Good morning and welcome, everyone, to this webcast with a presentation of the Q2 2025 report from Norden that was published this morning. In the first part of the presentation, you'll be in a listen-only mode, which will be followed by a Q&A session. During this session, you'll be able to ask questions by pushing the pound key or hashtag followed by five on your phone's touchpad. If you're watching this webcast online, you can ask your questions in the chat below. With that, I'll hand over to CEO Jan Rindbo and CFO Martin Badsted from Norden . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and also a warm welcome here from my side, and thanks for joining us on this presentation of our Q2 results. Let me just start by sharing some of our group highlights. We have, in the second quarter, delivered a group net profit of $52 million and a return on invested capital of 10%. This is driven by sales gains combined with profitable contract cover in what has been weaker markets. These weaker markets have been challenging for ship operators, but we've, at the same time, seen pretty resilient asset prices that have been favorable for ship owners. That is also reflected in the diverging results for our two business units.
We have raised the lower end of our full-year guidance, and we are now guiding for a full-year profit of between $70 million- $130 million. The net asset value has been pretty stable when you correct for exchange rate, and we are now reporting a net asset value of DKK 337 here at the end of the second quarter. In the second quarter, we have been extremely active, also continuing all the asset transactions that we've done. Year- to- date, we've now had 38 transactions. We have sold 20 vessels, realizing a lot of value in the portfolio, but at the same time, also taking in new lease agreements with purchase options. We continue to pay out our profits and distribute our profits to our shareholders.
We have $20 million here in the second quarter, which will be through a dividend of DKK 2 per share and a share buyback of $10 million.
Diving a little bit more into our business units, starting here with our Freight Services & Trading. We made an EBITDA of - $8 million in Q2, which was on par with the period from last year. It was a little bit a mixed bag, actually, with improvements year- over- year in the Dry Operator activities and also in logistics for somewhat weaker numbers in the tanker operator. In the tanker operator, we made - $2 million, mainly as a result of the much lower spot market compared to last year, but also because we still have some high charter costs from vessels taken in when the markets were higher. Logistics made $6.6 million, also a big improvement over last year.
Some of it was related to reversal of provisions from prior periods, so not all of it can be expected to be recurring, but still a good performance there. We actually also landed a small new logistics project in Australia with an existing freight client, helping them with barge services in their internal supply chain. In the Dry Operator segment, let me start out by saying that we've made small adjustments to the way that we report our Dry Operator activities. We have decided to merge our Handysize activities with the projects and parceling activities under the new header Dry Operator Small Vessels. The old Dry Operator is now called Dry Operator Large Vessels, and that includes the remaining Supramax, Panamax, and Capesize activities.
You can see in Dry Operator, we made a loss in the small vessel segment, we made a loss of $5 million, mainly as a result of fairly high period rates in the Handysize activities. In Dry Operator Large Vessels, we lost $7 million as the new activity that we are generating is both low in volume, but especially also low in terms of contribution margin, which actually failed to cover all costs. It does show that, as Jan was alluding to, it is a tough market for operators, with the tonnage costs, as expressed by TC rates, being fairly high compared to the spot rates that you earn from actually transporting cargo, making it tough to generate acceptable margins. When you add these two together, generating - $12 million in the two Dry Operator segments, that is a big improvement over last year, but of course, it's not satisfactory.
We have taken a number of steps to ensure improved performance from 2026 and onwards. For instance, we have appointed Anne Jensen as new COO to drive performance and profitability in the FST business unit. We have implemented a new profit center structure with clear P&L accountability and commercial focus. As I mentioned before, we have merged Handysize and NPP activities to drive commercial synergies within that space. Turning to Asset Management, it was a good quarter for Asset Management. We were very active, as Jan said, in managing the portfolio. We have made 20 vessel sales year- to- date, of which 13 were from declared purchase options. Importantly, we also actually made 18 new lease agreements year- to- date for high-quality vessels, including 10 NPP vessels.
That just goes to show that we are actually also still building the portfolio to position for future upside. EBITDA increased to $68 million in Q2, both as a result of higher sales gains, but also due to good contract cover, especially on the dry owner side, and slightly better tanker spot rates, which actually also benefits the tanker owner. By the end of Q2, Norden had still 67,000 extension option days and 85 purchase options, meaning that we are actually at the same level of purchase options that we were at the beginning of the year. 33 of these are still in the money and can be declared within the next two years. Turning to markets, which were in general quite challenging, you will see from the graph on the top here that the Supramax spot rates were down significantly over last year, down 33%, in fact.
Surprisingly, asset prices actually remained quite firm. Driving the spot rate weakness was quite weak demand growth, with total tons transported up only 0.5%. With some distance effect, the ton mile effect was a little bit better, but still. This was driven by the rest of the world, while China was actually negative in the period. Especially weak was the coal trade during the first half, but that turned around at the beginning of Q3. Oppositely, the bauxite trade was super strong at the first half, but was actually stalling towards the end of the first half. Near term, we see actually a market that is quite tight based on stronger coal and bauxite trade, and not least the upstart of Simandou iron ore exports at the end of the year.
In the longer term outlook, we still believe that it is quite attractive to be in dry bulk shipping, based not least on favorable supply dynamics. We see a fairly low order book, an aging fleet that needs to be scrapped, and fairly limited yard capacity. On the tanker side, tanker spot rates were down 38% versus last year, but actually coming from a very high level, it was actually still a decent level in Q2. There is continued support to the overall market balance from global fleet inefficiencies, mainly driven by a combination of sanctions, safety concerns, and an aging fleet. For the second half of the year, we do see stronger crude trade based on OPEC+ volume increases for exports, and that will add support also to product rates in the near term.
However, looking beyond 2025, we do see some rate weakness expected from gradual increases in new building deliveries, mainly in LR2 and in MRs.
Let's have just a quick look at our business model. In Norden, we have four key drivers in our business. We have dry bulk and tankers as our two segments, and then we have asset-heavy, which is represented in Asset Management, and then the asset-light, which is more on the operating side in Freight Services & Trading. Having these four drivers in our business means that we can adjust exposure between all four, and that enables us over time to generate superior returns. When you look at Norden's performance compared to other industry peers, we see that over time, we are able to deliver a higher return on invested capital.
Looking at our current position, we are, for the rest of this year, more exposed towards the product tanker market, where we have a long position. We are neutral in dry bulk, but when we look longer term, we have more exposure towards the dry bulk market. An important value driver for us is the purchase options that we hold because they represent great upside in strong asset markets, whereas, with an option, we do not have to own the vessels if asset prices are declining. It gives us a lot of flexibility and ability to constantly optimize our markets between these four different drivers. Turning to guidance, we are raising the lower end of our full-year net profit guidance from $50 million- $70 million, so that the new range is $70 million- $130 million. This includes sales gains from already agreed transactions of $70 million.
In Freight Services & Trading, we do expect margins to be negative here in the second half of 2025, squeezed by the challenging market conditions that also Martin explained earlier. In Asset Management, on the other hand, we expect to continue to benefit from the high and profitable earnings coverage that we have both in dry cargo and tankers at profitable levels. That brings me to the key takeaways. We've had a good first half year with a group net profit of $85 million, a return on invested capital of 10%, and that is despite weaker markets, as we explained earlier. We've had a very, very busy year so far with 38 asset transactions. On one hand, we are realizing significant values from our portfolio, but we're also optimizing with new deals that are coming in.
We actually have more purchase options now than we had at the end of 2024. We are looking at additional actions to improve our performance in FST from 2026 and onwards. We see strong long-term fundamentals in our industry. We see an aging fleet towards 2030. We see yards that are full. If you order a vessel today, you have to wait three or more likely four years. That actually creates a very, very interesting outlook when you look in the long- term for the business. With our business model combined with this outlook, we are well positioned to continue to provide best-in-class return on invested capital and, of course, return to our shareholders over time. That concludes our presentation. We are now looking forward to the Q&A session. Back to the operator.
Thank you very much. Yes, we are now ready to commence the Q&A session. To repeat, you can get in line to ask questions by pushing the pound key or hashtag followed by five on your phone's touchpad. Should you wish to withdraw from the line, you can push the pound key or hashtag followed by six. If you're watching this webcast online, you can ask your questions in the chat below. These questions will not be published, but will be asked to management by the operator. We have some questions here from the online audience from the chat. There is one here. How do you see the market for used vessels?
I can take that. We have seen in the second quarter, when you compare year- on- year, take the Supramax vessel class as an example, that asset prices are down 5% year- on- year. It's a little bit weaker, but actually quite resilient when you compare to the spot market, which is over 30% lower. There is this underlying strength in the asset markets despite weaker spot rates. I think this ties in with this longer-term outlook where we see full shipyards, high newbuilding prices, and this aging fleet. That is very supportive of asset prices.
You continue divesting vessels. Is that an indication that you remain cautious on the market going forward?
If I can comment a little bit on that. No, actually, I wouldn't say it that way. I think it's a reflection of the way that prices are aligned at the moment with our share price being significantly below our net asset value, which makes it, we think, attractive to actually realize the high asset values that we see now, buy back our share, and also keep some gunpowder ready, if you will, for reinvesting later on into what we call a long-term attractive market outlook.
Another question here. Full-year guidance is still quite a wide range. What assumptions are included for both the top end and low end of this guidance range?
Yeah, so first and foremost, I would say we have, of course, based our guidance on the prevailing spot market and future market rates. A big assumption here is, of course, to what extent we can generate new activity in the Dry Operator segment in the remaining part of the year. As I said, and Jan also said, it is a challenging market environment where the difference between what you can earn from transporting cargoes and what it costs to actually get the control of the ship does not leave much to cover additional costs. That is a big assumption that we can continue to generate some positive contribution margin there. I would say another uncertainty here is, of course, the variability of the tanker spot rate, where the market has seen some tightness here in the beginning of Q3, perhaps falling back a little bit now.
We base our forecast on forward curves, which is sort of in the middle of the road, and that can, of course, change both up and down.
How much do you think you can expand the logistics units without impacting its margins?
I think here we are still in a build-up phase. We're still investing in. We have just hired an industry expert, William Wallace, to lead this business. He has a lot of experience in this part of the business. We have two projects that we're now running. One of the highlights, I think, of the first year was that we did secure a new project in Australia, and we see a pretty promising pipeline because this really connects our freight business with the logistics. It's part of our strategic ambition of becoming more relevant to our customers. There is a bit of an upfront investment. We have to build the organization as we have now and then start building more projects. We have two projects now and hope to obviously add more projects in the future.
We do see this as a potential to be a very profitable addition to the business. These projects are not projects you just secure every day. It takes time to land these projects. There are not that many of them. Our hope is that over a period of time, we are building a solid portfolio of logistics projects that are not just standalone projects, but that also connect and support our freight business.
Thank you. Another question here from the online audience. Why keep zero dry bulk exposure for the second half of 2025, given your rather positive commentary?
I think first of all, if you look at our numbers over time, we've been quite cautious also in the first half of the year, which has actually done us well. The contract cover we have also in Asset Management has also protected us from the downside on the dry cargo rates we've seen in the first half. We have been running a business where we've had more cargo than tonnage. That we have now neutralized. In a way, that is a signal that things may be picking up here in the second half of the year. We have a long position when you look out further on the curve. The increases that we are seeing currently in the dry bulk market are actually overall benefiting our portfolio.
It may not benefit our P&L as much right now in 2025, but in 2026 onwards, both on the asset prices, so the net asset value of Norden, but also, of course, on our P&L, this is positive when we look out further on the curve.
How do you expect a possible Ukraine peace agreement to influence your markets?
That's a very good question and a very important one, actually. First of all, let me say it's at a fairly low likelihood that we have sort of a peace agreement right around the corner between Ukraine and Russia. If it were to happen, I think the next big question would be what happens to sanctions because it is really the sanctions that are impacting our markets very substantially. We think it's even more unlikely that they would be removed in the near- term. If it all came to a peace agreement and removal of sanctions, that would net- net be fairly negative for the markets since that would immediately enable a boost to the global fleet efficiency. That is not what we expect in our base case.
Thank you. Another question here. EBITDA in the tanker operator segment was negative in Q2. Could you share your outlook for the second half of the year and when you anticipate a potential turning point in the performance?
If you think about the business model of tanker operator, if you make it very simple, it is to a large extent to charter tonnage in at a prevailing TC rate and then employ them mainly in the spot market. What we can see from our cost base, if you just look at the one-year TC rate, that is coming down. On the other hand, spot rates are actually firmer than we had expected. You did see significant tightening, especially in the Atlantic in the start of Q3. We do think that there's good possibilities to actually improve performance in the tanker operator going forward.
Thank you. Another question here goes, can you comment on the expected negative margins in the trading unit? Is this driven by tankers or bulkers, and what can be said about 2026?
Yeah, so this is primarily driven by the Dry Operator segment in the business. It's a bit of a continuation of what we've seen also in the second quarter. Clearly, with a fairly weak market during the quarter, some of that negativity is carried over into the second half of the year in that unit. When we look into 2026, we certainly have no sort of legacy contracts that will impact us negatively into next year. As we said earlier, we are working hard to improve the margins in this part of the business. It is performing below our own expectations. As Martin mentioned during the presentation, we have already made some fairly important changes in our organization and in our structure. We expect that to have an impact from 2026 onwards.
Thank you. The next question here, there's more questions in this one, so I'll try to divide them. How do you see the latest development with the U.S.-China tariffs and tariffs more generally impacting the market? Over what time horizon do you see demand from China picking up?
That is a very, very big question. I would say overall, the whole tariff threat from the U.S. is not a big driver, I would say, of the markets that we are in. I think the main sort of source of impact here will be the general weakness that may come to the global economy if trade slows down and if people sort of stop interacting with each other as a result of this. It's more general macro uncertainty that I think is cast over the whole thing from all this tariff talk back and forth. As with China, there are a few caveats to that statement because one thing that we can hear that is being discussed is a purchase obligation of U.S. soybeans into China.
If that were to materialize, that could actually have a fairly significant positive effect, at least in the short- term, because China is already a big exporter or importer of soybeans, but much of it coming from down in South America. That could be a very specific point that could impact our markets. Other than that, I think it's mainly the overall macro picture.
Thank you. Another question from this viewer was if you could give any updates on the Red Sea and the impact of a potential reopening.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say here that our assessment right now is that a sort of reopening or an increase in transit through the Red Sea is not really on the cards. We are seeing no indications of that happening. Unfortunately, this is turning into become sort of one of the longer-term conflict zones. I think by now, world trade and shipping has adjusted to this new reality. You could speculate that even a resolution of some kind and maybe a slow increase in transits over time may also open up for other trading, other trades again. In that sense, it probably has less significance now than it had at the beginning. In the beginning, it had more of a panic impact on the markets, and that's when markets spike up. I think by now, we've all gotten used to it and found ways around it.
Thank you. It seems like we lost the picture. You're back here again. Sorry for that. We still have the sound on. There's one last question here, a little bit more broad characteristics. How green is Norden?
That's a bit open-ended question. We'll try and answer that sort of, I think the way we think about this, at least, is that when we talk about green and the whole transformation that we are part of, I think it's important that we look at this relative to our industry. I think relative to our industry, Norden is quite a front runner. We've been one of the, well, we were the first company that were operating ships 100% on biofuel. For our segments, dry bulk and tankers, where ships are running more like a taxi service, which means that we're servicing many, many ports around the world, that means that the refueling is actually quite challenging. To replace current fuel oil with an alternative fuel is actually something that is a major, major task for the industry. That will definitely take some time.
We think biofuel is a viable option here because it is a fuel that can be used on existing vessels. That is why we now for years have been focusing on this. We even have investments in a biofuel producer. What we're seeing sort of in the short- run here is that we are actually increasing the biofuel use in our fleet quite dramatically. It's coming from a very, very low base. We are more than doubling our biofuel use in our fleet currently. We think that this will be an important part of the solution going forward. Of course, biofuel is a more expensive fuel than fuel oil. With the proposed IMO regulations that are supposed to take place from 2028, actually not that far from now, we see that gap closing.
We also see, because the fuel component is becoming more important because it's more expensive, fuel-efficient vessels are becoming even more important now in the future. This is where, when we invest in new vessels, that this is a big driver. That's why there are different sides to this. There's one focus, obviously, for us to reduce our emissions overall for the fleet. There's also a business opportunity in this. We see where our customers, we think, increasingly will ask for greener solutions. We have a number of projects with customers right now where we're looking at different technologies on some of our vessels today to reduce emissions together with our customers. Perhaps it's a bit difficult to sort of grade how green is Norden, but I think that we certainly feel that we are part of the front runners in our industry.
We think that this will be a major transformation. We think also it will bring, for the companies that are prepared for this, like Norden, it will bring business opportunities as well. We're quite happy with everything that we're doing. It also, like many other things, requires some upfront investment, and that we are doing.
Thank you. There seems to be no further questions. By that, we'll conclude today's presentation. Thank you very much.