Okay. Good morning, and good morning from Bergen, and welcome to the first quarter conference call for Odfjell SE, which we, for obvious reasons, are doing virtually this time. I hope that everybody can hear us clearly. It does not mean that we do not want or welcome questions. So there's an opportunity to post questions on the website and the link that you all have.
And so please post questions, and we will address them towards the end. And if you do not have a chance to post your question or get it answered satisfactorily, then you are welcome to reach out to any one of us following this conference call. Today here with me, I have Bjorn Christian Oel, who is Head of Investor Relations in Odfjell SE. I have Thierry Ebersen, CFO and myself, enmark, CEO of Odfjell SE. Before we start, I'm looking at the agenda.
I just want to mention that in Norway, we are now in the week eight of working remotely. And most other countries in the world where we operate, we are also working remotely for land based staff except actually for China. And I'm happy to say that we have no major disruptions to our operations, and I'll speak to that a little bit later on in the call. And I actually think that, that's remarkable, and we're very happy with it. And it's especially thanks to our seafarers and our operators in the terminals worldwide who can, by definition, not work remotely.
So I want to start by saying special thanks to them for doing a remarkable job under these circumstances. On the agenda, I will start with the highlights. Then as usual, Terje, he will take you through the financials, and then I will come back for operational review and the prospects and markets update. And then we'll take questions, as I mentioned, towards the end. So if you flip to Page three, under the highlights, the short version of the Q1 is that it was a good quarter despite the circumstances.
Our results have improved into first quarter, and that's mainly due only due to the increase in the chemical tanker markets. We had an EBITDA of $66,000,000 which is up $8,000,000 compared to fourth quarter last year. And all of those $8,000,000 came from increases in Odfjell Tankers, who came in with an EBITDA of $58,000,000 during the quarter. Terminals had an unchanged EBITDA of $8,000,000 through the quarter. And that gives us a net result for the group of minus $4,000,000 compared to minus $10,000,000 in the last quarter, so we are down $6,000,000 But if you adjust that for nonrecurring items, then the net result was actually positive in the first quarter of twenty twenty, which is it's quite a long time since we have been able to say that.
So it's been a good development despite the clouds on the horizon. If you look at the chemical tanker market, the spot rates on our main trade lanes improved by 6% during the quarter. And especially important, I think it is that the contracts, the COAs that we renewed during the first quarter were also up by 5%. So we are still continuing to see an increasing trend in our freight rates. Also noticeably, we secured financing for our terminals in The United States.
That means that the Houston and the Charleston terminals are self sufficient with cash, they can execute on the growth plan when we can do safely. As I mentioned, we did not have any operational disturbances. And but also important to mention the IMO 2020 transition that everybody forgot about now, I'm also happy to say we did not have any unexpected disturbances or costs related to that transition. So the guidance we have, if you're looking at the right side of the page, is that first quarter showed continued improvement. There are some uncertainty for the future.
We are seeing some changed nomination activity under our contracts. And in general, we are less concerned about the virus spread itself, but we are more concerned about what comes afterwards, which means that if there will be a global recession, of course, demand in our sector will also be affected. But I'll speak to that in more details. And consequently, we are expecting to report slightly weaker results during the second quarter. I think I'll now hand it over to financials, and you have to go to Slide five.
You, Christian. I would like to start with the income statements, as Christian said on Slide five. Starting with Tankers, We saw an increase in the gross revenue from 216,700,000.0 to 240,300,000.0 this quarter. The revenue increased mostly due to higher freight rates, but also due to higher bunker costs where we received higher more bunker compensation from our customers. But at the same time, we also saw increase in number of days and also volumes through this first quarter.
Voyage expenses increased with $16,500,000 to 102.4 That is also related to the bunker cost increase we saw. As I said, last part of that is being compensated by our customers and also some of our external ship owners is taking that cost through the external pools that we are operating. Pool distributions ended up 16.1%, increased due to number of vessel increased and also due to increased results for the pool vessels. Then we ended with the time charter earnings at 121.8 compared to $117,300,000 in the fourth quarter last year. Time charter expenses, slightly down.
That has to do with we are replacing some of the time charter vessels with new and cheaper vessels. So that has been declining for a while now. We're happy to see that operating expenses are very stable, 34,600,000.0 this quarter. And after G and A, which we reduced compared to fourth quarter and under the 15,100,000.0 we ended with an EBITDA of USD 57,800,000.0. G and A decreased, as I said, due to more normal quarter compared to fourth quarter last year, but at the same time, we also get a favorable development in the U.
S. Dollar NOK exchange rate that is decreasing our total G and A expenses. After the preparations, both for the owned vessels and also for the IFRS 16 vessels, we ended with an operating result of $21,800,000 compared to 10,500,000.0 in the fourth quarter last year. After net finance and after taxes, we then have a net result of $5,200,000 negative. If you exclude kind of negative mark to market values on hedging that are not looked as hedge accounting of $5,000,000 we are actually positive slightly at 200,000.0 for this quarter.
Looking at the terminals. All terminals delivered quite stable results and revenues this quarter. We ended at $17,500,000 Operating expenses slightly down, dollars 6,600,000.0. And after G and A of $2,700,000 we had an EBITDA of $8,100,000 which is a small increase compared to the fourth quarter twenty nineteen. Main driver is the lower G and A, and that is related also to the fact that we are downsizing the size of the overhead organization for terminals compared to what we have had historically.
After depreciations, we have an operating result of 2.7 compared to 1,400,000.0 in the fourth quarter. And after net finance and taxes, we then delivered a positive result from our terminals at $1,000,000 compared to negative 200,000.0 in the fourth quarter. Looking at the total, also including then our gas joint venture, we delivered EBITDA of 66,200,000.0 compared to $58,000,000 We delivered operating results in the first quarter of 24,300,000.0 compared to 11,700,000.0 in the fourth quarter. The net result ended at negative $4,400,000 But if you adjust for the $5 in the negative mark to market on the derivatives, we ended up with a slightly positive result of 1,000,000 If we then flip to Slide number six, the balance sheet. We see that ships and newbuilding contracts increased slightly this quarter.
That has to do with the delivery of our newbuilding from New Dong shipyard. We also see that we have increase in the right of use of assets. That has to do with a new five year time charter that we took in this quarter. And we also see that we increased cash and cash equivalents from $100,800,000 in the fourth quarter to $120,100,000 in the first quarter. And the main driver behind that is the tap issues we did on our bonds in January.
That is now included in the cash. Looking at equity. We have an equity of US503.3 million dollars That is down US38 million dollars compared to the fourth quarter. Of course, that is influenced by the negative result of US4.4 million dollars negative, but at the same time, we also have a negative development on financial derivatives related to interest and currency this quarter that is booked as other comprehensive income and then directed towards the equity and not included in the P and L of US33.4 million dollars that has impacted the equity negatively this quarter. That leads to an equity percentage around 25%.
But if you exclude operating leases, calculating the equity percentage, we are around 28% and still well above the financial covenants when it comes to minimum equity covenants in our loan agreements. You see that the current portion of interest bearing debt increased somewhat this quarter. That is related to the fact that the bond, the Norwegian NOK bond we have maturing in January 2021 is now considered as a short term debt because it's less than 12 months to maturity. So that is then increasing the current portion of interest bearing debt. If we now please to Slide seven, the cash flow.
We see that we had an increase in the cash flow this quarter under the positive US31.7 million dollars compared to US24.8 million in the fourth quarter. Looking at cash flow from investment activities, we see that we paid the last installment on the newbuilding that we took delivery in the first quarter of $47,600,000 We also have positive cash from selling one Ola vessel of US4.1 million dollars Then under the bit cash flow from investment activities as negative US41.2 million dollars Finance activities also this quarter has been quite active. In total, we ended on with positive US31.6 million mainly due to the tap issues we did in January then we ended with 31,600,000.0 In total, we had a positive net cash flow this quarter of $28,400,000 Slide number eight. Bunker expenses continue to be one of the main cost components for the Odfjell Group. We see that in the first quarter, we experienced a large increase in the total bunker expenses.
Of course, that is related to IMO 2020. We see the gross bunker cost increase from US46 million dollars to US60 million dollars this quarter. But after adjusting for the bunker adjustment clauses, where our customers under their contracts of affreightments take their part of the cost increase and after also then deducting for the third party vessels, we ended at US50.1 million dollars in net bunker compared to US40.1 million in the preceding quarter. But you also happen to see that the spot rate increased more than compensated actually for the net increase we had in the bunker cost this quarter. And also looking at the current prices for VLSS both for low sulfur fuel oil, looking back in the kind of the last few years, we see that actually the cost of that fuel today is very comparable with where HFO has been priced in the last few years.
So we don't expect to see any cost increase in the coming quarters, maybe the opposite because we saw a sharp decline in the bunker price during this quarter and into the second quarter, and then we expect that to continue and show a decreased bunker cost for our vessels in the coming months. We have done some financial hedging on the bunker also. We have covered around 12.5% of total volumes through derivatives, securing that at a quite attractive price historically, but at the same time, slightly a bit higher than the current market price for the same period. Slide number nine, we show the debt development going forward. As you can see, we have some balloons maturing in third quarter this year.
That has been addressed already, and we are working quite actively to rebalance that before the end of the second quarter. Besides with that, we have the bond maturing in January 2021. And for the rest of 2021, actually, we have very few balloons maturing. So actually going forward in next two years, we more or less can concentrate on the bond that is maturing in January 2021. We are aware that the bond market is more or less closed today, especially when it comes to kind of pricing being well kind of quite high compared to where we historically have funded us.
So we are considering and working actively to make sure that we have alternatives if the market continues to be closed or be priced at current levels. So we are looking into vessels that are on an incurable today and also looking into vessels with low long term value and considering refinancing those early to take out additional fund and have that as a contingency preparing for potential repayment of the bond in January without refinancing that in the bond market. We're also saying that we did a refinancing of the terminals in U. S. This quarter.
We refinanced the USD 200,000,000 facility with a new facility where we can draw up to USD $250,000,000 and also have an additional accordion included in that facility of USD 65,000,000. We think that facility should make sure that we are very well funded and also are able to increase our activity and expand the terminal without injecting any further equity into that terminal. Going forward, we see that the gross debt is expected to increase this year. That is related to the newbuildings that are to be delivered. We have three vessels to be delivered for the remainder of this year.
So that is increasing the total debt. But after that, our plan and strategy is still to then to reduce debt going forward, to reduce our capital costs and also, as I said, being prepared for the bond markets maybe not opening at the satisfactory levels. Then we have the capital expenditures on Page 10. As you can see from the overview, we have very limited CapEx in the coming three years. We actually have only the three newbuildings that are being delivered this year from Hudong.
That is in total that installments of $129,000,000.100 percent of that has been financed, so we don't have any equity installments needed for taking both those three vessels. Besides of that, of course, we have CapEx related to ballast water treatment systems and also the expected docking expenses, but we don't have any additional major CapEx for the coming three years. On the tank terminal, we have included here our share of the expected CapEx for our terminal assets, or shall we know this share. And as mentioned, we still expect that to be financed by the balance sheet from the various terminals without any capital injection from the parent company. Danathil, I think I will leave it over to you again, Christian.
Yes. Thank you. So if I can if you can turn to Page 12. I mentioned already that we saw a continued increasing trend in our freight rates. And if I start you on the bottom of this slide, you can see that the trend we spoke about in the fourth quarter continued into first quarter with both spot rates and COA rates continuing on an upward trend.
Some of that can, of course, be explained by the increase in fuel cost. As we mentioned last quarter, The market has absorbed the extra cost for switching to a new fuel type and then some. So that's a good sign. Of course, spot markets come and go, but still in the first quarter, it was a strong spot market. And also importantly, as I mentioned, we continue to renew contracts at an increase of around 5% for this quarter.
On the top of this slide, our contract coverage was 51% during this quarter. We continue to take a strong stand, as we did in the fourth quarter, that we do not want to renew contracts. That locks us up both in terms of earnings and in terms of flexibility of our system. I'll speak to that a little bit later. So we have been reducing our contract coverage over the last couple of quarters.
And I think in the current market, that's a benefit. So if we if I turn you to Page 13, if you look at the volumes on the right hand side, volume was up this quarter quite a lot. It was up to 3,700,000 tonnes. And that can look like a big jump, but I want to remind everybody that in the third and the fourth quarter, the world was still dealing with the big explosions in Saudi Arabia that seems to be a long time ago. So yes, I think the volumes were unusually low in the third and the fourth quarter.
But at least now, in the fourth in the first quarter this year, volumes are again up. The second reason is that we have been booking more CPP as well and longer backhauls. So that will kind of that will increase the volume as well. If you look on the bottom right hand side, you are seeing our voyage stage development. And the dotted line the orange dotted line is Odfjell's own exposure, and that's almost flat, whereas we have been increasing the number of days from pools where we don't have any exposure to those days, but we have a share of the upside.
So that's kind of the model that we have been working with. On the left hand side, you are we are comparing again the Odfix with the Clarksons Index. And Clarksons Index was up 17% this quarter compared to ODDFIX only 3.3%. And I find myself trying to explain these swings quarter by quarter. And there are some effects of us comparing apples to oranges here because the spot index by Clarksons is a theoretical round voyage in real time, whereas the odd fix is an operational index that has time lags in it, for instance.
I mean, if we have a voyage ongoing and the market goes up, we have to finish the voyage we are doing before we can start a new one. And that means that there is a time lag. And the other reason is that for the big jump in Clarksons Index, we understand this in the fourth quarter, they were penalizing the index because of the IMO 2020, and they have corrected that during this quarter. So it looks like a big jump, but it's if you normalize it, it's not as big. If you then turn to Page 14, I'm going to speak a little bit about the impact of the pandemic.
I did mention a few things at the beginning of the presentation. But the short version is that it is causing some operational challenges, but our performance largely remains intact. The challenges we have are mainly related to port closures, increased waiting, some changed trading patterns, which is not dramatic. It's difficult to get waiting inspectors on board the ships. It's difficult to get spare parts on and off the ships.
And in general, we say that what used to be small operational challenges are now slightly bigger operational challenges. But we have been solving them. And as I mentioned on the bottom, we have 100% operational fleet, and we don't have any measurable impact on our operations. Our number one challenge is crew changes. Crew changes are virtually impossible.
It's difficult to find any flights going anywhere. Most countries are under lockdown, so it's impossible to move people around. That means that people have to stay longer on board. And those crew who are at home waiting to go on board cannot go. And I think that's an industry problem, and we are not only an Odfjell problem.
And I think it's a problem that the world has to solve soon because it's not sustainable that we don't get crew changes. We have also had in the recently one newbuilding delivered. We have had some challenges getting crew on board that ship, but those are being solved. But it is a challenge to move people around the world for obvious reasons. We have had corona measures in place on our ships since mid January, Home Office Solutions since February.
And as I mentioned, we are almost the entire land organization continues to work from home. We have no crew infected by the virus nor on our terminals. We have had one confirmed case in our office in Brazil, but that person was discharged from hospital this morning and as well. So Touchwood, we have not had other incidents related to physical conditions for any employees. If I turn to Page 15, I want to talk a little bit about the flexibility of our model.
As you have sort of seen on the previous slides, we have been reducing our contract portfolio. So we are somewhere between 5060% contract portfolio. And that means that we have room to maneuver in terms of scheduling fleets and optimizing. Had we been 90% contracted, we would have committed ships to certain trades because of those commitments, and we would not have had any flexibility in the system. But we do right now.
And if you compare that to the fact that we have a global operation, as you're seeing on the left hand side, we've been trying to explain on the bottom left hand side that if we kind of consolidate cargoes and ball ships that are not fully utilized, we have the flexibility to free up tonnage and participate in other trades, whether that's a spot trade in the chemical market or it is participating like we do at the moment in some of the CPP trades. That's the same effect that we consolidate, and we can swap bigger ships for smaller ships in some trades and free up capacity. And I don't think in the middle of the slide, there's any secret to anyone that the CPP market and the crude markets have had a major bull run, and it's cooling off a little bit now, which I think is a good thing. But there's a tremendous amount of demand for CPP and storage and so on. So we are participating in that.
And on the right hand side, we are seeing that we have seven MRs, coated MRs, and we have one LR1. And of course, they enjoy some of the benefits of an increased CPP market, and we are freeing up capacity to do that. Apart from the seven MRs, I also want to point to the fact that we also do have some of the super segregators that are almost 50,000 deadweight tonne, and they do they are capable of trading CPP. We cannot swing the entire fleet in because we have some contract nominations. But we do have tonnage that can participate in neighboring segments when market opportunities allow us for it.
If I turn you to Slide number 16 on the terminals, I think the headline here is that demand for storage is going up. Whether that's oil or CPP or chemicals, it's the same picture. Producers continue to produce and sales might be slow. So there's some stock building. And when you stock build, then you need somewhere to put it.
And that means that demand for storage in general is up around the world. That's the good news. The slight worry is, of course, that the throughput through the terminals that also generates revenue is down a little bit. But all in all, we are doing continue to do well on the terminals. We have 100% occupancy in Houston, our biggest terminal.
And in general, we're also seeing increased utilization on the other terminals. So we are 93% full on globally on our terminals. On the top right hand bar, you are continuing to see our EBITDA margin from our remaining terminals going up, and that shows that the plan that we have for reorganizing and restructuring our terminal division works. It's a smaller footprint, but it's a healthier footprint. So then we turn to the next page, prospects and markets update.
And if there was ever a time to insert a disclaimer, I think this is probably the time in my thirty years in shipping. I've never been looking at a picture that is unclear as it is today. There are if you listen to the media and all the doomsday prophecies out there, you can easily turn into a very dark future. But if you actually try to switch off emotions and only look at the data, then at the moment, we don't see any signs of a catastrophic impact on demand. Of course, it will have an ultimate impact on demand, but we are not seeing a catastrophic scenario being likely.
If we turn you quickly to Slide 18, this has nothing really to do with chemicals, but we one of the things that we are tracking is global shipping activity. And when the pandemic started to sweep the world, you saw that starting in Asia and then it came to Europe, and now it's in The U. S. And South America. So on the left hand side, what we are doing here is total shipping a number of port calls growth and contractions in number of port calls around the world.
So if you're looking at the light blue line, you saw that basically from January and in the first quarter, you saw a big dip in China. But from March onwards, you are seeing that growing again. And we think you're going to see start seeing the same picture also in Europe and The U. S. That with a delayed effect of, say, a quarter, you will start seeing growth in infrastructure and ports opening and trades opening up again.
So that's basically that's a good sign that kind of the wheels are turning and especially China from a logistics perspective is opening up. I mean China is the key to many of the trades. And that's why on the next slide, if I turn you to Page 19, we're going to talk a little bit about the demand picture focusing on the chemical producers in China. And I apologize for the busy slide, but this is a picture that has surprised us positively, I would say. If you're looking on the left hand side, what we're showing here is chemical feedstock prices.
And of course, when you have naphtha based whether it's U. S.-based or Far East naphtha going from, call it, dollars $4.50 down to, say, 200, then that's a huge impact on the production cost for the chemical producers. And if you're an ethane based producer, it's going from, let's say, $2.50 down to now $100 or $125 or whatever that is per tonne. So that's obviously a big impact on your production costs. And then in the middle of the slide, we are looking at, okay, so what does that mean for the global margins?
And actually, surprisingly, we are seeing the margins are rising. If you look at the methanol producers' margin on top and you're looking at ethylene glycol producers on the bottom of the middle of this slide, you're seeing that the margins are rising. So that's not a surprise because a big part of that is, of course, that your raw material cost is dropping, as you're seeing on the left hand side. But our margin has two sides to it. One is what it costs you to produce your product.
The other one is you have to sell your product. And if the market was just completely dysfunctional and you weren't able to sell, then you would not see an increase in margins. So this is really a good picture. On the right hand side then, even more importantly, is that we are looking at Chinese based chemical industry, and we track that week by week in terms of their utilizations. And if you track the methanol to olefins and the polyethylene and the polystyrene on the top and your the polyester chains on the bottom, then you are seeing that basically for all of them, they are now producing at capacity that's above twenty nineteen averages, especially the polyester chains on the two right ones, so you are up at 80% or 85%, whereas on the left hand side, the PTA, which is the polyester chain that goes into closed productions and fibers, is naturally a little bit behind.
But the general picture is that production capacity is ramping up again. Ports are working. Margins for producers continues to be high. So demand seems to be resilient. But it's a really fine balance between we are coming out of a first quarter that was good and a second quarter that looks to develop okay.
And we also, of course, see that there are scenarios where we are heading into a global recession or maybe even depression. And that will have an impact on ultimate demand. But so far, it has proven to be fairly resistant. If I turn you to the next page, Page 20, quickly. Of course, we are also being helped by a strong CPP market.
The top bar is the MR rates, and they are having enjoying historically high rates. And that means that on the middle bar that the number of product tanker that's trading in chemicals is beginning to reduce. So ships are swinging back from chemicals back into products. And other people are doing like us, swinging chemical tankers into CPPs or what we call reverse swing tonnage. That's helping us as well.
So in terms of actual supply of ships, is definitely helping the chemical markets. Product tanker, the CPP market may not last. A lot of it is storage, and ultimate demand will probably impact or will impact CPP demand as well. So it will not stay where it is, is our guess. But even if it falls back, we think that there's one thing that's extremely important to note.
If you're speaking about CPP or you're speaking about chemical tankers at this stage, and that's the bottom part of this slide. And that shows that we do not have a supply problem. In 02/2009, when the financial crisis hit, we came out after a huge wave of newbuildings, and we were suffering from a massive oversupply in all segments. And we don't see that situation now. The last five to ten years has been quite limited, especially the last five years, quite limited number of new additions to the fleet.
And at the moment, it's virtually zero. And we are not seeing any people ordering new ships in the foreseeable future. So supply is going to grow by somewhere between 01%. So supply is very much under control, which is a good thing if demand gets impacted. So if I turn to Slide 21.
Future market developments are, of course, highly dependent on how quickly does the world economy get back into the swing of things. It depends a lot on are we heading into a V shaped recession or is it going to be a depression and what is the impact going to be. And I mean, we are carefully tracking all of this and all the leading indicators. And so far, we are seeing, as I mentioned, that demand is fairly resistant. We really have to stretch our models to see a contraction in demand ton mile demand for chemicals.
We have been reducing our forecast to somewhere between 24%, and that might be lower. But we are not seeing as I mentioned earlier, we're not seeing a catastrophic impact where we will see a major contraction in demand because the structural long haul transport of chemicals remains. And And the supply side, we are saying well around 1%. But all of it depends on what follows the pandemic, not the pandemic itself. So a summary on prospects on '22, and then I'll we'll take some questions.
It was a we allow ourselves to say it was a good quarter for Odfjell in the first quarter, improved results driven mainly by increased continued increase in the chemical tanker space. And we are worried about what the future will bring, the impact of a slowdown in the world economy, and we are taking precautionary measures for the company. Usually, we are, of course, limiting CapEx, limiting spending where we can. As Terje mentioned, we our base case is that the bond market will not open, so we are working on alternative ways to financing that the bond that matures in January 2021. And in general, we take a defensive approach on kind of how we operate the company from a cost and efficiency perspective.
And I also want to say and remind everybody that Oswald has been through a fairly rough ride the last couple of years. Four years ago, we started with Project Felix where we took out $109,000,000 of cost, and we have been working with various efficiency gains and so on projects ever since. And I think that the crisis that we have had in Odfjell is helping us now, and it means that we are standing on a fairly lean platform. We have a competitive organization, and we have just completed the largest fleet renewal program in the history of the company. So in terms of timing, we don't have any of those distractions.
We don't have to throw ourselves into major saving programs and fleet renewals and all sorts of things. We can focus on what's right in front of us, and that's operations and keeping our customers happy and continue to operate safely. And the first quarter was an example of us doing exactly that. So we are I wouldn't say we are optimistic, but we are not seeing a catastrophic development in front of us. And we're also, I would say, optimistic for the second quarter.
It's a time to be careful and not overconfident, so we do expect slightly weaker results in the second quarter. And then we will try have to track developments during the second quarter and see how the rest of the year develops. So I think that was it for the summary on prospects. And before I end, if you can just take a look on the Slide 23, we had been planning for our Capital Market Day on the June 9 in Oslo, and we are now replacing that with an online investor presentation at the same date. I hope many of you will join us.
We will be speaking about our strategy going forward and, of course, a financial update and more about how COVID-nineteen impact our operations and our markets and try to also break down the demand side more into various industries. And then we will be speaking about Outfill and ESG, and we will be forwarding separate invitations after that. And now I hope that we will have some questions posted online. Yes, Sveer.
We got one question from Matt Spie of DNB Markets. Can you comment on availability in 2020 and 2021 to take down costs by reducing the short term fleet, redelivering charters or other means to adjust the fleet to lower volumes?
Yes. Thank you. That's a good question. I think we do have some flexibility to reduce our TC fleet. If you look at our TC cost in the last year, so we have been reducing our TC cost quite a bit.
But we do have ships that expire on TC. And our general approach at the moment is unless that it's a real bargain, will redeliver the time charter ships that we have. I don't, from the top of my head, remember exactly what percentage of the fleet that is, but we can get back to you after that. But it's important to note also, as you see in our in the pack that you just looked at, that we are replacing TC ships with pool ships. And with the pool ships, we don't have any downside risk, but we do get a fee for operating the ships.
And if we do well, we also have a profit share on top. So if you draw that line, it's not nearly the same upside as a TC ship, but it's not far behind. But it is a way of derisking the point that you are making. So, Bjorn Krasten, can you make sure that we get back to that on the percentage? Thank you for
the question. There appears to be no further questions right now. One question from Petter Haugin in Kepler Cheuvreux. Have you seen any floating storage requests for chemicals?
Yes, we have seen some floating storage, but it's very few. We had we've seen some requests for mixed chemicals based in The Middle East. But in general, the big storage push gets is mainly in CPP, and that also draws tonnage away from our markets. But we don't have any of our fleet in floating stores as it is now, right? Yes.
So not a massive impact directly, but indirectly.
One question from Anders Karlsson of Danske Bank. Are you seeing any change in the trend of COA renewal rates? Are rates coming up?
Yes. Rates are coming up during the first quarter, and we have recently only was it last week or the week before renewed a big contract, which is also up around 7%. So we have been seeing continued increase in COA rates, which is a positive sign. Of course, we have more than 100 COAs in some of the fronthauls, some of backhauls. And in some contracts, we compete with CPP tonnage.
So it's difficult to give one answer that covers all of it. There are exceptions to the rule, but the general trend is that it is has still been up during the first quarter, we are not seeing that reversing at the moment.
Next question from Bakkevig of Holmenkov, Polknik. Can you elaborate on your currency hedge? Why do you hedge currencies? And what is the expected impact for the remainder of 2020?
We have some currency exposure, mostly related to our G and A expenses being a large part in Norwegian kroner. We also have a large part of our selling crude that are Norwegians. And we're also covering the NOK expenses in that through derivatives. We have a policy where we are hedging kind of twelve months going forward on a rolling basis. But today, we have hedged around 80% of the NOK U.
S. Dollar exposure in 2020. We have a negative market value of that around $9,000,000 end of first quarter. That has been impacted absolutely by the weakened Norwegian kroner, which we saw couple of months ago, was starting. So we have hedged around at the level of around SEK 9 per dollar.
And today, we are at SEK 10.3 or in that range. So we have a negative value on that. But that has decreased somewhat into the second quarter, but there is a negative value related to the hedge. At the same time, I would say that we are hedged at a level that is quite attractive compared to historically where we have seen the Norwegian kroner trade against the U. S.
Dollar.
And then a follow-up from Oskar. What are your alternatives for refinancing the 2021 bond?
We have some unencumbered vessels that we are looking into, possibly draw some loans of those. We also have vessels in our fleet with quite low loan to value, which we can refinance early and then draw up additional funds. And we're also considering to have in place kind of bridge to bond financing in addition. We also have kind of available securities when it comes to our terminal assets and so on. So we could also consider to get in place a bridge to bond at some stage.
So we think we are quite well positioned to take care of that bond maturity also in a situation where the bond market continues to be closed.
To be no further questions online at the moment. So if there are no immediate questions, I'll hand the word back to Christian for a conclusion.
Yes. Thank you for listening. I see a lot of you have been following the presentation. We do appreciate interest in the company. And as I said initially, if you have questions that you didn't get answered or didn't get answered sufficiently here, I mean, feel free to reach out to Bjorn Christian, Thierry or myself anytime.
Otherwise, there's nothing left to say but to please stay safe. And thank you for listening.