. One deal stands out in the quarter, and that is that we have signed a new billing contract for two ice-classed multipurpose vessels. Those ships are ordered against a long-term contract that we have signed with a Swedish mining company, and the ships will be used partly to perform that contract when they deliver in 2028. with that i will hand you over to martin who will talk a little bit more about our nav

Thank you very much. Yes, as Jan already alluded to at the highlights page, the NAV developed quite positively during the quarter, up 11% to 422 kroners per share. And it was actually a broad-based increase in the value of assets, both in dry and in tankers. You'll see from the table here that currently actually, in terms of our own fleet, the majority of the value, 800 million, lies within dry, whereas 200 million are in tankers. But when you look at the value of the TC portfolio, including purchase options, it's actually a little bit overweight tankers with 263 million dollars. On the right hand side, you will see sensitivity analysis of what happens to the 422 per share if we change both the forward curve and the asset values by 10 or 20 percent. And you will see the outcome ranging from 308 to 559 kroners per share, all actually either in line or above the current share price. Sorry for that, it's a little bit slow. So looking at the market development in dry, it was actually a fairly strong quarter. When you look at the turquoise line in the middle of the graph, you will see that the spot rates for supers, as an example, were far higher than 2025. Actually, they were up 41% over the quarter. And that was mainly driven by the standard commodities, iron ore, bauxite, grains, whereas coal was actually quite weak, although we are seeing that changing currently. We do have a firm view on the long-term outlook for dry cargo. not least based on a favorable supply side, where you'll see on the right-hand side that the order book is actually matched more or less by the share of the fleet, which is over 20 years. So there's good reason to believe that you can actually still have favorable fundamentals in the dry cargo market going forward. Looking at our earnings in dry cargo, you will see that we made on EBIT level a loss of $45 million, which is, of course, unsatisfactory. It was mainly driven by dry operator large and small, which both made a loss in the quarter. Of course, some of this was related to cost as a result of the Persian Gulf conflict, where we both have vessels stuck within the Persian Gulf, but certainly also the regional bunker premium that Jan talked about in the beginning, which are hedged to the extent possible, but there are still some non-hedgable items of the bunker exposure we have that has cost us quite dearly during the quarter. Of course, it's not all the Persian Gulf. It's also what we call regional positioning, which really means that we have decided to reposition some of our vessels from the Pacific into the Atlantic in expectations of higher Atlantic rates. The benefits from this has yet to materialize, but we still expect some of that to show up in the Q2 earnings. And we do see gradual improvement in earnings in dry operator going forward. In tankers, it was a super strong spot market during the quarter, of course, driven by the dislocation of trade flows following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. You see the graph here actually coming up to close to $70,000 a day. That was actually an average of very large regional discrepancies, where the US Gulf ramped up exports quite aggressively and paying rates close to $100,000 a day, whereas it was a little bit more muted, but still good rates of call it $30,000 a day in the East. The development in rates has turned around in recent days. And of course, the underlying problem here is that with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, we are lacking 15 to 20% of volumes that will normally have occupied a lot of seaborne capacity. But also here, actually, fundamentally, we are not so worried about the supply side, as you will see on the right-hand side also here. The order book is matched more or less with the share of the fleet being more than 20 years old. But we do think some of this order book is starting to accelerate deliveries during the second half. That should put some pressure on rates going forward. In tankers, we made a total EBIT of $47 million, and it was actually mainly in the dry owner, which has some spot exposure through our Norian product pool. The tanker owner made $37 million and the tanker operator just over $10 million in the quarter. That brings me to the full year guidance, which, as you know, we upgraded end of April and we raised it by 40 million dollars to a new guidance of 70 to 140 million dollars. And that includes a reservation of 30 million dollars to cover possible costs for the six TC vessels that we have stocked within the Persian Gulf. which is really based on an assumption that those vessels may stay there actually until the end of the year before they can get out. The earnings that we expect for 2026 are quite front-end loaded, meaning that much of it should come in Q2 and then taper off within the second half of the year. And in terms of risk exposure, we have about 2,300 open tanker days and close to 7,000 open dry cargo days, all being long against the market. That concludes my part of the slides, and I'll hand you back to Jan.

Thank you, Martin. So this is just a reminder of the key drivers in the business model and how we approach markets. So we have these four drivers, dry cargo and tankers, two, and then acid heavy and acid light, the operating business. So we have these four drivers that helps us to adjust our exposure to the prevailing market conditions. and what we're seeing now is that in a very very high tanker market we have decided to reduce exposure there and move more of that exposure towards dry cargo and as we explained earlier on some of the previous slides we've done a few deals to both sell tanker vessels but also take longer term time charter contracts on on tankers and we now have on average around 80 percent cover for our tanker business until the end of 2028. So taking advantage of these high tanker rates and locking in long-term profits in that part of the business. That means that we have more exposure in the dry side and within the dry cargo business As we explained on one of the previous slides, we are moving exposure more towards the smaller segments where we have more impact on the earnings than just being driven by the market. And we think this flexibility in the business model where we have several drivers realizing that it's not always all four drivers that will go at the same time. But over a rolling five-year period, we can see that this generates higher returns than industry peers that are more specialized in just one segment. So this ability to switch between the segments actually has a lot of value for Norton in the long run. If we move to the next slide and then look a bit more at the direction we are taking towards 2030, we see an opportunity to go even deeper in our relationships with customers at a time where there is a lot of focus on supply chains and geopolitical uncertainty. Norden stands out as a reliable service provider in the freight. And that is something that we want to leverage and continue to build both more cargo networks with complementing contracts, but also have more efficiencies in the way that we operate the cargo book and the fleet. The expansion towards the smaller vessel sizes within dry cargo is also with a view to focus more on what we call the base margin, the core operating margins in the business, and thereby reduce the volatility in our earnings because in the smaller segments, project cargo, minor bulk commodities, but also the logistics part of our business, It is less exposed to market fluctuations and thereby giving more stable returns through the expertise that we can provide in those segments. We will, however, continue to be focused on this. adjusting our exposure and remaining what we call asset agile and continue to take the opportunities that we see in the market. So both buying and selling our vessels, as an example, is largely driven by the opportunities that we come across in the market. And that sort of is an important part of providing a strong upside in better markets. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now through the whole optionality portfolio, where we have a lot of extension options and a lot of purchase options in our fleet. And in rising markets, there's a lot of value there that we can realize. And that brings me just to the last slide and just a few points here on the investment story in Norden. When you zoom out and look at the industry, we think actually the macro view of the industry is fundamentally very positive because when you take a longer term view towards 2030 and beyond, we see an aging global fleet, both in dry cargo and in tankers. And we currently have a low order book, especially on the dry cargo side. So this replacement need of all these older vessels is not currently being met by the order book. And as we've also previously explained, all the geopolitical uncertainty and the dislocations are creating longer distances for transportation. And that means that we have a very healthy market balance as we see it. And even at times of lower economic activity, the inherent risk of a prolonged oversupply situation is much, much smaller than what we have seen historically over the last couple of decades. Our business model, point number two here, that we can adjust to the different markets that we are in, gives us huge flexibility to manage the risk through the market cycle and deliver better returns compared to a pure play company. And then we have the strategic focus on expanding in areas where we believe we have even more impact ourselves in terms of our operating capabilities and really building this business that is more sophisticated, not least with the AI driven opportunities that we also see in enhancing our decision making. and really bringing out what we call the northern platform, the value of being one of the largest operators in the industry and having a global network of offices close to our customers, bring out all of that value as an important part of our strategic focus. and then the last point we're making here is that we continue with a relatively acid light approach in our business model but with the upside from purchase options on the asset upside that enables us to return a lot of cash to shareholders and have this disciplined capital allocation that over time, at least historically, have driven a ROIC outperformance compared to the industry. I think with those words, let's turn over to the Q&A session. And hopefully there are questions where we can put a little bit more color to some of the points that we've made here today.

Thank you, Jan and Martin. And yes, we are now ready for the Q&A session. Just to repeat, you can get in line to ask questions by pushing the pound key or hashtag followed by five on your phones. Touchpad if you dial in by phone. Should you wish to withdraw from the line, you can push the pound key or hashtag followed by six. If you're watching the webcast online through a browser, you can ask your written questions in the chat below. Those questions will not be published, but the operator will read them aloud to management. But let's start off with a couple of the written questions here. They were originally in Danish, so this will be our translation. So the energy company MassMakes, which, among other things, was supposed to produce biofuel for DS Noon's fleet, has gone bankrupt. It is reported that they were unable to raise capital for the next phase. You have been invested in the company since 2023. Can you tell us what laws you will be taking in Noon's future financial reports in connection with this bankruptcy?

Yes, I can respond to that. So when you look at the future financials, this will have no impact because all of it has been provided for in the current accounts already. So, of course, we've been very happy to work together with the team behind MashMakes, and I think they have very interesting technology. But I think the phase that they are coming into now means that they will need new investors to take this forward.

And a follow-up question in connection with this. Can you tell us how this will affect your transition to biofuel? Are there new partners on the horizon or any concrete partnerships in the works?

Our efforts to work on decarbonization and offering that also as a product or service to some of our clients is unaltered. So we have a strong belief still that biofuel is part of the answer for the shipping industry. And we are working with several partners to help them actually realize zero emission transportation based on our products.

Thank you. And the next question here is, as an investor, one has noticed that the bulk slash dry cargo market for what is by now an almost excessively long period, has not been optimal for Noon. The tanker market, on the other hand, is booming. Looking a bit into the future, where we also see risk of, for example, lower Chinese growth, wouldn't it make good sense for Noon to look more towards the tanker market over the coming one, two years and prioritize this business leg more heavily? And do you agree with this analysis is also stated.

Yeah, I think let me start by saying that going back to the business model that we have, both being in dry cargo and in tankers, there will be periods where one leg is more attractive than the other. And only a few years ago, it was the dry bulk business where we actually got the same question. Why are we not just focusing on that? I think we've shown over time that the strength of having both activities, that's important. If you talk about the risk-reward from where we are today, yes, clearly, tanker earnings are very strong right now and it's attractive to be in tankers. But to invest further in tankers right now is also very expensive and quite risky. So the risk-reward, we think, is more skewed towards the dry cargo side. That's also why we're running with relatively high coverage on the on the tanker business. We have actually made money overall in dry cargo last year. We are, of course, having a more difficult first quarter in dry bulk, which Martin also explained. Some different drivers, some repositioning costs that will come back. So we do expect better dry cargo performance in the coming quarters. And of course, our focus is on obviously ensuring that we have the best possible performance. It's also a little bit ties in with the strategic choice of going towards the smaller vessels where we have more impact on the results through our own operation and not just being driven by the market.

Thank you. And then a question related to the current situation in the Middle East. It goes, how do you see this scenario for yourself when the Strait of Hormuz is reopened and peace returns to the region? One would imagine you'll be extremely busy for an extended period with simultaneously high flight rates. trade rates primarily for tankers. Do you agree with that expectation? If yes, how long might one expect it to last? And would you also have a positive impact on the dry cargo from this?

So that's a very good question or a number of questions actually baked in there. But I think overall, our view is that closure of the Hormuz Strait, as we're seeing now, is fundamentally negative for the tanker market. Yes, there has been some super short term spot rate earnings in the last couple of months, but we think those are temporary. And after that, if it continues that long, there will be a lack of 15 to 20 percent of normal seaborne volumes, which we think is such a demand hit that the market will be under pressure. But of course, if the Strait of Hormuz were to open tomorrow I think you're right that there could be an added employment for, again, a temporary period because countries and companies would need to restock and there would be quite a lot to do in that case. So it's very dependent on the timeframe that we are discussing here. It's less of an issue on the dry side. where I think the impact on the market is more indirect through the impact on the macroeconomic environment. So if global economy suffers because the oil price goes to $150 a barrel, then that will also lead to pressure on demand within dry cargo. But overall, we think it's a fundamentally negative story with some very strong positive temporary effects that we have experienced in the last couple of months. I hope that answers your question.

Thank you. And then a more specific question towards the tanker segment. Jan Renbo mentioned earlier today in the radio show Millionärklubben that no one has already secured coverage of 80% of the tanker order book through the end of 2028. Is that understood correctly? And does that mean you're looking to bring more tanker vessels into the business going forward?

Yes, that is correct. We have covered now around 80% of our tanker capacity until the end of 2028. And bringing more tankers into the book, probably right now in terms of long-term deals, so time charting in ships on long-term contracts and buying ships, right now we don't think that that's the right time to do that, you know, Prices are very high, rates are very high. That's why we've done the opposite, selling ships and taking in cover by chartering out ships. Now, of course, how the market plays out in the coming quarters, if there's an opportunity, For example, in the scenario that Martin describes, that if there is a softening in tanker rates, then that could be an opportunity then to step in and take more capacity on again. So that is obviously part of the playbook in our business model that we can do that. But right now, we feel that the risk reward is not there to add tanker tonnage.

My question related to this is a tank outlook beyond Q2. You say the market eases or expect to be easing in the second half of 26. How severe could this easing be if HOMOS reopens quickly versus stay closed?

Yeah, that is a very difficult question. As I said before, if it opens immediately, there will be some short-term benefits from, I think, desired restocking. But if it lasts for a very long time, then we think, as we said, then the easing will come and being driven to a large extent by the lack of volumes, but also by new building deliveries that will accelerate in the second half of the year.

Thank you. And we will then look at the dry cargo segment. There's a few questions here related to this. There's one here. Entering Q1, you assured the dry bulk market. How much of the dry cargo loss can be attributed to a wrong positioning?

Yeah, so that is part of the explanation, but it's not actually the main driver of the results in the first quarter. And we now have a long position also in dry going forward. The main driver of the results in the first quarter is the additional costs that we've seen following the conflict in the Middle East. And then this repositioning of ships on lower paying backhaul routes from the Pacific into the Atlantic. And the benefit of then positioning those ships back at front haul rates will only come in the coming quarters.

Thank you. And another question related to dry cargo. Could you provide more detail on the bunker price impact in dry cargo during Q1, especially why the sharply higher regional bunker prices following the Persian Gulf conflict could only be partially hit and how much of this impact you expect to reverse or normalize over the coming quarters?

Yeah, so that's actually a very interesting question. And I think there are multiple sort of impacts on the oil market overall. What you normally see based on quotes in the media and so forth is typically the development in the standard barrel of oil, where you've seen rising prices maybe from $70 before the crisis up closer to $120, $125 per barrel. But on top of this, when you look at then diesel and gasoline and some of these refined products, then the price changes have been even more vehement. And if you then look into the specific prices, when you actually go into a bunker port in different regions, you've seen spikes that we probably have never seen before. And this goes to explain why, even though we have a hedge framework that actually hedges all our flat rate exposure, if you will, sort of the standard price of oil, then you can't hedge what happens in local bunker ports here and there because there are no price indices, there are no derivatives to do the hedging. And that means that when you have to perform a cargo and you go into bunker, then suddenly you are met with very unpredictable and in this case very high bunker prices that will then seriously affect the voice results that you can incur.

Thank you. And another question to the dry operator segment and more specifically on the small vessel segment. It says here you're still loss making at the US dollar 9.2 million. When do the multipurpose handy size additions start to show up positively in this segment?

So the core fleet that we are building, so the 22 ships that we referred to earlier, the majority of those ships are new buildings that will deliver in the future. And the first new building will deliver to our fleet during Q3. That is the latest estimate for that delivery. And then it will ramp up through 27 and 28. So it will come over the next sort of two to three years in terms of that core fleet. And that includes these two ice class new buildings that will deliver in 2028.

Thank you. And then a question related to the fleet and the options that you have here. It says, let me just have a look. You sold seven vessels year to date and then you have 33 purchase options in the money at strikes 22% below broker values. What's stopping you from declaring more of these now while asset values are at a multi-year high?

Well, one thing is that the underlying charter rate is very attractive compared to the current market rates. And then we have options to extend that as well. So in addition to the purchase optionality that we have, we also have an extension optionality. And there's also value in that. And when we look at the development on asset prices, we are quite optimistic that the prices are not going to declined substantially from the current levels because new yachts are full with new buildings. The markets, especially on both dry and tankers, underbuilt the current asset values. So we would like to both get the value out of the extension options and then subsequently also get the value out of the purchase options. And then I think it's also important to highlight that we are also from time to time declaring purchase options without necessarily also selling the vessels at the same time. So we could also and we are also looking at declaring some of these options and then actually keeping the vessels in our fleet as owned vessels.

Thank you. And then a question related to your net asset value and capital allocation and what now seems to be the last question. Now it's up to 422 Danish kroner per share, while the share price is around 294. That's a 30 percent discount. You're distributing around 35 million US dollars for Q1. That's two Danish in dividend and a buyback of 25 million dollars. With the share trading well below now, would you not lean more aggressively into the buybacks rather than dividends?

Yes, that I think is a good question and something that we of course also have discussed. There is one problem, which is really that there are some legal limitations as to how big a share buyback program you can undertake compared to the general liquidity in the share in the market. So we can't actually do much more on the share buyback side than what we are doing. So we actually agree in the argument that it's trading at a discount. So it's a good place to actually invest. But we have maxed out on that opportunity already.

Thank you. There seems to be no further questions. So I'll leave the word to management for a final remark.

All right. Well, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for great questions related to the Q1 report. So thank you again for joining us here. And we look forward to seeing you again for the next quarterly presentation. Thank you. Thank you.