Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Klaveness Combination Carriers Capital Markets Day. My name is Haley, and I am the Head of Corporate Communications at Klaveness. We are so pleased to have all of you here at our headquarters here in Oslo, and also welcome to everyone who is joining online, so this is a milestone moment for KCC, as it is the first time that we are hosting a Capital Markets Day, and we are really looking forward to giving you a deeper look into our long-term strategy, as well as kind of tell you a bit more about who we are and how we think, so as you'll see from the slide behind me, we have a packed agenda today.
You'll hear from several members of the KCC management team, as well as some external panelists that will come on and speak during panel sessions in a couple of the sessions today, and also, if you're staying for the lunch, which I hope you do, there will be a CABU III newbuild presentation that will happen during the lunch so you won't want to miss that. You'll also notice that we have a Q&A scheduled towards the end of the program so if there's time permitted in some of the individual programs or individual presentations, then we will take a few questions but otherwise, we will designate them all towards the end. Okay, and for those of you joining online, you can use the chat button at the bottom right-hand side of the screen to submit questions and hopefully, we'll get to most of them during the Q&A session.
Okay, with that, I think we can go ahead and get started. Our first session today is called Redefining Shipping: Proven Performance, Clear Strategy, and Sustainable Growth. So welcome, CEO Engebret Dahm.
Thank you, Haley. Again, welcome to all of you to this Capital Markets Day. It's our first, as Haley was saying. We hope that you will learn more about what we're doing, how we are improving our business every day, and how we can possibly grow it going forward. Our business, the core of what we do, is to develop and to run shipping solutions that give large efficiency gains to our customers and to the maritime supply chain. We have developed over the years two concepts. We have our CABUs. We have our CLEANBUs. That are unique shipping solutions that are both tankers and dry bulk vessels. Their claim to fame when it comes to efficiency comes mainly from the fact that they are able to solve large efficiency problems in international shipping today. Some may say large waste in today's shipping.
There are large regional imbalances in trade, which leads to standard ships sailing long distances without any cargo on board, sailing so-called ballast. Our solutions, we combine our ships, combine the ships, the cargoes that are transported by standard tankers and standard dry bulk vessels with minimum time going empty, going in ballast. That leads to we transport more cargoes. We have far lower fuel and carbon emission per tonne transport. This is common sense efficiency improvements. The main part of the efficiency improvements that we deliver, in fact, are due to the fact we have dared to deviate from the standards in the international shipping markets. Shipping is very much standardized, and our fleet competes against 2,200 standard MR and LR1 pure tankers and close to 3,000 standard Panamax, Kamsarmax, dry bulk vessels. They all look alike. Our ships are unique.
There are 24 combination carriers existing in the world, including new builds, and 19 of them are ours, so combination carriers is not a new concept. If you look back on this graph showing the deliveries of combination carriers, large fleets of combination carriers were at the time called OBOs, or Ore-Bulk-Oil carriers, that were delivered during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, but as you see from the graph, very few combination carriers have been built since the mid-1990s, and you may ask why, and the main reason for this was the fact that oil companies introduced strict requirements after a number of accidents with transportation of oil in the 1990s. Someone remember maybe Exxon Valdez, so what happened was that oil companies, their association called OCIMF, introduced the so-called SIRE system. That introduced rigorous inspections and transparency and performance of oil tankers and combination carriers.
Actually, the combination carriers at the time didn't live up to the standards that the industry required, the way they operate, the way they maintain, the way they were built. In KCC, we have maintained, and Klaveness, we have maintained our dedication to combination carriers ever since. We have a strong belief in this solution. And if you look closely at the graph, you see that we have built ships throughout the time. We have operated ships throughout the time. And most of the ships that have been delivered over the last 25 years are built by us. And we also believe that there's a possibility to expand this business going forward. The potential is not anywhere close to what you saw in the fleets that were in the 1970s and 1980s. But the trigger is their efficiency and the value that provide.
We believe this efficiency will be increasingly important in the years to come. Partly, it's linked to fuel cost, because the value efficiency is higher the higher the fuel costs are. That was actually the problem looking back in the 1970s and 1980s. The shipping industry had fuel costs for many, many years below $100 per tonne. Look at the graph. Over the last 20 years, we have had fuel costs between $300 and $800 per tonne. We believe that as the shipping industry, despite the headwinds we are seeing lately, will need to decarbonize over the coming years, fuel costs are likely to increase further. We saw that IMO was close to introduce the Net- Zero Framework one and a half months ago. It may be delayed. It may be diluted. The industry needs incentives to carry through the decarbonization.
And the best incentives go for carbon taxes that add to the fuel cost of shipping. So hence, the industry likely is facing higher fuel costs and efficiency pace. The efficiency we can deliver pace. And that's why we believe we can expand this going forward. But I will have to say to you, it's not an easy task. It's not easy to introduce non-standard solutions in a very standardized market. And what we have, but we have shown over the last years throughout the history of Klaveness, and since we put the company on IPO in 2019, that it is possible. If you have the internal competency, commercial and technical, and you have the stamina to keep going and to convince customers that the reason prevails, that quality can be delivered with non-standard solutions, it is possible.
And if we take a short look back at what we have achieved since listing in 2019, we had the traditional cargo business. We have made it better. We were operating in both Brazil and Australia. We focused on Australia. We have substantially improved our market share. We have renewed the fleet and partly expanded it. And for the old ships, with the press release we sent out yesterday, we hope we can keep them going for a couple of years longer. We have, contrary to what I think 99% of the industry thought, we have managed to introduce successfully the CLEANBU fleet, based on strong technical and commercial performance, which is now widely accepted throughout the industry. And we have established ourselves as a market leader when it comes to low carbon shipping, being in the front of introducing innovative energy efficiency measures and operational energy efficiency measures.
We believe this will become more and more important going forward. Throughout the period, we have delivered shareholder value. We have delivered strong dividend distributions. As, I think, the only tanker and dry bulk company, we have delivered dividends every quarter since 2009, since the IPO in 2019, paid out $228 million in dividends. That has partly due to the way the market has been moving, but also performance through the share price appreciation and dividends, having high total shareholder returns. At the same time, we have managed to strengthen our balance sheet, having capacity internally to do part of the renewal and expansion that we hope will come. This year, we have used extensive time to develop the strategy for the next five years. We are now at the end of the first strategy period after we got the IPO.
We have challenged everything we do based on thorough analysis of our performance and based on how we see the world going forward. And the strategy headline is redefining efficiency and sustainability in shipping, in tanker and dry bulk shipping. Just underlying our belief that efficiency and sustainability will continue to be important and be even more important. And the main target is very much a continuation of what we have been doing for the last five, six years. We believe that we, based on what we have achieved on CLEANBUs, we can grow this business over the coming years, very close to have the trade and the customer support where we can actually grow it. Secondly, with the delivery of the third generation CABUs now in next year, with the likely change in the trade pattern, we believe we can diversify the trading regions of the CABUs.
That could be synergies with the CLEANBUs. And hopefully, we can also succeed to expand the cargo business. We continue to have a target to develop new combination carrier solutions. It takes time. There's a lot of things that need to be in place. But we have worked a lot on it. And we hope that that will be possible over the next years. As mentioned, we are very much committed and are strong believers that decarbonization is necessary. And by strengthening our capabilities in this respect, we will improve further our competitive advantage. But we'll have to do it in a smart way, with the headwinds we are seeing in the industry and the delayed implementation of global regulations. And to our shareholders, we will prioritize shareholder returns. We will have the discipline and focus on the medium and long-term value creation for our shareholders.
And again, as the headline of the video, to give our shareholders the best risk-adjusted return in shipping. So that ends up my introduction. And I think we are ready to go to the next step. So Haley, you would introduce that part.
Great. Thank you, Engebret. Okay. Is this the mic on? Can you hear? Okay. Oh, there it is. Okay. The next session is our decarbonization session. Let's get to the slide here. Yeah, here we go. It is called Leading Smart: Turning Emissions Goals into Business Gains. So the first part will be a panel discussion with Helene Tofte, who is the Executive Director and Department of International Cooperation and Climate at the Norwegian Shipowners' Association. And the other panelists will be Martin Wattum, who is the Head of Energy and Operational Efficiency at KCC. And Liv Dyrnes, the CFO and Deputy CEO, will be moderating the panel. Welcome.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and welcome, Helene. Thank you for joining us today and giving us some insights on what's going on on the decarbonization regulations. So just to give a short background, in April, IMO agreed on a Net- Zero Framework regulating the GHG intensity of fuel consumed by shipping, and then in October, they were supposed to vote on whether to adopt the framework or not, and actually, we were quite confident before summer and into August as well that this would actually happen, and I think the Norwegian Shipowners' Association thought the same, but then things changed, so in October, Helene, what happened?
Well, thank you. And a very good morning to everyone. Yeah, it was a meeting quite unusual for the IMO. And just to put this into some perspective, when the IMO meet, there are 180 countries that are to agree on regulations for shipping. So the good part about that is that if you manage to agree, you have regulated a global industry, and everybody has to adhere to the same regulations. But obviously, it takes some time to get there. But there was an important breakthrough back in 2023, actually, in which the IMO decided on the climate targets. And then the work since summer 2023 has to come up with a regulation that would take us to those targets, which include shipping being net- zero in 2015.
And as you were saying, in April this year, we had sort of the first voting on the Net-Z ero Framework, which was a positive one. And there was a majority in favor of the framework. Already then, it became clear that the U.S. was not in support of this framework. Back in 2023, they had been sort of one of the leading countries negotiating this through and sort of pushing to have a common framework. But it became obvious with the new president and with the new authorities in D.C. that they were not in favor of this. And the work to stop this from being finally adopted escalated throughout the summer. So I think most countries, most IMO states, including us, after April, were quite certain that this would come true and that there would be a 2/3 majority in favor of these regulations in October.
But when it came sort of when we came closer to the meeting, it became very obvious that the U.S. was very strongly against this. They were escalating their work to stop this from happening. And they gained more and more support for their position. I think it's true to say that a lot of what happened was not about shipping as such. It was about geopolitics. It was about how the world looks like right now. But at the same time, we also have to acknowledge that also within the industry, there were different views on the Net- Zero Framework. There has been a lot of writings about what happened and sort of the drama that took place throughout these days. So I don't think I have to go into details. But as you were saying, it ended up with a postponement of the whole process.
There were a clear majority to postpone the whole process, meaning that we will not pick up on sort of the Net- Zero Framework before October 2026.
But will it happen in October? Or will there be a vote next year? Or what will happen? Is everything up in the air? Will member states start to renegotiate the framework itself? What do you think?
We don't know yet. We don't know yet. I think it's very hard to see the Net- Zero Framework being voted through in a year, and the reason why I'm saying that is that the opposition was so strong at the end of the meeting, and also from the U.S. side, there have been statements after the 17th of October saying that if we try to do this again, we will vote it down one more time, so I think it's very hard the way the world looks right now, it's very hard to see this being voted through in October, but what will happen, we don't know, and I think all sort of the major IMO member states are sort of trying to come together, try to find a way forward, but how that way forward would look like, we don't know yet.
I don't think anyone knows yet how that will look like.
What about you, Martin? Because you talk to a lot of shipping companies. You primarily maybe talk to the ones that are believers, such as us, right? Maybe you have a skewed view on this. Anyway, you talk to a lot of suppliers as well, providing decarb or energy-saving devices. What's the take in the industry? How has this impacted the industry?
I think for many shipowners, if you're able to calculate against a coming regulation that has a cost introduction, then you can make a business case of energy efficiency measures. And now, without those regulations coming in, you see many forward-leaning owners are waiting a bit because it's difficult to defend the investment case. But you also see others that this will come. We will still go ahead. Or they also trade in regions where we have regulations in place today, where there is a financial gain to invest in emission savings. So it is a bit of a mix. Of course, when you talk with suppliers of these technologies, let's say wind-assisted propulsion companies, there are 25 of them. They are saying that, okay, it was a bit of a breather, but we expect next year to be still a busy year. Let's see.
But what they say is also that the more regional trading owners are still there to buy this technology. So it's a bit hesitant.
But the hurdle is maybe higher, but there's still a lot you can do based on the technology that is there today as well. And of course, trading efficiency and more operational stuff as well.
Yeah.
But what about you mentioned you have some regional regulations already? And if IMO does not adopt this framework next year, we might see more regional regulations, maybe. Or what is your take on that?
Yeah, unfortunately, I think that could be a consequence of this. And what we've sort of been saying to our members, including you, including Klaveness, is, of course, that not having the Net- Zero Framework in place means that you will not have the certainties that the industry's asked for, knowing what the regulation will look like going forward. Other consequences is we believe that we will have to live with the EU regulation for longer. The EU ETS and the FuelEU Maritime was supposed to be harmonized with the IMO regulations. Now, when we don't have any IMO regulations in place, we have to prepare that we have to live with the EU regulation for longer. And also, unfortunately, a consequence of this could very well be that you see other regions, other nations coming up with their own emission trading schemes or similar schemes.
And we see that happening already in African countries. We hear talks about China, Turkey, etc. So it will be interesting to see what happens. And sort of the longer the whole process drags on in the IMO to get something in place, that could be a consequence, of course.
But I think you said "unfortunately." But I think if there is not, of course, we all prefer a global where we're all on the same regulations. But if that doesn't happen, isn't it better that there are regional regulations instead of nothing, or?
We still believe in regulation or regulations through the IMO. And that's sort of what we've been tasked to work for, to have one set of regulations. And that is, as you said, I think that's preferred by everyone, that you have one set of regulation no matter where you trade. So we are still sort of committed, and we will continue working for that. But I think a consequence of this might be that you see more regional national regulations popping up as well.
Of course, it's quite interesting that China is one of the nations talking about this.
There are mixed signals what we hear. So if it will happen, it's too early to say. But they already have a trading scheme in China. So the question is whether they include shipping or not.
But what about infrastructure and production and innovation related to alternative fuels and the access for the shipping industry? Is that impacted by us not having global regulations?
Let's see. I definitely think it's very difficult to jump on alternative fuels without that backing. And for the last four years, it was a lot of development on the main engine side and a lot of push for this and expectations of more and more uptake of alternative fuels. Let's see how that materializes in the future. I was at a conference two weeks ago, and 99% of the world's main engine producers were there. There are two. And what they are really interested in now is energy efficiency on their main engines and turbochargers and tuning to get 3% saving today, while maybe four years ago, they were at zero emissions in 10 years. So I think people are trying to figure out how this will move, how the forces will move from the commercial side and regulations.
But what about the production of the fuel itself as well, like ammonia and methanol? It's probably impacted as well as the interest. The demand for the alternative fuels is not there, at least not as substantially as you would assume with the regulation.
It is likely that the uptake and the commercial interest will also affect the production, and yeah.
Anything else before handing over the word to you, Martin, for the presentation? Anything else we should mention?
Stay tuned. See what's happened. It will be a very exciting next year to see how this will sort of play out.
And I think you said in an early conversation that we had that it's all about geopolitics. So I guess that's the uncertainty related to this.
Yes.
Okay. So thank you, Helene and Martin. So we already have a competitive advantage. We are 35% lower emissions than our competitors. And of course, regulation would boost this competitive advantage further. But there's a lot we can do, even with no regulations, Martin. So you will tell us a bit about our strategy and ambitions for the next years as well?
Yes. Thank you very much. Yeah. Okay. So as we heard, a little bit of a setback on regulations. But in the long term, this is still ongoing work. So let's see what the future brings. I will go through the decarb strategy of KCC and our ambitions. But before I go into the figures, let's just briefly summarize. Engebret went through this. But as you all know, we are around 30%-40% more energy efficient than any alternative in our trade, because the alternative is basically to ballast a large share. In this example, we see the Australia trade, where we are busy with the full CABU fleet. The alternative on the dry side is to ballast almost the same distance as you go laden, while on the tanker, you typically ballast 30% on the return after you discharge with cargo in Australia.
So we have a unique advantage already in the efficiency in the design. So when we went through the strategy, there are some key aspects you need to look at when deciding. You could either be a follower on decarbonization if you believe that regulations in the long term will weaken. The value of Scope 3 emissions is not interesting for anyone, or that the fuel prices will be less. Those are external factors. There are also a lot of internal factors. Are you having a long-term view on your assets? And are you able to capture the value from fuel saving? Or does it go in a shorter value chain and you don't see the payback? If you want to be a leader, you would have the alternative view.
You believe that regulations will come, or you see the value of it from the commercial side, or you even have a long-term ownership picture and ability to capture the value from emission reductions. In KCC, we see that our decarbonization standing today is one of our core values, and we also expect in the long-term regulations to strengthen. We have owners that look at Scope 3 emissions as a more hygiene factor, and we also have a CAF in some of the freights that we do, where we actually compensated financially with lower emissions. You can read more about the CAF mechanism in all the published articles, so we see we are forward-leaning in those, but also when looking at our fleet, these are specialized vessels. We have a long-term ownership. We operate these vessels. We burn the fuel. We pay for the fuel.
So we also capture the value of emission cuts. So we would like to be a smart leader. By smart, we try to capture value, where there is a return on investments on energy efficiency. But we are cautious in investing in, for example, alternative fuels or other solutions, where we struggle to see the financial support today. So let's have a quick look at the EEOI target. First, I will talk a lot about EEOI and others will spare you for that. But for us, EEOI is a very important indicator. It basically tells you how much you pollute per cargo transported per nautical mile. So it basically tells you three things. How good are you at filling up the vessel? How good are you at utilizing the vessel? And how good are your assets in burning fuel or burning less fuel?
This is what we try to achieve big cuts in. If we look at the history so far, we have achieved a 20% cut since we started this decarb strategy. I will go back to some examples on how. Looking ahead for the next five years, we hope to achieve another 20%. Half of it is from better utilization of the fleet and also carbon-free fleet renewal. It will be a presentation of the new buildings later, and also further effects and rollouts of seen energy efficiency measures, as well as expected new initiatives. If we also see a change in the regulations or more push from customers, we may also find other initiatives, such as more wind-assisted propulsion on the fleet, or even biofuel blending. That would lead us to a new EEOI of 4.4.
But today, the new updated EEOI, as we look into the future, is at 5.1. Now, again, comparing this with the alternative, if you're a cargo owner and you would like to ship something in our trades, you would probably have an EEOI of around 9.1. So our benefit today is quite massive, and we work to make it even larger. So going back, just one example on how we got to where we are, the 20% fleet-wide cut. This is back in 2020 and the CABU fleet. So at that time, we had 16-year-old CABU I. They had an EEOI of 8.3. And then we had a new fleet of CABU IIs that delivered 6.8. Maybe natural that there is a big delta, right, with a new fleet, new modern engines, larger intake, and an older fleet.
We have invested in any low-hanging fruit and short payback energy efficiency measure you can think about on the CABU I fleet. And we have also improved a lot on the trading efficiency. The total effect of this is that that fleet is likely to deliver a 6.6 EEOI this year, which is down 20%. What's also interesting is that the 21-year-old fleet today is more efficient than the three-year-old fleet back in 2020. We have also done the same initiatives on the CABU II plus more long-term investments because we have a long-term ownership, such as shaft generator, air lubrication, which will give us a 5.8 EEOI on these vessels for this year, as it looks now, which is quite dramatic considering this was a three-year-old fleet five years ago. Now it's an eight-year-old fleet. Still massive improvements.
And they were also quite good on the trading efficiency in 2020. So most of it is from investments that have a good fuel saving. So let's compare the new EEOI trajectory with the existing one that we made in 2022. As you see, there is a difference. In our base case, which is the lowest gray line in 2022, the existing one, we expected a large uptake of alternative or zero-emission fuels by 2026 due to regulations or more customer support. We no longer believe that that will be the case. So the new baseline is without any biofuels compared to the old one. We also made in 2022 an alternative line, is the dotted gray. And as you can see, that is actually matching the new one in 2030.
As I was talking about, if we do see some changes in regulations or customer interest, we may invest in more wind-assisted propulsion or other means that have a good payback or biofuels, which would then push us down 14% closer to the old one, but not quite there. And in the new target, we have also revised a bit on what we believe or expect we're able to improve from both energy efficiency investments and also further gains on the trading efficiency. So all of those learnings are also into the new 2030 trajectory. So as we see, it is less aggressive than the old one, but it's quite an ambitious target. We have already gone down 20%. We are targeting another huge cut in emissions and improvement in energy efficiency. So let's summarize the decarb session. Our strategy remains clear.
We would like to be a smart leader within decarbonization and energy efficiency in the deep sea segment. We remain committed to ambitious continuous improvement in carbon intensity, building on the position we have today. We also see a competitive advantage in delivering on this. We see access to more customers. We will come back on that on the segments, which are increasingly recognized our position offering these kinds of levels on the freight. Also, finally, with our standing now with exceptional lower CO2 emissions per transported cargo and our ambitions to further drive on this, we are very well positioned for stricter requirements from customers or stricter regulations in the future to come, and we believe changes will be an opportunity for us going ahead. Okay. Do we have one minute if there are any questions?
I think we can take one minute if you have any questions in the audience, or if not, we can hold them till the end in the Q&A session. Good.
Good.
Thank you. Okay. The next two sessions that we have will be deep diving into our CABU and CLEANBU business. So welcome back to the stage, Engebret Dahm.
Thank you, Haley. Let's see where the point. Here we are. So again, the CABUs has been the traditional core of KCC and Klaveness Combination Carriers activities. Actually, this started up the business we have started up in the late 1980s with some fantastic ships called the PROBOs that some of you may remember. So first, looking at how does these ships look like? So the CABUs do the transportation work of an MR tanker, which we are competing against, which are around 50,000 deadweight. At the same time, a Panamax Kamsarmax dry bulk vessel. So each of our ships that have of the seven cargo compartments, three of them can transport caustic soda. And why only three?
Because caustic soda has a very, very heavy it's a very heavy cargo, very high specific gravity, meaning that we don't need more than three cargo compartments to transport the quantities we need. So the main advantage of the CABUs are the efficiency, but at the same time, also there's substantially higher carrying capacity when it comes to caustic soda than any other ship in the world. And here you see on the graph, you see that the standard MR tankers can transport 40,000 tonnes, while our old generation CABUs can do 55,000, around 55,000. And to the deepest port in Australia, our new CABU IIIs can transport 63,000 tonnes. So why is this important? Because actually, the way we are running this business gives our customers the incentives to maximize cargo intake.
In the freight mechanism we offer to our customers, they get the substantial freight benefit if they can be able to increase the cargo intake. And as we build the new generation ships, they are even more efficient and reducing the cost for our customers. The business is centered on Australia. It's been basically all the time. We have for many years operating the CABUs back and forth to Brazil, from US Gulf to Brazil. After 2022, we have concentrated our business into Australia. So what we do, we take caustic soda from the Middle East and the Far East, including China, into Australia. And more or less on every cargo, we bring a dry bulk commodity back again.
And of course, the sourcing of Australia is quite important for us because we are very competitive on the business of caustic soda shipment from the Far East and from the Middle East, while the imports coming from the U.S. doesn't work well for us, and if you look on these graphs, you see that U.S. market share has fallen tremendously since 2021, and it was even higher in the late 2018-2019, so you see China has a higher grown market share into Australia, which suits us well, and also the Far East, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan keeps up pretty well the market share, so this is a positive development for the CABUs. The industries we are serving are first and foremost the alumina industry, so alumina, as you probably know, is the industry that refines bauxite that Australia has ample resources from in various regions.
They use caustic soda to refine the bauxite to alumina, which is then sent on mainly to other regions where the alumina is melted to aluminum. So there are five existing refineries in Australia owned by Alcoa, South32, and Rio Tinto. And in addition, you have the sodium cyanide industry, which produces chemicals for mining of gold. So it's a nice commodity. And thirdly, we have the lithium industry, where Australia also has huge resources of spodumene, which is the rock that you produce lithium. And this industry has just started and is likely to expand going forward. But as you see from the graph, the alumina industry is the dominant factor in the demand into Australia. We see that the sodium cyanide business is expecting to grow with the expansion of one plant over the next years.
And there's also an expansion of the lithium industry, despite the headwinds that the lithium market has had over the recent years. So both markets, all the industries that we are serving with the CABUs, are long-term sustainable and resilient. This one, we have stolen from Hydro, our neighbor in the other building, and basically showing the scenarios of how the demand for aluminum will increase going forward with the expansion of electric vehicles, with solar panels, and windmills, and other features of the electrification of the markets. And here's two scenarios. Both again show the expansion that is likely to come. And this again shows demand increase up to 2030, where, of course, the recycling will increase the share of the aluminum production. But still, we also see the rather strong demand increase for primary aluminum, which are coming from alumina. So it's a growing market.
It's a growing demand for alumina in the world, for sure. When it comes to lithium, we also see here the blue line shows the expected demand increase, partly by the electrification and electric vehicles. We see that the supply increase, which have been built up over the recent years, but there are very little firm expansion plans in the industry. And part of the new capacity has been idled due to low prices over the recent years. This is a bit complicated graph. You see on the dotted red line, you see the development of the lithium prices that has fallen tremendously since 2022-2023. This shows again that with limited new capacity coming online, the market balance is likely to regain. And again, the lithium price is likely to increase, which again, hopefully gives the fundamentals to see a further expansion of the Australian lithium industry.
So again, the markets and industries we serve are strong and resilient. But looking back on our business, we have, since we focused our business on Australia, we have succeeded to tremendously grow the market share in Australia. In 2021, we had 35 cargoes into Australia. This year, we have 45. As of this morning, we have booked 45 fixed cargoes. We are close to conclude contracts for another around 10 cargoes, meaning that we have been able to show a substantial growth of the business, a market share that improves the efficiency of operation of the business. And we do business with all players, all the traders, the four traders, and the three end receivers of alumina refineries. This is quite important for us because this one just shows the number of ships that we intend to use to Australia. And it consists of the three series.
We have the older CABU Is built between 2001 and 2027. We have the second-generation CABUs built 2016 and 2017, and we have the beautiful new builds coming next year, so next year we will have effective capacity of two new builds as they are delivering into the year. We will start the phasing out of ships of the older ladies, and of course this phase out of Australia will be step by step as these ships reach 25 years of age. Our customers in Australia, they accept the ships up to 25 years. We don't expect that we will succeed to extend the life of those ships in Australia, partly due to the complexity of operating ships in and out of Chinese ports with many customers and stakeholders, so what we see here, the fleet is we have higher capacity in 2026 and 2027.
And given what we have booked on cargo volumes, we are confident that we'll keep them running at full capacity based on contracts of affreightment. As we phase out further ships in 2027, we are back to the fleet we have today, eight ships. And then coming on into the early 2030s, we will see that the effective fleet in Australia will decrease. So we have then a renewal need. We need to find out what we are going to do. We have a full flexibility. We can use the CLEANBUs. We can contract more ships. So this depends on how the trade flows, how the industries we are serving will develop. But in the meantime, we are very happy that we have now concluded the first contract for extending the life of the old ladies.
These are ships that we have designed, built, maintained, and operated in our business for 25 years. As the press release sent out yesterday evening, we did a two-and-a-half-year contract with our neighbor, Hydro, for shipping caustic soda from the Middle East into Brazil. In the start, this ship will operate more on a shuttle. We will, from time to time, with caustic soda, take dry cargoes. And there's a potential to grow this further, in our opinion. And again, this shows that having special ships that are run for the long term, the long-term view, it creates optionality. And of course, I just made this graph here to show how many ships that are between 25 and 28 years of age that hopefully we can succeed to keep running.
That gives are fully paid down, no debt, and well maintained with a fairly limited extra cost beyond the normal docking to keep them running for another two or three years. So we think this is a value creation for our business. We have done one. We will have to work hard to get the next ones going, but it is clearly a potential for the business. So the CABUs has been a very successful business for KCC and for our customers, given the values we create to our customers. The business is clearly volatile in the sense we are both the caustic soda and the dry bulk business are linked to very commoditized markets. But again, as the graph shows, where we compare the average CABU earnings with the market earnings for MR tankers and dry bulk vessels, we have outperformed the markets year to year.
But this is not only a market play. There are a couple of factors that I will mention to you which we have that we work on to improve, and we believe for us to improve the earnings of our business irrespective of how the market develops. One is, of course, the efficiency, and of course, our target is that for every caustic soda cargo into Australia, we should have a triangular cargo backhaul, then, of course, there are uneven distribution of cargos that makes that, from time to time, we need to balance the CABUs back from Australia into the Far East or Middle East to take the next caustic soda cargo. Of course, the most important thing is that our customers have that caustic soda on their tanks near their production facilities.
So our target is to have below 10% ballast, which has to be absolutely the most efficient trading in the dry bulk and tanker space. And I think with adding contract booking, I think we have a good potential to reach that target. Another lever is, of course, depending on the capacity we book in. If we have spare capacity or there is uneven distribution of cargoes, we fill up the capacity by taking so-called waiting cargoes. These are fairly low-paid dry bulk cargoes that we take. They are short, which gives flexibility, but they are poorly paid. And here we show the number of such cargoes we have had over recent years. Our target should be to have two or three, something like that, maybe one per quarter maximum. And of course, that means also that we keep the percentage in combination trade well above 90%.
And I think this year we'll end up with something like low 90s when we end up the year. Both these factors have quite an important impact on the earnings per day what the CABUs deliver. Another factor is, are we able to fill up the capacity? Are we able to utilize this what we call cargo carrying advantage of the ships? And the good thing is that we are seeing that we, year by year, are able to utilize the full capacity, a higher percentage of the cargos, the full capacity. A little bit down this year. And of course, there are certain what we call factors that are supporting that this is possible. Partly, we see that our customers are doing more two-port loadings because it pays to take one extra deviation in the Far East.
Secondly, we are seeing that more and more plants are building up their capacity to service our big ships. Because it is a win-win for us with our earnings and the transportation cost for our customers. So again, these are the things we are working on. How can we make our business even better? And that is a big focus for us going forward. So looking ahead, the development of the CABUs, of course, depends partly on how our markets are performing when it comes to trade flows and volumes. We expect Australia to be fairly constant. Our biggest customers have five alumina plants in the world in Australia. And four of them are in the lowest 1/3 when it comes to cost highest, when it comes to cost competitiveness, but lowest on the break-even costs. So you see the four pink layers, which symbolizes each of these plants.
There are some uncertainties coming into the 2030s on part of the industry. There's one old plant that you see to the right in this graph. There are uncertainties whether how long that plant will keep running, and of course, it will be dependent on how much investments our customers will put into the plant. There are growth in the lithium and the sodium hydroxide industry that will partly offset the possible reduction in capacity, but I think the main point is, when we look at it, taking into account the increasing market shares that we will deliver next year, we expect the volumes we will have well into the 2030s, into the mid-2030s, which, I mean, frankly speaking, is the longest we can have a view on, is strong and stable. Quite interesting development is what's happening in Indonesia.
Indonesia introduced some years ago a ban on exports of bauxite. They wanted the producers to do the manufacturing in Indonesia, and there you see the expected growth in alumina industry production from 2024 up to 2029. It's a doubling. Partly, we expect this to replace the capacity of Chinese poorly efficient plants and partly cover the increased demand in the markets. Also, Indonesia has an enormous nickel industry that also requires caustic soda to refine the nickel, so in total, Indonesia is going to triple or double their imports of caustic soda, so our challenge is to find out how can we service this in the most smart and efficient way. There are some limitations on port restrictions that we haven't yet sorted out, but we believe with the volumes coming, we can get this moving, and there are potential for the CABU fleet into Indonesia coming into 2027-2028.
Another major change is the chlor-alkali industry. So the chlor-alkali industry is the industry that produces caustic soda. There are two products. They produce chlorine that is used for the production of PVC, which is used into the construction of buildings mainly, and it's the caustic soda. There are coming big expansions ongoing in India and the Middle East over the next years. There are three big plants coming up where in total, most of the capacity will be geared to the export markets. China is also expanding. So this is what we call the export plants increasing capacity. West of Suez, there's some small capacity increase in the U.S. Brazil actually closes down one capacity.
You see this imbalance that is likely to come in the trade flows of caustic soda that we believe there's a fair chance could lead to changes in the caustic soda trade flows that will benefit what we do on the CABUs and the CLEANBUs. The first one will open up in early 2027. We, of course, are meeting them. We ensure that their berths and their capacity when it comes to cargo tanks meet what we can transport. So keeping the capacity and their possibility to use our CABUs efficiently. So there are quite a bit of upside. So just summarizing the CABUs, we believe in the Australian market. We will do whatever we can to improve further resilience of the business, keeping our market share, perfect the trading efficiency in the trades.
We will hopefully succeed to diversify the CABU trading based on changes in the trade pattern, and we will also use the old CABUs as a tool, as a spearhead for the business development, which gives us a great flexibility when trying to grow this market. We believe if this comes when it comes to the trade patterns, there are improving synergies between the CABUs and the CLEANBUs that will give us value, and thirdly, we will closely monitor how we're going to do with the fleet capacity, whether we will replace the two last CABUs, whether old CABUs with new builds, or whether we will expand the fleet further. This is too early to say, but we are looking at this not every day, but maybe once a week to see what we're going to do.
So the CABUs has been a fantastic business and likely is going to be a fantastic business for KCC for the years to come. Thank you.
Thank you, Engebret. So the final session before we take a quick break, which will be about 10 minutes, will be unlocking KCC's potential in large addressable markets. And welcome to the stage, Snorre Blix, VP and Global Head of CLEANBU Chartering at KCC.
Thank you so much, Haley. Mic is on, I hope. Good morning, everyone. It's funny you make the reference to the PROBO vessels. I was in charge of those vessels back in the days. I think the CLEANBU vessels are somewhat more sophisticated than the CABU vessels because we can carry oil in addition to chemicals. Now, the PROBOs, I think, were the naval engineers' wet dream. The CLEANBUs are not quite there, but pretty close.
The CLEANBU is a combination or has the capacities of an LR1- tanker in combination with a Kamsarmax dry bulk, similar to the CABU vessels. As opposed to the CABU vessels, the CLEANBUs carry wet cargo in all seven cargo compartments, in addition to switching to dry in all the seven cargo compartments. The vessel, we refer to them as an LR1+ tanker, meaning that we have higher carrying capacity, not quite as much as the CABU vessels, but quite a substantial increase for wet commodities, which is, on the right trades, very beneficial to our charters and obviously to our business. Now, this flexibility allows us to play two markets, two main markets, the CPP market, the clean products markets, and the Kamsarmax, the dry bulk market, and gives us the ability to minimize ballast substantially compared to standard tonnage.
And it also allows us to this diversification lowers the earnings volatility and also providing a big downside protection. And that downside protection actually improves when fuel prices and emissions costs increase. We started, I mean, in 2013, 2014, we identified an increasing shortage in Australia on CPP, on imports of gasoline and diesel. And already being present there, we're very familiar with this market, and we started developing the idea of a more sophisticated combination carrier. So by 2019, we had the first CLEANBU delivered. Before the delivery, we were having road shows. We had brokers laughing at us. This concept will never work. We had prospective charterers being polite, saying that, "Look, this is a great project. This is a great concept. But sorry, we can't use your ships." In 2021, we landed our first contract of affreightment for clean petroleum products with an oil major.
By 2023, we had carried multiple cargoes of jet fuel and naphtha with last cargo dry, in addition to, of course, diesel and gasoline, the other major commodities in this space. We are now basically established the concept as a concept that works in all major regions. In 2024-2025, we made seven consecutive voyages on the Balzani, running to and from South America and the Middle East with CPP and sugar in combination. Why is this a milestone for us? Obviously, it's very much a proof of concept that it actually works. Now, quite recently, we did our first fixture with ExxonMobil. That is not to say that they haven't, so they've been accepting our ships to their terminals for third-party accounts. This most recent fixture with Exxon directly is a very important milestone for us.
The oil majors play quite a significant role in the oil trading space. As I said, when we had the vessel delivered in 2019, we started basically from scratch, but we've had, as you can see from the graph on the left, we've had a very steady growth in terms of CPP cargoes carried to date, and not least, and most importantly, of course, switches between dry and wet is now at 70 switches, so we're sort of well beyond the sort of, how shall I put it, critical mass. I mean, we have a long, strong track record of switches without any cargo claims or any incidents whatsoever, and similar pattern on approvals. Approvals is very important in the oil industry, so what that actually means is the different stakeholders accepting the use of these vessels.
So you can see from the start, and we've had a very steady growth in terms of charters since the initiation in 2019. We have now sort of reached 21 charters. It's not a huge amount. We do a lot of repeat business, so we don't expect this to grow similar going forward, although it will grow. But what's really important for us is to continue the work for getting what we refer to as concept approvals, meaning stakeholders, not only charters, but also other stakeholders, that is, buyers and sellers of oil, oil products, and obviously load terminals and discharge terminals accepting the ships. Because why is this important? This is important because the nature of the oil industry is so that they need this flexibility. Oftentimes, the cargo will not be sold when it's loaded.
So it's very important that the charters have the optionality to send the ship basically anywhere. Yes. Now, in terms of approvals, there is no set process in order to get a pre-approval of our ships. This is just an example of how this might work. And there may be other elements that could be added. And for some, it's much more simplified. For some, it's sufficient to make a proper desktop due diligence where we basically address concerns that they may have. And as a conclusion, they accept the ships, and we can use them both as for their account or to the terminal or whatnot. Others work more on a sort of stepwise process. So you may start with a due diligence desktop. We may address issues.
Following that, they may want to inspect the vessels, maybe once, maybe three times, as was the case for Exxon, for instance, and then we get to a point where, okay, that's fine. We accept the ship. We accept the concept. It works, but only we will not fix the vessel directly, but you can use the ships at our terminals, and that, as I explained earlier, is really a critical component for us. In the case of Exxon, for instance, they also a number of other, not only Exxon, but a number of other majors also require this. They want a TMSA audit, so basically, the Tanker Management and Self-Assessment that we do with regular intervals in the company is being audited by the majors, so it's sort of looking into how our systems are, how we manage basically the vessels from the shore side.
And then another threshold, another step on a ladder, is fixing directly. Obviously, fixing with a major is not only a quality measure towards that charter, but is sort of within the industry. There's a lot of sort of peer references. So obviously, fixing with the majors makes an impact on dealing with other parties. And ultimately, we're looking to do contracts of affreightment. We've done that with a number of parties, BP and the Shell joint venture, Raízen. So that's sort of ultimately our goal. As I said earlier, we can play the two markets, dry cargo, Panamax market, and the CPP market, the sort of LR1 space. And as you can see, so basically, when one of the markets is stronger than the other, we can sort of place more capacity in that market.
Now, as you can see from this, the line represents the difference between the dry and the wet market. So when it's positive, as you can see back in 2020, the tanker market was about $14,000 a day better than the Panamax market. And then we sort of focused on placing more capacity in that market. The opposite effect in the year after, 2021, where the dry cargo market was stronger than the tanker market. And then you will see as of the later years, we've focused on having tonnage, or capacity, I should say, in the tanker market. And we do that by also increasing tanker market exposure. We do that mainly through triangulation, so meaning that we can have two legs in CPP and one in dry as opposed to back and forth. And we do that also on some trades.
We can switch between dry and wet by switching to veg oils instead of grains. We do that typically from South America into the Middle East. An example, the routes that you see on this map represents basically our key routes as of today. You will see that we sort of split the world into two. We have the West of Suez, strictly speaking, not only West of Suez, but includes the westbound trips from the Middle East. And then we have East of Suez, which is basically from Middle East down to Australia and Northeast Asia down to Australia. Now, as you can see on the graph to the left, we are skewed towards the westbound trades, West of Suez, and that is simply because it has worked very well for us. This is where we found the most efficient trades.
So we've ended up doing a fair bit of that. East of Suez, we have some work to be done. We expect to increase our presence or activity in that region and thereby sort of reducing the other category you can see here. Other means basically trades that are not so efficient for us. So that would typically be where we have to ballast more than we do on the combination trade. So one example of that would be, for instance, from Middle East down to East Africa, then we would ballast back into Middle East. And we have to do similar to the cargo where occasionally we have to do those less efficient trips. Just one example, I mentioned Balzani earlier where we had made seven consecutive voyages. This is an extract of two of those seven voyages.
So just to sort of demonstrate what kind of characteristics we're looking for in a successful trade. So in this case, we're open in Argentina after having discharged CPP. We ballast for four days into Santos to load sugar. We stay there for quite some time after we're sort of ready to load. And then we load and we proceed to Jebel Ali in the Emirates in Middle East for discharge, about four or five days there. Compared to the standard tonnage, we have a 32% lower emissions. And the earnings multiple on this occasion was 1.6. So very favorable compared to a dry cargo vessel. On the return, we complete the discharge in Jebel Ali, and then we proceeded to Ruwais, which is next door, only one day ballast, in fact.
Yeah, we also have to spend some time doing the cleaning and the conversion and then proceeding returning down to Argentina for discharge. In this case, we have an even better carbon footprint with 47% lower carbon footprint than the standard LR1 and also a very favorable earnings multiple. This is an example what we and as you can sort of imagine, this is also why we're sort of tilted westbound because this is a trade that actually works very well for us. Can it get better? It can absolutely get better. This trip, both of these trips were about 65 days. If they had been sort of ideal or optimal, they would have been closer to, say, 50 days. The inefficiency on this voyage is mainly the fact that port stays too long.
So when we are in port, even on demurrage, we don't actually create value. We want quick port turnarounds in order to create value. So that's one aspect. In general, for our concept to improve, we obviously want to optimize the trading. So that means those voyages where we do have to ballast or ballast equivalent to the standard tonnage and also improve the pricing. So the vessels we do trade at a discount compared to the standard ships. Different reasons for that, one being that we are the so-called committed tonnage. So we are actually in position. We're actually in the loading area when we load. And for that, charterers expect and that actually goes for standard ships and our ships. When you are committed tonnage, there is a discount. And then, of course, because we are a little bit odd compared to the standard ships.
So for us to improve on the pricing, it's improving our leverage, meaning improving our sort of base of customers. And it's also having a high degree of acceptance throughout the industry. And yeah, those are sort of basically the main items. So for us going forward, West of Suez works very well for us today. We need to expand our customer base both in the U.S. and in South America. We are looking to renew our current contracts, and we are looking to renew or, sorry, to conclude new contracts. And obviously, we need to verify the long-term regional outlook. For instance, how is the CPP short in South America going to be going forward? And how is, for instance, the alkylate trade into the U.S.? How is that? What are sort of the underlying demand for alkylate imports into the U.S.?
East of Suez, as I said. In order we need to sort of increase our leverage in the market, so that happens through growing our customer base in Asia. It certainly is to further expand our terminal acceptance and customer in general, customer approvals in general. We also want to increase. Currently, between East and West Australia, we have had more cargoes into Western Australia rather than Eastern Australia. We want to increase our trading into Eastern Australia because that works better for us. We also are looking to build a triangular trade, which will allow us to play the market a little bit better and create a more flexible pattern in East of Suez. I think that's it for me today. If there's any questions.
Great. Perfect timing, Snorre. So now we are going to have a break for about 10 minutes. When we come back, we will have a session on the market as well as a finance session, Q&A, and a wrap-up for the day. So see you back here in 10 minutes. Okay, I think we will go ahead and get started with the next session, which is called Diversified Market Exposure: Built for Resilience. And so on the panel today will be Kristian Hauff, Market Analyst from Klaveness Dry Bulk, and then, of course, Engebret , CEO of KCC. And here to moderate the session will be Petter Haugen, Partner Equity Research from ABG Sundal Collier. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay, happy to be here. Interesting times, as always. There is war, there is geopolitics. It's fundamental reasons for many of the moves. But okay, so we briefly spoke about what we should focus upon here earlier. Shorter is better. Around in the audience here, we're much more interested in what will happen in the next quarter and year, not the 2030, Engebret, I'm sorry about that. So we'll focus on 2026, I think. And you have exposure towards two of the very big markets, the Dry Bulk market and the product market. So we'll do it sort of in that sequence. 2026 is focus. Dry Bulk we'll start with. And as a market analyst here, Kristian, why is 2025 now sort of a tale of two halves? 2025 first half, not very good.
Second half has been, in my opinion at least, or compared to my expectation, very good. Capesize rates currently still almost at 40, but Panamax rates also surprisingly high. Why so? Why is second half this good?
Is it on?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. No, I think if you start with 2025, very briefly on 2025, I think that we had a very negative, most of us, including myself, were very negative going into and during first half, and this sort of disincentivized investments, both physical and on the commodity side, meaning that very little investment were done to position the fleet for a better market, and also, with most commodity prices and general sentiment in the world surrounding the increasing trade war and tariffs, we're pointing downwards, so for example, if I were to buy a coal cargo, I would most of the time be better off postponing it until tomorrow rather than buying it today, as it would be cheaper, and this sort of lasted for most of the first half, and then all of a sudden, everything turned first gradually.
And then quickly, as prices started increasing, people were running after it. Particularly on the coal side, you saw that people were very short suddenly going into the summer with very high temperatures in Asia, increasing energy needs. And then prices started ticking up. We go into a contango market, and then we get this very strong run on the second half. And I think that's the easiest explanation that people were caught too short across all markets going into the summer.
And that sort of expansion into the second half, do you think that is going to continue now into 2026? Or will we see sort of a repeat here, weak first half again?
Maybe we can go quickly on each market.
Okay, okay.
Like on the, because it's especially on the iron ore and steel side, there is a very lot to discuss because you have sort of two camps. You have the one camp that's very negative or concerned about the end demand side, especially in China, which is struggling still on the domestic side, very thin margins, and no sort of clear path to growth, but on the other side, you have a very positive supply picture, and by supply, I mean production of iron ore, which most, I think most are aware that going into next year, we may have up to some 3% growth or 6 million tonnes, most of which from Brazil, Guinea, which adds a disincentive, and why I think that matters more is I will compare it to sort of oil and gas production. These are major investments done on the production side from the producers.
Once you reach for an iron ore mine, once you reach full capacity, if you have a significant drop in production, you can efficiently only make it back at the end of effective lifetime. So you lose, like at least for the big production centers, you would lose most of the value by not producing. So on top of that, we have a very strong iron ore price currently at $105, some backwardation, but still above $90 all the way through 2027. So every producer is incentivized to produce and ship everything they have. And against that, we have this sort of weak demand side discussion. But if you, for example, look back to 2024, where that looked even worse, we had a negative profit margin of steel around $50.
But if you compare that to the sort of underlying size of the economy in China, which is still around 30% of the economy's traditional industry. So if you compare, say, $50 lost per tonne with a billion tonnes, that's $50 billion against the 30% of $18 trillion. So that's one cent of the dollar sort of to subsidize growth. So I like to put more emphasis on the supply.
Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like it. And on the supply side, I mean, most of the known supply now is going to the Capesize market, presumably. How do you think that's going to impact the smaller sizes?
Yeah, yeah. And then going back to this year, that sort of connected a little bit for me to this year because Q3, Q4, in preparation of trade war with the U.S., China bought some additional 20 million tons of soybeans from South America. Basically, they prepared to buy nothing from the U.S.
I know they did.
Huh?
I know they did.
Yeah, they have bought a little bit, but much less than usual. But the problem is that if they now, they promised to buy some up to 12 million tons. The timeline is very vague, but at least from the U.S. side. But if they commit to this schedule, then currently there is an oversupply in China. There is very weak profit margins on the food industry surrounding food prices and a deflationary pressure. So if they continue to buy U.S. volumes they don't really need right now, then you sort of have the risk of pushing the oversupply can down the line. And you may see a slower import pace on the Brazilian season going into next year. So it will be a buyer's market on the soybean side, I think.
Sort of a little sidestep, Engebret. To what extent do you actively in management sort of take these market considerations into consideration while sort of positioning the vessels, the ships next year? Don't you have just one more thing. If I remember correctly, your fixed exposure for 2026 as of Q3 reporting was next to nothing. So you seem very bullish, though. Nothing fixed, everything is bought. The only way is up.
I think generally, I think the dry market has what we call overperformed both in 2024 and 2025. With the maybe first half was very strong in 2024, second half weak, the opposite happened this year. And it seems that the analysts have underestimated the balance strength, the strength of the balance in the dry market again and again and again, and the market has overperformed. But again, we are what we do on the dry side for KCC. You mentioned we have had very little coverage at the end of the third quarter. We are likely to include some fixed rate contracts before the end of the year. And then we.
What does that mean? 5% or 25%?
As it looks at the moment, for some practical reasons due to the logistics, we only do one of the big contracts. We will only do the first quarter, and then the intention is to roll it over to year contracts. Hopefully, we can get that going into the year. That will not happen before the end of the year, so it will be only for the first quarter for one of the big contracts. We may then decide to do some FFAs for the last three quarters.
To sell some.
To sell some FFAs, given that we don't have that much fixed rate coverage. And then we may turn that around if, as we book physical contracts. So I would think that the target for us would be next year to be 25%-30% maybe fixed rate.
Okay.
Maybe we will be under that target in the start, and then hopefully can build on more, but again, you asked, how do we position this based on the market expectations? Of course, FFAs, we will only use in case of that we are, you know, we have a belief we are at a good level. Physical contracts, whether it's fixed rate or index linked, will to some extent be dependent on the customer, so that means we don't have that much what we call possibility to decide whether we do it fixed or index linked with those. But we could decide to go more spot on certain trades rather than new contracts, so the most important for us is to keep the ships running in the trades where they earn most money, and then the second priority will be what you do fixed and index.
Understood. So. Okay. As you said, Kristian, the commodities per sort of per commodity is a nice way to think about it, and the one commodity which is perhaps most in the middle of dry bulk and product tankers is coal, and the coal trade has been fairly overall weak, but it's been surprisingly better in the second half, perhaps. How does the coal trade develop into 2026?
That I think is the hardest of all to predict because on the one side, you have a growing energy need in the world, but the coal share in Asia as well is sort of a decline due to alternative energy sources growing faster. But the more alternative energy you add into the power mix, the more unstable the power production becomes. So you need actually more coal or gas or on-demand power to balance the grid at any time when you need it. So the average burn becomes lower, but once you're in a shortage, you need more than before. So the volatility will increase, but maybe sort of the average growth will not be as strong. Let's put it that way.
I think the 2026 coal trade is going to be higher or lower than 2025?
I'm struggling a little bit to predict it, to be honest, but what you saw this year was that when you rely more and more on varying power sources and you end up in a shortage, then you actually need a peak power that's higher than before on the coal side, and that's why you see China, they continue to install new capacity that have a lower average burn, because once you don't have sun or wind, then you need more total capacity on demand, so it will be volatile probably, and especially given the low import share of the total coal consumption. It's always like in a marginal trade, very margin-driven. Right now, the domestic price in China, probably they were a bit backward, too much backward looking after first half. They addressed an oversupply into Q3, Q4, which suddenly was no longer there.
Domestic prices increased from the summer all until last week, where it peaked. And now this marginal import margin, comparing the import price with the domestic price, is turning down again. So then you may see the usual decline into Q1, which is also very normal as they complete their winter stocking. So I think most lines up both on the grain and on the coal that we have a moderate period now as every year basically into Q1. But then the supply is there on all commodities to have a very good year next year overall.
Okay. And then going further into the energy trade, the product trades, you said it, Engebret. Last year was in 2024, we had a very good first half and a pretty bad second half, vice versa this year, which applies to, or to some extent at least, yeah, more or less the same, I would say. It applies to the tanker market as well. And right now, tanker markets are booming. And finally, we have also the crude tanker markets at very high rate levels. Do we sort of stand up here through the winter, or will we see this coming down already in the first quarter of next year? So MR rates now are still, well, in the 30s, and the big tankers are earning more than hundreds. So how should we think about the sort of imminent future?
I would think that seasonality normally goes well into the first quarter. So there should be what we call supportive seasonality in the tanker market into January and February. And of course, it seems to me that the crude market is the leading force. It absorbs a lot of LR2- tankers that, of course, is supportive for the product tanker market. And of course, given the supply side on oil and the oil market, I would think this looks to me to keep on going for quite a bit of time into next year. And then, of course, it could, you know, the dance music suddenly could stop, just like we experienced in 2020 with COVID, when supply of oil was substantially higher than what the underlying demand. And there are some signs that that could actually happen. But who knows actually how it will look?
What do you think, Petter?
Well, as you say, there is a big question of demand. Kristian touched upon it in the dry bulk side. Do really China need to produce as much steel? Is the sort of big uncertainty in dry bulk for both the short and long term? And in tankers, yes, we see all-time high oil on water, oil in transit, also export levels above 50 on our numbers, 50 million barrels per day without demand. Without demand. How long can that last then? It's a very, very valid question. Well, we think that the tanker markets will prosper in 2026, but it surely depends on that current production and export levels are kept up. If they are to decline, I mean, EIA is predicting 5 million barrels of oversupply in the total oil market in Q1 next year. That's 5 million barrels more produced than consumed.
It doesn't add up, actually, I think. So we need the higher demand. That's my view. This wasn't about me, Engebret. This is about you guys. I'm sorry.
Come on. We have to get it, Peter.
Okay, but we haven't. So now we talked about the demand sides. And there are definite uncertainties on the demand for commodities, while the supply of commodities is seemingly very, very healthy. On the supply of ships, there is a big difference, I would say, between tankers or product tankers and dry bulk ships. Fleet growth is going to be in the range twice as high in product tankers as in dry bulk. Does that concern you?
Absolutely, it is a concern. I mean, we would have liked it to be fleet growth of zero. But of course, what we have seen at least is that despite very high, what we call numerical fleet growth, the market has been able to absorb the fleet growth. I guess that on product tankers, I guess the peak is this year, maybe it's next year, but it's still at the same level of peaking deliveries. And the market has absorbed basically everything. It is the absorption of LR2 tankers into the crude market. It is the effect of the shadow fleet, that more ships go into the shadow fleet and where the efficiency is substantially lower.
So yes, I think it's a concern, but also the fact of the shadow fleet, the increasing number of ships, the age of the ships means that possibly if the market will correct, there could be more scrapping and it could make the, what we call the dive shorter. But again, of course, there are many, what we call floating pieces, moving pieces in the tanker market. And it's geopolitics, it's wars, it's hostilities. And of course, there could be positive and negative effects of both. Just like we see an oil trade into Brazil, where basically we have lost market share into Brazil because the Russian oil products went from 0% when the EU stopped imports of Russian CPP diesel up to 80%. And if that returns, of course, this trade will be, which is maybe one of the best trades will improve.
So it is pluses and minuses on many of these factors. But of course, yeah, there are uncertainties on both the dry and maybe especially on the tanker market into the second half of next year. And then as we talked about with on the dry side, we have the flexibility in our business concept that we can adapt capacity to the markets being the strongest, which we have actively did during the product tanker boom in 2023 and 2024. And then we have on the tanker side, we have a fairly high contract coverage going into the year. So you saw the graph we showed on the booking on the cargoes.
But those are floating mostly.
Around 40% is fixed rate.
Okay.
So that means that, and also given that we will overbook, basically book cargoes also for the CLEANBU fleet in the caustic soda trade, we will likely end up with something like 25%, close to on fixed rate for next year. And then of course, you have, if you add up the operational coverage, meaning you include the floating rate contracts, you probably are well above 50%, maybe 60%.
So yeah, then implicitly you say that you're more bullish on the dry side than on the tanker side, but I presume that it's also sort of business considerations that you need those product cargoes more than you would need the dry bulk cargoes.
It is. It is a matter of to secure again, as I said, the trading, the efficiency of the trading, and I think we, even though of course we are not isolated from market turbulence, but we definitely believe we have a possibility to absorb more market risks given our model with the diversification between dry and tanker market.
Yeah. Okay. Our time is up, unfortunately. We could do this all day long, I'm sure.
Can I ask Haley to get another 10 minutes?
It doesn't look like she's willing to give that, actually. She's very much there. Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Petter.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. Very interesting. So the next session we have today is the finance session from cycles to returns, creating shareholder value that lasts. And so we have Liv back on stage representing Finance, and then we will also have Håkon Moltubakk, VP, Head of Strategy and Business Development, who will be part of the presentation. Thank you.
I'll start by giving you an introduction to the Finance section, and then Håkon will tell you more about the value creation for both segments. And then at the end, I'll go through at least part of it, the capital allocation, capital strategy, some more information about our debt, and then finally I'll give you a sneak peek into what 2026 might look like. So if we summarize where we are today, we've had a very strong track record over the last years, and we are well positioned to continue to deliver shareholder returns going forward. This is based on a very solid balance sheet. We have an equity ratio of above 56% and available long-term liquidity of $127 million. This is per end of Q3.
Then over the last years, we have delivered strong cash flows as well, supporting both debt service as well as the high dividend payments that we have had over the last years. As you can see here, we have also delivered high returns, return on capital employed of 12% and return on equity of 17% in average for the last five years. And finally, I think we have a very clear capital allocation strategy, and we have definitely delivered on these principles over the last years. In this, we have produced in a phase where we have scaled the company considerably. So we started 2018 before we listed the company with eight vessels. And then we're now up to 16 vessels. So we have close to doubled the fleet since the start. And that is not all.
I think very importantly here is that we have established a completely new vessel segment, so if you look a bit at the EBITDA here, you will see that CLEANBU started 2019 with a slightly negative EBITDA, and we reached $67 million at the top of the market so far, then you will see here as well that the CABU EBITDA has been much more stable, and I think this also reflects nicely what you have seen from the CABU and the CLEANBU segments earlier today, that we are more opportunistic. We have more market exposure for the CLEANBUs than for the CABUs, where we have more of the industrial approach, so of course, we have had some tailwind from the markets as well, but this is also based on quite considerably business development over the last years.
This has resulted in attractive shareholder returns over the last five years. This is total shareholder returns, so it includes reinvestment of dividends. And as you can see here, in NOK terms, we have delivered 30% per annum return, and in dollar terms, close to 25%. And this is supported by substantial dividend distributions through these years. And this we show from time to time. So our ambition is to deliver the best risk-adjusted return in tanker and dry bulk shipping. And we like to illustrate that by plotting all the different peers, or at least companies that we compare against ourselves. This is the time series from 2019 when we listed the company until and including Q3 this year, where you see the return on invested capital on the vertical axis and the volatility and the return on invested capital on the horizontal axis.
So the further up in the left corner, the better relations between risk and return. And I think this nicely illustrates that we already deliver on our ambition. And we believe we can strengthen this further going forward. So we can optimize trading, we can expand into new markets with new customers, which gives more resilience into the concept, and hence also we can improve this relation further. So over to you, Håkon. Value creation, the most interesting part.
Oh yes, thank you. Yes, so a key feature of our ambition to create superior risk-adjusted return over time is our ability to earn a premium earning at a lower volatility than our standard tonnage peers. So time over time, I think we have shown that we are able to do this. In this chart, I show you the annual average fleet-wide TC earning, our fleet-wide TC earnings compared to standard tonnage of product tanker and dry bulkers. So in the period from 2013 to 2019, we had about a 1.5 x multiple to the product tanker peers. And in the highlighted box here, we have about 1.2 x. And a couple of things I want you to be aware of when we talk about this is that, of course, in this period, 2020 to 2024, we have had exceptionally strong product tanker markets.
Conceptually, when we have a market that outperforms the other substantially, we typically are not able to fully outperform that market due to that we use some more time in our trades for the return cargo. So we then spend some time, of course, loading the vessel and doing the sort of the weaker market. As Snorre showed, we have been very good at compensating for that by increasing our share in tanker in sort of the tanker space when appropriate. The other thing in this highlighted box is, of course, we had the effect of the phasing of the CLEANBUs, which we took delivery of from 2019 to 2021. So a question we get from investors often is, how does this sort of translate into economics?
So we tried to do some illustration for you guys where we have put up in the chart to the left here. The left side bar is sort of the additional cost to operate a combination carriers compared to a standard MR- tanker. In this case, it's a CABU versus an MR- tanker. So we estimate that, given the price and the time we order the second generation CABU II, we estimate that cost to be around $1,500 per day. That includes the additional OpEx, the additional maintenance, and the initial vessel investment. Comparing that figure to the additional or the advantage, the additional earnings we have made over, in this case, since 2018, year to date, we have earned about $4,300 more than a standard MR- tanker. So we are able to comfortably outperform that benchmark.
For the CLEANBUs, the picture is a little bit more mixed. We have a little bit more a higher additional cost compared to the standard LR1- tanker, mainly due to higher OpEx in this case and we have outperformed the benchmark we use about $1,500 since 2019 when we took delivery of the first CLEANBU, so a couple of things to note here is that, of course, this includes sort of the phase in effect, weak earnings in the start and the beginning of the, or at the inception of the project, and also the historical very strong product tanker market. As Snorre mentioned, we do believe there is a potential to optimize and improve this further, so we believe there is a substantial uplift to this figure, so that was sort of the premium earnings.
The other thing I want to talk to you a little bit about is the volatility compared to a standard vessel. So here in this chart, we have ranked the earnings in the same period as I showed you before, 2018 to year to date. And what you see here is that a CABU would outperform an MR- tanker in 70% of the observations. This, with a significantly lower volatility and a higher average earnings of $24,500 per day versus $21,500. And this is, of course, something we try to reproduce with the CLEANBUs. We are not fully there yet, but it looks promising to sort of get the same sort of effect. So how does this translate into return? We have over the period 2021 to year to date generated an average return on capital employed of 12% and an average return of 70% on equity.
So definitely solid returns driven by, one, very strong markets, but also the ramp-up of the new business. The CLEANBU phase in is, of course, a little bit dilutive to these figures because due to the sort of the weak initial earnings. And finally, I just wanted to give you a little bit of insights on what is sort of the return picture for our investments. So we have brought two examples here. The left-hand side is the CABU. This is the vessel Balboa, which was delivered in 2016. And at a sort of five-year average earning, that would generate an estimated sort of 13% unlevered internal rate of return. For the CLEANBU, we have the vessel Balzani, which is at the same sort of average rate, or five-year average rate of $30,000 per day, will sort of generate a 12% unlevered return over the lifetime.
And this includes what sort of the history of up to today. So I think that was it for me.
As mentioned, we have a clear capital allocation strategy, and it's based on two principles. One is to deliver attractive returns, and I think that's maybe I don't have to say it because that's why we are here. But I think importantly for us here is that a large part of it as well will come through direct return. So we introduced the dividend policy when we listed the company in 2019, and the policy is that we will distribute a minimum 80% of the adjusted cash flow to equity. That is EBITDA, less maintenance CapEx, and debt service. And the reason why it's important for us to deliver direct return as well is that we have limited liquidity in the share. We are still quite a small company, and the free float is limited. So I think providing direct return is important for us.
And the other argument back in 2019 as well was that we have less volatility than standard companies, and we have downside protection to the diversified market exposure, so we should have higher payout ability through the cycle. The remaining up to 20% we will use to accommodate the business strategy. so this is, of course, to build financial capacity and flexibility to withstand weaker markets, unforeseen events, and then, of course, we want to grow and believe that we can develop this company further, so we need some investment capacity as well. so I think we definitely have shown that we have delivered on this through the last years. so after delivery of the last vessel, the CLEANBU vessel in 2021, we have paid out between 86% and 97% of the adjusted cash flow to equity in dividends.
And if you add on the share buybacks that we promised did in 2024, for that year we are above 100%. So this amounts to $228 million. And then we have clearly stated as well, when we have such high dividend payments, we might have to raise equity for large investments. So we have done that in two different situations over the years. First in 2021, when we raised $25 million in equity to fund energy-saving devices. And then in 2023, we raised $50 million to fund the equity portion of two of the new builds. And then we used or still using capacity that we have on the balance sheet to take delivery of the last vessel. Despite such high payouts, we have definitely built financial capacity and flexibility as well.
So the equity ratio was above, sorry, below 35% in mid-2021 when we took delivery of the last CLEANBU vessel, and now it's at 56%, and you can see the same picture for available long-term liquidity. And then in a capital-intensive industry such as the shipping industry, of course, it's important to have access to competitive debt funding. So we have for decades, I would say, before being listed as well, focused on building trust in the debt markets. When you, in addition, have decarbonization high on the agenda and you as well have downside protection through the diversified market exposure, that adds value in the debt markets, definitely. So we see here that we have a very strong bank group, and we have added some names to this group over the last years as well due to the growth in the company.
We have been present in the Norwegian bond market since 2013, so we actually tapped into that market when we were still a private company, and we have a solid track record of raising bond debt as well. After 2020, I think it was, after that, we have only done sustainability-linked financing, and we will probably do that as well for the facility that we just secured. To the right here, you see the margin development over the last five years. The average margin has decreased by approximately 80 bps in this period. Of course, that's a general market trend, but it's also impacted by the strong financial performance that KCC has delivered, so average bank or the weighted bank margin currently is 195 bps , and including the bond, 230 when we adjust for the facility that we will draw on when taking delivery of the new builds.
Yes, as mentioned, we are fully financed, and the maturity profile is quite well distributed over the next six years. The new building facility we secured this year, it is a facility of $180 million, $120 million of that related to the new builds, $40 million per vessel, approximately 60% of delivered cost, and that's a fully revolving facility. Then we have $60 million in term loan that is used to refinance the existing CABU facility. We draw on that in October and November, so that is already done, and that improved the liquidity with approximately $10 million. The margin, 180 bps , 10 or 6-year and repayment profile, 20 years age adjusted. And there's no minimum value clause actually in this facility, which I think is one of the other terms that we have negotiated this year. Yes. So here is a sneak peek into 2026.
So, cash breakeven, we have estimated that for 2026 to be $21,000 per day on average for the fleet. This means that the TCE earnings above this level, 80% of that minimum, will be distributed as dividends. So, in the graph to the right, you will see the dividend sensitivity based on different TCE scenarios for 2026. So, if you include here the five-year weighted average of $29,000 per day, the dividend potential will be around $0.70 per share and 8.5% dividend yield. And then, of course, the dividend yield is based on the current share price, and if rates go up, then probably the share price will go up, and that will, of course, impact the yield as well, but just to put it into context. But I think this nicely illustrates the potential for attractive dividends in 2026 as well at quite reasonable TCE levels.
So to summarize the finance section, we are well positioned to continue delivering attractive returns, and I think the main points are that we have a solid financial and operational track record. We definitely have financial strength to deliver on growing the company and expanding into new markets over the next years. And then we have a clear capital allocation policy that we have definitely stuck to over the last years, and then that we have an ambition to continue to deliver on going forward. So that was it from finance. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we will have a final wrap-up from Engebret. Connecting the dots, strategy, performance, and shareholder value.
Okay. So I would like to start this wrap-up just by telling you a small story from an investor meeting I had some half a year ago with a quite important investor for KCC. And he was telling me, Engebret, why don't you make KCC a cult stock? And you may be laughing, you know, cult stock, how can you make a transporter of raw materials a cult stock? And you know, I've been thinking around it, I mean, us a cult stock? Maybe not. Maybe not. But actually, I think we have something unique to offer to our stakeholders that no one else does. We have a common sense producer that delivers value just by doing things smarter, just by being willing to do things that are not standard. It's a win-win between us and our customers.
We earn more money, our customers have lower cost and a lower carbon footprint, which also is the fact of our high efficiency. We have lower risks due to our diversification and our flexibility, and also, if you think ahead in time, the regulatory risks connected to, in our mind, a needed decarbonization of industry is much lower, and again, as Håkon was showing, also our ability over time to deliver premium earnings that more than offsets the extra cost to build our ships and to run our ships compared to the standard solutions, so I think we, so again, cult stock, probably not. I believe we deserve it, but I think it's not where we're going to be.
But again, we have built over the recent years since we got listed in 2019 a strong foundation to continue improving the business we have, and which hopefully can trigger a growth in what we're doing. We are getting close and closer to building the customer support and the trades to grow the CLEANBU business. There's still work to be done, but I think we are getting close and closer, and it was a big milestone, as Snorre was telling us, that when you get ExxonMobil, the most demanding customer in the oil industry to use our ships. I'm pretty proud about that, to be very honest with you. The CABUs, a very strong position. We are the world leader in transportation, of course, alumina development in trades, and fairly stable demands in Australia. That could likely continue to be a very strong business for KCC.
Developing new concepts, hopefully we can achieve that and continue the focus and dedication to improve our carbon footprint in a smart way, and again, always prioritize the shareholder returns. We come from a family-owned ship owner. We continue having a conservative focus and approach to our business. We have talked about a lot in this session. I just wanted to mention a little bit more about new combination carrier concepts. We call it the EXBU, basically. There are new concepts that transport either new dry bulk commodities or new tanker commodities. The same concept, creating efficiency by having these additional capabilities. We have developed over the last three years two concepts. We have participated in tenders. We have come quite far with customers. We have talked to shipyards.
We are not yet there, partly new building prices, partly geopolitical risks that, of course, make it a bit more tricky for customers to commit long-term. There are certain criteria for us to succeed. I just wanted to mention to you. It's nothing which is just around the corner, but I think it's likely we can achieve this over the next five years. So again, the trigger is, of course, that when we introduce this concept, it has to be substantially more efficient than existing standard solutions, just the way we do it on the CABUs and the CLEANBUs. So our target should be 30%-40% more efficient. The underlying trade flows have to be resilient, and there has to be a potential to expand to more customers. And we need to have backup solutions for these concepts.
We need industrial strong support, customer support in order to trigger it. So the first contracting will be based on a longer-term contract. And of course, it has to deliver solid value creation, meaning that the extra earnings over the cycle compared to the standard ships should overcompensate the extra OpEx by building a more expensive ship and running more expensively. But with all the expansions we have talked about, it's not only a dream. We have achieved the growth since we listed the company. And also going back to 2015, we had six ships. Next year, we will have 19. Of course, some may disappear as we phase them out, but up to 2030, 19 at least without an expansion looks likely. And of course, we are dependent on the development in the newbuilding market. Today, it does make sense.
After we contracted the CABU IIIs, the market went up 15%. It's on the way down. How far it will fall, who knows? We believe that the added capacity in the shipping industry and depending on demand, likely will that we can see opportunities in the newbuilding market. That could trigger that we could expand the CLEANBUs. We could replace some of the oldest CABUs and possibly grow the CABUs, and then possibly getting into a new combi concept. So why invest in KCC? Of course, the main point is, of course, that we do believe we can provide our shareholders with the best risk-adjusted return in shipping. It's a different, more sustainable approach to dry bulk and product tanker shipping. We maintain market upside potential with a lower downside risk.
We talked about a disciplined industrial approach, the opportunities to grow based on our very strong balance sheet, and the fact that we again have shown and will continue to show with our dividend policy to give a constant and high dividend distribution to our shareholders. So that ends the presentations, and we are now ready for a lot of questions. Hopefully, you have noted down a lot of questions for us, so you will share that.
Yes. Okay. Okay. Oh, that was loud. Okay. You can stay on stage, and Liv can come up. First, are there any questions immediately from the audience? You can go stand over there. Yes? Okay, I'll bring you the mic.
I have a mic.
Oh, okay. Daniel will bring you the mic.
Okay, quickly, on the contract announced this morning, is it possible to say something specific about the economics in that?
I think the earnings that this contract will generate, I think, corresponds well to how the MR- tanker market prices two and a half or basically three ahead in time. So it's lower earnings than what we call the spot, but it is earnings that gives a good return on the investment in extending life and then for the next three years.
A quick follow-up then. In line with the sort of two and a half, three years MR market, with the normal market or flat out?
The, what we call, the forward market prices amounts for the next three years.
Okay, thank you. I can follow up on that then as well, because you do have a couple of other vessels that are getting to the same age that you're working on. What's the potential to scale up that type of business in your view?
I think the potential for these ships, as I mentioned, it's difficult to keep them running into Australia after 25 years. So I think the main markets for these ships would be either Brazil or Indonesia. So we have had the interest in both. Nothing is ready. I do believe there is a potential to keep the ships running. We will always evaluate the alternative. That would be to sell the ships as a dry bulk ship. We will not sell them as a cargo ship. We sold one ship back in 2021. At that time, we got $14 million for the ship. It was 21 years old, getting a value for the good standard. So maybe I didn't answer your question, but again, yes, there's a potential, but too early to give you a precise estimate of probability. But we are continuing to work on it.
The next ship that turns 25 is in October next year. We have a little bit of time. We are planning the docking, the life extension. We got good experience. The first ship left the dry dock after the 25-year docking. Everything is expected. We get the payback for the continuous maintenance we've had. No surprises. The ship is on its way to the Americas to start the contract. It will go via Australia and then takes a little bit of time to position. Early March, she will start the contract for Hydro.
Okay, thank you. And one more, if I may. As you do get these vessels getting older and you want to maintain the exposure to Australia, we're getting pretty close, I believe, to the delivery slots in terms of getting new builds in place. So how does that availability look? And what would the price point be comparably to the LR1's MR today?
I think we still could get first half 2029 deliveries, given that especially also if we go back to the shipyard that built them, all the wrongs are made. They can just reproduce the ship. Newbuilding prices are still above the level we contracted in 2023. And so I think that means that for us, we will not do these contractings at this level. We would expect the prices to be. Should we act now, we should see lower price than what we did in 2023.
Okay, we have a question that has come through online. So on decarbonization, how many of your larger customers are today willing to pay a visible premium for lower CO2 per ton- mile? And do you see that changing contract structures or just improving stickiness?
I think the general rule is that our customers are not willing to pay extra freight for lower carbon footprints. We have this carbon adjustment factor with one customer. The compensations therefore implied in this linking the freight to the emission performance reflects the EUA pricing, but it still doesn't add up to a lot, but it helps a little bit. But I think as the world moves at the moment, it will be a marginal effect for us. But I think the most important thing for us at the moment is basically to get this glue to the customer, to get this relationship building, working closer with our customers, making the switching cost for our customers more difficult, building relationships, and working together to tune the logistics. That is the most important.
It's a tool for us to do these things I mentioned, more than actually the earnings that will come later on when regulations come. If the IMO had been implemented, it would have been a boost for KCC coming into 2030. It's uncertain with Trump in the office and what Helene told us about, but we are confident this comes. It's just a little bit of a pause at the moment.
Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about the synergies between the CABUs and the CLEANBUs? Like for example, when you do an Exxon fixture on a CLEANBU, do your CABU customers also notice that?
I think, of course, they notice it because again, in Australia, we are behind schedule when it comes to introducing the CLEANBUs into the market. So it's definitely a positive point. I think the upside potential is partly on the dry side. We get bigger volume that we can transport both on the CLEANBU and the CABU because the ships are equally sized when it comes to being a dry ship. Partly, it also creates scheduling advantages when it comes to, we have more flexibility on the CLEANBUs. It could be that we rather would take a caustic cargo instead of a CPP, a clean petroleum cargo, if that makes sense. So you have more choices. And also we typically see into Australia, we will use part of the CLEANBU capacity for the caustic exposure next year. It's a part to increase the contract coverage for the fleet.
And partly also it creates flexibility when we discuss with customers and to build this leverage that Snorre was talking about. We are still in the phase where we are working to decrease the discounts we give to our customers. We should always be cheaper, and we want to share the efficiency benefit. But clearly, we have had too high discounts on the CLEANBU business in the East of Suez. So it helps us to build leverage and to flexibility in the trading of the ships.
Maybe just to follow up on the CLEANBUs, do you think you'll have either maybe a longer-term contract with Exxon next year or some other new oil majors coming into your customer list?
We are hopefully about to renew one contract, which will be a three-year contract, which is linked to our oil major. We also do believe that we have a good chance to do another three-year contract with one of the oil majors. ExxonMobil, it's too early to say. We just completed (was it last week or the week before) the first shipment, but at least it's promising, and we know that even though Exxon has not been very public about the decarb strategy, they are very much focused on that in their business. How can they improve the carbon footprint without spending too much money, and that's what we can offer. We can see a big decarbonization at no cost, when actually at a discount.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, up here in the front.
Engebret, I think you said that the CLEANBUs are trading at a bit of a discount compared to standard LR1 vessels. And my original question was, whether you think that that differential will reduce over time. But I think I just heard you saying that you're actually using that as a competitive advantage to some extent, that you are pricing the CLEANBUs maybe a little bit lower to attract cargoes. How is your strategy on that going forward?
I think the first part of the question is that we have seen a substantial improvement in the discount level. It was part of what we did in order to get into the market. We were willing to discount the earnings. And we do it on the top level. If you have a double-digit discount on the top level, on dollar per ton, it ends up with a pretty hefty discount on the net level. So we have seen a clear improvement, especially on the West of Suez. And we also see an improvement East of Suez, but there's some way to go. And I think the philosophy is again that, as Snorre was talking about, given that how the market moves, if you have a ship in position, what do you call it, Snorre, the committed tonnage in the region, it's expected that you give a discount.
And it's also a little bit to the sense that you share the benefits of having a trade which is complementary. So some discounts will be there, and that is important for us to give the customers the incentives to work with someone that has a solution that's a little bit more odd, but which gives other values. But again, no, we are into the stage where we are actually working to get it further down. And I think we have the progress that we can deliver on that.
Okay, I have a question here, and I think it might be addressed to Liv. What is your view on the continuation of the existing dividend policy and your ability to pay out 80% of cash flow and still have flexibility to fund growth investments?
And I think that's a balance you have to strike, right? But I think one thing is for certain, the dividend policy is minimum 80%. So we will continue to pay out the minimum 80%. And when it comes to investment capacity, we have definitely built investment capacity over the last years. And I think if you add on the debt for the new builds now, we are at 47% equity ratio. And if we add on an additional $100 million on top of that, you're at approximately 41% equity ratio. So I think there is some debt capacity as well on the balance sheet to invest. That being said, we of course also state that for large investments, we do have to raise money as well.
Are there any questions here? Any more questions from the audience? Nothing? Okay, I think we can go ahead and wrap it up then. Maybe Engebret, you want to say the final word and send everyone over to lunch?
I think we probably have told you too much. You're probably overloaded by information. But again, we are very thankful that you showed up, you come up, being showing interest in what we do and our stock. So thank you for coming, and hopefully you will have an enjoyable.