Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Odfjell's Quarterly Presentation for the Second Quarter of 2022. This is my first presentation, and we are also presenting Odfjell's best quarterly results in 15 years. We have a standard agenda. I will present the highlights. Our CFO, Terje Iversen, will present the financial figures. I will continue with an operational review and our prospects for the future. Please also note that it's possible to write in questions directly on the screen. Our highlights. We are, as I said, reporting the best quarter in 15 years, and it's also the second-best quarter in Odfjell's history. Our earnings increased with 24 million to $160 million in time charter earnings.
We delivered the net result of $2 million from Odfjell Terminals. We almost doubled our EBIT from $27 million to $53 million. We almost tripled our net result from $11 million to $30 million. We saw an increase in contract rates during the quarter of 14%. We utilized the strong recycling market early in the quarter and sold one vessel for recycling, which resulted in $4 million equity gain and then $8 million cash effect. We have exited the terminal in Tianjin. During the second half of 2022, we will discontinue three of our five pools.
I'm also happy to inform you that the board has decided a dividend of $0.23 per share based on our first half results. When it comes to our outlook, we expect to also report continuous strong results in the third quarter with time charter earnings more or less in line with what we see in the second quarter. By that, I give the floor to Terje to present the financial results.
Thank you very much, Harald. I will start just echoing Harald saying it's a pleasure to present these figures being the best figures in 15 years for Odfjell. It's a pleasure to announce that we are now starting and paying our first half year dividend based on the results for the first half year this year. I will start going through the P&L for this quarter. As Harald said, we increased the time charter earnings with $24 million this quarter. Main reason being that the market improved. We saw increased spot rates and also increased contract rates. Despite fewer days, we were able then to increase the time charter earnings quite substantially due to the strong market.
That is also taking into account that actually we sold one vessel beginning of the quarter, which reduced our time charter earnings by $1.8 million compared to what we otherwise could have delivered this quarter. Looking at operating expenses, that is quite stable as in the first quarter, even though we have one vessel less. That means that there's a slight increase in the operating expenses due to cost escalation inflation globally, but it's only a minor increase all over for the quarter. Looking at the contribution from terminals ended at $1.5 million this quarter, down from $3.3 million in the first quarter.
Main reason being that we had positive impact from insurance proceeds in the first quarter of $2.5 million. Looking into the third quarter, we expect the continued stable activity at the terminals. In addition, we will then book a gain related to the final insurance proceeds from the fire back in 2021 at the OTH. G&A increased from 18.0 to 19.3 this quarter. Main reason being some provisions made due to a closure of one office and also some smaller general provisions this quarter. We had other operating income expenses of $1.1 million related to some gas vessels and insurance claims.
We ended EBITDA of 89.5 compared to 67.4 in the first quarter. We had a capital gain, as Harald mentioned, at 3.9 in this quarter. We are left with an EBIT of 52.8 compared to 26.7 in the first quarter. Looking behind the figure, the reason we are growing EBIT this quarter is the increased market. Time charter rates up with $24 million and also the capital gain around $4 million contributing to the increase in the EBIT. Interest expenses ended at 17.9 compared to 18.3. A slight reduction due to less debt and also some improved terms for some of our financing instruments.
Going forward, we should expect to see increased interest expenses, though, due to the increase in three months LIBOR that will impact our figures in the second half. After other financial items and taxes of $1.4 million, we are left with a net result of $30 million compared to $11.1 million in the first quarter, and the earnings per share of $0.38 compared to $0.14 in the first quarter. As mentioned, it's a pleasure then to announce that we are distributing dividend within the next few weeks of $0.23 per share based on the normalized result for the first half year. Time charter increased this quarter as mentioned. This quarter we ended at 27,206 per day.
That's a substantial increase compared to first quarter of $22,368, and well above our breakeven, cash breakeven level for 2022 estimated to be around $22,140. Looking at the quarter alone, we had a cash breakeven of $22,291 compared to $21,476 in the first quarter. The slight increase is due to the fewer trading days, as mentioned, also increased dry docking expenses this quarter compared to the previous quarter. Looking at our balance sheets, most interesting to note, ships and newbuildings contract at $1.35 billion, slightly decreased since first quarter. Looking at investment in associated ventures ended at $182 compared to $187 in the first quarter.
The reason for the reduction is related to the dividend. We have got some dividend out of the terminals, and also there are some currency exchange effects that have negatively impacted the book value in U.S. dollar at the end of second quarter. Looking at cash and cash available liquidity, we had cash at the end of second quarter of $94.8 million. If you include undrawn loan facilities, we're at $142 million, but then you should deduct $27 million that we had on the balance sheet at the end of June that is settled to our terminal partner after end of the quarter. If you deduct that, we are at $115 million in available cash and liquidity at the end of second quarter.
Equity ratio continued to increase based on the positive results, increased to 31%-33% end of second quarter. On the liability side, most worth noting this thing is that the other current liabilities and derivatives, $185.6 million, then also include the $27 million that I just mentioned that you should deduct from our cash available end of the quarter. Looking at interest-bearing debts, and we should also look that together with the current liabilities and derivatives because some of this hedging arrangement for the NOK bonds are included in those balance sheet items. Looking at the quarter as a whole, we reduced interest-bearing debt to around $40 million, including the non-current and also current portion of the interest-bearing debt.
The cash flow this quarter, we delivered solid operational cash flow, increased with around $30 million compared to the first quarter. That is, of course, driven by the improved results, and also the fact that in the first quarter, we had an increase in the working capital, quite a substantial increase in working capital that has more stabilized into the second quarter. T hat left us with a positive operating cash flow of $68. Investment activities. We had a positive quarter also this quarter due to the sale of this vessel that went for recycling. That gave us a positive of $13.7. Then we had some investments in dry docking and energy saving devices at $10.8 this quarter, up from first quarter.
That left us with $4.1 million in positive cash flow from investment activities this quarter. Finance activities, negative $37.6 million. Looking behind the figures, as mentioned, we reduced the debt with around $40 million this quarter. We also paid dividend based on the annual results for 2021 of $8.1 million, which is included in negative $37.6 million. For the quarter as a whole, we increased cash with $33 million, leading to an end cash end of quarter of $94.8 million. Looking at the cash flow in a longer perspective, we see that they have seen improving free cash flow through many quarters now. Looking at this quarter, we ended at $72 million in positive cash flow before payments on operating leases.
If you adjust for Q1 2021, because we then had some one-offs, we have been stable, increasing the free cash flow for many consecutive quarters. If you then deduct or reduce for the kind of rolling factor here, we had a free cash flow in the last 12 months of $55 million and if you adjust then for payment on the operating leases, we have $40 million each quarter in free cash flow on a rolling 12 months basis. This quarter, we more or less used the free cash flow to reduce our debt and also to pay down the dividend for 2021.
Bunker expenses, just a few words about that because we have seen a continued increase in the oil price and the bunker expenses, but we see that we have positive effect from the bunker adjustment clauses. On a gross this quarter, we ended at $88.4 million in bunker cost, but on a reduction for the adjustment clauses and also for external pool vessels, we ended at $54 million compared to $48.1 million in the first quarter. Of course, that is more than covered by the increase in the spot price during this quarter, leading to an increase in the time charter earnings as explained earlier. On the debt side, not much news to tell about. We continue to do some refinancing to decrease the capital cost.
Going forward, we have a very few large loan maturities coming towards us, but we are still considering and will do a refinance on some of these maturities to have a kind of better profile and also reduce the cost of capital for these financing. Looking at the kind of long-term picture ahead of us, we are still on a good path, we think, to reduce our debt as we have kind of been very clear about we are going to do. We expect to be around $1 billion in debt end of this year, and we are on target, we think, to reach a level of around $900 million end of 2023.
Of course, that will also be market dependent on, and dependent on the earnings that we will see in the quarters ahead of us. I would think I will leave the word to you again, Harald.
Thank you. Yes, when it comes to our contract coverage, we see a relatively stable picture with a coverage of 50%. This is up 1% compared to last quarter and it's also up 150,000 tons compared to last quarter. Our contract rates renewals increased by 14%, and this figure is including a couple of contracts that were renewed at pre-agreed rollover terms. We also see a very high demand from charters to enter into new contracts, and we also see that the available space for these contracts is limited. We believe that there will be a strong continued momentum also into the second half of 2022.
We are closing three of our five pools, and the effects of these closures are limited when it comes to our financial results. We saw a whopping 21% increase in the Odfjell Tanker Index graph compared to an increase of 8% in the Clarksons graph. The latter is explained by the trades that are included in the Clarksons graph. When it comes to volumes, we saw specialties relatively stable. We saw increase in volumes for easy chemicals. We saw increases in veg oils, particularly when it comes to imports of energy-related cargos into Europe, and we saw increases in the volumes for CPP.
Compared to the IMO 2008 baseline, we have now managed to reduce our emissions to air by more than 50%. The second takeaway from this slide is that, for the 5th quarter in a row, we are reducing our emissions. The third takeaway from this slide is that we are reporting the lowest emissions ever in Odfjell's history. Tank terminals, stable development. We delivered an EBITDA of $8.5 million. We saw high occupancy rates in Europe and U.S., close to 100%. We also saw high throughput on those terminals. We saw a slightly lower occupancy rates in Asia at our terminal in Ulsan, but also there we saw high levels of throughput.
We have concluded the sale of our terminal in Tianjin, and that also marks the exit of our partnership with Lindsay Goldberg. We will also book $5 million gain related to insurance proceeds from the fire at OTH that occurred in 2020. Prospects. These are figures by Clarksons. If you look at the freight rates west of Suez, we see a sharp increase that started in the first quarter, by the end of the first quarter and continued through the second quarter. We see a similar and even stronger tendency when it comes to the trade lines east of Suez.
As an example, we saw in the west export rates from the east coast of South America increasing by 41%, and we also see a very strong market in the eastern trade lines. In addition, we see that more and more swing tonnage is going back to CPP due to the increasing rates for CPP. Due to this, we see that the availability of tonnage in Europe, in our region, is going down. We saw a reduction of 9% in the second quarter. Similarly, we saw an increase of available tonnage by 11% in the Asian markets.
This has contributed to the improved market in the Atlantic basin that I showed you before. We also noticed that the speed of the chemical tanker fleet continues to decrease from 2016 until today. We've seen a decrease of more than 6%, and we have to remember that next year, for many vessels, this decrease will be mandatory due to the new IMO legislation when it comes to decarbonization. There are a lot of talk of recession ahead of us and the graph on the left shows the chemical tanker market during previous recession periods.
As you can see, the chemical tanker demand has been quite resilient when it comes to previous recessions. This year, we see a 6% year-on-year growth when it comes to demand for chemical tankers. As I mentioned before, we see a sharp increase in volumes of energy-related products being shipped into Europe. All in all, we expect that the expansion of the chemical market will continue with approximately 4% in the coming years. Even more interesting is the development on the supply side, where we see a flat development, where the tonnage will increase with approximately 0.5% during the next three years. This is a calculation of available deadweight tons.
Into this picture, you have to calculate the reduced speed. You have to calculate the fact that ton-mile production is increasing due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You have to calculate that more vessels than before are being sold to domestic and regional trades. For that reason, we believe that there will be a negative fleet development in the years ahead. To summarize this presentation, we have delivered our strongest result in 15 years and also our second-strongest result ever. We see very strong markets across all trades, and we also see a tendency that there is a lack of supply in all regions. Odfjell Terminals performed well in the second quarter. They have very high occupancy rates and stable throughputs.
We expect the markets to be resilient in the years ahead, and this is driven partly by supply growth and also by a healthy demand picture. The company has decided a $0.23 per share dividend for the first half of 2022. Despite softer market typically in the third quarter, we expect to report continued strong results also in the third quarter. With that, I thank you, and this concludes the presentation and now we are open to answer questions.
Yes, sir. Thank you, Harald. We got some questions here online for you. One question from Felipe: "You let the June bond mature with cash or other resources. Will you come back to the market now that spreads are beneficial and your earnings obviously in a strong momentum?
I can answer that. I think we have a long-term target to reduce our interest-paying debt and be in the range of $750 million-$900 million. Today or end of this year, we expect to be around $1 billion. Looking at installments in 2023, we are at around $99 million, I think, so that we are very close to reach that target being below $900 million. In addition, we have the bond that is maturing in September next year. Of course, that could also be interesting to look into if you want to reduce the debt further to come within our financial targets.
We also would expect that if we should do a new bond issue, that should be at substantially improved terms based on the earnings that we are seeing and the strength that we have on our balance sheet today and expect to see continue improving further.
Yes. One question here for you, Harald: "How do you look at the management composition now after having changed CEO internally? Is there plans to strengthen the top management team to face upcoming strategic, commercial, and operational challenges?
Well, I think that's a bit too early to say. What I can say is that the present management team has seven very difficult years and I'm very confident with the core team that we have. Whether there will be changes going forward, that remains to be seen.
Okay. Thank you. One for you again, Terje, here: "Congratulations on a strong quarter. Now that you generate strong cash flow, when and how will you reach your deleveraging targets?
As I just mentioned, we are on target, I think, to reach the debt levels that we have set as a kind of target range end of next year. That should be possible. We also have a cash breakeven target that could be more challenging to reach already next year, and that will also depend on the fleet that we have. We also, based on the fact that we see some cost increase on OPEX inflation, and also interest cost increasing due to increased short-term interest.
There could be some need for resetting that target at some stage, but I think we will work quite hard to reach that target, and come as close as we can get based on the balance sheet and opportunities that we see today.
One here for you, Harald. This is the last question we got so far. Could you elaborate a bit more on the strong CoA rate increases during the quarter and expectations on this going forward.
Yes. As I mentioned in the presentation, we have seen an increase in contract rates of 14% in average for the contracts that we renewed during the second quarter. We believe that figure will continue to increase going forward. The reason for that is, I think, mainly seen on the supply side. Our customers will experience that the availability of chemical tankers available for contracts will decrease, partly due to the very strong spot market and partly due to the fact that we will see a decrease in tanker capacity due to speed reductions, due to tankers being sold for domestic markets, and also due to the increased ton-mile demand.
We believe that there is a strong market for contracts going forward.
Thank you. There are no further questions online right now, so I'll leave the floor for some final remarks from you, Harald.
Yes. I thank all of you for attending and asking questions and have a good day.