Welcome to the first quarter results presentation of Claromnis Combination Carriers. My name is Ingred Brattam. I'm the CEO of the company. And together with me, I have Lille Leonez, CFO. We will go through the questions after the presentation.
Please send in questions while we present on this webcast solution. So in our business, safety is priority number one. And in this time, COVID-nineteen times, especially the safety of our seafarers is important. We do whatever we can to ensure that there are no spread of the virus to our ships. We have made a number of precautionary measures to make sure this happens.
And we're pleased to see that through this quarter and to date, there have been no incidents on board the ships. The ships are operating fine, no without any problems, thanks to the dedication of our crew. Just to remind you who we are. We the KCC stands out in the standardized shipping world with unique solutions, which we have developed over time. We are the world leader in combination carriers, having 80% of the world fleet of combination carriers, including new builds.
We have two types of ships. We have the caboose. We have nine ships on water, which are servicing the alumina industry, transporting caustic soda one way and dry bulk the other way, competing against MR tankers in the caustic soda trade and dry bulk in the Panamax dry bulk in the dry bulk trade. We have three clean moves on water, the new generation of ships, which are full fledged LR1 tankers and the Kamsarmax bulk carrier at the same time. We have another five ships delivering over the next nine months.
Our concepts, which are combining wet and dry and efficient trading patterns, ensure that we are by far the most carbon efficient shipping solutions around today. We have set ambitions to improve further, to reduce emissions and energy consumption on our ships and improve operations and to reach the target of carbon neutral operation in 02/1930. The ability of our ships to load both dry and wet cargoes and switch between the markets makes that our ships are more flexible and has a more diversified earnings base than most other shipping segments. And we see we benefit that in a number of instances over the last year. Seeing in the third quarter with a very strong dry market, the switching between dry and wet made the earnings stand out.
And while the market fell into the first quarter, we substituted dry loading on one of our trades with a wet loading, which we have in our combi trades, the possibility we have, which increased earnings. And we also saw that coming into April, we fixed all our clean moves on time charters where as a tanker when the tanker market overshoot. So this shows again the flexibility the concepts have, which are extremely important in the volatile markets we have in the shipping world today. So again, pleased to present the results for the first quarter, the strongest quarter we've had in KCC since the company was established in 2018. We have earnings of the car boost and clean boost above $20,000 per day.
We have with the same fleet as in the fourth quarter, we have a 40% higher EBITDA, and we have a result of $4,300,000 in the first quarter. The extremely strong tanker market over the recent months, in our opinion, was short lived, which has shown to be the case. And we decided to utilize this short period of time to do whatever we can to fix earnings ahead in time. And we fixed, as mentioned, three ships on Clean Bus on time charter. We extended two contracts, cargo contracts and also sold FFAs derivatives ahead in time for the tanker market.
We're also pleased to see that with the conclusion or credit approval of the last finance facility of the Klindbus, our company is fully financed, including the issue of a new bond we did in January. And based on the positive results, the Board decided to triple the dividend payments to ZAR0.03 per share for the first quarter. The caboose are servicing, as mentioned, the alumina industry, and alumina is the intermediate product in aluminum production. As you know, the aluminum industry is hardly hit by the COVID-nineteen situation due to much less demand from auto industry, construction and aviation, for instance, meaning that there are a number of smelters that has been curtailed and production falling off. All our alumina refinery customers in Australia and Brazil are among the world's most cost efficient producers, and they are maintaining production at full production.
And from what we understand from our customers, there are no plans to reduce production on these plants. So that means that we are seeing on to the right of this slide, you're seeing the number of bookings of caustic soda cargoes. And we are seeing that in the first half of this year, we have managed to increase considerably from the second half and especially from the 2019, where we had the issues around the Alunorte refinery in Brazil. We are seeing that changes in the caustic soda market caused by the COVID-nineteen situation leads to regional price differences of caustic soda, which are supporting our main trades from FIS to and Middle East to Australia, meaning that we are confident that we can fill up the full capacity of the carbers in the caustic soda Kumbi trade for this year. So the results of twenty thousand two hundred and eighty three dollars per day in the second quarter, up by around $1,200 per day.
It's a very strong result. It is impacted by settlement of from one of the customers for underperformance in 2019 of about $800 per day impact. And the good results are part, as I mentioned, that we have more or less full utilization of the ships in our combi trades. Secondly, we did renew contracts at the 2019 at good levels. And it's also right to say that the results are negatively impacted by the poor dry market dry bulk market and the low the falling fuel prices.
Looking going over to the Clean Booth. The station of the Clean Booth are continuing and progressing well. We're seeing that during the quarter and year to date, we have increased the number of customers. We have substantially increased the number of terminals that we have called. And we're also pleased to see that we have doubled the number of dry to wet switches.
And we have reached a very important milestone in the quarter, where we have done the first switch between dry cargo and jet fuel, which is the most demanding type of wet commodity we transport. And that happened now in May in Japan after we completed discharge of grain cargo from South America to China. So this is a major milestone and shows that our ships are able to transport the most demanding CPP without any trace of carbon contamination. Looking at the Clean Bus, we have increased the share of the capacity in common trades in the first quarter. And but we have maintained one ship in as a tanker in the tanker trade to develop new trades and to increase the number of terminal acceptance.
The earnings in combi trade is very satisfactory over $24,000 per day, exceeding the earnings of standard Alla One tankers, while the earnings as a tanker is somewhat below and which is due to the fact that operating only one ship in the tanker market is not ideal. So the results of close to $21,000 per day for the first quarter is positive, and we are pleased to see again that we are getting good earnings in economy trade and twothree of the ships in economy capacity. Slightly underperforming the LR1 market, but more than 3x the earnings of standard triship. Looking on the operation of the ships. We are pleased to see that the off hire is minimal for the cleaners for the first quarter.
We are seeing that after a fairly demanding 2019 with a lot of guarantee works on especially the first ship, operation is strong. There will be some there one guarantee item remaining on ship number two and three, which will be made one for of the ships during the fourth quarter of the year and one ship during the first half of the year, which will impact Ofaya, but which will be covered as a guarantee item by the shipyard. The COVID situation at the shipyard and delays has impacted delivery of the remaining newbuilds. We expect Klindber four to be delivered in mid July and the remaining ships to be one to two months delayed. Also looking on the OpEx, we have had a good development.
The car builds are in line with expectations, about $7,100 per day, which is slightly above the year end target. The car boost has also come down substantially in operating costs from $10,300 per day in the fourth quarter, which included a number of start up costs down to close to $8,400 per day in the first quarter. The target for this year for the ships that are in operation, the three ships that were delivered last year, is about $8,100 per day, while we expect the new ships delivering to be higher due to start up costs. We have, as mentioned, high ambitions when it comes to decarbonizing our business. And we have a number of ongoing projects, including investing in the ships during the upcoming dockings of three year Cariboos.
And we also have number of initiatives to improve the operational efficiency to reduce carbon emissions per vessel and to improve the carbon efficiency further over ships. The individual KPIs for Bornkvoda isolated is difficult to make sense of. But as you see from the below, where you have the carbon efficiency to the left, which is the best ever at 7.2. The ballast is slightly up because of one positioning voyage from Far East to U. S.
With a lot of ballast, while the CO2 emission is up mainly due to calculation method reasons, which will be evened out further in the quarter as the quarters go. The COVID-nineteen situation is a big concern and a big risk for all businesses and which is, of course, particularly true for a volatile business like the shipping. We're seeing to the left seeing the in black is the Purchasing Management Index, a three month moving average, which is a good indicator for the industrial production, which is turning down quite dramatically in March, April, while we see the blue is the three months moving average for the Baltic Drynecks, which is bottoming out. So yet, we can't see any from this graph any, what you call, bottoming out of the macro cycle, But a number of indicators from everything from the coal consumption in China, which is the graph to the right, to the reported oil consumption figures for April and May, which shows that probably the trough in the world economy has been passed in April and May and that we are seeing the world economy restarting and improving. But there are, of course, uncertainty with respect to the to how fast and how long time it will take to get back to something which looks as a normal activity level.
In the tanker market, we have been through a spectacular boom in over the last two months, which is partly due to increased oil supply due to the Saudi Russian price war in combination with a dramatic fall in oil demand, which led to a cotango pricing for fuel, which again led to increased demand for floating storage for tankers, also quite a bit increase of congestion in ports as well as increased shipment volumes. The oil markets have normalized quicker than many expected. We are seeing the demand is picking up. We're seeing supply and production oil production and also refinery runs are decreasing quite a bit, which is again one of the reasons why the tanker market fell down quite dramatically over the last weeks. Still at the level which is good, but is we expect there to be downside in the tanker market coming into the second half as the destocking starts up and ships with on the floating storage will be released.
So we have used, as mentioned, the time over April to fix two contracts, carbon contracts, important carbon contracts, one for twelve months, one for three years, and which means that we have close to threefour of our capacity for the cargoes covered for the second half of the year and a little bit less than half of the capacity for first half of next year. You see in blue, you see the part which is fixed rate contracts, while the gray is the index linked contracts, which is then linked to the market. On the Clean Boost, we see that we also are fully fixed for the first for the second quarter. For the second half, we have, including the FFAs we have sold, we have covered around 60% of the financial exposure of the CleanBoost for the second half. For the first half next year, we have fairly limited coverage, but we have some time charter coverage and some FFAs.
The dry market had a strong quarter in the third quarter, fell back through the fourth quarter and into the first quarter as seasonally normal. While we didn't get the pickup after Chinese New Year due to COVID-nineteen situation and the strong, what you call, disruption in the world production industrial production due to COVID-nineteen situation. We are as the forward market, which is illustrated here on the graph to the left, shows there's optimism that the dry market will recover somewhat over the next quarters, partly due to increased expected increased shipments of iron ore from Brazil, stimulated by Chinese positive stimulant packages. So we there are also the grain season from U. S.
Coming up after the summer, which should have a positive impact. So in our business, we have we are only hatching dry markets at fairly high levels. We are more or less fixed for second quarter. We have one shipment left to be fixed for the second quarter. For the second half, we have about onethree of the capacity fixed in terms of rates.
While we are operationally wise, we are about 40% covered. The levels we have covered are at good levels, good earnings, well above $10,000 per day, which were made partly in August the 2018 and partly in the 2019. So Lee then, I leave it to you to go through the figures in more detail.
Thank you and good morning everyone. Q1 was impacted by our fleet in full operation, efficient combination trading and support from a strengthening tanker market during the quarter. Net revenues ended at $22,400,000 up approximately 20% compared to the previous quarter and up from $13,300,000 in Q1 last year. Operating expenses and SG and A quite stable over the last quarters. Hence, we had ended at a strong EBITDA for the quarter adjusted of $12,900,000 That's 40% higher than last quarter and up from $4,700,000 in Q1 last year.
Depreciation also quite stable over the last quarters, while net finance cost increased by approximately $1,400,000 The main reason for this is the repurchase of the KCC-three bond and the corresponding settlement of the swap. In total, 900,000.0 in one offs. We also saw US20000 higher interest rate costs related to higher bond debt. In addition, we had some negative FX effects for the quarter. EBT, hence, ended at $4,300,000 up from $1,700,000 last quarter and negative $800,000 in Q1 twenty nineteen.
This corresponds to $09 per share. I would also like to mention that we, from January 1 year, has accounted for all financial derivatives as hedge accounting, which means that the value change of these derivatives, the unrealized value change, will be part of the other comprehensive income going forward. We will hence see less volatility in the financial results going over P and L. When comparing EBITDA in Q1 this year compared to Q1 last year, we saw an improvement of $7,600,000 CABO net revenues, up $3,500,000 mainly due to a much higher caustic soda volume, which again implies more combination trading. The rate per day was up $4,200 per day.
Klimbu net revenues up $5,600,000 which of course relates mainly to two additional vessels in operation. The rate per day was up $10,000 per day. However, we took delivery of the first Klimbe vessel in January, which impacted that quarter. We had off hire related to the delivery, and we did not start combination trading for that vessel until later that year. Operating expenses, up $1,800,000 also related to or mainly related to two additional Klieve vessels.
All in all, EBITDA for the quarter, dollars 12,900,000.0, driven the change driven by higher caustic soda volumes and the two additional vessels. When comparing to the previous quarter, we see an improvement of 40%, dollars 3,700,000.0. Cabo net revenues, up $1,000,000 Rates are up $1,300 per day. This is mainly based on more combi trading. We only had, as mentioned earlier, one positioning voyage for the Kabu vessels this quarter that do not qualify for combination trading.
Klimbu net revenues, up $2,500,000 rates per day, up $2,200 per day. OpEx and SG and A, quite stable. As mentioned earlier, for the quarter, we had both segments delivered earnings per day about $20,000 per day. We saw much higher combination trading compared to last quarter, up from 80% to 92% for the Kabi vessels and from 58% to 68% for the Klime vessels. In addition, we only had nine off hire days for the entire fleet in Q1.
We have two main funding events this quarter, as Engie Brett mentioned in the start of the presentation. As mentioned earlier, we have refinanced the KCC03 bond. We repurchased or close to $160,000,000 in Q1, and we issued a new bond, five year bond of NOK500 million. We are very pleased with the timing of this issue when we see the situation that the world is in today. And also, we were able to get a fifty percent fifty bps lower margin.
The bond was listed on Oslo Stock Exchange on Monday. We have also obtained credit approval for the bank financing of the last two Klime vessels being delivered next year. This is subject to final documentation, but we estimate to close the transaction within the end of Q2. So all in all, we are fully funded. We have a limited refinancing risk over the next years.
Over to some balance sheet key financials. Equity ratio down from 47% at the end of the year to 43% by the end of Q1, mainly due to higher interest bearing debt and also some negative impact on equity due to unrealized value changes of derivatives of, in total, dollars 8,500,000.0. Equity, hence, decreased by $4,600,000 Cash and cash equivalents, up $21,000,000 based on a strong EBITDA and also higher interest bearing debt. We have paid newbuilding costs of $10,300,000 for the quarter. And in addition to other regular cash flow items, we paid cash collateral of $2,900,000 related to negative value on the cross currency interest rate swaps related to the bond debt.
This is down to approximately $500,000 today. Return on capital employed, up from 4% on an annualized basis from Q4 to 8% in Q1. If we adjust for capital related to the newbuilding program, of course, this would have been even higher. Dividends up from $01 per share to $03 per share in total approximately $1,500,000 and in line with our dividend policy. So all in all, we delivered a strong financial result for the quarter.
We have a solid financial position. We we have a fully funded newbuilding program, and we continue to pay dividends. Thank you.
So to wrap it up, outlook for KCC despite the current difficult macro situation and the COVID-nineteen situation is positive. First quarter was a strong quarter, and we are very pleased with the quarter, but we expect the second quarter to be even stronger. Based on the bookings, have made on both on the carbus and the clean bus. We are more or less fully booked now for the remaining part of the quarter, So we are pleased to increase the guiding for the carbon earnings from the $17,000 per day we gave at the end of the first when we made the presentation in early April, up to 19,000 to $20,000 per day for today, the update. When it comes to the clean moves, based on fixtures we have made, we expect earnings of between 28,000 and $29,000 per day in the second quarter.
Looking ahead for the second half of the year, due to the decreasing weaker tanker market, we expect earnings to fall back slightly. But we have based on the strong bookings we have of contracts and time charters and also an expected improvement in the dry market, we expect also second half of the year to be a healthy year for the company. In this difficult world economy, having a diversified risk base and high degree of efficiency is important. So with the basis we have with being a fully financed company and with a good contract coverage, we believe we are probably more than most shipping companies robust for whatever comes in the effects of the COVID-nineteen situation. So with that, we are ready to take questions.
So Linda, do we have any questions?
We have one question. You have previously aimed to exercise multiple of the remaining four options for clean blue newbuilds. Subject to the company being able to secure equity financing. Have you changed your view on these options following the recent market turbulence?
I think we are as we have said, we are dependent on raising new capital to fund new builds. And that means that as the market looks today, we are not going to declare these options in the short term. But luckily, we have four options, which we have which are going the next one is exercisable in October, and then we have another two options in after the New Year. So we believe it makes sense for the company, assuming that we get the repricing of our shares, to grow the fleet further. But again, are no immediate plans for the next months to declare options.
The next question. Can you say anything about the size of the new financing commitment for the two last new buildings?
Lee, will you take that?
Yes. It's in line with existing financing of the Klimbus, so it's approximately $30,000,000 per vessel and the same approximately the same profile, and it's a five year tenure.
That looks like that's it.
That's it? Okay. Thank you for participating. And please reach out if you have further questions at Inter. Thank you.