Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Hapag-Lloyd analysts and investors' nine months 2021 results conference call. Hapag-Lloyd is represented by Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO, Mark Frese, CFO, and Heiko Hoffmann, Head of Investor Relations.
Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and thanks, everybody, for making your time available to join us here on this call. A s usual, we have a short presentation prepared with a couple of remarks from my end in the beginning, and then Mark will take over on the numbers, after which we'll give a few comments on market and outlook. Maybe a couple of opening remarks. If you look at the first nine months, we have seen, as you all know, continued strong demand, but clearly also a fair number of operational challenges.
If we look at Q3 in specific, in particular, I think congestion was, as expected, pretty severe. Apart from that, and that has certainly limited us in our ability to move volume because quite a bit of it is actually stuck on ships as we speak. Apart from that, I think the two main events that are worthwhile mentioning from our end are the acquisition of NileDutch, which closed in July, and then we also signed the agreement to take 30% in Wilhelmshaven, in September.
In terms of numbers, earnings are still strong, of course, on the back of high freight rates and transport volumes that are roughly in line with our expectations, c osts are up not only because of time charter, but also bunker is up and we have quite a lot of congestion-related extra costs as well. Balance sheet ratios, of course, improved significantly because of the strong earnings.
In terms of market demand expected to outpace supply growth not only this year but also next year. Supply chain disruptions will continue. We still think that there is going to be some easing into 2022, but nobody knows exactly when. All activity has slowed down, still a fairly sizable order book, but we also shouldn't forget that as we move forward and environmentally related regulations will become tighter, there will also be a need to replace the older fleet.
Going forward, we expect also to see a strong Q4, as you will have seen from our updated outlook. In terms of the priorities for the next years, those we will present at the Capital Markets Day in a few days. A little bit more detail on congestion. You see it on Page number three of the presentation that waiting times outside of the ports are not only up in the U.S., but clearly also in North Europe and in Asia. In addition to that, we also see that port operations in and of itself have lost for the first nine months, about 5% of capacity.
Of course, if you add up these two effects, significantly longer waiting times outside of the port, but also 5% lower productivity, then that unfortunately explains almost on what chart the key remaining problem that we have at this point in time. Because whereas when demand started to bounce back after the initial phase of the pandemic, we, I think, in reality, had three problems.
One was that boxes were sometimes in the wrong places, and because we needed them longer, we didn't have enough boxes available. I think that problem has been resolved because we have built enough boxes to now be able to provide them. That doesn't mean that every now and then there cannot be a shortage of boxes, but by and large, that problem has been resolved. We have enough ships on the water. Everything we have is sailing, but it's really down to this problem which we see here illustrated on this chart.
We've done a lot of things to counter that. We moved capacity to high-demand trades. We tried to find alternative gateways. We tried to buy second-hand products. We put in additional vessels. We deployed extra loaders. We bought a tremendous amount of additional containers.
In addition to that, we also have added people, have added IT capacity, and developed a number of new digital solutions to ease the work. That doesn't change the core of the problem, though, but I do think it makes it more manageable. Before I hand over to Mark, last point on current developments. You will have seen that we closed the transaction with NileDutch in July. Meantime, we're in the midst of the voyage cutover, and we will, as anticipated, close that by the end of this year.
Then, JadeWeserPort or Wilhelmshaven, we have agreed that and have signed the agreement, closing expected over the upcoming couple of months once we have all the necessary approvals. With that, I hand it over to Mark, who's going to talk you through the numbers.
Yes. Thank you, Rolf, a lso good morning from my side. Even if the chart is not indicating that, I can keep it short and crisp. As already outlined by all nine months 2021 was dominated by continued strong demand for transport from the Far East to the rest of the world for sure. That was resulting in some operational challenges as such. While the operational situation remained very difficult, financials improved strongly on the back of these higher freight rates and volumes.
As a result, we were once again able to improve profitability, strengthen the balance sheet as you can see here, and earn cost of capital. For the next chart, we take a closer look on the P&L. We see that the earnings trend is accelerated even further in third quarter. As a result, we see 9M EBITDA quadruple to $8.2 billion. The EBITDA margin jumped with that to 45.5%. The nine months group profit came in at more than $6.6 billion. Looking at Chart eight, you can see that the transport volume increased by 3.3% to roughly 9 million TEUs in the first nine months.
The strong demand for exported goods from Asia led to the increase in transport volumes, as we have seen, on the trade to Latin America, Middle East, and Far East, and particularly compared to the year or the previous period. The lower transport volume on the Intra- Asia trades is attributed to the network optimization and container repositioning to meet demand from exported goods from Asia to the rest of the world.
On the TP, the congestion of local port infrastructure and the resulting delay led to a slight decline in transport volumes despite the higher demand for container transport as mentioned. Looking now to Chart number nine, while a higher volume growth was impacted by the continuing supply chain disruptions, our average freight rate increased heavily due to the scarcity of vessels and containers.
On the other side, we had to cope with bunker prices, which with a number of $514 per ton in Q3 was already close to the level we have seen in Q1 2020, when the introduction of the IMO 2020 low sulfur regulation led to that temporary surge of bunker prices. Now to Chart number 10, o n unit costs, they continue to increase clearly due to the global supply chain disruption as said, as well as general cost inflation, and we have to say more to come.
In particular, expenses for handling and haulage have been negatively impacted by the operational challenges, higher container storage costs, and at the ports and hinterland terminals due to longer dwell times led to that increase of 16%. D&A was also up on previous year, primarily due to the rise in the percentage of ship chartered in on medium-term basis at simultaneously higher charter rates and the resulting increase in right of use.
Due to the very good earnings, looking at chart number 11, the operating cash flow increased to $7.5 billion, while investments have also gone up as we have acquired NileDutch, invested in additional containers, second-hand tonnage, and made first installment payments for our new orders, the ultra-large container vessels. Despite these high investments, free cash flow surged to $6.6 billion compared to the $1.9 billion of the previous year period.
Now that we have used the cash flow to pay out a dividend of EUR 3.50 per share and to pay down financial debt, and we have to say that investment in Q4 are expected also to increase. Last chart from my side. As a result of the very strong earnings trend, our balance sheet ratio improved further. In the nine months of 2021, we reduced our net debt by $4.3 billion to $1.2 billion. Net leverage ratio is now close to zero, and we certainly will be net cash positive by the end of the year.
With that, our balance sheet gives all the strong financial and strategic leeway we will need for tomorrow. Having said that, I will hand it over back to Ulf to conclude and comment on the market.
Thank you, Mark. I mean, yes, only a few things from my end before we open up for questions. Maybe a little bit as usual on supply and demand. First of all, we look at volume growth. Of course, volume growth has been strong after the decline last year, which was much less than was expected. I think, when you look at container volume growth, there's probably a little caveat to that as well because I still think that a lot of that is actually being measured based on an export basis.
There is a tremendous amount of cargo currently probably stuck. Yeah. If we would measure it based on what actually arrives at destination, then the growth is probably going to be less than the 7%. When you look at the growth rate that most of the larger liners have reported, you will also see that on average, you will not get to this 7.4% at the moment. Having said that, healthy growth and I believe also the outlook for next year, which still, with still a lot of pent-up demand and low inventories around the globe, on that front is definitely healthy.
When we look at the order book for a second, I would say that the order book is up. Yeah. It's above 20% at this point in time, which I think was a little bit to be expected. Newly placed orders are slowing down a little bit quarter -after -quarter. We'll have to see. when that order book will really be delivered. When we look at the situation that we have today, you can also see that the idle fleet is at an absolute low point, with lots of people pushing out scrapping, but also pushing out dry docks and regular maintenance.
We will certainly need some additional capacity to take care of that as well, and we also shouldn't underestimate the impact of the new rules that are going to kick in as from 2023. Having said that, looking at it for now in the short run, I think we see that in 2021 and 2022, where demand growth will probably outpace supply. In 2023 and 2024, it might be a little bit the other way around.
Personally, I still think that like that scrapping and the impact of additional dry docks that a lot of people need to catch up is actually higher in 2023 and 2024. The gap that's being suggested here is probably a little bit smaller. As such, looking at it from today's perspective, I think it's fair to say that the next number of years right now look to be reasonably balanced.
Yeah. Of course that picture can still change, but until 2023, not a lot of relaxations we expected. As I said, I think the big wildcard there is the impact from new environmental regulations. Looking at the outlook, this is the last one that we've actually published. Transport volume roughly in line with previous year. Bunker consumption price up quite a lot. We still see bunker prices being pretty high these days.
Freight rates up, of course, and EBITDA in the range of EUR 12 billion-EUR 13 billion, and in terms of EBIT between EUR 10.3 billion-EUR 11.3 billion. How do we look ahead? Operational challenges will remain, but we do expect some normalization, not before the first half of 2022, though. We need to make sure we stay close to our customers. That's also where we invest a lot and where we try to do our utmost to help them also through this period.
We'll continue to be prudent on the financial front, and we also start looking ahead, three or five years from now because we need to make sure that then unit costs start going down again, as shipping midterm definitely will again be the most efficient way to move your cargo, probably also at the lowest possible cost. Of course, digital solutions being very, very important. We have seen that in terms of some of the stuff that we have developed already and more in the pipeline.
We'll talk more about our priorities for the next roughly three years, yes, and we'll also talk to our sustainability strategy at our virtual capital markets day in a little bit less than a week from today. With that fairly short introduction, this time we'll hand it over to you for any possible questions you may have.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Sathish Sivakumar with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks again for the presentation. I have three questions. My first question is actually on contract rates. Could you please actually update on the progress that you made so far, versus last year? Where do you expect this year, for 2022, in terms of volumes, to differ versus, say, 2021, i.e., split between spot and contract rates? Second one is actually, slightly related, more on freight forwarders.
Given the current tight capacity that we are seeing, are you actually seeing increased pressure on freight forwarders actually to buy capacity for longer duration rather than, say, typical two to three months ahead? In terms of congestion, I understand the reason why U.S. is actually seeing an increased congestion. In Europe, what is actually driving it? Because we are not seeing a similar demand compared to U.S. Is it mainly related to landside bottleneck? Where do you see congestion normalizing in the Europe?
Sorry. Let me try and take them, starting with number three. Congestion in Europe is definitely mainly landside related. I'd also say that demand has been going a little bit up and down, but has also been strong in certain pockets, but main bottleneck there indeed on the landside. When you look at the position of for forwarders, your second question, yes, of course, forwarders operate in the same market as BCOs, and that means that right now we have a market where space is tight.
Of course, that puts some pressure on the duration of contracts, the same pressure we face when we talk to people that charter our ships. When it's around contracts, I think your questions were, how is the split between short and long term? Yes, that's shifting a little bit more towards the long term as we look into 2022. Certainly also a segment where we contract for multi years.
In terms of the progress that's being made, I would say we're probably a bit ahead of where we were last time, where we were last year around this time, but still the majority of the volume is basically under negotiation now, and we are closing deals daily as we speak.
Do you expect the split to be significantly different versus last year on the spot versus contract?
I expect that the contract chunk will go up a bit.
Okay. Sorry, just to follow up on freight forwarding. What was the typical exposure actually within the spot market and contract, back in 2019?
I didn't really understand the question.
Out of the capacity that freight forwarders buy from liners, what is the typical mix would look like, say two to three months' worth of capacity versus mainly on spot?
I mean, that varies. Well, it's very difficult to give a clean answer to that. I mean, they tend to operate in three segments. One is the annual contract, one is the three months contract, and then you have the spot market. It varies really a lot between which forwarder. Some are more on long-term, more. Some are more on short term, but I would say that they probably typically have a decent presence in all three segments.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thanks very much.
Next question is from the line of Sam Bland from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the question. I have two, please. The first one is again on contracted rates. Could you just confirm whether your 2021 guidance includes much of a benefit from contracts being renegotiated early? Or does most of the sort of contract renewal uplift kick in from early 2022? The second question is on spot rates. We've seen some decline in some of the indices, and there's been some press articles recently.
I mean, it's a bit of a crystal ball question, but do you think that's the sort of start of a normalization, or could it be maybe more of a seasonal effect and we might see an uplift later on? Thank you.
I think on spot rates, maybe first, I think the decline that we see right now is probably less than you normally see in this time of year compared to what we see in peak season. Of course, we also come from a very high level. I would nevertheless hope that these spot rates normalize a bit more, as they are today, still on a very high level ang g oing into 2022, I think it would be better for everybody if we see a little bit more normalization.
We don't see a lot of that just yet, though, to be honest. When you look at the effect of contract rates on our 2021 forecast, I would say that the effect of that is fairly minimal. Most of that you will only see in 2022.
That's fine. Thank you very much.
Next question is from the line of Andy Chu from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Just on the current contracting season for Asia/ Europe, I think, Rolf, I think I saw some comments that you were saying in the press and wanted to double check whether this is correctly quoted, that you were saying that actually the absolute amount of contractual rate on Asia/ Europe was actually not that high relative to the current sort of spot rates.
A lot of your other sort of competitors and sort of top ten players are talking about contract rates Asia/ Europe in the market at this early stage, rates up. 100, 200 %+. I just wondered if you could comment on Asia /Europe and how those negotiations are going?
In terms of slide 15, supply demand, just a couple of sorts of points here. Just wondered therefore, is it right to conclude for 2022 that the only way really year on year is really given that supply demand balance looks favorable to 2022, that freight rates should go up year -on- year? In terms of the sort of supply coming on board in 2023 and 2024, if you were to take, say, 2023 and sort of Drewry and others that are sourced into the 7.3% supply, in terms of closing that gap versus the demand that you alluded to, you're starting with 7.3% demand.
What percentages would you chip away at for, say, delivery delays, higher scrapping, or any other sort of category? How should we think about the sort of chunks in terms of closing the gap to the demand at 4%? Thank you.
Yes, let me try and take them, can s tart with the last one. When you look at 2023, 2024, I mean, I think the likelihood that there will be some slippage in production is definitely there. A likelihood that there will be some more scrapping is also there, and there will also be some impact from IMO 2023. How much of that gap will close? I really don't know, but I would not be surprised if it closes anywhere between 1%-3% of the gap.
Yeah. I think the gap is predicted to be 3% or so, but I would be surprised if it's going to be more than 2%, assuming that the demand indeed comes. Your question on whether in next year we expect rates to go up, I do expect contract rates to go up on average because quite a lot that was closed before 2021, but I do expect spot rates to go down. What the mix of that will be, that remains. It's too early to tell. Then on Asia /Europe, yes, contract rates are over there, significantly below spot rates. I think that's also what you see in other markets, and that spread is considerably bigger than you normally would see.
If you look at how much are the contract rates up versus last year, it's difficult to put a percentage on that. Also, because the contract rates that were closed for 2021, especially in Asia and Europe, had been closed over a longer period of time, which means that you still had some very low rates that were being closed, but at the end of the contract season rates were already up quite significantly. The percentage probably goes from a high double-digit to somewhere in the triple-digit percentages.
Thank you. Maybe just one further question. In terms of all the sort of disruption in the industry, whether it's land side, at the ports, at the warehouses, what will it take? If you were to sort of offer a solution, what. Is there a solution? Is it trying to clear the bottlenecks at L.A. and Long Beach as a priority, trying to get extra maybe government resource in there to clear the bottlenecks? Is that sort of one of. a potential option. How would you actually go and clear this bottleneck if you were sort of-
I think the focus-
Yeah.
... will have to be that. the efficiency gets improved. If you look at the waiting times that truckers also have in places like L.A., but not only there. T hey could move a lot more boxes, yes, if they would just go in and out of the terminal and pick up the boxes and deliver the empty ones. I think there's a lot that can still be done in terms of efficiency, and that's not only on the terminal side and opening hours, but it's also about the ability to deliver boxes to the customers.
Many customers would still accept boxes only during certain times of the day, and certainly not during the night. If we all go and think a little bit more 24 / 7, not only in the ports, but also when you look at the truckers and also when you look at the warehousing abilities to deliver, you would actually create an enormous amount of additional capacity that would allow us to. at least get rid of quite a bit of the congestion.
If you put yourself in the shoes of a trucker, I mean, it's much more fun to do four trips a day than to do one trip a day and then all the time have to wait for five, six hours and still incur a lot of overtime.
Then maybe one small one to finish. In terms of vessel speed, Maersk said that they've speed of their vessels. Is that what you've been doing as well or plan to do?
I mean, if and when that makes sense, we do it, yes , but w e will not just speed up to end up in the same queue and have to wait a little bit longer there before we get into the port.
If you don't fast steam, are you not further back in the queue?
Alright. That depends on the berthing arrangement that you have. I mean, if I have a berth slot at 6:00 P.M. , and I can sail very fast to be there at 3:00 P.M., it really doesn't make any sense, yes. If I'm otherwise going to miss that slot because I'm only going to arrive at 8:00 P.M., yes, of course, then I speed up. In most cases, people have slots where they need to get into the terminal, whether it's on a specific day or at a specific time, and you would do your utmost to get to that slot.
Yes, there are also some terminals where you just have to queue, but for all of us to go and burn a tremendous amount of fuel to see who's first in the queue, I don't know that that's a very good way of working either.
Brilliant. Thanks very much. Thanks, Rolf.
Next question is from the line of Marc Zeck from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Just three if I may. One on spot rates and my understanding, weakness in spot freight rates on Transpacific, freight rate providers like Freightos is due to their including a premium freight rates in that. Could you give us a reminder, what's your share of volume that ships on premium on the Transpacific?
Second question would be on the current container dwell fees in L.A., Long Beach. I guess, just today you sent out an FAQ to customers saying that these additional 100 staging fees will you pass through fees? I guess my understanding that this is not the intention of, let's say, the government or the authorities. Would you expect some court challenges to you passing through the fees? What measures, what instrument do you have to really pass this on if authorities don't really want this to be passed on?
Third question would be on, let's say, first quarter of 2022. Your bigger competitor, they gave a sneak preview on first quarter 2022 saying that EBITDA will be roughly in line first quarter 2022 with the third quarter 2021. Is this something that we could expect for Hapag as well, or is this too early to tell? Thank you.
Yes. Let's start with the last one. I think it's too early to really say something material about Q1 2022, but also we would not expect to see a dramatic change, yes, all of a sudden from one quarter to another . So, I can somewhat relate to their comments. You made a comment on the additional charges that are being imposed by the ports of L.A., Long Beach, on long-dwelling containers, o n the one end, I think it's good to have an incentive to peel out those boxes earlier.
I think we just need to make sure that it easily can also become a double-edged sword, because if there's cargo in those boxes that is not very valuable, you may also end up with a lot of abandoned cargo, which is then going to stay at the terminal for much, much longer. It's a bit of a balancing act t here. I hope it works indeed as an incentive. We'll need to see.
In terms of your question to spot rates, you asked how much of your cargo is moving on premium rates. Well, I would say that's a small chunk of the overall volume, probably a single- digit percentage.
Thank you. The single digit is like, is specifically for Transpacific or related to the overall uplift volume?
I think it's. I don't know for the rest, but I mean, your question was on Transpacific, and there I said definitely single-digit. If you look at other trades, it's the same. Yes, b ecause even if our freight rate is up very significantly year-on-year, of course, the increase is still very, very far away from what one sees on these premium rates. That's indeed a very small percentage.
Certainly. Perfect. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of [inaudible] from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. [inaudible] . Thanks for taking my questions. In the upper end of your guidance range, you guide basically for an even higher EBITDA in your Q4. Could you give some flavor what will take it there? Basically, is it expected higher rates? Is it your end of voyage, so to say, methodology or even higher volumes? I guess volumes is difficult really to argue for as it's difficult to push through more volumes in this market as it is right now.
Then a second question would go to whether you see increased business with the forwarders that so to say is pushed out. For instance, we have other carriers that are taking a battle right now with the forwarders and are losing some business or at least losing some clients here. Is it something for you to grab at the moment? Do you sense, so to say, a change here as of late? That would be my two questions. Thanks.
I mean, maybe first of all, as of Q4, I think you are right. I think we see a little bit then when you look at rates, they start to plateau a little bit at least. We would still expect a strong Q4. You are also right that we have an end of voyage, yes. Accounting mechanism, which means that with us you would typically see the uptick potentially a little bit later. The swings in the results can still be quite high, though, because you also have big swings in terms of what percentage of completion these types of things can influence.
I think, yes, the upper range a little bit higher, v olume is going to be probably as much as possible. Rates are very strong, and we have the end of voyage principle. In terms of the forwarders, I mean, we see certainly very healthy demand for space from the forwarders. In how much of that is related to other carriers offering them less space, I really don't know. We also see healthy demand from BCOs. It's not a one segment that is that much stronger than another. Also with us, the split between NVO and BCO is largely unchanged, so.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Next question is from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, morning. Thank you for taking my questions as well. The first one is a little bit getting back to the contract rates. I don't know, you're probably going to transport something like 12.5 million TEUs next year, ballpark. Could you give an indication how much of that will be on multi-year contracts? That's the first one.
I mean, it's still a little bit early to say that. I think that in the end that is going to be a small double-digit percentage.
Okay. All right. I assume that will be up from close to nothing last year.
Yes, I mean, I think t raditionally that has been a small segment, although we've always had some. I think we've had a small to mid-size single digit percentage of cargo that moved on multi-year contracts. I think right now we're going to see that moving into double- digits. How far up in double digits? I would guess small double- digits.
Okay. All right. On the cost side, I'm a little bit curious about the development and how sticky your costs are. We have seen other carriers even going out buying vessels instead of taking in on time charter because the time charter rates are completely outrageous just like the container rates are.
What I'm trying to get at is sort of the length and the stickiness of your network cost given that I assume that if and when you roll new time charter contracts with the suppliers that you will have to make multi-year contract there also compared to earlier if I understand it correctly.
Yes, I mean, that's certainly a challenge. I'd say, though, that Hapag has a relatively high ownership share, so that makes us a little bit less exposed to that side of the market. We also, when we entered into the pandemic, did a number of extensions to the number of our existing contracts at lower rates. So overall, I think we're actually reasonably well covered, even if, of course, we also have some expensive ships in there.
But I'd still say that our exposure is quite likely below average there. There are also other cost categories that have been up. I mean, if you look at storage in terminals, also terminal handling, bunker costs, some congestion-related surcharges that we face here or there. So, I mean, costs have...
There's been quite a lot of upward pressure on costs. Some of that will stick, some of that won't, yeah. I think the structural cost increase that we will see is hopefully going to remain excluding the bunker component then. Excluding the bunker component, I think that that's still going to be a single digit number.
Yeah. Okay. On the TC-
Sorry, single-digit percentage just for the avoidance of... Ye s.
Yes, a ll very clear. On the TC part, I don't know if you can give any indication about. how much your average length of your TC is up. I don't know if you have a measure for that.
How much of our TC is up for renewal, you mean?
No, I mean, I don't know, historically you maybe had a charter in fleet average length of the time charter of maybe six to 12 months. If maybe that is up by a year or 1.5 or whatever it is. That was what I'm trying to get at.
I mean, I'm just looking at Heiko now, but I would say that it's up with a bit more than a year. Is that fair?
Yes.
Between one and 1.5 years. Duration is up on average between one and 1.5 years.
Okay. All right. Thank you. The last one, very shortly getting back to the contract part of your business. Normally, I mean, as you mentioned, you're probably making a lot of negotiations these days as you normally are this time of the year, at least on Asia/Europe, but on Transpac, most of those will normally start in March and then take place during April and step into forth on the 1st of May.
I'm a little bit curious to get at if this has changed or have you seen a similar demand also on Transpac, which means that you're getting out of the normal seasonal pattern with early negotiations on the Transpacific as well?
I mean, there are certainly significantly more early birds or early negotiations on the Transpacific than there are in normal years. In quite a few cases, you then also do discuss multi-year discussions, which is something that we tended to discuss throughout the year anyway, but now there seems to be a little bit more appetite to conclude that.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Next question is from the line of Parash Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Maybe first a quick one for Mark. Mark, with your current capital structure, is it fair to assume that with pretty much achieving net cash balance sheet, any excess cash will return to the shareholder in absence of any loss ticket acquisition or CapEx? Is that understanding correct? In this regard, do we have any guidance?
Secondly, for Rolf, I just wanted to understand what percentage of fleet today has been stuck because of all of these congestions. I mean, the slower asset turnover. Does it mean that whether in second half of 2022 or at some point in 2022, when this congestion unwinds, your active capacity increase will substantially outpace any new build number that we are seeing, and that would put perhaps a larger impact on the spot rates. Is that understanding correct? Thank you.
Starting with your first question, your general understanding of the potential balance sheet structure end of the year and the net debt position is absolutely right. There is no additional planning on top of our dividend policy. For sure, as you know, our dividend policy is to pay and give back a decent dividend to our shareholders. Much too early to say how it will look like, but yes, we are prepared to let our shareholders participate. Nothing more than that is planned.
I n terms of your second question, how much capacity is stuck in ports, I think realistically there's probably somewhere between 5 and 10%, these days. That will never go down to zero. Can that give a boost to available capacity when you look at 2022? Yes, definitely. We're also anticipating that. Yes, that next year we will be able to move more because of that.
Mr. Jain, are you finished with your questions?
Okay. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Anders Karlsen from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. A little bit more on your charter-in fleet. I was wondering. How much of the fleet on the charter-in side do you have optionality to extend? I s there a percentage of legacy charters that are done on historically lower rates than what you see today? And then in terms of contract negotiations, are you seeing, I understand it's towards the tail end of the season, but have you seen any clients. asking for early negotiations in order to secure space for next year numbers?
To take the second question first, yes, we have certainly seen that people trying to extend early to secure space, not only on Asia/Europe but also on Transpacific. In terms of your question on charters and how many cases we actually have options to extend, to be honest, I don't really know the answer to that question.
I know that next year we do not have a lot of charters that are running out, so the number of fixtures we have to do next year is actually reasonably small. Which puts us in a fairly comfortable position. How many of those actually have extension options are really low.
No, that gives some clarity to it though. Thank you. That's all for me.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to go back to any more questions to the investor relations team, and I would like to hand back to Rolf Habben Jansen for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Well, not so much to be said. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate the questions and you taking the time to listen to us. Hopefully it was informative and hope to speak to you again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.