Good morning and welcome to Höegh Autoliners' fourth quarter presentations. My name is My Linh Vu, Head of Investor Relations, and with me today we have our CEO, Andreas Enger, and our CFO, Espen Stubberud. We will walk you through the business and financial updates of the last quarter. If you have any questions, please send an email to our investor relations mailbox at ir@hoegh.com, and we will take it up at the end of the presentation, and with that, I will leave the stage to you, Andreas.
Thank you, My Linh.
Yes, welcome to a presentation of another strong quarter from Höegh Autoliners. I'm going to go through some highlights, a little bit on the market before Espen Stubberud for the first time will present our financials. $181 million of Adjusted EBITDA makes up another very good quarter, $138 million of net profit, a gross rate above $100, marking a period of record high rates, dividends of $90 million for the fourth quarter, which makes our total dividend payments in 2024 up to $841 million or $4.4 per share. The Q4 number in isolation is consistent with our dividend policy of distributing surplus cash on a target cash balance. It's strongly impacted by an accelerated delivery of new builds, which we believe is quite good for us.
We have had three new builds delivered in the quarter, and with the new build program, we're now paid a total of $280 million in equity installments on new builds, which obviously goes out of our dividend capacity. We only have a net of $11 million left, meaning that we are fully funded on our new build program. We remain committed to our dividend policy of not accumulating cash, and we have a strong belief in a high dividend conversion also going forward. Equity ratio still very strong, but somewhat down, obviously, from adding vessels and debt with the three new builds and also making us now having four of the new Aurora Class vessels in operation and operating very well, which is a strength for our future.
The agenda of this is the normal brief market commercial update, touch on capacity, sustainability before you enter financial update and outlook. On the market side, we have had continued strong momentum with growing volumes out of Asia. We've continued to increase our contract share, and it's in Q4 approached 80%. We've had record high contracting development in the quarter, and we also have the highest net rate on record, strengthened by also a strong contract portfolio. Slight reduction in High and Heavy break bulk coming out of the very high contracting activity also on new vehicles. Our contracting situation, our contract backlog has been substantially transformed through the quarter. We now have contract coverage above, actually, our 80% target, both for 2025 and 2026. We have an average duration on contracts of three and a half years.
I also want, just because there's a little bit of confusion on our terms of contract and spot, where our definition is fairly strict in the sense that unless we do have pricing and volumes committed with clients, we call it spot, meaning that also a lot of our spots are covered by rate agreements and something that you could call contracts. I think it's also important to note that 60% of what we define as spot is High and Heavy break bulk cargo, which is cargo that traditionally held sort of high, strong rates through the cycle. I think the most important thing here is a total transformation of our contracting backlog and portfolio, fully in line with our strategy, in the same way as we held back in the beginning of the cycle to make sure that we were able to reprice appropriately.
We're now at a stage where we believe that having a stronger backlog and relying more on long-term contracts is a commercially sound way to balance our portfolio. And we've done that, as I said, more successfully this fourth quarter than I think any time in the history of the company. Market-wise, I think it's the same history as always. Steady growth in Deep Sea, new car volumes driven by Chinese exports.
I think if I should make one market comment for the quarter we're actually into this year, it's that we've been somewhat surprised by the speed and the ability of our Chinese customers to shift their product mix from EVs to hybrid cars in response to tariffs in Europe, just I think illustrating some comments we made earlier that it seems more likely that those tariffs will delay the electrification of the European car pool rather than necessarily curbing Chinese exports, which I think you'll also already see in the automotive numbers. And so that's maybe a sort of change on the market side. Although it doesn't affect volume, it does affect the sort of the products that are actually on board our vessels. High and Heavy is stable in 2025 in our expectations. We see growth trends. It is continued to be an important segment for us.
We have taken down the share slightly because of the attractiveness of the automotive market. We are adding vessels with market-leading High and Heavy break bulk capacities, and it's obviously a strong priority on our commercial activities. Capacity is we are now in the middle of sort of the delivery cycle of new builds. 2025 is going to be the year with most deliveries. We have a robust position in the sense that we have come quite far with four of our vessels in operation, three, four more coming within a little more than the next year. We are getting our capacity renewals and vessels that operate extremely well. We also see that the kind of slightly more balanced market is affecting charter rates, which we generally consider as positive for our operation. We have a strong contract backlog.
We've had several years now where we've been unable to use the charter market to balance our system, which comes at a cost. And we're now seeing an evolution that allows us to a larger degree to use the charter market also to balance our system, which is positive for our operating structure and our ability to deliver a strong product. We're also starting to see the impact of our strong commitment to reducing our carbon emissions. Obviously, it requires CapEx. It comes gradually, but we're now seeing a substantial decrease that will continue and accelerate with delivery on new builds.
The new builds and the Aurora Class is a very important part of that, having 58% lower carbon emission out of yard than an average car carrier and having the potential going all the way to zero, and we will get the first zero carbon capable vessels already in 2027. It's important to say that we also have a comprehensive technical upgrade program. We've had, actually, we had 11 dry dockings in 2024, all covered or including substantial technical upgrades for fuel efficiency and economy and carbon footprint reduction. Obviously, also some CapEx associated with it that is with our dividend policy taking out of our dividend capacity. It's also a situation where we sort of have taken large investments in 2023, 2024. 2025, we will only have six dry docks.
We are sort of coming into a slower pace, but on the environmental side, every dry docking is covering also a substantial technical upgrade to improve performance and fuel consumption and emission on our existing fleet. That ends the first part, and I would then leave it to Espen to take us through the financials in some more detail.
Thank you, Andreas. Good morning. Turning to the financials, our volume in the fourth quarter came in at 3.5 million CBM . Our volume in 2024 has been relatively stable. Comparing to the fourth quarter 2023, volumes were meaningfully higher, but that was before we decided not to transit through Red Sea. So we've basically been sold out this year, and capacity hasn't constrained any further growth.
Looking at the rate side, I think when our market started to tighten back in 2021 and going into 2022, spot pricing went up quickly. But the key driver for increased net rates over the last couple of years has been renewal of our contract backlog. And as Andreas already mentioned, we have record high net rates in the second half of 86.7. So the top line is driving our EBITDA and net profit. We've seen increased revenue throughout the year, which is also then reflected in the EBITDA result. Very stable operating result and also stable EBITDA margin, just about 50% coming to the end of the year.
Net profit is a bit more fluctuating, and then it's worth reminding that in the fourth quarter in 2023, we had gains from selling one vessel included, and in the third quarter 2024, we had two vessels included in the net profit, which is explaining the quarter-on-quarter drop of 28% into the fourth quarter. Turning to the EBITDA waterfall, it's relatively flat, as already mentioned. We saw some increased revenue from the second to the third quarter based on increased rates, and then higher revenues based on higher volumes mainly into the fourth quarter. We've seen somewhat lower fuel prices and also lower consumption, which has also had a positive impact to EBITDA. We have a robust balance sheet. Net interest-bearing debt was up $326 million as a consequence of the three Aurora vessels that we took delivery of and also paying out dividend, as Andreas mentioned.
Still, our net debt- to- EBITDA is below one, and equity ratio at healthy 56%. We ended the year with $208 million in cash. Then we also have undrawn facilities of $211 million, so total liquidity reserve is $419 million. Fourth quarter, another strong quarter with strong cash generation. We had $184 million from operating activities. Then we had negative $9 million related to dry docks and vessel upgrades. Then we have negative $21 million related to investing activities, which was installments in new builds. We had high CapEx with $230 million in the quarter paid for new building installments, and we drew $209 million in debt. Then we had normal mortgage and lease payments, and we paid out a dividend of $245 million in the quarter, which included the net proceeds from selling of two vessels. Turning to the balance sheet, quarter on quarter, it has increased by 4%.
We have added the three new builds, and worth pointing out that the two latest new builds are on the balance sheet as owned vessels and with interest-bearing debt. Interest-bearing debt was up $198 million. Adjusting equity book value to the market value of our fleet, we get the value-adjusted equity per share of NOK 138 . As already mentioned, we are very happy to pay it out $841 million during 2024 and another $90 million to be paid out in March. Back to you, Andreas.
Yes, thank you. Then the only thing remaining is some brief comments on the outlook. Starting with repeating, we have now the strongest contract backlog ever following a very strong contract signing activity throughout 2024, but particularly in the fourth quarter. The volume in Q1 is expected to be in line with recent quarters following what we call a sort of normal seasonal slowdown in the beginning of the year, and we expect volumes to gradually pick up also with new capacity and new contracts coming into operation. Delivery of new builds will gradually reduce the capacity pressure in our segment, but we expect the market to remain strong, and we have access to more volume than we can carry in our key trade lanes. We monitor the Red Sea situation continuously, and we do maintain contacts with all the relevant stakeholders.
We are still seeing uncertainty in that situation that we do not really see an immediate return, but as I said, things are developing and we're following it carefully. Lots of focus on geopolitical uncertainty and threats of new tariffs. Our direct exposure to the tariffs under discussion is fairly limited, but it's also important to obviously say that we are a business with our main purpose of facilitating global trade, and we are strong believers that that adds value and are obviously exposed to dramatic changes in global trades, but we are not seeing those signs for that, and I don't think it's meaningful to speculate about some other processes and discussions going on.
And as a result of, as I said, the sort of seasonally slow start to the year, which we also saw last year, we will have an expected Q1 result, which is slightly below the same quarter last year. So that concludes our presentation, and we are ready for questions, My Linh.
Yes, we have received a few questions during the webcast, and I can see that a lot of questions actually are referring to the same topic, so I can try to summarize these questions so the first question is about capacity and fleet planning. Do we have any plan for further new buildings, or do we have any plan for sales of ships in the future as a new building is coming in?
I mean, first, I think it's important to say that it's part of our business to continue to continuously assess our fleet structure and our assets, but I think we've also been quite clear that we have a new build program, adding 12 vessels, a market-leading capacity, also I think market-leading in size relative to our current operations. We are quite satisfied with that, so we have no immediate plans of additional new builds. I think it is fair to say, if we go back to the charter and the statistics, that we've been successfully able to sell some vessels in a strong market. I think with new builds coming and with the market balancing, we do not expect lots of opportunities for that, but I think we will obviously always review opportunities.
But we actually do not have immediate plans neither on additional new builds nor on additional vessel sales, but we do have, I think we commented on, an intention to work more actively with the charter market.
Thank you, Andreas. And the next question is about the contract and contract renewal. How is the sentiment and renegotiating contracts long-term contract with customers these days? How fixed is the volume and what is the risk with the long-term contracts we recently signed?
I've been extremely pleased with the sentiment in our contract discussions because we have had very good dialogues and processes with strong OEMs on major trade flows where their main interest is to get the robust cover for their transportation needs. We've had the benefit and the pleasure of taking on new volumes for new OEMs who either have new needs in new trade flows and also some that are less satisfied with existing arrangements and want new suppliers. So we've been able to build, I think we've renewed almost all the contracts we've got for renewal in good processes. We've also added contracts from beyond that on several important trades. We've been able to select and focus on contracts that fit well in our trade system.
So I think in overall, we are very pleased with that, and there's a strong interest in our customer base to basically create an industrial strong transportation product. And there are various degrees of commitments in contracts, but generally, we've been able to achieve more balanced contracts, more specific commitments than we've had before. So we are confident that we have a stronger contract backlog and a contracting base and a contract quality than we've actually ever had.
Thank you, Andreas. And the next question, the last set of questions is actually related to the macro picture. There has been some signs in this Red Sea opening. Red Sea may be open earlier than expected. And the next question is basically about what would be the effect of Red Sea opening for us as a business?
I think that is difficult to say because in some ways, it would add obviously more capacity and take away some capacity strains, but I think with our current contract portfolio, it would improve the efficiency on operation, and it would actually allow us to take more volume and cargo. So I think we are on the balance saying that, I mean, we would really want the Red Sea to open because it will improve the trade flows and the efficiency of our system. We think we have a contract situation and a contract volume that it will increase our ability to carry cargo. It will obviously also change the market balance over time and add to that, but we believe that that would be a good thing for us.
Thank you, Andreas. And the next question about tariff, just to resonate what Andreas has been already saying in the outlook sessions. Of course, tariff is in general not good for business, but so far our exposure is limited, and we continuously monitor the situation. The next question is about dividend policies. This is a question coming from our analyst, Per Øivind. What are your takes for the dividend policies to change? How do you see long-term with our dividend policy?
No, I don't. I mean, we don't really see any reason to change the dividend policy, and I think it's important to see where that comes from. As I said, we have created the balance sheet, and we have a financial structure on our new build program. So we do not have any CapEx plans that are not fully covered by committed financing. All of that financing has duration beyond 2030. A lot of it has duration five, six, seven years beyond that. So we have a very strong, very competitive financing structure. A lot of it also fixed income rates at times that are attractive relative to the current situation. So we have a financial situation that we believe is very robust. We do not have any additional CapEx plans.
We have taken in the last couple of years $280 million out of our dividend capacity to pay installments on new builds. It's $11 million left. So I think we are both confident that we have a strong dividend capacity and that we have a financial structure and most of all have fully funded CapEx plans that allow us to continue with a very high conversion ratio. So we do not really foresee any change in our dividend policy. You will see quarter-by-quarter fluctuation given that we have set a target for our cash balance and basically said that we pay out surplus. We don't want to accumulate cash. We pay out surplus cash.
There will be quarters like the fourth quarter where we take, or I don't think there will be another quarter where we take delivery of three vessels in a quarter actually, but where we have accelerated new build deliveries. On top of that, I think we basically also have spent almost $10 million on dry docks. We've had an intensive dry dock season, and we have an ambitious program on dry docking. But again, there were twice as many dry docks in 2024 than we will have in 2025. So that's also something that is leveling off. We have had a peak on dry dock activities in 2023 and 2024, which is sort of materializing in also adding new builds and selling old vessels is converting into a slightly lower activity in the next couple of years. So no, we are comfortable with our dividend policy.
I mean, the construction of the dividend policy means that there will be variations from quarter to quarter because it is cash-driven, but we're still committed to it.
Yes, I think that these are the main questions we receive for the webcast. Of course, if you have further questions, feel free to send an email to our Investor Relations mailbox at ir@hoegh.com, and we'll get back to you. Thank you very much for tuning in and watching, and we look forward to seeing you next time.