Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the d'Amico International Shipping 3rd quarter and 9 months 2023 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. For operator assistance via web call, please press the headset icon on the bottom left side of your screen. For conference call assistance, please press star zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paolo d'Amico, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Hello to everybody, and welcome to our usual quarter call. Thank you to be with us. Going to the presentation, we would jump the executive summary as usual, because we are not duplicating two things. Said that, I pass on the floor to Carlos Balestra di Mottola, who is our CFO. Thank you.
Thank you, Paolo, and good afternoon to everyone. So we start as usual with our fleet overview. As at 13th of September, we control a fleet of 36 vessels, so the same as at 13th of June, when we last presented our results. But the fleet composition changed slightly. So now we have 26 own vessels, so two more than as at 30th of June. And we have 3 bareboat chartered-in vessels, instead of five, which we had last time.
We still have 7 vessels chartered in, and of course, we are still, our main segment is still the MRs, where we control 24 vessels, and then we have an eco presence on the other ones and young fleet, 8.3 years average age, relative to an industry average of 12.5 for the MRs and 13.7 for the other ones. Mostly Eco design, this percentage has been rising over the course of the last few years and should continue rising in the future.
We have such a young fleet because of the important new building program, which we were involved with, through which we ordered 22 vessels since 2012, and which were delivered to us, all of them by the end of 2019. [audio distortion] Yes, hello. I think there was a technical problem, unfortunately, with our microphone, so I apologize for that. We continue with the presentation. So, Capex commitments for the full year, the maintenance Capex expected is of $11.1 million. And that figure is slightly down from what we had anticipated at the beginning of the year. That's because a few dry docks were postponed to next year. So at the beginning of the year, we expected a maintenance Capex of $14.5 million.
And then, of course, the maintenance Capex for 2024 now is estimated at $6.4 million, which is higher than what we initially forecasted of $3.3 million. Going on to the... Of course, then the other big investment this year was the exercise of the purchase option on the High Explorer for around $30 million, which the vessel was already delivered to us. So going on to the following slide, here we show our bank debt repayments. We used to show also the upcoming balloons, which had to be refinanced, but there are none here shown, because there are none upcoming or in the next two years. So the first balloons we have are only at the end of 2026.
So that is, of course, positive for us. And the daily loan repayments on our loans have been falling as a result of the purchase options we have been exercising. And some of these vessels, we have kept them debt-free. Also, the new loans that we recently drew down had a slightly longer maturity profile, which also helped in this respect. Going on to the following slide, the purchase options on the lease vessels. So there are only three left now, two which can be exercised next year, and one in September 2025. So we will eventually be exercising these options. Some of them, it's quite convenient to exercise early. Maybe one of them, we might wait closer to the purchase obligation date, which is the charter reducer.
But, we will eventually, of course, be exercising all of these, and, and reducing our breakeven by doing so. So, and going on to the following page, we show the vessels which are, time chartered in, on which we have, purchase options. Two already exercised, they were denominated in yen, and because of the strong depreciation of the yen relative to the U.S. dollar, they were particularly attractive. The remaining four are also very attractive. As we will see later when we look at, our NAV, we have also included the value of these options now in our NAV calculation. They are, they're all in the money, and they can all be exercised. So, something might happen also on this front, depending on how the market develops.
And here we show instead our coverage, and our Q4 coverage now is at 33% of the available vessel days at an average rate of almost $28,000. And we have also increased our coverage for 2024, which now stands at 25% at an average rate of $26,600. We have recently fixed 3 Handys and 1 LR1 on time charter contracts, and that has contributed to this increase in the coverage for 2024.
So $26,600 is lower than what our vessels are earning on the spot market today, but it's still a very good rate, and it provides us some good visibility on the earnings already for next year, which going on to the following page, we show here. We have some overview on how we have been trading in Q4. We have 33% of the available days in the quarter, which were fixed through TC contracts at an average rate of $27,900, and another 33%, which were fixed on spot voyages, at an average rate of almost $30,000, $39,820. Giving a blended rate for two-thirds o f the days in the quarter of almost $29,000.
So hopefully we, we can do even better than that by the end of the quarter. Usually, we see the market strengthening in the second half of November and in December, and we expect the market to follow that trend also this year. Going on to the...[audio distortion] here. Going on to the following page, page 14. We show our fleet evolution, and we show at the bottom left the recurring results on the fixed contract dates, so both time charter and spot contracts already fixed. For 2023, we are already at $182 million, and for 2024, we are at $35 million. So we are starting to have some visibility also on 2024. What does that mean for the full year 2023?
Well, I mean, those figures we are showing here on the bottom, they are just potential scenarios, which will help you, investors and analysts, then make your own assumptions. We are not providing guidance here. But if we were to earn $25,000 per day on the remaining 3 days, our profits for the year 2023 would be $191 million. At $30,000 per day on the remaining 3 days, our profits for the year would be almost $197 million. For 2024 instead, at $25,000, $25,000 per day on the 3 days, our profits would be of $123 million, and of almost $170 million at $30,000 per day.
So, very strong results potentially if the markets, the spot market continues being as strong as this year, where we were at on average, above $30,000 per day. Going on to our costs, daily operating costs. As was expected this year, we saw an increase in these costs. They had been pretty flat between 2019 and 2022. But this year, as most other sectors, we were confronted with important inflationary pressures, which affected, of course, also the crew wages for us, but also insurance costs, because we had to insure our vessels at much higher values, reflecting the current market values.
Of course, that also contributed to the increase in direct operating costs. There were also an increase in costs for spare parts. But the good news here is that as we had expected, the daily operating costs for the 9 months of this year are lower than they were in the first half of the year, where we were at around $7,800, and now we are at below $7,500. So there is an improvement there, which was anticipated by us. But we are glad we are seeing that in the actual figures. And on the G&A front, there was a big increase this year.
A lot of that increase is linked to variable remuneration, which is connected to the very strong results that we achieved in 2022, and we have been achieving this year. So a lot of this increase will unwind eventually, if markets correct. Of course, we don't expect that to happen soon. But it is a buffer, a safety buffer, which we have, and so not all of this increase is a permanent increase in G&A. Here we are showing instead the ratio between the fleet market value and our net financial position, as well as some key balance sheet figures. This ratio improved from 36% at the end of 2022 to 21.5%, as of 13th of September.
As of the end of June, it was around 25%, so it improved also relative to the end of the first half. We expect it to continue improving, although at a lower pace going forward. It will continue improving, because we expect to continue generating substantial amount of cash in Q4 this year, and also next year. We ended the quarter with $105 million in cash, which is slightly less than our cash balance at the end of the first half of the year and at the end of last year. At the end of the first half, we had $113 million in cash. The decrease is due to the fact that we took delivery of two purchase, of 2 vessels, on which we had exercised purchase options in Q3 this year.
And it's due to the share repurchases for EUR 6.1 million, which took place in Q3 this year. Vessel values increased slightly during the quarter, which also helped this ratio improve. Going on to the following slide, we show our results P&L line items for Q3 and for the 9 months this year and for the same periods last year. And in the Q3 this year, our profits were of almost $50 million, so $48.9 million. So $5.3 million more than our profits in Q3 2022.
And in the first 9 months, our profits were of almost $150 million, so well above what we achieved in the first 9 months of last year. This, these very strong results were achieved because of the very strong spot markets that we benefited from this year. And our average rates in the year for the spot market was of 33,400. And we have seen that there was a slight correction between Q1 and Q2 in the average spot rates achieved, but since then, average spot rates have kept pretty steady. And if you look at the blended rates, so including also the time charter contracts in Q2 this year and in Q3 this year, they're actually pretty much aligned.
There's only a $30 per day difference. We achieved $30,860 in Q3 this year. So this is it for the financial highlights, and I pass it over to Paolo for the market overview.
Thank you, Carlos. Talking about the market, not too many things have changed since we last met. If we look at the asset values, what we can say that the rates improved quite a lot from the start of the Ukraine war, and also the values, but the values have been not so fast as the rates are being. This is quite normal because the values on ships they follow after a time element, the improvement or rates. On the refined products from Russia, it happened what we forecast, really. Since the cap and since the sanctions, the flow has been diverted from Russia to Europe, and they go even more further ahead away, like India, China, Africa, Turkey, and Brazil, and Middle East.
So, more ton miles for the Russian exports, and also more ton miles for the European imports. Everybody was predicting deficit due to the OPEC Plus cuts on production for the second half of this year. But what we are experiencing today that the flow of crude at least is basically steady. So this cut has been offset by few elements, and I suppose these elements comes from OPEC members who are supplying more than their quotas. The Venezuela opening to the United States, which of course, is not going to be a big increase for infrastructure problem, but it's going to be an increase. And we have most of the non-OPEC countries like Brazil, and today also Guyana, which is a big producer at this point, who are pumping more.
So the so-called cuts that Saudi Arabia and the rest enacted a few months ago, thank God, for the moment, it's been offset. The throughput from refineries has been recovering, and today we are in a phase where not all the refineries are out of the maintenance period, in the full maintenance period. So the operational refineries, and as a consequence, the flow of cargos is very quite difficult to assess in a full way. The inventories for refined products are low, and the cracks, even if today they have been corrected downwards on some products, are still high.
We think that naphtha and diesel, who are today not really the big winners for next year they should, they should improve and give us a better growth for 2024. The 2023 has been fueled more by jet fuel due to many people going back to fly. Not as much as we thought. China didn't perform the way that many analysts were predicting. The domestic flights have been full back to 2019 levels, but the long-haul flights, no. As I said, we have a strong support from the crude side of the industry because of this increase of production of crude oil from non-OPEC countries.
As a matter of fact, there are quite a number of the VLCCs moving in this moment steaming to the U.S. Gulf to load American crude, and only 50% of them are fixed, so the rest is going on pure speculation. The changes of the refined landscape, you know them. On the positive side, we have the big part of it coming from Middle East, China, and India. On the negative side, we have to keep in mind that the Dangote refinery next year should go to power in Nigeria. This is going to, of course, affect the imports of clean products to West Africa, but it's going to be a very long program, so it's not going to affect us that fast.
Shell Oil is increasing, its production is growing. This is a good news because will be an element of more crude coming to the market. So on the demand side, I would say overall, the situation it is still very positive. This netting up any sort of recession for forecasts that have been taken up to now. Looking to the supply side, there are elements to think that demolition should start kicking at certain point. One, because of the new indexes which are coming into force in Europe, the scarce financing for older vessel, the price of steel, which is still sustained for demolition.
The growing pool of demolition candidates, because the big bulk of the product carriers is being built in the first decade of this millennium, so from year 2000 to 2005, well, up to 2010. So these ships are becoming, the youngest one is 13 years old, but the oldest one is starting 23 years old. So these ships are becoming more and more candidates to be phased out. So we have very slow deliveries in front of us. The newbuilding orders are very limited due to the price, to the uncertainty of the fuels for the future. So, and the final result, we have a very low fleet growth, basically flat, very close to flat.
So I, I would say overall, looking to the demand element and even more on the supply side, I think the overall look of the market is still positive for quite a while. I leave the floor to Carlos again to comment on the NAV.
Thank you, Paolo, and on the NAV here, and it shouldn't come as a surprise, there was a further increase relative to June. So on a per share basis in US dollars, at the end of June, we were at $7.1, and now we are at almost $7.9. And on an absolute basis, our NAV increased from $870 million to $947 million. And this includes, as I was referring to before, also the value of the purchase options on the TC- in vessels, which we estimate are in the money for $34 million as at the end of September.
So as at the end of September, translating our closing share price into U.S. dollars, we were at a discount of 38% to NAV. Since then, the share price traded up a bit, and therefore, using yesterday's closing share price, our discount to NAV was slightly lower. It was 30%. Still substantial, but slightly lower. So there's still a lot of upside here. Also, taking into account the fact that our NAV should continue rising, especially because of our strong forecasted cash generation in the coming quarters. But we also believe vessel values should be well supported.
As we have shown in our presentation, vessel values are still well below the peaks reached in the last super cycle. While instead, earnings are at the same or higher than they were at that, in that last cycle. So there is still room in theory for vessel values to continue increasing. So I think that's that's it. These were the key messages, and we pass over to you for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
This is the Chorus 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, and then press the raise your hand button. Please do not mute your microphone locally, and when prompted, make sure you turn on your webcam in the pop-up window. If you are on the phone instead, please press star one on your keypad. The first question is from Matteo Bonizzoni of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have 2 questions. The first one relates to the interim dividend distribution. So you are now distributing the lately EUR 0.14. My question is: Should you expect more or less, a similar distribution with the final installment next spring? And does this interim dividend distribution have an implication structurally on your future dividend policy? And the second question relates to slide 34, in which you show that the building orders are continuing to be under control, but there has been some pickup, you know? Because there are now 100 vessels, MR and LR, LR1, which have been ordered this year to date, which is something which we have not seen after 2015 for several years.
So that's pretty natural, because the market is very healthy. Just to have your feeling, you, you clearly say that these deliveries will not come before 2026 or 2027. And so I, I would infer that for at least another 2-3 years, the fleet growth is well under control. Do you expect for the pickup and growth of new building activity, or there is maybe a cap also in terms of shipbuilding capacity that prevents these evolution? Thanks.
I pick up the second one, maybe.[Foreign language][crosstalk] So, yes, I mean, the delivery forecast is more than manageable, and most of these ships will come out in 2025. And I can tell you that today, delivery on an MR from, let's say, a historical shipyard is not going to happen before end of 2026, and we'll start talking early 2027. So, if you see the project done a few of them are still on traditional ships. Some of them are on new dual-fuel ships which have dictated premiums up to $9-$10 million on the price of the conventional MR.
So we are talking already of ships costing $51 million, and which are entering in already, programmed, trades with main, charterers around the world. This is not going to affect too much the existing market the way it is, and still there, we are talking about 2,000 beginning 2026. So I would say that the 24 months in front of us, starting from today are more than controlled. And anyhow, after that, things are looking, let's say, in, in a positive way due to lack of supply.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would like to just add to what Paolo just mentioned, that, you know, it's also an important consideration that we have already almost 10% of the fleet, which is more than 20 years old. And as Paolo was mentioning, a lot of these vessels are going to be turning 25 years old very soon. Starting from 2022, as we show here in this graph, there's quite a steep increase every year, almost, in the number of vessels that were delivered in those years. And these are all vessels which are eventually going to become 25 years old in a few years' time, so the 22 vessels in 2027, and so forth. And this is really a demolition wall that the market is going to be benefiting from.
I mean, if you look at the vessels, the millions of deadweight tons that were delivered in 2023 and 2024, and you compare them to the fleet size today, it represents potential demolitions of 3.8% around in 2008, 2028, and 5.8%, 5.8% in 2029. Now, to the... it’s since 2011, we never had deliveries in none of these years, which were higher than 5.8%. I mean, the peak year maybe was 6% in 2016, or 5.5. I cannot see exactly here. But I mean, it’s... So i...
Since then, yard capacity for construction of most vessels, and in particular product tankers, has decreased substantially, because yards lost money during many years. And they are facing a lot of inflationary pressures in the labor costs, as well as higher costs for steel. And so it is very unlikely that we are going to be seeing a big ramp-up in production capacity for product tankers, and therefore, deliveries, even if the yards were inundated with orders, annual deliveries are unlikely to exceed these numbers. So, and we are, we see here in 25, that despite the 100 vessels that were ordered today, the annual deliveries are just above 2% of the fleet.
So here we are, we are assuming a 0.7% fleet growth, because, just because of natural scrapping, which is below 2%, because we have had very little scrapping over the last few years, and the fleet is aging very fast. This is not driven by a bad market. This is driven by vessels reaching 25 years of age. They're just becoming too old to continue trading. It's very, very difficult to trade vessels after 25 years of age. So that should be very supportive for the market going forward. On the dividend front, the interim dividend that we are distributing now, of course, is a reflection of the very strong markets, and, you know, more will come most likely next year.
And if the markets continue being as strong, the expectation is that in next year, we should be distributing more dividends than we distributed this year. That much we can say. We don't provide, we don't have an explicit dividend policy, but what we have said, we try to be consistent here, is that as our leverage ratios fall, we will be distributing a higher percentage of our profits as dividends. So this year we had the final dividend of $22 million out of the 2022 results, plus this interim dividend of $20 million. Next year, hopefully we can do better than that in terms of cash distributions.
The next question is from Daniele Alibrandi of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I have two. First question, on spot rate, and I would appreciate if you can comment both on current trading and, more on a longer term basis. So, two sub-question, basically, how the market is evolving on the spot rates, because this is the first winter season with the embargo, and some peers have even disclosed a higher spot rate moving in Q4 versus Q3. So any comments, on the latest weeks, despite you provided some visibility, on the slide, that would be appreciated. And on the more longer term, looking at next year, what do you think could be the lowest level of spot rate below which is very unlikely to end up, from your, standpoint? So I'm asking basically your worst case scenario here.
And the second question is regarding the other direct operating costs. What was the driver of the decrease in Q3, and what would be a good proxy for Q4? The level of Q3 or the level seen in Q4 last year. Thank you.
Thanks, Daniele, for the questions. On some of them, I must say, are quite difficult to answer, but we will try.
We are here for difficult questions.
So on the, on the spot rates, I think I'll, I'll go back to the slide where we give a preview here of what's happening on the market. But, so you know, we are almost at $30,000 on the fixtures, so far for, for the spot days in this, in this quarter. Our expectation here is that, you know, we, we, we should be able to do, at least as well as we have done, so far in the remaining, the remainder of the quarter. That's because usually we have this improvement, in the second half of Q4. And, what we usually see is that the, the crude vessels start running around mid-October, and then the product tankers, around one month later, right?
It's the time which is required for this crude to be transported to the refineries and then for it to be refined and transported by us. So it's not a coincidence that there is this lag of around one month. We saw this year also a very important rally on the crude tankers, especially on Aframaxes and Suezmaxes, but also VLCCs to a certain extent. So that's promising. It is an indication that there was quite a lot of crude oil moving. And it also supports, you know, what we have been seeing in terms of crude oil price, where there has been some weakness recently, which probably reflects a much more balanced market than what was anticipated.
In the beginning of the quarter, there was this expectation that the market was going to be in deficit. But instead, there is quite a big level of non-compliance by OPEC in terms of cuts which have been agreed to. Iran has also increased its exports this year. And we have more recently, there has been this agreement to allow Venezuela to export temporarily its crude without sanctions. Which is not probably going to have a big impact in the market, but nonetheless, it's also one factor at play. And therefore, we are quite positive that we are going to be seeing a ramp-up in refining throughputs in the second half of November and December.
Refineries are still terminating their maintenance programs now. So, we have actually witnessed over the last week a strengthening of the market in the Atlantic, but it was mostly driven by the bad weather that we have experienced over the last few days both in Europe and in the U.S. And to a certain extent, also the Panama Canal restrictions, which is going to become are going to become much worse in the coming months, but they are already playing into the psychology in the market into the sentiment, let's say. So, you know, when people fixing vessels in the U.S. today, they, they have this anticipation that the market is going to become tighter also because of these restrictions in transit on the Panama Canal.
And so when they fix, you know, owners are firmer in their negotiations, and they're able to secure higher rates. So all of that is already contributing to a strong market. And what is missing is the increase in refining throughputs, but that is going to arrive. And when that arrives, the market is going to strengthen even more, especially in Asia, where it has been a bit weak over the last few weeks. But hopefully we are close to a bottom there. And well, yeah, the tougher question you had is the one relating to our worst-case scenario for next year. Unfortunately, there we cannot be of much help because our markets, you know, are very difficult to predict with precision.
We can analyze trends, try to forecast trends, which of course also depend on certain assumptions about what is going to happen in the future. But we think that if the geopolitical situation continues being like it is today, plus we avoid a deep recession, which I would say is the base case today, especially in the U.S. European economy is a bit less dynamic, and it's showing some more worrying signs of weakness than the U.S. one. But if we are able to avoid that scenario, then oil consumption should continue increasing next year, and so will refining throughputs, and it will further support the market because of the very low deliveries that we are pretty sure are going to happen next year.
We are quite positive about 2024, currently. And finally, in terms of the other direct operating costs. Go back to the slides where we have it. So yeah, for the 9 months of the year, the average was $7,450 relative to $7,800 for the first 6 months. So we do expect that in Q4 we are going to be seeing a rate which is probably going to allow us to reduce this average value for the year slightly. So the average value for the full year 2023, we don't expect it to be higher than the $7,450. Potentially, it should actually be slightly lower than that.
There's also an element where we do concentrate purchases of spare parts in the first part of the year, and that also explains why these costs tend to be a bit higher in the beginning of the year, and then they tend to fall during the rest of the year.
Thank you.
The next question is from Massimo Bonisoli of Equita. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the very interesting presentation. I have two questions. One is a clarification on the dividend policy. I understand there is not an explicit policy on shareholder remuneration, but if I got correctly from your press release, your intention is to increase remuneration over the next few years. So I was wondering if this intention is relative to earnings or on an absolute basis, and if it is including buyback or not? The second question is more a strategic one. You are in a privileged position where you can wait to order a new vessel to or to substitute older ones that you mentioned before. You have about 10% of fleet, which is 20 years old.
At which point in time do you believe you will need to order new vessel to substitute the old one or to maybe increase the fleet? Thank you.
Thanks, Massimo. Good questions. So the first one, I'll try to answer the first one in terms of the dividends and the buybacks. You are correct in stating that, yes, we don't have an explicit dividend policy. And what we have said is that we will be distributing an increasing proportion of our profits as we deleverage our balance sheet. So of course, if our results for some reason next year were to be, which we don't anticipate now, were to be much weaker than they were this year, the absolute dividends number for the dividends distributed might actually end up being lower than this year. But they could potentially still represent a higher proportion of the profits that we would be generating next year.
So that was the message that we wanted to give to the market of given our expected developments for the market next year, I think there's a good chance that the absolute number of dividends distributed next year could end up being higher than that which we distributed in 2022. And that is including, let's say, the buybacks. So the buybacks, we momentarily stopped now. We have room to do much more. The authorization that we have would allow us to purchase up to 15% of the shares issued, including the shares already repurchased. The reason we stopped is not because we don't think the shares represent good value anymore. We think they are very attractively priced still.
But because we don't want to overdo it and then negatively affect the liquidity of our shares, since we already have a controlling shareholder, which has a very significant participation in the company.
Going to the replacement strategy of the fleet and with a possible new building program, when the market is strong, is the most difficult thing to figure out. Of course, we are opportunistic in the sense that if a deal is where we look at it, and I can tell you we are looking at a lot of things every day, but due to the values where we are today, is not really feasible for us to do anything, if not to keep going with the politics and the strategy we always say. So deleveraging and distributing dividends. What I can say, that normally, yards they start worrying 24 months before an expected lack of new orders.
In the sense, if they are, let's say, let's assume, as reality is, that the shipyards today they are delivering on something order today, they are going to deliver it in end of 2026, beginning 2027. Then, the moment where the yard will start thinking of their future orders will be second half of 2024. So I would say, on this very stupid calculation, which is not, but I think certainly in 2024, we'll be softly looking at what's going on. But from there, to take a final concrete decision to build a ship, this is something which is going to take, take even more time. I hope it does answer your questions.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Climent Molins of Value Investor's Edge. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by asking about asset valuations. You've made the point that asset values are sitting well below previous peaks, despite the strong market environment. But what do you think are the main reasons behind this? And secondly, do you expect the spread in valuations between modern and older tankers to continue to widen? Thank you.
I would say, the basic dynamics, you know it better than me. It's a matter of supply and demand. So, probably the demand is not as strong yet as it was in the past. Certainly, what is aggravating the market today, the sale and purchase market today against the past, like the past, in the past, you didn't have any sort of technological challenges in front of you. The emissions were not a problem. We were not going to enter in a phase where you were going to pay your emissions in Europe. I mean, it was a different world. Today, the world is more complicated, and this probably is reflecting, in a way, also on the value of older ships. So, it goes all, everything down to supply and demand.
Certainly, if you look at the future and the way things are with the supply of new ship restrained with where it is, and the demolition element, which is kicking in with more and more strength every year, which is passing, due to the fact that we say what we said before, the bulk of the product carrier fleet has been built in the first 20 years of this millennium. You see that, I mean, the element of demand and supply is getting tighter and tighter, and this should be reflected in the value at a certain point. In more value at a certain point, because we already have a lot of value there.
Yeah, makes sense. I had another question about the Panama Canal. I know it's not a huge transit point for tankers, and as I understand it, the MRs can also use the old Panama locks, which have not seen that much congestion. But I was wondering whether you've seen any effects from this on the overall market?
No. I mean, the effects of the Panama Canal on MRs, we saw them because a lot of MRs have been queuing, waiting to pass through the Panama Canal, because they restricted the number of ships allowed to pass through. So a lot of supply of tankers has been idle, waiting to pass through the canal. So you have it in a way, in an hour, and it's affecting MRs in the same way it's affecting many other ships. Of course, the trade of clean products from the US Gulf to the Far East is limited to naphtha, is limited to few commodities. It's not a main route, let's put it this way, of clean petroleum products. But it is affecting anyhow.
There is another element that is not very much seen in the market, the Jones Act ships. Because a lot of supply to all the West Coast of the United States is coming out of Texas and Louisiana with American flagships. Now, these are going to stop, which means that California has to supply California, Oregon, and Washington their own needs from Korea, Japan, and China. And you can realize the ton-mile is gonna sky up there. So the Panama Canal can be something which can play quite heavily on the market, at least on the west of Suez market.
Thanks for the color. That's really interesting. That's all from me. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations for the quarter.
Thank you.
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Okay. So at this point, thank you very much for being with us. I hope we satisfied all your questions, and let's see you at the next quarter. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your devices. Thank you.