It seems that we are reconnected, and I hand over the work to Jan Rindbo, who will take us through the first slide.
Thank you very much. Let me start with the business highlights. We had a second quarter performance in line with expectations in market conditions that were closely linked to geopolitical events, especially around the Red Sea situation. The financial results were impacted by the temporarily lower margins in the dry cargo activities in Freight Services and Trading, while positive earnings and cash flow generated from tank activities and coverage in Assets and Logistics added positively to the results. We continue to see a very positive structurally asset market, where we have a low order book, limited available shipyard capacity, and an aging global fleet. Norden is strongly positioned towards this with the investments that we have made in own vessels and an extensive declarable portfolio of purchase options with significant value upside.
As final point, strategic, we continue the strategic execution on the growth ambitions in Freight Services and Trading, and we've done that in this quarter through the agreement to acquire Norlat Shipping, which we expect to contribute with high quality earnings. Let me hand you over to our CFO, Martin Badsted, for some financial highlights.
Thank you very much, and please turn to slide number 5. We made a net profit of $46 million in Q2, which corresponds to a return on invested capital of 21% when measured over the last 12 months. And as Jan said, that was basically in line with our expectations. If we dive into the business units, FST made a net loss of $18 million, as Jan said, due to higher charter costs in relation to the cargo commitments we had taken on, that we talked about in the first quarter report. In Assets and Logistics , we made a net profit of $64 million, driven by high earnings coverage in dry, and a strong tanker market, which also led to $27 million being booked as a sublease gain in relation to a TC out of a tanker vessel.
Our estimated net asset value for Assets and Logistics increased DKK 79 per share to DKK 451 per share. It's important to notice that the DKK 51 per share of the increase was due to a new calculation methodology for purchase options. The board has decided an interim payout of $23 million in a mix of dividend equal to DKK 2 per share, and $14 million in a new share buyback program. Finally, we narrow our full-year guidance for 2024 to a net profit of $160 million-$240 million versus the previous guidance of $150 million-$250 million. Please turn to slide 6.
This graph indicates the group contribution margin per quarter since the middle of 2019, so over the last five years. The first point that I want to make with this graph is really that if you look at the bottom red part of the columns, which is the Assets and Logistics part, those earnings really do add a measure of stability to the overall earnings of Norden. Whereas you can see the blue part of the bar is the Freight Services and Trading , which is somewhat more volatile. The second point is actually that the low margins that we are witnessing now is in our view also driven by what we would call an owner's market.
So currently, with high asset prices driven by lack of new building capacity and a favorable order book, really means that owners have the upper hand in negotiations, and you really see that the TC rates are often higher than spot rates, which means that when you start up a new vessel, which we do all the time in a dry operator, we typically can't lose money on the first leg and hope to recoup that on the latter part of the voyage. But it goes without saying that starting out this way with high charter costs makes it harder to make the strong margins that we saw in 2021 and 2022, where we would call it more an operator's market.
What we are in now is more akin to what we saw back in 2019 and 2020, where, at that point, the owners also had most of the upper hand. Turning to page seven, we continue to believe in the structurally positive outlook for assets in both dry cargo and tankers. Based on that, we continue to hold on and build our deferred market exposure to benefit from that market development. This, of course, is based on our extensive portfolio of own ships and purchase options, which number in total over 100 units, which of course presents significant value upside with that positive market outlook. In the more short term, we are a little bit more moderately positive in dry cargo.
We still see the fundamentals being quite strong, again, with the low order book and high demolition due to an aging fleet. But we also do see some clouds on the horizon, with some of the demand going into China, perhaps having been front-loaded a little bit and stealing demand from future quarters. On the tanker side, we still believe that market conditions will remain attractive. We are seeing a bit of weakness currently. We think part of that is seasonality. It's not unusual to see weak tanker rates at this time of year, but there's certainly also an effect of the switching of crude tankers into products....
where we have seen, some traders take, both VLCCs and Suezmaxes, and clean them up, and then use them for transportation of products, which of course, is cannibalizing demand in the core, product, segments. We think most of this effect is already included in rates and will dissipate as we go forward, through the year. Overall, we have a net open position of 3,700 open vessel days across both business units, and 7,000 dry cargo days, again, across both business units. But importantly, most of this risk is in the FST business unit, whereas you will see in, the appendix material, that, for instance, our Capesize exposure for 2025 is more or less, covered, already at reasonable rates. Now I'll hand you back to Jan on slide number eight.
Thank you, Martin. In terms of our strategy update, we use our strategic scorecard to measure our progress and performance. Here we are continuing to deliver on our long-term strategic objectives, confirming our focus on delivering long-term value to our shareholders. Looking at the Return on Invested Capital, we have over the last five years generated 24%, and in the last 12 months, 21%. Relatively stable, but at a much higher level than our stated target of minimum 12% over a five-year period.
We continue to grow the business, and, again, over the last five years, we've grown, on average, 7% per year, a little bit less in the last 12 months, but here, we can see that we are growing, relatively faster than our markets, and therefore, continuing to expand our business. Despite the short-term headwinds, that Martin has already mentioned in Freight Services and Trading, we actually, over a longer period, have a very strong margin of almost $1,200 per day. But, we have had, you know, headwinds over the last 12 months, where we have a minus $78 per day.
But again, just reminding you of the strong upside that we continue to see in this part of the business, where we historically have generated strong margins and substantially higher than our target of $500 per day. On emissions, we have had a strong progress with 15% reduction to a 2022 baseline, so actually not that long time ago. And reminding you here, that this is across our entire operation of 500 vessels. So I think a 15% reduction just in less than two years is a significant achievement. We continue to focus on biofuel and optimization of our fleet and the day-to-day operations. And I think with fairly simple measures, we have actually come a long way to further reduce our emissions.
This is, needless to say, this is an ongoing focus area for Norden. And the final strategic target on the shareholder returns, we have had shareholder returns that have been slightly down over the last 12 months. But again, over the longer term, and certainly over a market cycle, we have generated very strong shareholder returns, with 39% per year on average. Which I think highlights the long-term value creation and the benefit of our diversified business model. Let me move on to the guidance and final remarks.
So if you turn to page number 10, we on the basis of our first half year performance, that was in line with our expectations, we are narrowing the full year guidance of a net profit in the range of $160 million-$240 million, and that was previously $150 million-$250 million. The full year guidance for the year includes gains on vessel sales, that have already been signed and agreed, of $61 million. Our expectations in the business units are that for Freight Services and Trading, we expect that earnings and margins will continue to gradually improve from the level seen here in the second quarter, throughout the rest of the year.
In Assets and Logistics, our expectations are that earnings will continue to be relatively stable, but at a high level throughout the year, and that is driven by the high coverage that we have in the business. Turning to page 11 and our final remarks, it was a quarter that was in line with our expectations. Norden is strongly positioned towards this structurally positive asset market, where we now have an estimated net asset value of DKK 451 per share, and that is for the Assets and Logistics business unit alone. We continue to return cash to our shareholders, while we, at the same time, are investing into our business. We've done that through the acquisition of Capesize vessels and also the acquisition of the Norlat Shipping business.
And finally, as just mentioned, we are narrowing the full year guidance for 2024 to $160 million-$240 million. So with that, we would like to turn to the Q&A session. So I will hand you back to the operator.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Ulrik Bak with SEB. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, Jan and Martin. Just a couple of questions from my side. This performance in your freight service and trading segment, can you perhaps expand about the, the phasing in the second half of the year, what when you expect to be breakeven? And, perhaps also more medium term, what your target is for, yeah, earnings per day. You mentioned something about, the market environment being similar to 2019 levels. Should we look at the earnings per day at that level for the second half?
Thank you, Ulrik, for those questions related to the FST performance and our expectations here into the second half of 2024. Well, so we expect this gradual improvement in the second half of 2024, and that is a gradual improvement towards a breakeven level. Exactly when we will hit that, of course, you know, it depends also on the positioning of voyages, front haul and back haul. But I would say that in the fourth quarter, our expectations are that we will be at least back to breakeven for that period. But there are some fluctuations just in relation to the actual positioning of the ships at that time.
Then, Ulrik, you asked sort of longer term, which I sort of take as a medium-term target, which I sort of take as a target into 2025. Our expectation clearly here is to be back in profit. We definitely believe that this business can make money, and that is also what we have seen historically. I think we've been quite clear to say that the high margins that we saw, especially in 2022, you know, there are more headwinds. And I think as Martin said earlier on the call, that this is more of an owner's market at the moment.
That means higher premiums are paid on period tonnage, and that makes it obviously harder to generate returns on the ships that you take in on these sort of shorter-term charters of between one months to 12 months. But the expectation is definitely to be back in profit for 2025. And here, I think our guided sort of target of $500 a day is, you know, it's not an unrealistic target for us, for us to have for the long term. It is difficult, though, I would say, to put too much weight on individual quarters. And I think that's important to remember also when we look into the future, that there are fluctuations between quarters.
And that is just the nature of the business, both with seasonality and front haul and back haul cargoes. And there will, you know, be times where the markets are behaving in a different way than we expected. So there will be volatility, but we expect sort of less volatility or at least less negative volatility compared to what we've seen in the first half of this year. So definitely back in profit for 2025 is the expectation.
Understood. And then perhaps a follow-up question on that. So what needs to happen? What kind of dynamic changes should we look for, for this segment to start, you know, trending back to these $500 per day? Because clearly, right now, you also allude to that the time charter rates are, you know, higher than the spot rate. So what are you hoping for to the market to develop like, so this could be improved?
Well, I think there are, you know, different elements at play, but I would say the first one would be that while we are seeing a market where there are high premiums for period tonnage, then it's probably scaling back on doing period tonnage and perhaps doing trip charters, keeping the business, you know, more less exposed to markets, shorter-term charters. So more focus on that part of the execution. Perhaps not taking too much business that requires ships on longer periods. And that is also why when you dive into the position that we have more of a market exposure on the smaller vessels compared to the larger vessels, because it's a little less exposed to these market developments.
It's more the craftsmanship in the business that we are very good at. So we want to, you know, have more focus on that, rather than having big sort of plays on whether the market goes up and down. So it's a little bit more back to basics.
Okay, understood. Then a question on your guidance. You booked an income from these subleases that you entered or agreed during Q2. Have you also assumed some income from the more subleases in the second half of the year?
Now, Ulrik. So when we do our estimate preparation for the guidance, we do not sort of try to guess if there could be additional sub lease gains in there. So it's only similar to the asset sales gains. It's only when we have a contract, and we know the values of it, that we include it in the estimate.
Okay, understood. Then perhaps a final question from me. In your table with the capacity and coverage information, I can see that, you know, the quarterly chartered dry cargo and tanker vessel days, they are declining from 2024 to 2025, and again, from 2025 to 2026. Are these vessel days that we can see from these tables, are they realistic, or will you charter in more capacity as time goes by?
So the days that are included in this table are the days that we currently contractually have. So typically, you would have a situation where you get new deliveries, and you redeliver some ships, and sometimes that goes up, and sometimes that goes down. But we're not adding, you would say, new activity into the vessel days that we count in this table.
Okay, so in 12 months' time, we shouldn't expect the 2025 number or the 2026 number to have risen compared to what we see in the table today?
Yes, I do think that we should expect, for instance, the 2026 number to go up if we find some attractive chartering opportunities. But it's not something that we include as of now, if you know what I mean.
Okay.
It's only when we do new contracts that they start to appear in this table.
Of course. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We have no further questions. I'll now hand back to the management team for closing remarks.
All right. Well, thank you for your time and your interest in Norden. We look forward to speak to you again in the future. Thank you, and have a good day.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.