Good day, and welcome to the Vopak Analyst Call, first half 2023. Today's call is being recorded. Your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Fatjona Topciu, Head of Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, welcome to our first half 2023 results. My name is Fatjona, Head of IR. Our Executive Board will guide you through our latest race results. We will refer to the first half 2023 analyst presentation, which you can follow on screen and download from our website. After the presentation, we will have the opportunity for the Q&A. A replay of the webcast will be made available on our website as well. Before we start, I would like to refer you to the disclaimer content of the forward-looking statement, which you are familiar with. I would like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements during the presentation, which involve certain risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, this is applicable to the entire call, including the answers provided to questions during the Q&A.
With that, I would like to turn over the call to our CEO, Dlck Richelle.
Thank you, Fatjona. A very good morning to all of you joining us in the call. Let's take a look at the key highlights of this first half of 2023. The first half of the year shows improved performance. The need for our services was strong across the different products and regions, and we served our customers well. We continued to deliver on our strategy to improve our financial and sustainability performance, to grow our base in industrial and gas terminals, and to accelerate towards new energies and sustainable feedstocks. We reported improved financial results with an EBITDA of EUR 494 million, a 14% increase compared to the same period last year, and an occupancy of 91%.
We are actively managing our portfolio by divesting assets like Savannah, as well as repurposing existing capacity, for example, in Los Angeles and Deer Park in the United States. Besides financial improvements, I want to emphasize the focus on improving our sustainability performance. We continued the trend of reducing our CO2 emissions in the first half of 2023. Looking ahead, I'm pleased to confirm our 2023 outlook as we remain focused on long-term value creation through disciplined and balanced capital allocation. Moving over to growth. We are solidifying our leading industrial position in Singapore and China, while at the same time expanding our footprint in gas with LPG and LNG investments. Today, we announced that in Singapore we are creating a long-term industrial integration between the Banyan Terminal and the new production plant of an existing customer.
In LPG, we announced in April an agreement with AltaGas for a partnership to study a large-scale LPG export facility in Western Canada, that's next to our existing RIPET facility. In India, we announced in April to proceed with four expansion projects, together with our joint venture partner, Aegis, in existing locations, strengthening our leading position in this fast-developing country. We're pleased that the first project has already been commissioned in Haldia just a few weeks ago. Our LNG projects in the Netherlands that further enhance the energy security and supply of Northwest Europe are going as planned. To continue with our strategic goal of accelerating towards new energies and sustainable feedstocks, we have commissioned new infrastructure in the port of Rotterdam related to waste-based feedstocks. Also, we successfully got access to a prime location in Europe's leading petrochemical and industrial cluster.
Moving to share some of the key market dynamics and how they impact the demand for our infrastructure services. I'd like to give you some details on how the markets in which we operate developed and their impact on Vopak. To start with the gas side, LNG markets normalized in the first half of 2023 after the disruption of the Russia-Ukraine war. While LPG prices were volatile during the first half, LPG imports in India continued to grow by about 5% per year. For Vopak, we see that the demand for energy infrastructure remains healthy, particularly in the Netherlands. The other terminals in Mexico, Colombia, and Pakistan show a stable performance as per their role in the local energy systems. Moving on to new energies and sustainable feedstocks. The momentum for hydrogen and ammonia continues to accelerate.
We see an increasing interest in infrastructure to store and handle ammonia in the different regions. The trend of a growing demand in sustainable fuels also continues to be there. Moving on to the energy markets we serve through the storage of oil products. Oil flows are still rebalancing following the international sanctions regime. This leads to changing flows being more long haul, generally spoken. A growing demand at the one side versus production cuts announced by OPEC+ are causing volatility in the market. These market dynamics cause favorable demand for our storage services. Oil distribution terminals serving local growing markets had a stable performance. Let's take a look at the manufacturing markets we serve through our industrial and chemical terminals. Activity in the global manufacturing markets was slowing down in the first half of this year, caused by, among others, higher cost of production.
China's economic recovery is slower than expected, resulting in an overall bearish sentiment also for the second half of the year. In Europe, higher import volumes that make up for less local production lead to favorable demand for our infrastructure services, serving chemical markets. Throughput flows in our industrial terminals remain stable, may be impacted in the second half of the year, specifically in Asia and China. Relative impact is limited since the majority of our revenue on these terminals come from take-or-pay contracts. We're actively managing our portfolio in multiple ways. First, by rationalizing. In this past half year, we divested our chemical terminal in Savannah, in the U.S. We received offers to divest our chemical terminals in Colombia. The strategic review of our chemical terminals here in Rotterdam is still in progress.
Furthermore, we are repurposing some of our existing assets, like in Los Angeles, for example, where we repurpose existing tanks for sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel. Finally, some assets are transformed to serve our customers for future New Energies. A good example is the concession of the prime location we acquired in Antwerp, which will be transformed for new energy projects. Let me take you through the different elements of our business performance in a bit more detail. The starting point is the first half year of 2022, with an EBITDA of EUR 433 million. Divestments we did had a negative impact of around EUR 5 million on the EBITDA when we compare it to this first half year. We experienced some negative currency translation effects of EUR 2 million. The oil markets have been favorable the first half of this year.
High occupancy rates and contract renewals drive growth in EBITDA from our oil portfolio. With regards to the chemical markets, we have overall stable demand across the portfolio. Next to the increased need for import of chemicals in mainly Europe, indexation of our contracts is partially compensating the rising cost and has supported the revenue increase. In the gas market, we see the LNG market is back to a normalized level as the available capacity is meeting the market demand on our LNG and LPG terminals, and our LNG and LPG terminals are performing their role in local energy systems. When comparing our cost base to the first half of last year, we see an increase of EUR 30 million, mainly driven by inflation, higher energy, and personnel cost. Finally, we have delivered on our growth projects, which have contributed EUR 6 million in this first half year.
This all results in 14% EBITDA growth to EUR 494 million. Next to the financial performance, improving our sustainability performance is important to us. All elements, Environmental, Social, and Governance, we improved or maintained a stable performance. As you know, safety is our first and foremost priority, to take care of our employees and contractors and the communities we are in. We maintained a good performance on our Process Safety Event Rate and are happy with our improved, with our improved personal safety performance. We reduced our emissions by 13% compared to the first half of 2022. Also, on Diversity and Inclusion, we make steps forward. Women make up for more than 20% of our senior management today. Moving on with our second strategic pillar, to grow our base in Industrial & Gas terminals.
As you can see on this slide, we solidify our position in the key industrial clusters of Houston and Singapore. At our Deer Park terminal, strategically located in the Houston Ship Channel, we will repurpose and expand part of the existing capacity into vegetable oil storage, underpinned by a long-term commercial agreement. We will invest EUR 58 million and expect to commission the first phase in H1 2024. In Singapore, at our Banyan Terminal, we will repurpose existing capacity and create a new pipeline connection with a new industrial plant of an existing customer, also supported by a long-term commercial agreement. The investment is around EUR 15 million, and commissioning is expected in H1 2025. Next to solidifying our footprint in industrial terminals, we expand in gas terminals.
I want to highlight four projects in LNG and LPG, which we have announced in the first half of 2023. We signed a new partnership with AltaGas for an LPG and bulk liquids export facility in West Canada. This strategic location has a significant logistical advantage in terms of deep water access and transport time towards Asia. On two locations in India, we will expand LPG capacity by 20% together with our partner, Aegis. These terminals fulfill an important distribution role to switch to cleaner fuels. Commissioning is expected to be in 2025. In the Netherlands, we are progressing well on two LNG opportunities related to the fourth tank expansion at Gate and completion of the acquisition of 50% of the shares of Eems Energy Terminal. We're also delivering on the third and last strategic pillar to accelerate towards New Energies.
We focus on four areas: hydrogen, CO2 infrastructure, low-carbon fuels and feedstocks, and long-duration energy storage. We see momentum continue to build around these four areas by increasing interest from our customers and new regulations worldwide. Two proof points mentioned here. In Vlaardingen, in May, new capacity was commissioned for waste-based feedstocks for the production of biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel. This project started in 2021, and around EUR 90 million was invested. In Antwerp, we have access now to a prime location in Europe's leading petrochemical cluster, which will be redeveloped with the primary aim to make a positive contribution to the decarbonisation of the industrial cluster. The market interest for new infrastructure for ammonia, a product that we are storing already for more than 20 years at six locations around the world, remains high.
To summarize, we improved results and made good progress on our strategic goals in the first half of this year. The need for our services was strong, and most divisions, was strong across most divisions and along all lines of products we store and handle. We benefited from Vopak's well-diversified infrastructure portfolio, serving both the manufacturing markets as well as the energy markets around the globe. We improved our financial performance with strong first half results and continued our efforts in further improving our sustainability performance. We made good progress in growing our base in Industrial & Gas terminals around the globe, a healthy interest is shown in accelerating towards new energies and sustainable feedstocks. Supporting these three strategic priorities, we simplified our organization structure with the aim of enhancing execution capabilities, maybe, mainly at the country level and improving efficiency.
As a result, we removed the division layer in our structure. Going forward, we will be organized in nine business units. We're positive that this change will help us on all strategic priorities. With that, I want to hand it over to our CEO and CFO, Michiel Gilsing, who will give you some more insights on the financial side of things
Thank you, Dlck, good morning to everyone in the call, also from my side. Let's start the presentation. To give a bit more clarity on the financial areas we're focused on and what I will cover in the slides to come. Our primary focus is on strong and improved financial business performance that will and has led to an improved cash flow generation, a solid balance sheet, and disciplined capital allocation. To start off with the financial performance of the first half year compared to half year 2022, we increased our revenues to EUR 721 million, an increase of 9% compared to the first half of 2022, and EBITDA increased even more with 14% to EUR 494 million. This was underpinned by the higher occupancy compared to last year, which is 5 percentage points up to 91%.
This results in a higher operating cash return of 14.6%. The growth expenditures are lower compared to last year, but in line with our expectation for the year. Total Net Debt to EBITDA ratio came down to 2.46x, just below our range of 2.5x-3.0x Net Debt to EBITDA. A closer look at the Q2 2023 shows a stable performance. EBITDA was slightly lower compared to the Q1, being EUR 245 million, this was driven mainly by a negative currency translation effect of EUR 4 million. Occupancy was down with one percentage point compared to the Q1 of this year. This is mainly related to capacity out of service in Los Angeles and the bearish sentiment in China, impacting our spot chemical occupancy there.
Cost remained stable as the increased personal expenses were offset by a decrease in energy and utility costs. This all and higher operating CapEx resulted in a lower operating cash return this quarter compared to Q1. The 13.7% is still well above our OCR target of above 12%. Due to the seasonality of the operating CapEx spend, in line with prior years, we expect that in the second half of the year, the operating CapEx will be higher. Going back to the first half year compared to last year's first half, a strong EBITDA growth was seen across most of the divisions, driven by favorable market developments in both oil and chemicals. Currency effects and divestments had a slightly negative impact, offset by strong performance in the Americas, Asia and Middle East, and Europe, Africa regions.
China and North Asia remained flat due to the weak spot chemical markets. The New Energies and LNG division saw improved results driven by the Gate terminal in Rotterdam and our spec terminal in Colombia, handling higher throughputs. All in all, this leads to an EBITDA of EUR 494 million in the first half, which is 14% growth compared to the first half of 2022. We have often mentioned to the market that the main drivers of our performance are the terminals which we operate. In this slide, we are giving some more detail regarding the proportional revenue, EBITDA, and operating CapEx for the different terminal types we have in our portfolio. We see growth across all terminal types. The market conditions were favorable in the first half, translated in the market opportunities we captured and the increased occupancy.
Vegetable oils and biofuels, not being a segment on their own and mainly part of chemical terminals, is the fastest growing product in the mix. Proportional EBITDA improved by 12% due to increased occupancy, coupled with portfolio's indexation abilities and effective commercial management. Proportional operating CapEx spend is expected to be higher in the second half of 2023, in line with our outlook for 2023. As we have often mentioned, we are determined to improve the quality of our portfolio by positioning our assets towards long-term contracts and attractive returns. For some of you, it's familiar, we have approximately 60% of our proportional revenues coming from contracts that are longer than three years. This positions us well in times of volatility, as well as gives the opportunity to capitalize on our commercial capabilities.
The proportional EBITDA margin improved in the first half year 2023, reaching 57%. Our cash flow generation continued to be strong in the first half of the year, driven by positive business performance, working capital movement, and derivatives, which were offset by lower dividends received from joint ventures. Operating CapEx was EUR 120 million, reflecting the timing of the low operating CapEx spend, typically at the beginning of the year. Growth investments include growth projects in Vlaardingen, Alamoa in Brazil, Vopak Aegis in India joint venture, as well as the transformation of Eurotank in Belgium. The positive cash flow generation of the company is funding growth investments and the dividends paid to our shareholders, while at the same time keeping leverage in the low end of the range. We have a solid balance sheet that is supporting our growth ambitions.
Our management philosophy is to keep our senior Net Debt to EBITDA ratio in the low end of the range of 2.5 to 3 times EBITDA. The leverage ratio in the first half year was 2.46, just below the management range, coming down all the way from just above the range, with debt being 3.06 times EBITDA last year. This improvement was driven by better cash flow generation of the business. Majority of interest-bearing loans have a fixed interest rate being 3.9%, and the remainder has an average floating rate of 4.5%. We did a lot of work in our corporate debt portfolio, project financing, and refinancing of terminals in the first half of this year.
We reached an agreement to amend all existing private placement note programs, resulting in an increase of our senior net debt to EBITDA covenant from 3.75 to 4 times. We signed an agreement for new debt issuance for a total amount of EUR 400 million equivalent, and we received these proceeds in June. As per half year, the revolving credit facility of EUR 1 billion is fully available, and we successfully exercised the option to extend its maturity till 2028 at the same terms and conditions. In Singapore, we refinanced maturing debt with a new five-year facility of around EUR 150 million, which is sustainability-linked. In our Pengerang terminal in Malaysia, PITSB, we have successfully refinanced the maturing project financing with better terms and conditions. Also, this facility is sustainability-linked and approximately EUR 225 million in size.
Following this successful refinancing, we received a one-off dividend of EUR 47 million, out of a total of EUR 56 million in full year 2023. Lastly, in China, we finalized a non-recourse financing facility of around EUR 73 million, with a tenure of 14 years to finance our previously announced expansion at the Chaojing terminal in Shanghai. We're going to stay focused on a disciplined capital allocation approach that will support and enable the strategic, improve, grow, and accelerate priorities. First of all, we remain committed to a very solid balance sheet, maintain our healthy leverage ratio, because that provides us with the license to invest for growth opportunities. We will return value to shareholders by our progressive dividend policy. Any remaining capital will be spent on growth investments with attractive operating cash returns.
Focus on cash flow generation is further supporting the robust balance sheet and is providing available capital for growth investments. The deployment of growth CapEx towards our strategic priorities is going well. Since Capital Markets Day in June 2022, when we announced the new strategic framework, EUR 128 million is allocated to improving our portfolio... like in the Eurotank terminal, as well as in the U.S., where we are repurposing and building vegetable oil storage. We have allocated EUR 284 million to grow our footprint in gas and industrial terminals. In India, we announced to proceed with four expansion projects together with our joint venture partner, Aegis, in existing locations, strengthening our leading position in this fast-developing country. We are pleased that the first of these investments have been commissioned just a few weeks ago in early July.
Aegis Vopak joint venture has commissioned 51,000 cubic meters of liquid storage in Haldia, in the east of India. We are also strengthening our industrial terminal position in Singapore by creating a long-term industrial integration between Banyan Terminal and an existing customer in their new industrial plant, with a total investment of around EUR 50 million, underpinned by a long-term commercial contract. The investments in LNG that we announced earlier is not included in this number. Upon successful FID of Gate, the fourth tank in Rotterdam, and the closing of EemsEnergyTerminal in the Netherlands, this number will obviously increase. Including these, the investment amount will go to approximately 40% of our ambition to invest EUR 1 billion in gas and industrial terminals. The investment on our partnership with AltaGas in Western Canada will also be added once the financial final investment decision is being made.
Accelerating towards new energies and sustainable feedstocks is progressing well and in line with our expectations. We are confident in our project funnel in New Energies, and foresee that the material capital allocation will be after 2025, as we already indicated when the framework was presented initially. To summarize our performance year to date, we have improved our revenue and EBITDA performance, both in a reported as well as a proportional way. As mentioned above, we have been able to improve occupancy by capturing market opportunities, particularly in consolidated companies. In addition to business performance being positive, our balance sheet strength has been further enhanced, reducing both reported as well as proportional debt. We remain committed to a disciplined capital allocation strategy. The return metrics have also improved.
We have an encouraging trend of both the ROCE at a consolidated level as well as the proportional operating cash return. Moving to the outlook drivers. Market indicators, we expect favorable demand for storage of oil to continue, while chemical markets and gas markets remain stable. Costs remain an area of attention. In first quarter 2023, energy costs were more stable and lower compared to the second half of 2022. For the remainder of 2023, we expect some volatility in the energy prices, inflation, and pressure from increasing labor costs. On the business performance, we see momentum in improved financial performance, leading to an EBITDA increase by 14% year-on-year and operating cash return by 3.2 percentage points year-on-year. Finally, we're confident that we can keep capturing growth opportunities and accelerate to the company we want to be in the future.
To bring it all together, we confirm the short and long-term outlook we gave earlier. On the short-term outlook, the EBITDA outlook for full year 2023 is expected to be above EUR 950 million, with an equivalent in proportional EBITDA of EUR 1.14 billion. Consolidated growth investments outlook for full year 2023 is expected to be around EUR 300 million, including the expected FIDs for the LNG projects that we have announced. We confirm the consolidated operating CapEx outlook and proportional operating cash return outlook for the full year 2023. On the long-term outlook, also in the long-term outlook, we confirm our previously given outlook. We aim to maintain an operating cash return of above 12%, which we believe is a healthy return for the type of company we are.
Vopak's long-term commitment to invest EUR 1 billion in Industrial & Gas terminals by 2030 and EUR 1 billion in new energies and sustainable feedstocks remains unchanged. On leverage, we confirm our ambition to maintain a healthy leverage ratio with a range of around 2.5x-3.0x going forward. Our progressive dividend policy, which aims to maintain or grow our annual dividend, remains unchanged. I would like to bring our Analyst and Investor Day to your attention, which we will organize on the 1st of November in Rotterdam. We will provide analysts and investors with a comprehensive update on the progress of our strategy execution, and we will host a visit to the Vlaardingen terminal in the Netherlands with its newly commissioned capacity for waste-based feedstocks. Please reach out to the investor relations team to get registered for the events.
On behalf of Dlck and Frits, we look forward to meeting you there. This concludes my remarks in the presentation, and I would like to hand it back to Dck for the Q&A.
Thank you, Michiel. With that, I would like the operator to please open the line for, for Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have our first question from Lambros Malis, from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. good morning to all, and congrats on another great quarter. I have two questions, please. The first is, can you give us a bit more color on the warnings from the chemical players and the very sentiment that you see for the industry for the second half, and how do you see this playing out for, for Vopak? Perhaps a general comment on the overall market outlook for the second half. Then for the second question, also, occupancy seems to remain sequentially flat, and if we normalize for the L.A. terminal, what do you expect for, for the second half there? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Lambros. I'll share with you. The second question was specifically on the oil side. Was that your... Or was it, no, just in general?
On, on occupancy, yeah, no, in general.
Occupancy in general. Okay, maybe let me start on the chemical side, Lambros. So, so what I've shared also in the presentation just now, I think the best way to look at this is to start in China, where industrial activity is slowing down and people had expected economic activity to pick up. So there's a few things that are happening, because at the same time, there was new capacity, chemical production capacity, added actually, towards the end of last year and gradually over the beginning of 2023.
Now, with economic activity lagging behind expectations, you basically see a double effect happening today in the Chinese market, which is there's excess product, there's not enough demand, and therefore, you see that there's quite a bit of product that moves into the different areas in Asia. For us, in terms of demand, as I explained just now, it, we see it having an effect on the industrial terminals and the activity at the industrial terminals in China. Since we have long-term contracts, we're relatively well protected there. You also now see that that has a bit of impact on activity levels in, let's say, Southeast Asia. Activity levels, I would say that's, that's pure, throughput levels from some of our customers.
That doesn't immediately have an effect on the demand for our services, because the occupancy is expected to still remain healthy. Where it might have an effect, which is what Michiel also alluded to, and I shared in my presentation, is spot capacity demands, maybe some excess services, revenue to a limited extent for, towards the latter end of this year. I think that's Asia, China. If I then move to Europe, relatively unchanged from what we shared before, meaning still pressure on local production, but a healthy demand for import. In the US, actually, we see a relatively stable development.
I wouldn't be the signal that I would be giving is not the alarming signal that maybe some of our customers are sharing because we simply don't see it, at least for the immediate short term in 2023. We're happy with the first half. The chemical side. The big push has been coming more from the oil side than from the chemical side, but if you still look year-over-year, healthy improvement on the chemicals. To be followed up towards the end of the year of how that how that starts to develop on the chemical side. That's how I would position that.
On the total occupancy side, 91%, higher end for oil, because that's where you really see a lot of healthy, healthy pickup and still good developments also from the revenue line. That's, I think, my overall comment on market sentiment, if that's helpful.
Yes, absolutely. Just to follow up, assuming China indeed picks up, let's say, in Q4 or 2024 Q1, do you expect any offset, you know, from the higher imports in Europe, or those two regions, would you say, are unrelated? Essentially, if China reopens, this will only provide the upside risk.
I wouldn't immediately link the additional imports coming from Europe, to whatever happens directly in China. That's much more finished good related, so that's not so much the, the activities that we would be exposed to. I think there is an interlinkage between what happens in China on their capacity and then vice versa, in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore. That's where we see a bit of linkage in terms of how the demand figures are developing, but not so much Europe.
Okay. last thing, so on occupancy, basically for the second half, you would expect levels to remain, you know, at the same levels that we have seen around H1?
Yeah. No reason to, to see that that would be fundamentally different going forward, Lambros.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Rachel Fletcher, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. I have two, please. The first is on the balance sheet strength. Your target leverage ratio hasn't changed, it's still 2.5-3.0x, I believe. This ratio now includes subordinated debt. I wanted to ask you why you've decided to make this change. Also, despite the change to include subordinated debt, you're still below your target. Should we expect this target ratio to come down as your subordinated debt comes down? How should we think about the outlook for balance sheet strength going forward, please? On my second question, CapEx. I was wondering what your CapEx outlook for the second half is.
It seems you're well within the rate implied by your annual guidance. I think Growth CapEx for the half was EUR 149 million, so that's broadly halfway to the EUR 300 million you've guided. Operating CapEx seems below, you're at EUR 120 million for the half. Should we expect this to remain kind of flat or to pick up in the second half? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Richelle. Let me start on the balance sheet strength. Indeed, we have taken a bit of freedom on the subordinated debt to include that in the overall target, because it was still a little bit of an outstanding issue on how to take this subordinated debt. There were also a lot of comments saying, of people saying, "Well, you should also take that into account in your total debt position." As a result, it was sometimes confusing, let's say, the covenant, which is without the subordinated debt, and then the total debt is actually larger than what is in the covenant. We think this is a more fair representation of our total debt position as a company, first of all.
Indeed, we dropped just below the 2.5x-3.0x, there is also some growth coming up. That means, let's say, we will further invest in growth, which normally takes a bit of an increase on our leverage. To be seen what happens a bit, I think, related to any potential divestments going forward. We still have the strategic review taking place for the Rotterdam terminals. Too early to tell what is gonna be the outcome. At the moment, there is no reason to adjust the target or to make it a lower target. We're still in a position that we think this is a fair fair target going forward. That's on the balance sheet.
On the CapEx outlook, indeed, growth CapEx are more or less halfway, and if you look at the potential projects, we should be able to come close to that EUR 300 million guidance we have given. On the operating CapEx, it is always a bit of a pattern, which is relatively low operating CapEx in the first quarter, higher in the second quarter, and that trend effectively continues in Q3 and Q4. Q4 is normally where we spend most on the operating CapEx. Definitely it's not gonna remain flat. It will have an increasing pattern during the year. We still think that the maximum outlook we have given of the EUR 300 million is still a valid outlook at this moment in time.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Quirijn Mulder f rom ING. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Good morning. My question is about, how do you view the outlook for oil in 2024 at this moment? Do you think that you can continue this story and then there is more growth possible, or do you think, "Okay, this is, this is it?" We have now adjusted for, let me say, the oil work from the Russians. We have lower distances, there are good utilization rate. The rates are up. What is the next level to see an improvement in the oil terminals? My second question is about utilization rate over 90%. What is the upside there for utilization? Can you go to 95%? We have seen it in...
If I look in the past, maybe 2011, 2012, it was over 90%, but it's difficult to raise that further. T hanks.
Thank you, Quirijn, for the questions. I'll take the first one, and then Michiel can share his thoughts on the occupancy. Maybe on the oil side, as I said, so strong in 2023. First half expected to continue second half. No indications at this moment why that would be fundamentally already different in 2024. At the same time, and that's the standard disclaimer that you would expect me to say, I mean, the oil market, especially volatility, global flows, are dependent on any events that may happen from a geopolitical perspective. That's obviously always hard to predict how that would work out in 2024.
But if you look at the fundamental drivers today, why there's a high demand for oil, it is security of supply, it is a continuation of those redirected flows. Although the world may have adapted to it, it still means that flows are generally traveling a lot further than they were doing before, and continued high volatility in that market. Those three elements, maybe with the exception of the last one, which is difficult, more difficult to predict, but they are expected still to continue in 2024. For now, no, no immediate indication of why that would be fundamentally different in, in 2024 from an oil perspective.
What will happen then if the contango returns suddenly? Then it looks to me that the markets has even more upside there.
Yeah, could potentially be, Quirine, but we also know that the direct correlation between contango and backwardation, in the demand for at least the services that we provide, is relatively limited and has been relatively limited, as you can see in the last 12, 18, 24 months, with steep backwardation on a lot of the products. You see, generally speaking, that therefore the demand for us, I think generally maybe in the market there would be increased demand, but I don't see an immediate effect on the occupancy levels in our terminals. Then again, the other part of our oil business is fuel distribution. Fuel distribution in Australia, South Africa, in Mexico, certain extent, Brazil, that remains just a normal, healthy, predictable, and relatively stable development.
Yeah, okay. It's, it is supportive for the, the old, the average, the general tariffs, in my view, if you have a contango. That's okay, fine.
Maybe to the second question, Quirine, on the utilization. Yeah, how, how high can you go? Well, effectively, if you look at the, the, the trend, which has been upward, definitely was supported by good market conditions. Also what helped us quite a bit is that we are running at a much lower out-of-service percentage as a company, if you compare it to a few years ago. That means, let's say, there's more tanks available in, in our network as well than we previously had because of the lower out-of-service. The, the operations team has done a very good job to really get that to a lower level. That has helped us. Can it go further up?
If you look at the different divisions, I would say that, if you look at the Americas, we're now at running 92%. We have historically sometimes seen 94%-95%. So depending on market conditions, yeah, that could still go up, but very limited, I would think. On Asia and Middle East, we're running at record high utilization, so that's 93%. Not a lot of upside is left there. If you go to China, then you see that the occupancy has come down to 82%, so that there is still quite some upside. If the market really rebounds to growth, then that obviously could have a positive impact on our overall utilization.
You have to realize that the China capacity is relatively small versus the other divisions, but it will have, it could have a positive impact. Europe is running at 90%. Still some available capacity, but we historically, we never reached, like, 93%-94%, so we're running at quite a high utilization. The New Energies in LNG is 100% occupancy, so there's no upside there, there's only downsides. If you look at the contract structures, these are all rented out capacity. Yeah, there is always an opportunity that that utilization may go up 1% or 2% more. Will it reach 95%? That's probably quite unlikely if you look at the history, but also where we are today and how the markets look going forward.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. We have our next question from Thijs Berkelder from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. All is Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO, or VHF. Four questions. My 25-year experience on Vopak is that if occupancy is higher than 90%, that you see an uplift in your pricing power slash contract renegotiation power. Can you maybe explain what you see in terms of pricing power in, in the various businesses? The second question on the outlook, quite simple. H1 EBITDA, EUR 494 million, why not lift the four-year EBITDA guidance at this moment? What, what could make this EBITDA still land at, let's say, EUR 951 million? Third question. You announced a couple of restructuring measures. What kind of cost savings should we expect from these restructurings coming in in 2024?
Maybe for now, final question is, you are about to potentially divest three chemical terminals in Rotterdam. Can you maybe give a rough indication what their EBITDA contribution has been in the first half?
Thank you, Thijs. I'll take the first one, and then we'll take two, three, and four also through Michiel. Maybe pricing power, I think that's a process, to be fair, that's a process that has been ongoing quite a bit over the past period, especially on the oil side. If you zoom out on the 91% and then or zoom in, basically, to say, how does it look at the oil side? That looks already higher than the 91%. That process of pricing power has been going on gradually over the past, let's say, half a year to a year. There is still, in this current period, there are contracts, longer term contracts, that are opening up that give us some pricing power.
You have to link that to the average, kind of like, contract portfolio duration on the oil side. There's always a bit of pricing power that is left, which we are making use of. That is indeed also a reason why we feel relatively comfortable on the medium to longer term outlook on, specifically on the oil side. On the chemicals, I was already quite detailed in the outlook. There, from a pricing power perspective, if you look at that from a global market, it's probably a bit less. Also traditionally, our pricing power in that part of the market has been a bit less because alternatives are developing in an easier fashion.
I think there you see a bit more pricing power in the locations that are further away from the main hub locations, and that's, and, and that continues to be relatively healthy, I think, now. Overall, I see, I, I'm, I would reconfirm a positive and a healthy outlook.
Yeah, maybe on that outlook, two times half a year, a very valid question, of course, Thijs. Why is it not two times first half year? We have looked at, let's say, different aspects of the outlook. First of all, if you look at of the foreign exchange, the currency impact has been negative for us in the second quarter versus first quarter, and even after closing, let's say, the second quarter, you see that certain of the currencies are moving negative for us. So we said, "Let's be at least cautious on the foreign exchange." If you look at the impact, so the outlook, we've given EUR 950 million, in that we already absorbed EUR 6 million of more negative currency impacts than we had in the, had anticipated.
The second is, on the, is that we did a divestment of the Savannah terminal, which obviously has a negative impact for the second half of the year because it was running at a positive EBITDA. Then we also look at the run rate for our capacity and what is the clean run rate of our business. Sometimes you have some one-offs which are positively influencing the results, and during the first half year, we had some of that, although not large, but some of it was positive.
If you then look at the clean run rate of our business, take the divestments into account and the currency impact, we said, "Well, it's still valid to, to have an above EUR 950 outlook, and let's see how the coming months develop, and then we can update you in Q3." That's on the outlook. On the restructuring, the cost savings, yes, what is also in the press release, it will impact around 50 jobs worldwide. We will take a provision going forward, which will be around EUR 10 million, and then as an exceptional item. You may expect a payback somewhere between one-two years. That's, that's the normal way of, let's say, of these provisions versus, let's say, the financial benefit of it.
Savings between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million over time. That's what we anticipate. The last one, the EBITDA for Botlek, yeah, we don't normally disclose individual EBITDA levels, and also given the sensitivity of this divestment program, we will not disclose that to the market, and we will update the market once we have a more firm outlook on where this strategic review is heading towards to. A bit patience here, please, but we hope that in Q3 we will give more clarity.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Andrew Mulder from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Andrew Muld Two questions, I would say. First question on Rotterdam. Can you detail what kind of parties have made offer? Second question is on the new split. What's the reason, what's the real reason behind it? More details, if I look at the countries that are singled out, should we expect that also those countries will be sold, like Colombia? I'm missing Spain in the picture. All of the countries have been mentioned, except for Spain. Last, what will be under the heading of other or not being able to allocate?
Very good, Andre. Maybe let me take those questions. The first one on Rotterdam, process is still ongoing, so I hope you understand we're not disclosing what type of parties at this stage are in the process. The process is continuing, and whenever we have news to share with the market, we, we will do so accordingly. Maybe on the second one, on the new split, maybe one step back of what we're actually trying to do. What we, what we have today, before this change, we have basically three layers in our organization.
We have an operating company, which is composed of a few terminals with a full responsible P&L holder and a management team that sits on it, let's say, the operating company, Brazil. They report today into the second layer, and that's the division layer, and that sums up and rounds up the numbers of the whole Americas, North, Canada, and Latin America. That's the second layer. They report the five divisions, four plus LNG, they report to the global office. What we are now doing in this new setup, we are removing the entire division layer, and we are basically creating sufficient scale in these individual operating companies, which we now will call business units, to make sure they have sufficient scale, and therefore report directly to the global office.
That's why you see Brazil, instead of reporting to the Houston office, they will they will start now in the future to report to global directly, and directly into us as EB, so to say. You see the same, for instance, in Singapore. Instead of having our Singapore business report to the Asia region, they will start to report directly to Rotterdam. Why do we do that? Because we think it will shorten the decision lines, it will shorten and decrease the distance between the global office and the operating companies, where the action sits, and that's where we, where we came to this change. No divisions and nine business units.
Now, where does the so o n your particular question, the individual countries that are being singled out, is there any strategic reason for singling them out? Not at all. It's basically a logical setup for us to make sure that we can execute our strategy in a better way. That's the way to do it, in our view. We set Netherlands aside, we put Belgium aside, we put South Africa aside, and we feel that, by giving the teams locally the opportunity to fully focus on those countries, that will actually help us a lot. And we can support them very well from the center here. It's a real simplification of our business structure. Then your last question was related to Spain and to other.
Spain is indeed a joint venture that we will man directly with people from the head office in the joint venture board, so it doesn't geographically sit under one of the other individual BUs. We will report that as well, I think, under the other category. In other, is basically the head office cost of what we have today, which is head office cost, that we would then not be able to allocate to all the business units. It's more of a reporting element rather than anything else. I hope that clarifies, and thank you for the question.
Yep, thanks. Okay.
There are no further questions. I would like to hand the call over to your host, Dlck Richelle, to conclude today's Conference. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much, everyone, for being in the call. Thanks for all your good questions. You know, if there's any follow-up questions or comments you would like to make, please reach out to the Investor Relations team. Thank you for now, and I wish you a nice summer for all of you. Bye-bye.
That concludes today's event. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.