Carry both wet and dry products. 2021 was a transformative year for the company, took delivery of its last CLEANBU and successfully implemented them into their combination trading. With that, I would like to introduce CEO Engebret Dahm.
Thank you, Marcus. We have a fleet of combination carriers that are both tankers and dry bulk vessels. We have two types, the CABU, which in tanker mode transport mainly caustic soda to the big alumina refineries. Our new CLEANBU, the last ship delivered in July last year, which are all can do all type of liquid cargos and most of the capacity currently in the tanker market into the clean petroleum trade. Both ship types can transport any type of dry bulk commodities. Our business is to transport tanker cargos into regions that are big exporters of dry bulk commodities. East Australia is a good example. We transport caustic soda and clean petroleum products southbound, and we combine it with dry bulk commodities northbound with a very high efficiency.
Only 10% of the round trip is in ballast. We compete against standard Kamsarmax dry bulk vessels that are ballasting all the way from the Far East to Australia to fetch a cargo of dry bulk commodities, having 40%-45% of the capacity trading empty. Similarly, the product tankers have the opposite trading pattern, going southbound, but they also have long ballasts, especially after discharging the cargo in Australia, having 30% of the time in ballast. Our high efficiency leads to three factors. One, we have more earning days than the standard ships. Secondly, we have far lower fuel consumption per ton transported. Thirdly, we get the positive benefit of increasing fuel prices. As the freight for standard ships compensates standard owners for increasing fuel prices, we get an overcompensation due to our efficiency.
The value creation of our company is in three main factors. Firstly, we provide the lowest carbon emission shipping solution in the tanker space. Our customers can cut carbon emission by 30%-40% overnight by replacing the standard ships with our fleet. Going forward, our strategy is to improve this quite unique competitive advantage that we have. We believe by maximizing the energy and operational efficiency of the fleet is a winning recipe in a world with strict environmental regulations and likely higher fuel costs for the shipping industry as an effect of these regulations. We are working across our business. We are improving the trading efficiency of our fleet. The operational efficiency, we just before Christmas introduced a big energy efficiency program we add to even our most modern ships.
We're also planning for the future through testing out new type of fuels. We know that shipping, commodity shipping is not for the fainthearted, and especially so looking at over the last two years with the pandemic and now lately the tragic and sad situation in Ukraine. The second value creation of our company is the lower volatility of earnings compared to the standard markets. We achieve that partly through having three markets where our earnings derive from. We have dry market, tanker market, and also the fuel market.
Looking at the benefit, taking out the Kamsarmax earnings back from spring of 2020, they were hit by the pandemic in the early part, increasing up to October last year, falling back again, and now seeing a positive effect of the recent effect in the in Ukraine situation. Just the opposite development we see for product tankers. Here we see the boom back in the spring of 2020 and a very sad and weak performance ever through second half of 2020 and 2021. We are seeing quite a tightening of the market over the recent weeks. The same with the fuel prices.
We see the fuel prices have increased from $200 per ton back in May 2020 up to $1,000 per ton this week. Being that diversified, we can afford to have a lower contract coverage. The risk profile of our two businesses are different. Our CABU are industrially based in the tanker market, exposed in a more stable MR tanker market. We have a high proportion of fixed rate contracts, 60% for the remaining part of this year. The CLEANBU are trading in a more volatile LR1 tanker market. We have index-linked contracts, but we are 100% exposed to the market. On average for the fleet, we are at 25% coverage in the tanker market.
In the dry bulk market, we are 100% in either spot or in index-linked contracts, but we do some hedging in the derivative markets. Including what we have fixed for the second quarter, we have 33% coverage for the remaining part of 2022. We also manage risk by having a strong balance sheet. Our target is to have more than 40% equity ratio. It fell back during 2021 due to the delivery of several newbuilds.
We also have a strong cash situation, which has improved in the second half of last year due to sale of one vessel and also the effect of a small equity raise. The last value contribution of our company is our ability to more or less consistently overperform standard tankers and dry bulk vessels. Looking here on the development over the last 10 years, we see KCC average earnings in the blue columns compared to the dry bulk market earnings, the Capesize and Panamax earnings in gray and the product tanker market in dark blue. We see that every year we have substantially overperformed both the tankers and the dry bulk, with exception of the dry bulk market in 2021 for several reasons.
Taking the average from 2016- 2021, we have outperformed the standard markets by 1.5%-1.6%. Over the last six months, we have worked to improve further our business. In the CABU segment we are concentrating the business now on Australia after selling our oldest CABU. We have succeeded to increase the contract portfolio substantially over the year, meaning we can absorb the whole CABU fleet into this market. This move will increase earnings and improve our environmental performance further. The last CLEANBU asset was delivered and put into service in July last year, and since then we have continued to expand the trading pattern.
The main areas for business for us is Australia and South America. This map just shows how we are the main trades we have. The main success factor for the second half is our ability to get our ships into the efficient combination trading, which is where we earn our money, and it's where we succeed to substantially outperform on the environmental side. In medium blue color, you see how we have increased the share of our capacity in the combination trade from more close to doubling it from first half of 2020 up to the second half of 2021. You also see the effect on the efficiency of operation, that we managed from first half of last year to second half to halve the ballast percentage.
The effect of this we see on earnings. Here we see the average time charter earnings of our fleet. Of course, positive benefit from the strong dry market, but as well important benefit of increased efficiency of our fleet. The earnings back in fourth quarter of $23,600 per day is outperforming the standard tanker markets by close to $3,000 but are somewhat below the dry market this quarter. The guidance we have given for the first quarter is $20,500-$21,500 per day, which is outperforming the standard tankers by more than $2,000 and will match and likely outperform the standard dry bulk ships in the quarter. Also on the earnings side, here is the adjusted EBITDA.
We see we had some bad quarters in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021, as we took delivery of several new builds and a lot of upfront cost for these new builds, as well as heavy COVID-19 effects on our fleet. We are pleased to see the positive development in the adjusted EBITDA over the second half, and we see the same on the earnings before tax, where we had a record high $15.1 million result in the fourth quarter. Adjusting for sales gain and some extraordinary effects, the results were $7.3 million that quarter. We have, since putting the company on OTC and listing the company in May 2019, paid dividends every quarter.
We are pleased to see here that we, for the fourth quarter, increased dividends by up to $0.10 per share, which gives a yield of roughly 7% on the current share price. Our policy is to pay 80% of the adjusted cash flow as dividends. As you see from this graph, we try to keep the dividends fairly stable while of course quarterly results go up and down. That also is a guidance to you that the level we have established now for the fourth quarter, we expect to deliver that for the coming quarters, hopefully improve it. To summarize, when we went into 2022, before the situation in Ukraine, we had two strong markets, the dry market and the fuel market.
We were expecting that the tanker market would recover over this year. What has happened now with the situation in Ukraine, we of course see a positive immediate effect of this tragic and sad situation. As mentioned, we believe that the effects will be stronger in the tanker market than in the other markets. Of course, the risks are high. We are in uncharted territory. I believe that the way we have set up our company by having the diversification through three different markets, we have the underlying efficient trading pattern based on fixed rate and index-linked contracts. We have a strong balance sheet.
I think we are well positioned to weather the storm and to take benefit of all the opportunities that may be there in what is looking to be a fairly volatile and maybe difficult year. To summarize, our business, we believe it's future-proof and also more profitable than the standard tankers and dry bulk. Firstly, we provide the lowest carbon emission shipping solution, which we are certain will become more and more important going forward. Secondly, we have lower risks, lower earnings volatility than the standard markets, and that will be quite beneficial in the market, the year we have ahead of us. We have and we will deliver higher earnings than the standard markets. Thank you.