Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the CMB.TECH & Golden Ocean presentation about the proposed merger. Welcome as well to people who are dialing in, and welcome to all the people that are physically here. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us today. My name is Alexandre Saverys, I'm the CEO of CMB.TECH, and I'm joined today by my brother Ludovic Saverys, the CFO of our group, and by Peder Simonsen, the CEO of Golden Ocean. We will start with a presentation about the proposed merger of our two companies, and then after the presentation, we'll have time to answer your questions.
Four topics we want to discuss today with you, give you some more background and details about the proposed transaction, talk about the proforma CMB.TECH & Golden Ocean company, zoom in on the value creation, and then we'll finish with an overview of the various marine divisions and the state of the markets. Let me start by giving you the highlights on the proposed merger between CMB.TECH and Golden Ocean. It's a merger which is stock-for-stock, with CMB.TECH being the surviving entity. CMB.TECH & Golden Ocean shareholders will own approximately 67% and 33% of the company post-merger, so of CMB.TECH post-merger.
The exchange ratio, as we have already communicated, will be 0.95 CMB.TECH shares for one Golden Ocean share, and that's based on a value of $15.23 per share for CMB.TECH and a value of $14.49 per share for Golden Ocean, which is the price we paid to John Fredriksen for his stake in Golden Ocean. That could be adjusted if we pay dividends or do some other kinds of transactions. The company surviving entity will operate as CMB.TECH NV. We're headquartered in Antwerp, but we have offices all over the world: in Europe, in America, in Africa, and also in Asia. Of course, we will also keep an office here in Oslo. Our listings: CMB.TECH is listed on NYSE in New York and on Euronext in Brussels.
The two listings of Golden Ocean would disappear after the merger, but we will apply for a secondary listing on Oslo Børs here in Oslo. Path to close: there's a couple of customary things and steps on the administration side that we need to do. The main one is a general assembly of shareholders of Golden Ocean to vote on the merger, and we hope to be able to close in Q3 of this year, so July of this year, all going well. I want to zoom in high level on CMB.TECH today before the proposed merger. We're a shipping group, a maritime company very similar to Golden Ocean. We put assets on our balance sheets and lease them out, operate them on the spot market or on the time charter market. We have five main divisions, marine divisions. The first one is our dry bulk division, Bocimar.
The second one is Bochem on chemical tankers. We have a container ship division called Delphis. We have Euronav, which is our large crude oil tanker division, and then we have our offshore wind division called Windcat. We have actually a sixth smaller division, which is called Work Boats, where we have a couple of tug boats and a couple of ferries. You can see the fleet list on the slide. We have about 160 ships split over the different segments, as you can see on that slide. Important to highlight, and I will say a few words about that later on, already about one third of our fleet is either ready to be fueled by hydrogen and ammonia or fully fitted with hydrogen and ammonia engines. A couple of numbers on our numbers of 2024: you can see that our net profit was $870 million.
We have a liquidity today of $350 million, a contract backlog of close to $3 billion. Our outstanding CapEx, we have a big new building program, is $2.2 billion, and the fair market value of the fleet of CMB.TECH today is $7.5 billion. We also want to zoom in on Golden Ocean, and I would like to give the word to Peder to do that.
Thank you, Alex. First of all, thank you for a very constructive process during these past few months. I think it's a good result for our shareholders and subject to the conditions that you just mentioned. Golden Ocean, we are the largest listed owner of capesizes and Newcastlemaxes. We have a fleet of 91 ships, of which 59 are capes and Newcs and 32 are Panamaxes and Kamsarmaxes. We have an average age of around eight years, which makes us one of the youngest fleets of the listed owners. We have approximately two thirds of our capes fitted with scrubbers, giving extra premium on top of the modern fleet that we have, which gives a premium to the underlying market rates.
We have a very strong balance sheet with around 37% leverage on our loan facilities, and this gives us a very low cash break even, enabling us both to pay out dividends throughout the cycles and also enabling us to keep our fleet in the spot market. I think that's basically Golden Ocean at a glance. I'll give the word back to you.
Thanks, Peder. I'd like to talk a little bit about how the combined company would look like if the merger is approved. You see here on the screen a snapshot. The title we put there is a leading diversified maritime group. We would indeed be diversified over all the segments that I just described to you, with the one big change: instead of having 30 dry bulk vessels in CMB.TECH, we would have more than 120 because we would add the Golden Ocean fleet in our dry bulk division. The numbers are more than 250 ships combined. The contract backlog, of course, stays the same, but the average age of the fleet would go down to six years. It would be a fair market value of $11 billion. Post-merger, NAV projected, our own projection is $14.9 per share. You can see all the vessels.
The number on the left is what is underwater. The number on the right is the vessels that are still on order. It's four points what we stand for. We want to reward our shareholders by creating sustainable cash flows, long-term cash flows. The strategy of our group, of CMB.TECH today, will also be the strategy of the group tomorrow, which is focusing on diversification and decarbonization. We want to be a diversified group, and we want to focus on low carbon solutions. Now, low carbon solutions for us, it's three things. One is operating a modern eco fleet, like the fleet of Golden Ocean. Two is having ships that have the capability to be retrofitted to hydrogen and ammonia. And three, and this is where we invest most money in, is to have truly hydrogen and ammonia fitted ships.
We want to inspire and attract the best talents, and we have some great talents here in Oslo and in Singapore with the Golden Ocean team. Last but not least, everything we do starts and ends with our customers. We want to engage with our customers and offer the products they need. The diversification angle of our strategy can be shown by these graphs. Pure play companies usually invest in what they do, sometimes regardless of the cycles. We do not think that is always the most intelligent strategy for a company. What we want to try to do is to be active across segments, allowing us to invest in the segment where we see most potential at any given time. Now, the graph you see here is basically order book to fleet combined with age profile. Things we know as shipping people, it is the supply side of things.
Needless to say, I see a lot of analysts in the room, so they should know the tanker markets and the dry bulk markets is definitely markets where we believe that the order book to fleet and the age ratio look very attractive. We can continue to invest in that, and the Golden Ocean transaction fits perfectly well into that strategy. It brings us a strategy as well of a mix of time charter and spot exposure. Golden Ocean today is mainly focused on the spot market, but as and when the cycle will allow, do not be surprised that we would take some cover and lock in some longer term cash flows, as we have already in CMB.TECH, our $3 billion contract backlog.
You can see that a combined company would shift from being 75-80% to the crude oil markets, more to a 50-55% dry bulk, with then all the rest being added on top. That creates a big other leg to stand on. The fleet I have mentioned a couple of times already, just again to highlight that the 91 vessels of Golden Ocean would be added in our dry bulk division. You can see as well more in detail how the various vessels are powered. Someone in the previous call asked me, are the Golden Ocean vessels retrofittable to ammonia? Let me be very clear, the answer is no. Any ship can be retrofitted, of course, but it would be too expensive.
The angle that we have with Golden Ocean is a modern, efficient eco fleet that allows us to engage with our customers with fleet underwater to build on new buildings on ammonia later on. Hydrogen and ammonia. I will not talk about methanol and LNG and hydrogen and ammonia and all the different molecules that are out there, but clearly, for those who have followed our story a little bit, we believe in hydrogen for small ships and ammonia for large ships. We believe these are the two only molecules that are truly zero carbon and on top of that, will be able to be produced at a cost which is below diesel. Today, it is still more expensive, but costs are coming down. All the ingredients to produce these molecules are there to, within five to 10 years, bring us below diesel parity.
It is a key element for us. It is a key differentiating factor. On this slide, you can see how hydrogen and ammonia are produced, but we are also making the link towards our vessels. At the end, we offer the molecules to our customers so we can offer them a one-stop shop. The strategy on decarbonization is supported by European legislation, Fuel EU Maritime, the EU ETS, but also recently, as you might have read, MEPC 83 decided to implement a tax on the greenhouse gas content of our fuels as from 2028. It still needs to be ratified in the month of October, but if it does, it will be a game changer for the shipping industry because all the fossil fuel alternatives that we have today will one day become redundant unless you pay very hefty penalties.
We feel that our strategy is very much supported by regulations. I would like to hand it over to Ludovic to talk about the value creation.
Thanks, Alex. Hi everyone. My name is Ludovic Saverys. I'm the group CFO, and I'm going to zoom in a little bit in deeper detail on the transaction and the value creation we'd like to do. On this slide is probably the most important slide if you look at what we're trying to do, is the exchange ratio. Alex mentioned we're going to do a stock-for-stock merger with CMB.TECH as a surviving entity. When doing this, there's a couple of things that are crucially commercial, is the exchange ratio. On the top, we show the history, the deal with the Hemen Holdings on purchasing 40% in Golden Ocean at $14.49. That was a negotiated price between the both parties, after which we have increased our stake from 40% to roughly 49% post-announcement. On the bottom, we have broken down basically the calculation of the NAV of CMB.TECH of $15.23.
This has been done in a relatively objective process together with DNB Markets giving a fairness opinion on the Golden Ocean side, where we have broken down the various fleet components of CMB.TECH, where on the slide you can see we've used two broker valuations from reputable brokers, taking the arithmetic average and coming up a buildup to about $9 billion in enterprise value on the whole assets. Deducted from that, the net debt from CMB.TECH, including the remaining CapEx, as Alex mentioned, of roughly $2.2 billion of yard installments to be paid. Coming to a net debt and cash-like items of $6.2 billion out of the working capital to end up with an NAV of CMB.TECH on a standalone of roughly $3 billion. Having that exchange ratio then allowed us to continue on the transaction and quite quickly announce.
We have signed a non-binding term sheet, which now will take its course in the coming weeks and months of finalizing binding transaction to eventually get to a vote at an EGM, hopefully over the summer. This slide, we put a quite theoretical example on what a combined company would look like. Alex has mentioned we calculate the combined NAV of both companies at $14.90. This would, in this entity, this slide, we just showed the simple addition of both market caps. That is obviously not a quite theoretical example, but this would differentiate us on the listed markets quite significantly from the other, not just on a pure play versus diversified, but also on a large intrinsic market cap of roughly $4.4 billion and just a market cap based on share trading of $3 billion. Larger does not mean best. It does mean that we can attract more investors.
It does mean that we can attract more interesting instruments in the capital markets, debt capital markets, equity capital markets, to be able to sustain the strategy that we have in the company. The free float, which I didn't mention, is obviously one of the crucial things. The one important factor we missed at CMB.TECH standalone was the free float. It wasn't by design. It was more about circumstances. We had 8% free float. The combined company now, with the issuance of 95 million shares in CMB.TECH, will have 38% free float, which we believe will attract a new slew of investors that can really enjoy our story. Here we give a snapshot about our listed history as a group. CMB.TECH was listed for more than 104 years until 2015, where we've run through various cycles where we've paid a lot of dividends.
The dividend question comes up with a lot of investors and analysts. We've paid approximately 62% of our net profits over the cycles. CMB.TECH, year and a half, combined company, we've paid a lot of dividends, well, more than $2 billion since 2004, roughly 45% of net profits. To then conclude and go back to the main points of the attractiveness of this platform, it's large, it's listed, it's diversified. There are very large private fleets out there, but unfortunately, nobody can access them. There's a lot of larger pure play companies. I think here we can combine both, where we can use the strength of the platform and the instruments we have to run cycle to cycle, but also opportunities. Right now, any opportunity for us is secondhand, is new build, but is now also other dislocated values we can see in listed companies.
We have more than 250 modern vessels, 200 ocean-going ships, with a very strong focus on the pragmatic decarbonization, as Alex mentioned. We're resilient, and we can run various cycles. The anchor shareholder, we're happy to be diluted back down to 62%. I do believe that in some cyclical times, in volatile times, having an anchor shareholder who is fully aligned with the other shareholders is a strength of the company. Proforma figures are in the annex of the capital markets deck. Base is 2024 figures. We're over a billion EBITDA. We would have a combined leverage of roughly on a mark to market 65%, but obviously hoping that the strong markets in dry bulk and tankers will continue to give us the firepower to grow. I'll hand it over to Alex and happy to take questions after.
We'd like to finish the presentation by zooming in on the various markets and where we are, according to us, and why we believe we are very well positioned as a company. You see here on this slide a snapshot of the five main markets we are active in. At the bottom, I don't know if you can read it properly, but you see whether we are positive, cautious, or negative. You can see that on tankers, we are positive, on dry bulk, we are positive, on offshore wind, we are positive, on containers, we are negative, and on chemical tankers, we are a little bit cautious. I'm very curious to hear later on when we have a cup of coffee what your view is on the different markets.
I'm stating things that we know is the demand side in the various segments, the supply side on their various segments, and then what the balance is. Now, we are as a company exposed spot-wise in the markets we really believe in. We are as a company covered with time charters in the market where we believe things might turn a little bit more negative in the following months and in the following years. That's basically the conclusion of this slide. I do want to zoom in a little bit on the tankers. We are, of course, here to talk about dry bulk because it's Golden Ocean, but we have a large tanker fleet. What you see here are some of the numbers of 2024 and the last quarter of 2024, how the different segments performed.
In essence, we have a VLCC fleet, we have Suezmaxes, and we have two FSOs. We have quite a few vessels that we have on long-term charters, and the rest is operating on the spot market. Now, dynamics in the tanker market, it's about age and order book. Here you can see that if you combine age and order book, and this slide is specifically on Suezmaxes, we think that the market will be structurally undersupplied going forward. As always, the timing of scrapping and the timing of all the vessels disappearing from the market, we do not know. What we do know is what is coming in 2025, 2026, and 2027. We are very positive on the supply side in tankers. When we look at the demand side, it's a mixed picture.
The trade war and the economic outlook, of course, is not positive, but as we know, even a falling oil price can be an impetus, a positive one for the tanker markets. Whether you look at storage, whether you look at the contango and storage buildup, this could be actually a positive for the tanker market. On the demand side, I'm not wiser than you, but we do see a couple of green shoots together with a couple of worries that we see in general caused by the general economic environment. On sanctions, we can talk a lot about that, but clearly the Russia side and the Iran side, and it changes every day, whether it goes in one direction or the other. Definitely on Iran, we can't really see something negative. On Russia, the jury's out.
Will peace happen and will we all continue to then move Russian oil remains to be seen, but the sanctions definitely are a factor to reckon in the tanker markets, and we believe today that there is actually upside to our markets if they would be strengthened or even if a peace deal with Iran would happen. We want to talk about dry bulk mainly, and therefore I'm going to give it over to the specialist Peder to enlighten you with some insights on the dry bulk markets.
Thank you, Alex. The combined fleet on the dry side of then Bosimar and Golden Ocean will be a fleet of over 120 vessels, of which 87 ships will be Newcastlemaxes and Capes. Approximately half of them will be scrubber-fitted, and close to 30 of them will have ammonia dual fuel engines or be ammonia dual fuel ready. Putting that into the competitive landscape, it will move us very close to the largest owner globally of Capes and Newcastlemaxes. Looking at the left-hand pillar here, you can see that we will have the most modern fleet in the market. In addition, we will be the only one with ammonia and dual fuel optionality, and I think that is going to be the distinguishing factor going forward.
The scale and the modern fleet, as well as the ammonia optionality, as proven by CMB.TECH's now recently announced contracts, will provide a differentiated proposal to our customers. With the size that we have now, we will continue to be the only large listed owner with significant exposure to the Cape and Newcastlemax segment with significant liquidity in this share. On the market as such, there is a little bit of a spread among the analysts that we have here today, but mostly everybody agrees on the supply side. We have a very restricted yard capacity where the large dry bulk ships compete for capacity with LNG ships and container ships and tankers at the same yards. As of now, these shipyards are constrained, and the next delivery we will see of any meaningful volumes on our segment will be in 2028 and onwards.
We have an aging fleet, which is also we will come back to, and an order book to fleet of around 8%. On the demand side, we have healthy demand from Asia continuing, with China being the main driver on the iron ore side, and a shift from volume-driven demand to quality-driven demand, which again impacts the ton mile. Looking at the order book, we have, as I mentioned, 8% order book to fleet ratio, and this has been pretty stable for the last couple of years where the influx of new ships has matched the recycling. We had a fleet that is rapidly reaching historical high average, increasing now to around 11.5%. The shipyard capacity is historically visible. It gives them very good visibility on the deliveries in the coming years, which is as good as it gets in shipping.
Looking more at the fleet distribution, age distribution, you can see that there's a lot of ships that were built from 2009 to 2012, which are continuing to become older. When we reach 2030, about 40% of the total Capesize and Newcastlemax fleet will be above 20 years, which is pretty significant. Moreover, these ships, particularly the ones built in this period, were to a large extent built at substandard shipyards and are pre the eco designs. They are poor design and built not up to the standard of the modern fleet that we as a group have, which means that they will significantly underperform commercially. As they approach 15 and also 20 years, they will have challenges being competitive in the market. These ships will also enter into a heavy dry dock cycle that we are now coming into. We see this already.
Approximately 25% each year of the total dry bulk fleet in 2025 to 2027 will need to dry dock. A lot of these are 15-year special service. Not only is this going to be very costly, but it is going to take a lot of yard capacity and a lot of time. This is going to impact the freight market and the shipping capacity of the global fleet. We estimate between 0.5%-1% additional shipping capacity decrease in this period compared to the normal five-year docking cycle, evenly distributed. In addition, a lot of money needs to be invested. These investments are for the 15-year dockings. This is for a two and a half year cycle. A lot of money needs to be invested into this with very uncertain returns.
On the demand side, China continues to be a very important driver for dry bulk demand, particularly for the big ships, with iron ore being the main cargo. The Chinese demand has shifted from being very volume-driven and over to now being more focused on the quality of the ore itself. China has, over a number of years, produced their own iron ore, but that iron ore is deteriorating quality, coming now below 30% ferro content on their ore. This competes with ore from Brazil and West Africa and Australia, which is in the mid-60% on average. In addition, the iron ore delivered from China, not to China, from Australia, Brazil, and also upcoming new projects in West Africa has an average delivered cost of around $56 per ton.
This compares to current iron ore prices of $100 per ton, which makes it very profitable for the miners to continue to pump out their ore. The focus on quality in China comes from both very thin steel margins, which means that they need to have as efficient production as possible. In addition, the steel market in China has increasingly more pressure from environmentalists on reducing the carbon footprint of the steel market. This means that they need to have as efficient output as possible from the input that they put in. The more higher quality ore and the less coal they use in the steel production reduces the carbon footprint of the steel industry. On the new projects coming on stream, I think going forward, we see a deteriorating quality of Chinese ore.
We see massive new projects coming in West Africa, the Simandou project, which is the new key driver for demand. This is to a large extent driven by or invested by Chinese interests, both in the mining, but also in the infrastructure bringing this ore out. It is very likely that this ore will find its way on ships going to China. The exports out of Simandou mine of 120 million tons over the next three years will more than triple the sailing distance if you compare to the Australian volumes, and obviously add new volumes if it replaces domestic volumes in China. This will be a massive contributor to ton miles for the Capesize segment. In addition, new projects in Brazil and also Australia will add to more volumes flowing into the market. The bauxite trade has been very interesting for the Capesizes.
It used to be a Panamax and Supramax trade from Australia and Indonesia into China and Asia. Guinea, West Africa, the same area where the new Simandou project is coming out, has been the big driver for exports of bauxite. It's the best or highest or biggest volumes of high-quality bauxite, and it's used in Chinese EV industry and in renewable industry, which has been massively growing over the number of years. The bauxite has grown with around 20% annually over the last seven years, and this has contributed massively to the ton mile. Currently, the bauxite consists around 13% of the total ton mile for the Capes, which means that the projected growth in bauxite exports of around 5%-10% in the coming years will add 1%-1.5% on shipping demand for the Capes.
In addition, we have the coal markets, which we and the grain markets, which we continue to see growth, maybe not to the same extent as we expect for baux ite and iron ore, but continue to support the market. In sum, we think that we have a historically healthy vessel supply situation and visibility on vessel supply, with shipyard capacity being constrained, an aging fleet, and a lot of ships going into dry dock in the coming years, in addition to a supported demand situation where ton mile drivers are being added to the market going forward. All in all, it's a very healthy situation on the market outlook for the dry sector.
Thank you, Peder. Let me wrap up with our three smaller divisions and very briefly touch upon what we do there. On the container side, we have five ships, four ships on 10-year contracts, one ship on 15-year contracts. As I am in Norway, very proud of that little ship because it is a 1,400 TEU container vessel, which will be chartered by North Sea Container Line and Yara to move goods between Germany and Norway, the very first container ship powered by ammonia. Expect a party next year when she will do her first port of call here in the Oslo Fjord. Small division, I told you, we are not very positive on containers, so do not expect us to invest massively in containers in the next couple of months, but everything we have in terms of exposure is covered by long-term charters.
On the chemical side, big milestone, a couple of weeks ago, we signed a new contract for six ships with MOL, with long-term charters, with ammonia capability. It brings our fleet to 16 ships. Most of them, if not all, are chartered out long-term. I told you that we're a bit cautious on the chemical tanker market. Also there, we have very little spot exposure, actually two ships in the pool. A nice little division with steady cash flows. Last but not least, next week, I am going to christen three ships in one go, the one on the right, the one on the left, and the one which is being built in the middle, three CSOVs on offshore wind. These are vessels that bring people to the large offshore wind parks during maintenance or construction phase.
We have six of these in total, but next to these six CSOVs, we have also 61 CTVs, which are much smaller catamarans, bringing people, up to 20-30 people, to the offshore wind parks. It is a lot of vessels in number of ships. It is, in terms of value, one of our smaller divisions, but nevertheless a very promising one. Also there, we are getting traction with longer-term contracts. That wraps up our presentation. We would like to open the floor for questions, and we will start with the people in this room. Can I ask you that if you have a question, that you just state your name and your company and then ask your question? For people that are dialing in, we will give you the floor once the questions in this room are over.
If there are any questions, you can just raise your hand, and I come with the microphone.
Out of the fleet of 250 vessels, if we're thinking a bit big picture, I'm not looking for a specific number, but are you thinking that there's a floor and a ceiling to how many vessels you want to have in your fleet? If you do new projects, at what point should we expect that you sell all the vessels and recycle that capital? Or is there essentially no commitments to a number here?
No, we are not focused on the number. However, you do hint at selling all the vessels. We do believe that we still have a bit of work to do to rejuvenate the fleet. Not a lot. We still have some older tankers that we would like to sell. I think in the Golden Ocean fleet, there are definitely some sales candidates as well. It will be done as and when we think the price is right. Do not be surprised if you see us selling four, five, six, seven vessels and recycle that in more modern tonnage or newbuildings, again, subject to price. Number of ships, we are not tied down to that. Had you told me six months ago that we would add 90 ships in one go, I would have told you I do not believe you. You never know what comes across our path.
As long as our balance sheet can sustain it, as long as our gearing and the contract cover we have makes sense, then we will look at any opportunity that comes across.
Given the uncertainties we have globally, should we expect a lot of new projects from you in the coming months? Is it more about shoring up the new platform and completing the CapEx program you have underway now?
Yeah. Look, we have a bit of work to do. Integrating Golden Ocean into our group will take a bit of time. We still have our new buildings that are delivering. I will repeat what I just said. I'm not excluding us doing other big projects, even in a volatile market, but it needs to make sense financially.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Just a big picture question, right? You have CMB.TECH. Just curious on your equity story, right? On the one hand, you have a large market cap. If you're bullish on dry bulk and tankers, it's a great play probably, right? On the other hand, you have this alternative fuel story. Just curious, if you're bullish on that story with the 2028 carbon tax, how do you benefit as a company? If you want to invest in CMB.TECH for that reason, what do you say?
Yeah. Let me start by saying that we are bullish regardless of the regulations. The regulations will accelerate the fact that people have to move to decarbonize ships, even if the regulation would not come into play. As you know, in October, it could be voted down. There is always a chance. We are still bullish on the low carbon solutions because eventually, we believe it will be cheaper and our customers need it. That is our conviction. I know that there's a president in the United States that has a different view on things. We will see what happens. I think our equity story, one strengthens the other. We want to be invested in different segments, but we want to offer products that our customers want.
We believe eventually, just building pure diesel vessels will not be a business model anymore because your customer will want these low carbon solutions. We are pragmatic for it. At one point, when we had our battle between Euronav and Frontline, people said we were a little crazy startup on hydrogen. We are not. As you can see from our fleet, we still have a lot of ships that have diesel engines, good modern vessels. We'll keep on using them, keep on making money with them, and reinvesting that money in more modern tonnage, which is either ready or fitted with these alternative fuels. We will be pragmatic. However, it's only one month ago that I could really tell you, and I know you've been asking us the question, how do you make money with decarbonized ships? We're now actually signing contracts.
That proof of the pudding was necessary. We want to continue to build on that.
Thanks, Alex. I'll continue on that. The fact that we'll be able to showcase taking a transaction like Golden Ocean actually ties in also in our story of decarbonization, longer-term contracts, good EBITDA margin, getting some cover. Building up that contract backlog helps us to de-risk when we do opportunities like Golden Ocean, where we have a big spot exposure. When we think we're well positioned for a market like dry bulk or larger tankers to pick up, it allows us to take more risk at that moment. The one is helping strengthen the other because if we then are able to do that, again, you become bigger, you become stronger, more investable, hopefully better pricing in our share price, hopefully better access to capital markets, cheaper funding to then go to the next one.
The fact that we're agnostic about the asset type or sometimes the cycle, because you could even imagine that we're selling at a not-so-good market because we can recycle that capital in another asset class, that's even more promising. Having that decarbonization, but also diversification angle, I think gives us a lot of firepower to take on opportunities.
Anyone else? I think we can go to the digital ones.
Do we have any questions?
No further questions.
Great. Fantastic. We can go to the informal part of things. My team, Katrien and Joris, are available, Peder, Ludovic, and myself, to over a cup of coffee, continue to our discussions. I would like to thank all of you for having come here to listen to us. I'm sure this is the beginning of a long journey. Looking forward to engaging with you. Thank you very much.