Welcome to the 2020 Bulkers Q4 conference call. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand it over to the speakers. Please begin.
Thank you, operator. Welcome everyone to the fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call for 2020 Bulkers. As usual, I'm also joined here today by Vidar Hasund, our CFO. Before we start the presentation, we would like to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking matters. These forward-looking assumptions are based on the company's current views with regards to future events and are subject to risk and assumptions subject to uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. With that, I'll move over to the highlights for the quarter. 2020 Bulkers generated a net profit of $6.7 million in the fourth quarter. By this, we maintain our unbroken track record of profitability every quarter since we got our first vessel in operation in Q3 2019. We continue to outperform the Capesize index and achieve time charter equivalent earnings of $25,500 per day.
This compares to the Baltic Capesize Index, which was approximately 14,900 during the quarter. For the months of October through December, we announced a total of $0.27 per share in cash distributions. During the quarter, we also extended index-linked time charters for Bulk Santiago and Bulk Shenzhen for eight-13 months each. Further, we increased our charter coverage for Q1 this year to 50% of available days at an estimated average of $17,000 per day gross. During the first quarter, we've further increased this charter coverage from 19th of February, taking our Q1 coverage to 62.5% at an estimated average of $17,400 gross. During January, we achieved time charter equivalent earnings of $16,500 per day, and we declared a cash distribution of $0.01 for the month of January.
During January, we also entered into 2 new index-linked time charters for Bulk Santos and Bulk São Paulo, which will run until Q2 2025. These will start in direct continuation of our current time charters that are rolling off in Q2 and Q3 for these vessels. With that, I will leave it over to Vidar.
Thank you, Magnus. 2020 Bulkers reports a net profit of $6.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2022. Operating profit was $9.2 million, and EBITDA was $12.1 million for the quarter. Earnings per share was $0.30. Revenues were $18.5 million for the fourth quarter, and the average time charter equivalent rate was approximately $25,500 per day gross. Vessel operating expenses were $5 million, and the average operating expenses per ship per day was approximately $6,700 in the fourth quarter. G&A for the fourth quarter was $1.2 million and include approximately $0.3 million in share option costs. 2020 Bulkers charged Himalaya Shipping $0.3 million in management fee for the fourth quarter.
Interest expense was $2.6 million in the fourth quarter. Shareholders' equity was $155.9 million at the end of the quarter. Interest-bearing debt was $221.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter, down from $225 million at the end of the third quarter, reflecting scheduled repayments. Cash flow from operations was $10 million for the fourth quarter. Cash and cash equivalents were $15.5 million at the end of the quarter. The company declared total cash distributions to shareholders of $0.27 per share for the months of October, November and December 2022. That completes the financial section. Now back to you, Magnus.
Thank you, Vidar. An update on our cash distributions and dividends. We now have a track record of monthly dividends for 31 consecutive months. So far, we've returned 78% of the paid in capital to shareholders. Our 2022 full year cash distributions ended up at $1.35 per share, which equates to approximately a 14% yield on today's share price. We continue to show strong commercial performance relative to the results announced by our public peers who report separate earnings for Cape and Newcastlemax. This reflects the additional earnings power of a scrubber-fitted Newcastlemax relative to a standard Capesize vessel. Over to have a look at the market. The second half of the year, last year, was unseasonably weak relative to previous years.
It was mainly driven by an unwinding of congestion, which we will get back to later on. So far this year, rates have started seasonally soft as normal, perhaps a bit more than usual, as there's been particularly low Brazilian exports due to wet conditions in Brazil. However, last week, we start to see some uptick in those volumes. As you can see from this graph, the Capesize market has a historic pattern of bottoming out during Q1 or early Q2. As mentioned many times before, 2020 Bulkers main mission is to give shareholders a good return through monthly dividends or cash distributions. As you can see from this sensitivity table, which takes into account that we have four ships at fixed rates, reducing to five ships from the 19th of February.
Our positioning reflects a desire to have a good coverage in seasonally weak periods in Q1 while we maintain full exposure to the later part of the year. We will, as usual, not give any guidance on rate expectations, but as a reference to current FFA curve for Q2 through Q4 right now sits around $17,000 per day, which would imply an annualized dividend capacity of around 30 NOK for that period. Taking a look back at the full year 2022 and some of the main drivers in the Capesize markets. Overall ton miles sailed on Capesize vessels were up approximately 2% relative to the prior year. This was mainly driven by a 30% increase in ton miles for bauxite.
For iron ore, ton miles were down 1.6%, negatively impacted by a 2.8% drop in Brazilian export volumes, while Australian export volumes were up 1.8% year-over-year. For the coal trade, ton miles were up 2% compared to the prior-year. The main reason for the disappointing second half relative to the start of the year, we believe was the unwinding of congestion seen since COVID down to levels in line with pre-COVID levels. We believe as a rough estimate that the peak to trough unwinding of congestion represented the equal of 7%-8% fleet growth over a few months, which the market then had to absorb. We find ourselves at relatively lower levels in terms of congestion, which means that any disruptions would reflect an upside in utilization for the Capesize fleets.
For the year of 2022, global crude steel production, ex-China, was down 7%, while Chinese steel production fell 2%. Steel production in China saw some improvements on the year-over-year basis during the second half of the year. Chinese iron ore imports were down 2% in 2022. Imports did, however, pick up towards the end of the year, with imports in the second half increasing 1.3% compared to the second half of the prior year. Chinese iron ore port inventories currently stand at 125 million tons, compared to 140 million tons a year ago. As you can see on the right-hand side, the guidance from major iron ore producers indicate increased production volumes this year relative to 2022.
Following the continued weakness in the Chinese economy, China continues to increase infrastructure stimulus by bringing forward quotas for issuance of local government special infrastructure bonds. The issuance of such bonds were more than two times the level in 2021 during 2022. As you can see, Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing fixed asset investments have increased recently, while real estate fixed asset investments are still lagging. As a response to this, Chinese regulators have responded by implementing stimulus measures, such as significantly boosting PBOC Pledged Supplementary Lending and lowering first time buyer mortgage rates. The order book for the Capesize market keeps shrinking and is now down to 5.96% of the existing fleet on order.
This, in combination with Chinese yards having very little capacity for new orders before 2026, gives us good visibility that we are likely to face three years with historically low fleet growth. Clarksons expect Capesize deliveries of 20.4 million deadweight tons in 2023, dropping further to 6.5 million in 2024 and 3.1 million in 2025. As I said, the yards are very fully booked, so there's very little that can change those numbers. Scrapping in 2022 came in at 19 Capesize vessels, in line with the level seen in 2021. Five of these vessels were scrapped in December, which could imply an uptick in scrapping as new tighter environmental regulations get implemented.
We touched on this before. Although it's hard to quantify exactly, we believe the coming years of implementing CII and EEXI will be tough for all the less fuel efficient ships. Data from Clarksons suggests that 67% of the large bulker fleet may face non-compliance by 2023. Sorry, by 2030. With that, I will conclude the presentation and leave it over to the operator for questions.
Thank you. If you have a question for the speakers, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. We will have a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question will be from the line of Frode Mørkedal from Clarksons. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.
Hi, Rod.
Yep. Thank you. Hi, Magnus. Yeah, can you summarize your dry bulk market outlook for 2023? Yeah, you made some coverage for Q1. Curious to know how you envision your chartering policy for the rest of the year.
Sure. I mean, as always, I mean, we'll be very careful in terms of giving specific guidance on numbers. This is a market, as you know, with very many variables. I think on a high level, I think we've had some artificial tightness in the market over the last two years, which came to a halt in April in 2022. That congestion now I think is down to pretty normal levels. I think we're back in a market where more conventional supply and demand forces is what's gonna dictate. I think we do believe that the China reopening will boost demand out to China. I think we're actually quite encouraged that the Capesize market saw 2% ton mile growth last year, even with China being as weak as it was.
I think with China coming back, that's probably gonna help. I mean, our indications is that the workers in China have taken a proper Chinese New Year and full activity isn't expected to resume in the steel mills until the 15th of February. As you said, we've taken some coverage for Q1. Q1 is always the weakest quarter in our market. As of now, we'll have five ships on fixed charter from the 19th of February. It's really more about protecting the downside during that part of the market. I think where we're looking to make our money this year, so to speak, is from Q2 onwards.
There's, I guess, still a chance that we may do a little bit more hedging for the latter part of Q1, and maybe that will take us a little bit further into the year. The idea is to be as open as possible for the back end of the year. We're able to enjoy what's hopefully a more buoyant spot market then. I guess although FFAs are usually pretty poor predictor in terms of where rates eventually end up, that's very clearly what's being reflected in the curve as well, that view.
I think the numbers in our presentation already look a bit old because the market has been shifting up a little bit over the last 24 hours or so, in line with spot rates, stopping to fall, at least for now.
Yeah. That makes sense. Maybe you could comment on the average premiums you've achieved on the two newest charters, you know, above the Baltic Capesize Index. Do you see any trend there, so to speak, recently?
I don't think we're gonna give out any of them specifically, but I think should be possible to work out backwards if you look at our historical numbers. I think generally speaking, they've been fairly stable, although the ones we do in the lower market tend to be on the higher end, whereas when we have refixed some ships back in the fall of 2021, when spot rates were $50,000 plus a day, then we got a little bit less premium. It's not a huge variation. I think if you look at our historicals, you'll have a pretty good idea of where we are. They have not been going down over time.
At least if you look all else equal, the ones that are done around now should be higher than what was done 18 months ago in premium, simply because the market is lower.
Yeah. Final question on the market. You provided some interesting slides there, constructive apparently on iron ore. How dependent do you think the Cape market is on, let's say, the real estate industry in China? That seems to be one of the major pushback from investors these days. Curious on your thoughts there.
Oh, it's obviously a big variable in the market. I guess China takes 70% of the iron ore imports globally, and I guess the total property market is around close to 30% of demand. That being said, if you look at last year, you know, the China headlines were pretty horrible. The country was in lockdown for the second half of the year. Still, iron ore imports only dropped by 2%. It's important, but I'm encouraged that the market and the volumes actually held up as well as they did with China being as low as it was. The inventories, as I pointed out earlier, are lower now than at the same time last year.
I saw a presentation from some competitors today which had aggregated, both the inventories of the steel mills and the ones in port, which actually showed an even lower inventory situation relative to last year. I think another thing which wasn't a big part of the Capesize trade or Newcastlemax trade in the past, which is growing, is the bauxite trade out of West Africa. You know, that's really contributed with posted ton miles last year. There are more mines being built in the coming years in West Africa. It's obviously long-haul distances to China. China is structurally short bauxite, and it's quite inefficient shipping logistics. Those are very welcome tons.
Yes, if we're gonna really fire up this market, I think we need China to return, I think that's not the most outrageous expectation one could have, given the countries coming out of lockdown and there's a lot of pent-up stimulus that we think will be put into action.
Yeah. I agree. Thank you.
Thank you for that.
There are no further questions at this moment, I will hand the word back to the speakers.
Okay. Well, I think we'll just say thank you for the ones who dialed in, and if you had a question that you forgot to ask, feel free to reach out. We're always there to answer investor questions. Have a nice day.