Good morning everybody, and welcome to this Q2 presentation of Hafnia. Welcome to, especially to you, Mikael Skov, the CEO. My name is Tuur Östervo and I'm with Hafnia, and I'll be today's moderator. Welcome everybody, and I think our agenda today is going through the Q2 and then, of course, the industry dynamics. We'll spend approximately half an hour. Also, please ask all the questions you may have. The purpose of this event is to make sure that all investors get all the questions they may have answered. Please put them in the chat. Mikael, welcome. We will as usual go through the sort of Q2 and start by that and then go into the industry dynamics. Why don't you take over?
Yeah, thank you for that, and t hank you again for hosting this webinar and giving us a chance to present the Q2 and also a little bit about how we see the current quarter and, you know, the time ahead of us for Hafnia in the product tanker sector. I think for Q2, as far as we're concerned, we were definitely very pleased with the result. I think the market has shown quite a bit of resilience, probably more than what people in general would have thought. We came out with a net result of $75.3 million, which is better than Q1. This kind of reflects really that we've been through what I call a very strong and healthy market.
Not like the hey years that we saw in the first half last year and the year before, where everything was massively strong and there were a lot of, if you want, inefficiencies in the market. A healthy, strong market, in terms of the net profit we made, and also the return to shareholders. We managed again, as I said, to have a strong quarter and we've paid out 80% of the net profit in dividend. We're sticking to the dividend policy as before. I think that's positive. All in all, we are very satisfied and I think the quarter has definitely ended better than what we would have thought if you had asked us maybe earlier in the year.
Yes, it's been quite a turbulent quarter, right? Starting with April 2nd, where Liberation Day was on everybody's mind. I understand. Maybe just before we get into the industry dynamic and talk more about Q2, maybe you should just take this slide as a reminder to everybody what it's all about.
Hafnia is all about transportation of refined oil product. We own and lease around 130 product tankers traveling globally worldwide. In addition to that, we also operate on behalf of other owners about 80 ships. There are other owners that do not have their own commercial operation and they've decided to outsource it to us. All in all, we have more than 200 vessels product tankers sailing around the globe, basically transporting refined oil to whatever demand indicates it has to go. We are primarily in the spot market which means that we do have some coverage, but primarily, Hafnia's strategy is to be exposed to the spot market unless, of course, we are seeing that the markets ahead of us look to weaken up substantially in which case we have reversed that strategy now and then as well and hedged more.
At the moment, I think we are around probably 85 to 90% exposed to the spot market which has been extremely helpful in the period we've just been through. In addition to that traditional business model, we also have what we call adjacent business, which is that we make a bit of money on fees on third-party arrangements. We have a big joint venture now with Cargill, one of the largest trading houses in the world, where we have set up a joint venture called Sea scale Energy, which procures bunkers, which is really the fuel that the vessels around the globe use for sailing the ships. We have had a separate business on this for years. We've now joined forces with Cargill.
We have a high expectation for this business, not just because of the earning base for Hafnia, but more the ability now to procure the fuel for our ships at a time where this gets a lot more complex since the whole fuel and energy complex is changing and you're going to see a lot more of biofuels and ammonia and methanol in the future. We feel that a procurement platform will be essential to optimize on that. Of course, we have a fee-generating business by managing other people's vessels commercially, as I just mentioned before. We operate a total of eight pools, which are all pools of different sizes of ships that are represented around the world depending on what size they have and what trade they are engaged in.
Just a few questions from my side on this slide, Mikael, because the average age of your own vessels, this is something we've had debated for quite some time. I understand this is actually on the right side or in the lower end of the worldwide fleet, if I may say so. At what stage becomes this critical? I mean, when it approaches 12 years or 15 years, what is your sort of aim in this?
No, I think for sure is we would like to keep the average age of our fleet below 10 years. We're now at 9.4. I think in general, you know, that's kind of been a good guideline for where you'd like to be, but w e also have to keep in mind that the average age of the entire fleet of product tankers has been increasing over the last few years. I think today it's around 13.5 to 14 years, the average for the entire fleet of product tankers.
We're definitely on the younger side, but we can also see when we look at the valuation of ships in general that, because of all the new regulations that are coming into our market about your emissions, how environmentally friendly your ships are in terms of what oil they burn and what emissions they put out in the atmosphere, that the very, very old ships, which is, you know, say, 16, 17, 18, 19 years of age, are dropping in values more than the younger ships because people realize that in the future they'll be more expensive to run because they're not environmentally efficient as the younger part of the fleet.
In addition, also the net asset value, I mean, you're trading right now, I think, at NOK 61. Actually, I think you've narrowed the gap to the NAV. Is that correct?
That's correct, yeah. Our NAV is around, as you say, around NOK 66, NOK 67. We have narrowed that gap and, you know, I still think, I mean, when you look at the markets and you look at the earnings and you look at the values, we've seen a bit of a drop in values actually from Q1 to Q2, which has also been reflected, you know, in general terms in the NAV. It seems like we've reached a bit more of a stable environment also for values of ships. If we look at the amount of transactions that are going on now in terms of assets, this year actually has seen a lot of increase.
I think the way to look at the value of the ships in general is that when freight markets dropped by the end of last year, asset values came down as well and people were concerned about where should we end up in the so-called bottom. After having been through the first six months of this year and now going into a third quarter that's also showing strength in freight, it looks like the industry feels that the values were maybe dropping a bit too much. Now you're beginning to see slowly but surely that there's a lot more transactions going on and values have stabilized and gone up, particularly for the younger part of the fleet.
Okay, let's just talk a little bit about the shareholder returns because I know that's really on your mind. I think your sort of dividend policy is pretty easy to understand in that respect. Sometimes you sort of spice it up with some share buybacks and sometimes not. This quarter you haven't bought back shares.
Yeah, I think, sometimes it's maybe, you know, we've done it once, that is true. I think, you know, just to be clear on our policy, we do have a dividend policy, which is really what we are focusing on. As you're correctly saying, we're paying out again 80%, which is linked to our net loan-to-value. As you can see from this graph here, it's 24.1. Anything between 20 and 30 would trigger an 80% payout. We were at some point just below 20. At that point, we paid out 90%. We're kind of sticking to this, and I think the share buyback situation is obviously something we will always be discussing depending on where our stock is trading. In general, it would be an ad hoc discussion. If we did it, it would be in addition to the regular dividend policy that we have. It wouldn't be a combination.
It would be a dividend policy plus potentially a share buyback if we would decide to do that.
Speaking of your financial situation, I noticed that you have a revolving credit facility that you put in place here around $700 million. Does that have any impact on this, or is that just usual business?
No, I would say that's usual business. I mean, I think this was something that we have been working on for a while, and we were quite pleased that we had great support from a lot of our banks to do this. You know, we've improved on our financial terms by doing this, and we've also given ourselves a lot of flexibility going forward. We do like to have the ability to build off a bit of reserve so that we do have capacity in case something interesting should come up on the investment side or whatever. I think this is a good cleanup of some of the financial agreements we had already. I would call it more the usual part of our business, basically.
Speaking of your financial situation, very often analysts ask about the capacity to acquire other companies. I mean, how much can you spend to acquire others? Do you see Hafnia is in the right position in that context right now?
Yes, I think so. I mean, I think that, you know, the way we look at the market going forward, and for people that have been watching this before or other presentations, I think Hafnia has always been quite clear that we do believe there's still value to be obtained by consolidating our industry further. To give an example, at the moment, we are not buyers of assets as they are in the market today. We are not cash buyers of assets. We feel that we have a good platform, we have good assets, and unless we see something which is very attractive, then we'd rather return capital to shareholders than just going out and buying steel one by one.
We would still be interested in a consolidation basis, and we do believe that, you know, looking ahead with fossil fuels eventually having to get phased out, I think that it's important as a transportation business that you have scale that you have access to capital through listings. We still think there's more value to be extracted from potentially consolidation within the product tanker market.
Can I ask, Mikael, are you still happy with your dual listing so that you have the Oslo and the New York Stock Exchanges? Has that provided you with actually more opportunity to gain capital?
I think it has. I mean, I think since we listed the dual listing in New York, we've seen now that two-thirds of our daily trading liquidity actually comes out of the New York Stock Exchange versus Oslo. There's no doubt that the actual dual listing is giving us more liquidity, w e've grown in daily trading so t hat has been definitely worthwhile. What we so far still like about the balance is that we also do know by experience that U.S. investors and shipping is very much depending on whether you are in flavor or not during a certain period, where Oslo and the Norwegian investors and Scandinavians seem to be more loyal to our sector, even though times may be not as great. We're kind of finding a good balance so far. Right now we're quite happy being both places.
Cool. There are many questions and don't worry, I'll get to them in about five minutes or so. Let's just take a few things from the industry view. It's so clear there are so many things going on in the world that impact you. Before we get into this, what is sort of your general feeling about the geopolitical situation that impacts Hafnia?
I think that it's kind of a little bit more of the same as what we have seen, right, in the understanding that we still have a Red Sea situation that's unresolved. We, as in Hafnia, and I think also as an industry, have been saying for the last couple of quarters that we don't think that even if a return to a passage to the Suez Canal, we don't see it as having a massive impact really, because what has happened is that we, when everything got redirected by the Cape of Good Hope, we actually lost a lot of volume that normally would go west from the Arabian Gulf through the Suez Canal. Those tons did not go via the Cape of Good Hope, t hey just went different places and got replaced by local transportation in the Western Hemisphere.
If you kind of reset the via the Cape of Good Hope transportation to go via the Suez Canal, we actually think that there will be more volume going shorter distance. Net-net, it will probably not have a big effect. I think the Ukraine war is a situation that's more linked to what would a ceasefire and a peace deal look like in terms of Russian oil and gas and sanctioned fleet and what would happen to those, slightly more uncertain. Again, we don't see that Europe will go back to where we were before the war, i.e., with a lot of import, almost depending on oil import from Russia into Europe. We don't see that happening.
I think all in all is, you know, the Ukraine-Russia war is probably a bit more uncertain as to the effects because it's very much about the terms and conditions that will be surrounding a potential peace deal.
Mikael, I'd actually like to jump to page 14 because that's the order book, and we can discuss the industry dynamics from that. Obviously, people are concerned with the buildup of the order book. As you reminded me, there are some very strict points to this. Maybe you can elude on the order book here, please.
Yeah, so I think when you look at the order book as kind of, let's say, as described by, you know, by the industry analysts, whatever, I mean, they would, you know, they would describe the order book as being around 19% to 20% of the existing fleet. I think what we have been and others have been saying for a long time is that the order book, 50% of the order book consists of a size called LR2, which is technically a crude carrier, but it shows up on a list as a product tanker because it has a coating inside that technically makes it available for loading refined oil as well. The reality is over the last many, many years that 60% of that type of ship has always gone directly into crude transportation, so not really being part of the product tanker fleet.
What we have seen so far this year is actually that all of those LR2 ships, the same amount of LR2 ships that have been delivered as new builds to the market, have gone straight into the crude market as well. Basically, there's been no addition to the fleet in the product tanker sector from the LR2 ships coming into the market. This is something which I think is important to understand that when it says 20% of the existing fleet is the order book, the real amount is probably more like 13% to 14%. I think that's part of the reason why we've seen also a stronger market this year.
Over 20 years, you need at least 5% growth in the fleet per year to just cover up for the changes in the fleet. Isn't that a right assumption?
Yeah, that's right. I think if you look at the slide here, this is just really to give a broad impression of kind of, you know, where we are, right? I think if you look at the age of the existing fleet, if you look at the sanctioned/dark fleet and all the problems that go along with a big part of our fleet not having been maintained and therefore never will return to what we call normal compliant trade, there is no doubt that the product tanker market in general is heavily, heavily undersupplied. The big question mark is when do you see the scrapping versus ships coming in?
I think theoretically, and if you look at the expectations for our market for this year and also next year, there was a lot of cautiousness also from our own side built in that we may see new builds coming into the market before we see the scrapping. That could potentially mean that we have to go through a weak period of a weak market before it becomes really strong. I think that thesis is still out there is how quickly will the scrapping happen? I mean, now we are in the third quarter of 2025. We've absorbed the ships that have come in. The market is still stable high. Every day that goes by, you come closer to putting pressure on the vessels that are more than 20 years old and very badly maintained. It's kind of what will trigger that scrapping?
Will that scrapping be triggered by a regulatory requirement in connection with, for instance, the end of the war in Ukraine-Russia, where basically the, if you like, the opportunity for the dark fleet will disappear as everything becomes compliant trade? That's the big question is how much pressure will the legislation put on all of these ships that have been breaking the law for a long time and making sure that they get phased out? That's kind of the parameter from the supply side.
I just checked with your Q1, you also said that the full order book was around 19% to 20%. It's basically been stable for the past, let's say, four months.
There's not a lot of, well, there's no real ordering going on, right? Basically, at the moment, the order books are being filled up by container ships and gas carriers, etc., and very little on tankers. It's certainly an order book that will continue to drop as you kind of progress through the calendar years.
I just want to show the audience this one with these dark fleets because it's impossible to find out what is actually going on if you read the papers. Maybe you can just comment on this with a dark fleet. It's very difficult to comprehend as an investor.
Yes, and I don't blame people for that, right? Because technically, the way that we're defining it is really that you have ships trading around that predominantly are 20 years, 19, 20 years and older, but more importantly, with unknown ownership, trading under flags that don't have any reporting jurisdiction, and more importantly, sailing around without any insurance and, you know, with no agreements on crewing, etc. All in all, it's dark from a perspective that no one really knows who controls and what happens. It's a fact that they are obviously transporting a lot of the sanctioned oil around the world. We've seen that increasing, going up, also the sanctioned ships in general. We definitely see that more and more ships have been joining that part, trying to extract more value out of their life as a vessel, basically.
Now, as time goes by, there's no doubt in our mind that the pressure will be on all these ships in a normal market. We don't see how they can come back. The real issue here is the safety part. I've said this before, I'm still not happy with the international community and the lack of enforcement that is going on. I mean, these vessels, some of them are sailing, passing by the window, say in Denmark. Yet they are still allowed to sail around the world because there's no global agreement on enforcement on a lot of these things. I just hope we don't have to see a massive accident that we've seen in past history before the politicians realize how important this is. I'm not pointing fingers at any specific.
I'm just saying it's a problem that the world in general cannot agree on how to enforce security, insurance, and safety, which is really what we are talking about. Forget the commercial part for a minute, but just the fact that there are people on board these ships under conditions that are far, far from what they should be and what would normally be expected in normal trade.
Thank you, Mikael. I think let's take some questions. We have approximately eight minutes back. Let us start by your fixings or your sort of the outlook for 2024, the final quarter, but also 2026. I noticed that you only had 8% coverage at this stage. Can you comment on your sort of strategy into your fixings?
Maybe I can at least start by saying that the third quarter has started, you know, as we have already seen, you know, on a very strong note. There's no doubt that even the month of July has kind of been the strongest month of the entire year, actually, for most of our segments. What we saw in Q2 is definitely accelerating into Q3. I think it's clear now that we have a market that is not driven by one thing, but by a combination of a lot of different factors. We don't see the market being super vulnerable here now to any shortfall, but rather see a stable outlook where we can see if we look at Q1, Q2, and Q3 that the length of the voyages are increasing, which is good. Inventories have been low, which is good, and they need to be replenished before the winter.
Refineries have been closed in the Western Hemisphere and will now then get replaced by diesel oil and middle distillates going from the east to the west. We're seeing quite a lot of things that are working our way. As I mentioned earlier, the new builds that are coming into the market, of which 50% are allowed to, all of those have gone straight into the crude trade. Not putting negative pressure on. I think all in all is that balance is good. For this year, really, we still feel that we're in good shape also rate-wise. We'll continue with the strategy we have. We wouldn't mind looking at hedging further into next year, but I think, as always, this is a matter of how do you see the freight markets.
If the price for hedging is too high, i.e., that you have to accept lower levels than, for instance, what we're seeing today, significantly lower, then we definitely wouldn't do it. That's kind of how we look at the situation at the moment.
Cool. There's a question here on your competitors that have been divesting older vessels. The question goes, are you also optimizing the age of your fleet by selling the oldest ones?
Yes, we are. We have done that basically steadily also over the last, I would say, 18 months, really. We kind of sold from the back end of the ships. We've just recently sold also in Q2 some ships and now we're kind of moving into, we still have some ships left in the LR1 sector that we're also looking to dispose of. But yes, we're doing exactly the same thing.
Okay. There's a question on motivation for buying or acquiring new builds. I think it's a fair question. Could you take us through what is the calculation of it and what is this thinking of what is required to order a new ship within the product tanker area?
I think that there are two elements to bear in mind, right? One is that if you want to order a product tanker today, you will not get it until 2028. There is a disconnect, so to speak, between a strong market, freight market, earning market, and a forward delivery, which basically means that you can order a ship, but you cannot guarantee any earnings. You cannot charter it out for five years or do like project financing. That's not going to happen. It's too far out, basically. That is one factor which makes it a bit difficult for a lot of people to relate to. Secondly, as I mentioned, the shipyards have been fortunate enough to get a lot of orders from particularly the container side and the gas side, that quite frankly, they're not showing any encouragement to lower the prices.
If you look at new builds in Korea today for a medium-range tanker, it's probably around $51 million to $52 million. That is not attractive to us. We are definitely not looking at spending money for delivering 2028, 2029 at these price levels. We would rather focus on consolidation between, you know, others in the product tanker sector and just modernize the fleet based on second-hand tonnage and consolidation.
There's a lot of questions about geopolitics. I'll try to cover that in a broader sense because some of them are very specific. I think it's fair to cover this one in particular. What will your sort of estimation of impact be if it becomes safe again to sail through the Suez and also the Red Sea?
Yeah, I think, you know, once that happens, as I mentioned earlier, we think it is going to be neutral for the product tanker market because we lost a lot of volume when we went through the Cape of Good Hope. What we gained in longer distance, we lost in volume. Going back, there will be more volume moving, but shorter distance. For us, that will be a net zero gain. We don't see that as any real impact anymore. Our view is, and has always been, that we're not going to be the first ones to go through the Suez Canal until we know that area is 100% safe. For the time being, that's not how we evaluate it.
Perhaps a final question, Mikael. We're now in the middle of Q3, and you seem rather positive about the current developments. Normally, this is quiet quarters, right? What can you just give us a status on how you see the market right now?
Yeah, we see this, I mean, we see the market, as you say, surprisingly strong. If you look back historically and see how the product tanker market normally evolves, right? You see normally a strong Q1 fading off in Q2, a weak Q3, and then a strong Q4. What we're seeing this year is actually kind of slightly reversed. We're seeing more stability, and a s I mentioned earlier, which is good, it's a lot of different factors, it's slightly longer distances, low inventories coming into a fourth quarter eventually, but also a good demand situation around the world. More importantly, and I really think this is an important factor, is that the new builds coming into the market, the majority of those being LR2 vessels, have gone straight into crude. That has definitely helped as well. I think we're quite confident.
There's nothing really that changes our view here now on that. We're not advocating for it going to go back to where it was two years ago, but certainly these markets now seem to be pretty stable on these parameters.
Many thanks, Mikael. Can I thank you, Mikael, for attending this presentation? Thank you to the investors and viewers for attending, and thank you for your questions. If you have any wish to see the full presentation, you can find it on Hafnia's investor relations page. There's a lot more material than we covered today, so please find it there. Thank you very much.
Thank you.