Good morning, everybody. Morning, gentlemen. I'm very pleased to be with you today. To present you the half-year results. I would like to thank, in particular, Société Générale for organizing this event. We are going to present you the main facts of the first six months. But first, some words on the company. As you know, we are an engineering company. We are providing technologies for containing liquefied natural gas. We have a very long track record as we began this job 50 years ago, and we always continued to improve our technologies and to provide solutions to our customers. We design systems. We license our technologies. We support our customers, and we support the users of our systems, the shipowners.
Besides that, we provide some engineering services, some assistance at the time of overhaul of the ships, and we provide also innovative services for the maintenance or for the optimizations of the vessels. Some figures right now: our total revenues for the first six months amounted to EUR 127 million to be compared to EUR 114 last year. All these went from EUR 108 to EUR 120, and services went from EUR 6 million up to EUR 7 million. The net income went from EUR 63 to EUR 76 million. So the key highlights of these first six months are that our revenues have increased by 12%, and our EBITDA has reached a level of EUR 84 million. The first six months of the year marked significant movements in our order book. We delivered 25 vessels, 24 LNG carriers, and 1 FSRU, and we received 20 orders.
In the LNG as a fuel, as you know, it's something which is quite promising as it's supposed to be a market which is going to grow. We had last year nine orders for container vessels for CMA CGM. In the first part of this year, we received an order for a bunker ship of 20,000 cubic meters. In July, we signed for tanks for a cruise vessel for Ponant, and we will talk more about it. Another important highlight, an important fact on the first part of this year is the FEED, Front-End Engineering Design Studies, that we got for gravity-based systems. That's onshore tanks that you put on the seabed, which are in the sea. So it's a kind of oxymoron, if I may say so, an onshore tank in the sea. But it offers a lot of advantages.
You can build that in a secured yard, tow it where you want to ballast it, you ballast it, and you can operate it. So this concept that we've introduced last year is already attracting a lot of interest from the industry. We signed a license agreement with Sembcorp Marine, a company, a large yard in Singapore, and we are already working on projects with them. Having said that, let's have a look on the market and the activities. Well, the energy demand forecast, as Wood Mackenzie is saying, should go between 2015 and 2030 by an average growth of 5.2%. So it's something which is, in the long term, very positive. With a split between the different regions of the world, which should remain the same, it means that Asia should continue to dominate the energy market.
In the first part of 2018, compared to 2017, we saw the Asian energy imports growing at a very significant rate of 14%. We saw, for example, China increasing its import by 55%. A very strong increase of imports in Asia. We could say the same about India, about Korea, which saw its imports increasing by 17%. All that is fueled, if I may say so, by the wish to rebalance the energy mix, giving a larger place to energy, which is cleaner than fuels like coal, still very much used in some energy mixes. This year, we saw new importing countries. All that I use in these meetings to celebrate new countries joining the club of energy importing countries. This year, we have two new countries, the Philippines and Panama.
Well, the amounts are still small, but we expect that in these countries, for example, in the Philippines, it's going to be significant over the next years. Something which is important also, it's not only new countries for importing energy, which is good for the energy carrier business. Very often, these new countries are importing energy through FSRUs, which may be designed by us. So if we look back in the past, we see that compared to 2013, which is not so far away, the imports have increased by 30%. So we are really in a very active market. Let's look at the pricing dynamics on the market. We see on this figure, you see the blue points, that's the Henry Hub price, and the red line is the price of the energy according to oil prices.
You know that energy in most parts of the world is based on oil, and if oil prices increase, then energy prices increase. That renders the American energy, not based on oil, but based on the Henry Hub, which is a kind of supply and demand pricing, that renders the American energy particularly competitive. That's the case currently with American Henry Hub at about $3 MMBTU, while the energy in Asia is at about $10. If we look at the energy shipping, that's a table where we follow the need or the needs of ships for the projects which are currently in construction. We arrive at a figure of about 30 ships currently needed as of July 1st, needed by the market for transporting the energy for these projects already decided. So that's a table we are presenting you regularly.
Last in February, I was telling you that I was really feeling that the market was really needing these ships. That's what we saw at work during the first part of this year, and we still consider that the market is needing ships for transporting this energy. If we look at what's going to come beyond, we saw that there is a long-term goal planned by analysts such as Wood Mackenzie. We saw that in the short term, the market is needing plenty of ships. If we look at the projects now, we see that many projects are in the offing. You can see many American projects. You can see a project in Canada, LNG Canada, or Woodfibre in Canada as well. You see projects in Russia with Arctic LNG 2 , which is very close to Yamal. Another one in Sakhalin in the eastern part of Russia.
You see that Qatar is more or less ready to significantly increase its production capacities. You see that Mozambique is also ready to launch its projects. Many projects are more or less ready to accompany the need for additional energy. On this slide, you can see the production of energy in blue. That's the plants which are already operational. You can see that some fields are experiencing quite naturally depletion and need to be replaced. In red, you see what is under construction. You see that by 2022, which is not that far away, additional capacities are going to be needed. In fact, we saw already in the first part of this year a positive decision taken by Cheniere for a new train in Corpus Christi, the third one, adding 4.5 million tons of production. Well, something new, we deliver many ships.
These ships are with our modern technology and are very efficient in terms of boil-off, as the boil-off is very balanced, very optimized. That's the boil-off is consistent with the needs of the propulsion. So it renders all ships more and more different in terms of consumption. And especially for long voyages such as Gulf of Mexico to Asia, their relatively high consumption may be quite penalizing. So while we expect that in the decade to come, these ships will have to be replaced because probably they will not correspond to the constraints, and they will be in a fairly unfavorable situation as far as their consumption is concerned. So we expect that with the renewal of the charters, these ships could be replaced. And we estimate that about 55 of them, because they are consuming more and because also they are smaller, may be in an unfavorable situation.
So there is a kind of pocket for developments in the next years. Talking to the industry, some players are already considering this possibility. So if we want to look at what we consider for our core business, at the beginning of this year, we had a long-term view of about 225-240 units. I would say that the flow of orders we had last year and this year is fully supporting this vision. For FSRU, we see between 30 and 40 units over the next 10 years. And for FLNG, we see between 5 and 10 units over this period. For onshore tanks, we see between 5 and 10 units. So if we want to look at new businesses, let's talk about energy fuel developments.
First of all, we had recently a contract with Ponant for an icebreaker cruise expedition ship vessel capable of going to the North Pole or going close to or going to Antarctica. It's going to be the very first cruise icebreaker with energy propulsion. Its delivery is planned in 2021. The tanks, that's the Mark III technologies, there will be two tanks. And we've offered to the yard a turnkey solution. It means we are not only providing the design, we are going to conduct the construction of the tanks, and we will select the subcontractors, and we will coordinate them on the yard. So it's quite important. I mean, we signed for container ships last year. We signed at the beginning of this year for a bunker ship, and now we are signing for a cruise ship.
Well, container ship, after the nine container ships we signed for with the CMA CGM, well, these ships have tanks of 18,000 cubic meters, and you need to feed them. So you need to fuel them, you need to bring the energy, and for that, you need a bunker ship. We are designing this bunker ship, which is going to be built by Hudong-Zhonghua. It's going to be operated by MOL, the very large Japanese owner, and it's going to bring energy for CMA CGM, Total energy. It's Total which has signed for this contract. So in the LNG as a fuel market, you can see that there are quite a lot of interesting things. Of course, there are the tanks on these big ships. There are these bunker ships, which are not small when you talk about an 18,000 cube ship.
If you look at the quantities of energy that CMA CGM is going to burn in a year, it will represent about currently 0.1% of the world production, which is not at all negligible for only nine ships. So quite a lot of interesting things. Well, talking about shipping industry, if we look at the worldwide shipping industry, we see that it's about 90,000 merchant vessels. It has about 3,000 new builds per year. It represents 90% of worldwide transportations, 3.1% of the worldwide emissions, which is a fairly rough figure because there you are mixing different kinds of emissions. Some of the emissions from the shipping industry, like for sulfur oxides or nitrogen oxides, are not particularly friendly or particles. But if we compare to that, if we look at the French emissions, the shipping industry is representing twice French emissions.
So it's really there as well, not negligible, and it's an area where the world has decided to work on in order to improve the emissions in this sector. So different approaches are contemplated. Among them, there is the energy, which is fully compliant with the current regulations. The availability of energy is improving. We can see that whenever an owner is switching to LNG, major oil and gas companies are finding the solution. As we saw with the bunker ship, we are providing for Total, for CMA CGM. The technology is available. There are already 248 energy-fueled ships in the world, even though they are small, but the technology is there. By the way, it's used for ages by LNG carriers, so it's something that we know quite well. We at GTT, we developed various solutions.
I will not say that each time we develop a solution, we experience immediately a success, but the solution is there and is existing, and we can talk with owners, with shipyards on the application of this solution to their needs. In the case for container ships, in the case for bulk carriers, in the case for cruise ships, while we have solutions for providing energy, we are currently finalizing the construction of a barge in the U.S. We have this contract for a bunker ship. We developed a self-supporting membrane tank named BRIC, which is attracting quite a lot of interest. So what I want to say is that we have a wide range of solutions in order to answer to the needs of the shipping industry. Simultaneously, we developed a wide network of partnerships with yards, including new ones.
For example, VARD, which belongs to the Fincantieri Group, is a new partner with whom we are working on these solutions. We work also with some other partners, Wärtsilä, which is a very important player in the shipping industry, and we signed a partnership last year in order to provide solutions for energy as a fuel. We signed also an agreement with DSEC to build membrane tanks in third-party shipyards. We have an agreement also with COSCO in China. We have outfitters, people capable of building our tanks. We have several of them, and shipowners are already turning to our solutions. Well, something we are working on for years, it's developing our service activities. I would say that it's not only for business, if I may disappoint you a little bit, it's really for helping the industry to operate in a very optimized manner, energy carriers and energy-fueled ships.
You saw that this industry is going to continue to grow, and that is raising plenty of needs, for example, training needs. But also, as the vessels are more and more numerous, you can work on optimizing the inspection solution, the test solutions, and if you are able to come up with a smart solution, you can find a market. So that's what we do with a wide range of solutions that you can see on this chart. I will not name all of them. What I can say, it's plenty of solutions. We have different ideas there, and we are placing ourselves in a situation where we are trying to propose new solutions which make sense for the owners. So each year, we are trying to introduce new things.
So our strategic roadmap, of course, we are keeping on working on intensifying the cutting-edge aspects of our technologies on the energy carriers. We are deploying these technologies on some immediate adjacent sectors, such as offshore. We are keeping on working offshore with FSRUs especially, but also FLNG. We are keeping on working on multi-gas carriers. We are mainly working on energy, but we sold ships for transporting ethane. That's something which is still of interest for us, and we are looking at what we could do with LPG. Gravity-based system, I talked about it earlier on, and in order to do so, we are keeping on improving our two technologies, NO96 and Mark technology. We are enlarging our activities in energy as fuel, and there we develop various solutions. Here I name, for example, one which is a transfer arm between a bunker ship and an ocean-going vessel.
It's something which is fairly far away from a tank, but we designed it, and this arm is already existing on the barge built in the U.S. We are developing our services, and we are continuing to do so. Beyond that, we are looking at what we can do in smart shipping. We have smart shipping solutions in-house, and this year, at the beginning of this year, we acquired a company in Singapore named Ascenz, which is providing this solution. Simultaneously, we are developing our activities in gas handling technologies, and we are looking at what we can do there in the future to provide further optimized, even more optimized solutions to the industry. Mark gives you the floor.
Thank you, Philippe. I will now, as usual, go through the financials, and we will start with the much-awaited slide on the order book. If we look at the order book and units, Philippe mentioned earlier on we had 25 deliveries in the first semester, and we are expecting around 15 for the second semester, and then 30 on average in the next couple of years. More interestingly, when we look at the order book in value, this is increasing from EUR 400 million to EUR 434 million without including the revenues of the first half, which amount to EUR 120 million. So you see that if you add what's in the order book for 2018, we have an extra EUR 108 million of revenues to expect for a total for the whole year of EUR 228 million. So the second half is not twice the first half, if I can mention.
Having said that, for 2019, we are showing already revenues of EUR 201 million, which is a strong level of revenues already booked, and for 2020, EUR 102 million, which is also quite respectable. Just as a reminder, these numbers are only for the core business, the royalties business, so they do not include the revenues derived from services or energy as a fuel. A little rundown on our numbers, starting with revenues, which stand at EUR 127 million, EUR 120 million for the core business and EUR 7 million for services, so a 12% increase on royalties, and a 7% increase on services, which compensate a bit for the relatively low performance of services in the first quarter of this year.
Perhaps I should mention that the pro forma numbers for 2017 here include the consolidated perimeter at the time, so do not include Ascenz, which was acquired at the end of January of this year. So a lot of the differences are linked to scope effects because 2018, the first semester, will include Ascenz. The EBITDA margin is increasing by 8.8%, with an EBITDA at EUR 84.2 million. The EBITDA margin is slightly lower from 68% to 66%. This is due to a one-off effect in the first semester of last year, which was linked to research tax credits refunds, which we got in the first semester of last year on a non-recurring basis. Net income increases by 20% to EUR 75.7 million.
This is, of course, the result of the strong operational performance, but also of a one-off since we made a claim towards the tax authorities in respect of the 3% tax on dividends, which was abolished recently. That claim was successful, so that had an impact of positive impact of EUR 5.7 million on net profit. I won't dwell on the margin. All this activity has generated strong cash flow, 41% increase in cash flow to EUR 91.6 million, and also a strong impact on changing working capital. We've had a positive cumulative impact of EUR 21 million. This is due mainly to two factors, to make it simple. One is the fact that we've received a significant number of orders in the first half. In each time we get an order, we get a down payment of 10% of the value of the contract.
And also to the fact there have been quite a lot of deliveries, and we receive 30% of the value of the contract when the ship is delivered. So it's a double positive effect, which impacts favorably the change in working capital. CapEx, we are looking at EUR 10.3 million. This includes the goodwill on the acquisition price of ASCENS, which was slightly below EUR 10 million. We will also be paying an interim dividend, which has been decided by the board yesterday, of EUR 1.33 per share on the 28th of September, and the record date will be two days before that. Quick view on the cost base.
I mean, here we are obviously going to see some effect linked to the scope, but I think first of all, perhaps if you look at the split between external costs and staff costs at the bottom right of the graph, you see that the proportion of external costs is 42% and has decreased from historical levels where we had basically about 50% staff costs, 50% external costs. So this is the result of the cost-saving exercises we have undertaken in 2017. These cost reductions, of course, place us in a good position to face the increase of activity, which will take place, which is taking place, and will continue in the second semester and the years to come due to the high level of orders received. So I think this is the key element. We're still obviously controlling our cost quite tightly.
You see travel costs have reduced by 11% in the first semester, for example. Staff costs are impacted by the consolidation impact of ASCENS. So these are the key elements on the cost base. I will hand back now to Philippe. Thank you.
Well, so the outlook for 2018, as far as the revenue is concerned, we confirmed that our revenues should be in a range between EUR 235 million-EUR 250 million. Our EBITDA, we confirm that our consolidated EBITDA should be in a range between EUR 145 million-EUR 155 million. And as far as the dividend is concerned, we confirm that in 2018, the dividend will amount at least to what we paid between 2015 and 2017. As far as 2019 is concerned, we confirm that the payout will be at least 80% of the distributable result. So now we are ready to answer your questions.
Thank you for the presentation. Do you have some comments to say regarding the order book for H2 2018?
I would say you saw that since July 1st, we announced three contracts for energy carriers. We announced also energy as a fuel contract. I have to say that if you look at the chart we have on the needs for vessels for transporting American energy, we could expect that the second part of the year should remain fairly dynamic. That's what I can say. The level of orders we are going to achieve on December 31st is still hard to predict.
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Of the guidance. The second question is related to the LNG as a fuel and wondering if you can share with us the commercial dynamic that you have right now because we have seen recently a number of investments under desulfurization operation from majors or operators. We have seen a number of contracts secured by ENC companies. So wondering if for the moment the desulfurization is winning against the LNG and if you can share with us your commercial dynamic for the moment. And the last one related to the Mark tank, the development of the technology has been postponed due to difficulties. If I well remember, you said that you should relaunch the Mark V technology by the end of the year. So I was wondering if it's still the case, please.
Thank you, Kevin, for these questions. The first one dealing with the EBITDA for the entire year, well, Mark showed that there are some phenomena which are at work on that, and especially, I mean, between last year and the first half of this year.
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Since the beginning of July, we received close to 45 orders. So in the second part of this year, we will have to accompany this increase. We are going to have to also take into account that the number of deliveries will be a bit smaller than in the first part of this year. You have the figures in the document. But still, I mean, you can see that our model, which is to remain whatever the conditions to remain lean and fit.
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Our cost structure. That leads us to maintain our guidance on the EBITDA. We are guiding on the EBITDA now and no more on the net margin. We are maintaining our guidance on the EBITDA in this current situation. Well, the second part of the year may be different, but fundamentally not so different than what we would have experienced. On desulfurization, for the time being, there are not all solutions which can meet the constraints. The regulations, the tough regulations that are implemented, the toughest regulations which are implemented. I think you have the chart in the annex. The only way to cope with that is LNG. The fact of the matter is that we are seeing that many owners are coping with that for the time being through what we call scrubbers, which is cleaning up the emissions.
Rather than releasing acids in the air, you relieve them in the sea. For us, both because it's not cheap in terms of CapEx, it's cheaper than a cryogenic tank, but it's not cheap. It's more expensive in terms of CapEx because it increases the consumption of the ship, which with a high oil price will be penalizing. It's also expensive in CapEx if you take into account the maintenance. It's a fairly short-term solution. The more energy will appear as a feasible solution to the shipping industry, something that shipowners who've tested LNG are capable of managing, the more you will be able to find LNG in major harbors, the more this solution will deploy. The ramp-up is not as fast as what we would have expected some years ago, but the ramp-up is there when I look at the number of ships turning to LNG.
And in a certain way, probably for a solution like us, which is not the most obvious solution, but which is a very optimized solution, I would say that it may be the best solution because it gives us time to convince people that our solution is very optimized. Finally, your last question on Mark V. We've investigated there. The solution we have or the issue we had and the solution we could deploy, the issue is to come with a solution which makes sense in the current market conditions.
I would say that the solution that we propose in order to cope with the unavailability of Mark V, the Mark III Flex Plus, has attracted quite a lot of interest and is raising an issue about how you introduce commercially Mark V while we are proposing a very convincing, well-known, and in terms of cost, very competitive solution with Mark III Flex Plus. We have a kind of marketing issue there, much more than a technical issue. We have the technical solution. It's not that negligible in terms of incremental cost. We've always been convincing both because our systems are affordable, but also because they are easy to industrialize. That's what we have to keep in mind when we introduce Mark V.
Yes, I have a question on DSME, which is saying that they have technologies they develop and they might sell it or use it internally. What will be the threat for you in terms of commercial dynamics?
Well, I would say that each year we see systems which are proposed by shipyards or by other companies. And you can track that in our reference document. You can see that we look at the competition and we refer to all the systems which are developed. You can look at that since 2014. And finally, from that, you can see that it's not so easy. What I can say is that I've read some reports on that, but talking to shipowners, LNG carrier owners, as far as I know, this system is not currently proposed. And I would say that the LNG carrier owners and the LNG companies, the big LNG companies, are really the prescribers of these technologies. Well, not so in a certain way. The shipyards, what they want is to sell a ship. It's a big business. I mean, LNG carrier is costing about $200 million.
In order to do so, they try to meet the expectations of customers and to listen to what they would like to have in terms of technology. So, well, of course, we will see that, but more importantly for us, we will continue to listen to the industry, LNG carrier owners and LNG companies, to understand what are their needs in the short term, also in the long term, in order to pilot our technological roadmap.
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Potentially the reason that have pushed Temasek to exit GTT in February. Also, what is the current situation with NG? Is there any intention on their side or something like that to potentially exit GTT as they recently sold all their LNG assets to Total?
As far as Temasek is concerned, I think that's a fund which is buying and selling. Their internal reasons, they do not explain, in fact, to us. Their investment has been a profitable investment, and we are very pleased to have allowed this shareholder to have a profitable investment. I think it enters in their overall strategy that they did not particularly share with us. I would say that as far as NG is concerned, while they sold, as you said, their energy activities, I don't know whether they would have had the possibility to sell their stake in GTT at that time, but they did not take it if they would have had. All the discussions I have with them is showing to me that they are very pleased with GTT, with the strategy, with the results. They are accompanying the company for many, many years.
They've invested in the company in the mid-1950s. They would have had various possibilities to sell, including at time of IPO, maybe at time of this divestment in Total. They never took that, and they are keeping on supporting the strategy of the company. That's all what I can say.
Announcement from Oddo BHF. Just one question regarding the expectation for next year 2019. So you have secured some more sales for next year. Nevertheless, probably we should have a limited downgrade of the earnings of the sales compared to this year. What about margin? So you should invest with more workforces to prepare the next deliveries. Do you see any risk in terms of margin for next year? Do you see some risk in terms of downgrade from margin next year compared to 2018 due to more investment in workforces?
Well, we guide on the margin for the year at the beginning of the year. But well, what I can say, and you know the company and you know how finally we are transforming the volatility of the market into fairly stable figures, slightly growing. And we may expect that the current situation that we are encountering is going to allow us to keep on this business model. What I can say is that we've never been complacent about costs, and I do not intend to become complacent about that. Mark has shown you the table on our cost structure, and you saw that, for example, on travel expenses this year, as an example, we've marked a significant decrease compared to last year. So if you wanted a sign that we are not complacent, you could get it from there.
I think that in 2019, we will guide you on the EBITDA, not so much on the net margin. At this stage, I don't see a particular reason to inform you that there should be a major change in our business model.
Any more questions? Okay. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.