Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Jul 1, 2021

Good afternoon, good morning, and welcome to our video conference presentation for our second quarter results for Stolt-Nielsen Limited, which we are streaming live from our office in London. My name is Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen. I'm the CEO of Stolt-Nielsen Limited. Together with me, as always, I have Jens F. Grüner-Hegge, our Chief Financial Officer, and I'm very pleased to also inform you that this time Lucas Vos, our President of Stolt Tankers, is joining us and will present the Stolt Tankers part of the presentation. I'd like to remind you that you can post any questions anytime during the presentation. There's this Q&A section up on the upper right-hand side of your screen. You can post them. We will answer hopefully all the questions at the end of the presentation. Let's then move on to the presentation. If we go to the next slide. Follow to the next slide, please. The agenda, I will go an overview of Stolt-Nielsen. We will talk about ESG. We'll go through each of the businesses. Jens will take you through the financial highlights, and then we will try to respond to the questions that you post. Next slide, please. Second quarter highlights, the utilization is up as we reported, but profits are still lagging. Net profit from continuing operation came in at $7.8 million. The increase in EBITDA was mainly driven by the record number of shipments that we saw in Stolt Tank Containers. We saw an increased activity and higher utilization at Stolthaven Terminals. We saw a slight improvement in the utilization in Stolt Tankers. We had lower results in Stolt Sea Farm, that is due to the lower volume that we sold in the second quarter as the first quarter is the strong quarter with the Christmas sale. We improved our free cash flow due to lower capital expenditures. Jens and his team completed a $77 million financing secured by the 3 CTG ships that we bought last summer, we also leased in an additional 600 new tank containers. At the end of the quarter, we had $397 million of available liquidity, we paid out the dividend on May 5th of this year of $0.25 per share. Looking at the operating revenue, $526.9. That's up from $480.2 million. EBITDA up $116.7. That's up from $109.2. Operating profit also up from $36 to $41. I already mentioned the net profit. Also here is the free cash flow of $20 million. This free cash flow is an after our capital expenditures and interest expense. Generating a free cash flow for the quarter. Tangible net worth rose slightly from $1.636 billion up to $1.642 billion. Next slide, please. If we do then the net profit variance and compare first quarter of 2021 to second quarter, how we got there, you can see that we had a slightly lower operating profit from Stolt Tankers. We had a significant improvement in Stolt Sea Farm of $2.6 and STC with its record number of shipment came in at an increase of operating profit of $4.5. Lower operating profit from Stolt Sea Farm. Again, the second quarter lower volume, because of the Christmas sale in the first quarter. Stolt-Nielsen Gas, still in the development stage, but that came in at a lower operating profit of $1.1. Corporate and others $1.3 million, mainly due to lower accrual for the profit sharing and short-term incentive. We had a lower net finance expense, over $1 million, some FX change and slightly higher income tax, bringing the net profit for the quarter to $7.8 million. Next slide, please. ESG, as we promised, we better at reporting what we are doing. At Stolt-Nielsen, our goal of zero harm for people and the environment is our number one priority. We believe that we as a corporation, as a company, even though we consume a lot of fossil fuels in what we do and the products that we transport is created very much from fossil fuels, it is our responsibility to do what we can do to contribute to a more sustainable future. We have mentioned on the right-hand side before our targets. For Tankers, the reduction at least 50% of our carbon intensity relative to the 2008 levels, and that we want to achieve by 2030. In terminals, as a primary activity, to be carbon neutral by 2040. STC, so Tank Containers, by 2030, 50% of the energy and utilities consumed in our depots will come from renewable energy sources. The Stolt Sea Farm, zero waste to landfill by 2030. Also to reduce our dependence upon fish oil and fish meal by finding substitutes in the feed. In Stolt Tankers, we have actually been doing some trials with biofuels on our ships from operating in the Rotterdam to use the ARA service. Stolt Tankers has also joined the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping as a strategic partner, working together with other operators. Santos Terminal in Brazil has been named as one of the top 3 bulk liquid terminals in Brazil by our customer, Raízen. The award was given based on safety, processes, productivity, and controls criteria. Stolt Tank Containers has retained its silver sustainability rating from EcoVadis, and Stolt Sea Farm successfully completed an annual food safety audit for GLOBALG.A.P. and SAE. The next slide, please. Then I'll give the word to Lucas. Thank you very much, Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, and thank you for having me in this session. I'd like to take you through the second quarter for Stolt Tankers, so if I can have the next slide. I think if I look at Stolt Tankers overall, the quarter was marked by substantial higher volumes, but unfortunately, lower spot rates. Our operating revenue has gone up with around $27 million, which is great. However, you do not yet see it coming back in our EBITDA numbers in our operating profit. That is very much driven by the five CTG ships that Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen was already mentioning at the beginning of the presentation, which has come into the fleet in quarter one and have been fully operational in quarter two. The utilization therefore has gone up with 1.4%, but the main drivers are the rates and the bunker prices, and I'll come back to that on the next slides. Maybe one more item to mention on these slides is that you can see that our owning expenses have gone up, partially because of the CTG ships, but also partially because we have decided to advance some of our dry dockings too, because it's a relatively weak market. Get them done right now so that we are well-placed for hopefully a pick-up in the market when we get there later in the year. If I can have the next slide. You will see that the higher bunker costs have been a big hit on our numbers. Overall, prices have increased around somewhere between 25% and 16%, depending on how you look at it. Consumed was 25%, purchase was around 16%, but you see that our overall costs have increased with only 7%. What is the differential there? The difference really is that we have a natural hedge through our contracted volume. 93% of our contracts with customers, they have a bunker hedge, which means that around 62% of our total volume is protected against the increases in the bunkers. However, that's not the whole explanation. It also is a sign that the internal cost-saving program that we have now been conducting for the last two years, and which is primarily focusing on the bunker consumption, that that is now paying off. We've been reducing our speeds, we've been optimizing the trim of the ships, we have been purchasing bunkers in lower locations, and we have made sure that the optimal routing is continuously maintained. We've done so by centralizing this function all together in Rotterdam. Bunker costs are up, but we have a lot of mitigating factors in this to make sure that it doesn't hit our bottom line to the same extent. The other factor is the prices. If I can have the next slide, please. It's the market circumstances. We've seen our contracted volumes slightly lower than we normally have at the 62% level, whereas in quarter one, we were still at the 71% level. It's not an overall sign of weakness in the market. It's not that at all. There are some conscious choices and there are some unfortunate events in here. One of them is also mentioned on this slide is the cold snap that we saw in Texas or the Houston freeze, as we tend to call it. It has overall cost us around $5 million in the bottom line, and because of our voyage accounting, most of that falls in quarter two. The impact there is $3.9 million, as you can see, and that is very much contracted volume. We have also stopped calling the West Coast of South America, where we had one contract with a customer which we decided not to continue. That was a conscious choice from our side to reduce that volume, and we have been impacted by some assets facility being shut down because of refurbishing, and that has also hit our contracted volumes. That is the bad news, but it's not that overall volumes are low. The good news is that my organization has shown quite resilience by getting a lot of spot volume in. Our spots volume has increased with around 45% quarter-on-quarter compared to the 6% decrease in contracted volume. That 45% increase in spots volume did come at a lower price. The spot prices have decreased with around 6.5%. They were already at a low. They have gone down even lower, and if you set that off against the higher bunker prices, then you can imagine that is not necessarily a good scenario. Overall, I think Deep Sea, I'm very happy with the performance on the volume side and well, I'll take you through my outlook for the market later. If I look at some of our other services, look at the intra-European service, I think overall, we're doing fine. It wasn't as strong as quarter one. Quarter one hit a bump because of the pre-Brexit movements that took place. As you know, our December month is in quarter one. I'm happy with the inland services, so our Rhine barging that takes place. Contracts are very stable. We haven't had the low waters as we've had in previous years, so rates have been relatively okay, but not as strong as they may have been in past years, but overall on track. Inter-Caribbean Service very much impacted as well by the Houston freeze, but they're back to their normal levels. Good performance there and we see a strong market, strong customers in Asia-Pacific, and that also we see continuing in quarter three. If I can have the next slide. As I talk about quarter three already, let me take a look at the outlook. We look at all sorts of parameters, as you can imagine. These are four important ones. The overall global GDP, because chemical volume is always a function of what happens in the global economy. We see clearly the recovery in 2021 and hopefully also continuing in 2022 and 2023. That's a good sign. Underneath you can see what that implies for the chemical trades. As you can see overall, it is actually quite stable. The growth hasn't been as good in 2020 for known reasons, of course, it's jumping back already in 2021 and continues so to do in 2022. What our customers are trading overall, that volume is really good. As you well know, we now need to share it with more tonnage because we have the MR segments or the swing tonnage, as we call it, also in our market because of the depressed earnings in their own markets. We are looking at when is that starting to move, and one of the indicators there is the global crude floating storage, as you can see, which has now come back to normal levels, I would say. With the economies heating up again, hopefully the oil pipeline will be turned open and transportation of oil will also resume and MR tonnage can move out to their own segments again. If you add on top of that in the top quarter, the supply and demand order book for our segment, it is still very favorable and also as you can see in the years ahead. There is very little ordering going on, which I think is a healthy sign for a good recovery. I would say longer term, I see a lot of signs all green for a good recovery in the market. I, of course, look very diligently to our own asset composition, and I can show you on the next slide. There we have also had some interesting developments over the last few months. We're optimizing that asset base continuously as we speak. You have seen that we've started a joint venture with Essberger called E&S Tankers in the intra-European market, where we now are by far the market leader with 48 tankers. The joint venture is proving to be very beneficial for both ourselves and Essberger. The synergies that we beforehand thought we saw are actually proving to be there and actually a little bit more as well. The business is quite complementary. Our customers are really appreciating the additional services and the additional offerings that they get through this, and it still remains a good complement to our Deep Sea network. Overall, we're very happy with how that is being progressing. The CTG ships, I think it's been mentioned already a couple of times in this presentation. The ships are fully in service. They are going from Transpacific to Transatlantic. They are versatile ships, so they can go from the one trade to the other, and overall, they're a good complement to the overall service offering that we have, and they're already returning decent money, I would say. You will also have seen an announcement that we've made to the market around 2 weeks ago around a pooling agreement with Tufton. Tufton will add 7 of their J19 ships to our pool. We already have one ship of Tufton on a contractual management. There we saw that the collaboration between Tufton and Stolt-Nielsen is very good. They've decided to concentrate their ships instead of having them with different platforms to concentrate them with Stolt's Tankers. We have done a lot of work last year to renew our pooling agreements, to make it more transparent and to make it more attractive for other players to join. I think Tufton is an evidence of that. It's for us, a new market. J19s are not necessarily where we are operating now. We won't see any cannibalization of our contracts. We will build up a new contract portfolio and show that Stolt Tankers is the leading platform in this industry and will make a success out of this arrangement as well. If I look at the Deep Sea and go to our contract portfolio, which is on the next slide. I think this is the big foundation of Stolt Tankers. This is our true differential, I would say, compared to some of our competitors. It is the long-term relationship that we have with our customers and the important part that we play in their supply chain. There's a lot of talk about commoditization of this market. I don't agree with that necessarily, particularly if I look at some of these customers and the specific requirements they have on the types of ships and the type of service that they need, where I'm convinced that not many people can bring it, but Stolt Tankers can. We have a best-in-class contract portfolio on it. We also see the contract rates have increased with around 5.9% quarter-on-quarter. I'm sure that we'll see that coming in to the results. Mind you, one of the maybe downsides of choosing to be so customer-centric is that if there is an increasing market, we may benefit from it at a lower pace than some of our competitors. Through the cycle, we believe this is the right strategy going forward and being that special part of the supply chain of our customers. As you can see on my COA renewals, it has been going up steadily since quarter four 2019. I'm very happy with that development. If I add that all together, I think we are well-positioned. That will be my last slide to capitalize on the market upcycle. There's a favorable chemical tanker outlook. We're doing everything that we can to optimize our assets and also try to grow in a nice asset-light manner. We have a substantial cost-saving program. Over 2 years, we are aiming to save $60 million, which I see coming through on the bottom line. It may be difficult in the overall numbers because clearly we're also doing other things like adding the CTG ship, but we see it coming through in the numbers. With that contract portfolio, I feel very confident that we are well positioned to make the upcycle in the market. That's what I would like to give the audience, Niels. Back to you. Thank you, Lucas. We go to the Stolthaven Terminals. Next slide, please. We came in with an operating profit in the second quarter of $60.6 million. That's up from $58 million and EBIT at $34.2 million, also up from $31.1 million. Operating profit coming in at $18.3 million, up from $15.7 million. Utilization went up from 88% to 90%. If we do the operating profit variance, again, higher revenue because of the higher utilization, slightly higher operating expenses and depreciation, higher equity income from our joint ventures, and slightly lower A&G coming in at $18.3 million. Next slide, please. In the U.S., we saw higher utilization and throughputs on volumes, increase in lease capacity as well as higher wharfage, cleaning, and railcar activity. A nice pickup in the U.S. Gulf. In Santos, we saw higher throughput and utilization remain stable. European terminal had lower throughput, but again, pretty stable performance even with a slightly lower throughput. The Australia terminals utilization stable to high throughput. The New Zealand performance was flat compared to the prior quarter and utilization stable. We saw a slight less utilization than joint venture, but the wholly owned terminals, again, utilization picked up. Next slide, please. Oh, okay. Stolt Tank Containers. This is really where we saw a significant pickup compared 1st and 2nd quarter, where we had $18.3 million higher transportation revenue. That was up by $18.3 million, and that was driven by more shipment at an average rate increase of 6.1% on the freight revenue. We had a slightly higher margin, but the ocean cost increased with the rising shipment and carrier constraints, which are passed through to customers with lag, as we have said before. Move expenses per shipment increased by 3.5% in the second quarter. We had a slightly lower repositioning cost this quarter. We had higher other operating expenses than A&G. Again, the work amount needed to do a shipment now because of the issues that we see in the container lines there's a lot of rework that needs to be done because we are bumped up from one ship to another ship and all the paperwork needs to be done. We have hired quite a few additional operators to be able to handle that extra activity. Slightly higher equity income from our joint venture, bringing the operating profit to $12.5 million. Next slide, please. The demand continues to grow across all the markets and sectors as the economies begin to rebound from COVID-19. As you see from the shipment increase, we are seeing strong demand for the shipment of products in tank containers. In order to meet demand, STC has also placed an order to purchase an additional 1,000 tanks, and that will be delivered at the end of this year and into 2022. Customers are increased production to meet their demand and as a result, of course, that means our demand is also picking up. The container ship capacity constraints continue while demand keeps growing. Supply chain transits are lengthening. It is because of the port congestions, the transit times are taking longer. The February cold snap, like in tankers and in terminal, the cold snap in the U.S. Gulf and the Suez Canal closure and the recent congestion in Yantian in China, having caused supply chain disruptions and an increase in transportation and demurrage costs. You can see the last 12 months, number of shipments and the quarterly statements of the number of shipments. You can see a nice growth development. You can see on the bottom graph here, this is a new part which we're showing you. The % of revenue per shipment has not been growing as fast as the % increase in the transportation cost per shipment. Again, that is with a lag. You can see the growth in the transportation cost per shipment grew, but it's been coming down and we have instantly been able to pass it on. We're seeing the revenue growth per shipment has been going up. Next slide, please. The global seaborne container trade is expected to grow by 6.6% in 2021, so this is very much driven by the container lines. While the containership fleet growth is expected to grow by 4.5%. You see that growth is higher than the new supply of tonnage coming in. The high demand for capacity allocation and the disruption and congestion in ports since the second half of 2020 are causing an increase of the ocean freight rates across the markets, which is expected to continue into 2022. The new capacity, we've seen that the containership order book has increased from 8.3% in November of 2020 to 18% in May 2021. That new additional container capacity, as you know, will not come into the market until 2022 and beyond. The challenge with the availability of quality drivers and trucks is becoming challenging in multiple markets. We expect that transportation will continue to rise, and that additional cost will be passed on to our customers. We try and pass them on as fast as we can, but there always is a lag. Customers are moving away from the unsustainable flexibags to tank containers. The flexibag is where you put a big plastic bag into a conventional container box, but our customers are seeing the dangers of shipping in flexibag and seeing the leakage coming from it. We are seeing more of the products moving from flexibag into tank containers. Due to the global dry box shortage and focus on sustainable supply chain. When there's a shortage of these boxes to put these plastic bags in, of course, that also put pressure on them to come over to tank containers. Sustainability in the supply chain. STC has established its own sustainability goals, as I showed you earlier. Demurrage. Tank container costs have been rising and demurrage has remained low. Higher demurrage rates and reduced number of free days is expected to incentivize faster tank container returns and generate higher revenue. What has happened, traditionally, the customer receives a certain number of days which they can have on discharge port to be able to take the container from the port to their factory to discharge and return it. If they use more time than what is included in the contract, they pay demurrage. We have seen, and that's one of the reasons that we have seen historically low results in STC. We have seen that the demurrage revenue has come down because of the blockage and because of the delays caused by the congestion and the shortage of the containerships. We have seen the customers, once they receive the tanks, they take the tank right away because they are desperate to get the product into their factories. Subsequently in the second quarter, we are now seeing the demurrage revenue picking up. We continue to spend a lot of time and resources in our digital platform. Recent investment in systems and system application and digital platforms are key to offer improved flexibility and faster response times to our customers' demand. Direct integration with our customers and vendors is key to improve the operational efficiency, increased scale, and higher returns per shipment. Next slide, please. Stolt Sea Farm. We had an operating profit of $1 million in the first quarter. We had lower sales in the second quarter, again, because of the seasonality. We had higher sole sales because of the increased volume that we're getting out of our new sole recirculation farm in Spain. Slightly higher operating expenses and higher A&G, bringing the operating profit of -$0.6 for the quarter. The higher A&G is also driven by the cost for we went out and explored the opportunity or the possibility of doing an IPO of Stolt Sea Farm. Next slide please. Subsequent to the ending of this quarter, what we're seeing right now is a strong recovery in demand, we expect that to continue. One, of course, they're opening up quite fast now in Southern Europe. We are seeing an exceptionally strong demand this year. Actually, the prices are increasing as we speak because of this increase demand. One, it's okay. Restaurants are opening up, wild fish is over, I also think there is an impact of the dispute between us. Usually the supply from the U.K. is not as big into Europe as it used to be. We are seeing some very strong price increases both in turbot and sole, and we expect that to remain. The 2 RAS, the recirculation farms in Stavanger and Tocha are both performing beyond our expectation. The first harvest from Tocha, that's the one in Portugal, we are expecting to be 4 months ahead of our schedule. We are actually expecting to harvest our first fish out of that farm already in August. Our expansion plans continue with the next stage, focusing on the sole broodstock expansion and the new hatchery. The growth plan that we have in Stolt Sea Farm remains and are basically on track. Next slide, please. Stolt-Nielsen Gas. That is basically our investments in Avenir LNG. We are 47% owners of Avenir LNG. I remind you the strategy there is the mission is to provide assets and expertise to unlock stranded LNG demand, bringing clean, affordable, and reliable energy to new markets by shipping and storing LNG. We have our investment program, which is due to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2022. We have 2 LNG ships that are already on charter, with the remaining 4 to be delivered by the end of first quarter 2022. The new terminal in Sardinia, we will start commercial operation, I think within this month of July. It is a strong or robust operational outlook. There is a lot of activity going on and a lot of inquiries. The commercial pipeline remains robust and well diversified across segments and geographies. Strong fundamentals with significant acceleration in LNG adaptation as a marine bunkering fuel. I remind you that the shareholders have injected $182 million, and including debt, we'll have a total investment of $330 million investment program based on our current asset portfolio. That is against 6 ships and the terminal in Sardinia. I just wanted to give you an idea of what kind of earnings we see coming from Avenir LNG. I would say quite realistically. If we just say that even though our long-term goal is to become a supplier of LNG to stranded demand, not only being a shipping company, but if we take and fill up all those 6 ships that we have being delivered by the first quarter of 2022 and use the rates that we are seeing in today's market, the EBITDA out of that business alone, just those 6 ships, will be in excess of $40 million. Of course, once we are able then to develop these supply agreements, then the EBITDA is on top of that. We are working on several very interesting and exciting opportunities there. If you, I don't know what kind of EBITDA multiple that you would use, but if you do the calculations yourself and put whatever multiple you want on that business, you will see that I think last traded was at around $8 per share. I think that does not reflect what we're seeing as the earning potential in this business. Next slide, please. Over to you, Jens. Thank you. Thank you, Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, and good morning and good afternoon to all of you. I will as normal review the financials as reported, including cover a few key balance sheet items. I also want to remind you that we have today also posted the earnings release, the interim financials, as well as this presentation on the company's website, which is www.stolt-nielsen.com. Also as a reminder that the second quarter runs from March 1st through May 31st, so it's a slightly skewed quarter. If I could have the next slide, please. As mentioned by Niels, if you look at the second quarter, saw increases of activity across the 3 logistics businesses following what is really a seasonally weak first quarter because of the winter weather. Unfortunately, profits did not keep up with the improvement in activity. As such, you saw operating profit was therefore up only slightly, by $5.4 million to $41.4 million, which was up from about $36 million. million in the prior quarter before any one-offs. You will note that there were very few one-offs this quarter as was last quarter. Much of that is due to a lot of cleanup that was done on our balance sheet last year where we took some impairments down in Australia of goodwill. We cleaned up the caviar business. We hope that there will be less of these going forward. Looking at the year to date operating profit before one-offs, it was slightly down from the first half of 2020. That was due to the lower A&G in 2020 as we introduced, if you recall, significant savings initiatives related to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Also had lower profit-sharing accruals because of the worry about what might happen from the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at interest rates, they were down by about $1 million as I mentioned earlier. You will recall that in March, we had a bond that fell due that was about $154 million. That has coupled with the general reduction of interest rates in the market, reduced our average interest rates down to approximately 4.3%. I'll come back to that a little bit later. During the quarter, we had a gain on FX paper hedges of about $1 million. Also income tax increased by $600,000 approximately. That increase mainly reflects increased withholding tax on a dividend that we got from one of our joint ventures. Net profit, therefore, was up by $5.3 million to $7.8 million, and EBITDA was $116 million, as you will see at the bottom of the first column. That's up from $108 million in the prior quarter. If you compare to the same quarter last year, the net profit increased by $4.8 million due to the $9.3 million write-off, but the EBITDA was higher in the prior quarter. That $9.3 million write-off related to losses at Stolt Sea Farm, particularly in the caviar business. If you look at the year to date, we have earned a profit of $10.3 million. That's a significant improvement on the loss of $17.2 million that we took in the first half of 2020, when Stolt Sea Farm, in addition to the caviar write-off, also wrote down inventory value of its biomass due to the collapse of the hospitality industry that we saw tied to COVID. Year to date, EBITDA, therefore, is pretty much in line with what was last year. If I may have the next slide, please. This slide has 4 quadrants, they cover the 3 of them are covenant coverage. The top left looks at our gross debt to tangible net worth. You'll see there's a slight increase in our gross debt by about $21 million to just over $2.6 billion. That was driven by the additional debt secured by the 3 of the CTG ships that were acquired. Those were the 3 ships that we took wholly on our balance sheets where the other 2 remaining ships then went into our joint venture with NYK, as well as additional drawdowns that we had of $75 million on our short and long-term credit lines. This was offset by the $154 million repayment of the March bond and some other principal repayments. Now, what you need to keep in mind, because those quick math will say, well, then our debt should have reduced. Because of the cross-currency hedges that we had on the bond, gross debt only went down $104 million because that was what was booked against long-term debt while the remaining $50 million was booked against derivative liability, which is why you saw that there was a slight increase in the gross debt. Tangible net worth, the blue column that you see there, was up by $10 million to $1.64 billion. That reflects the net profit and improvement in other comprehensive income driven by pension gains and some positive currency translation adjustments. That is all on the balance sheet, and that was offset by dividend payment in May of just over $13.5 million. We have three main financial covenants in our loan agreements. One is the debt to tangible net worth, which says to be at max 2.25 as adjusted for IFRS 16. EBITDA to interest expense, which you see on the top right, of minimum 2 to 1 and a minimum tangible net worth for the group of $600 million. The EBITDA covenants are based on the EBITDA for the most recent 4 quarters on a rolling basis. You see at the bottom right quadrant, which the EBITDA for the last 4 quarters was $499 million, so down about $5 million from what we reported last quarter. Therefore, we see that debt to tangible net worth was pretty much flat at 159 versus 158. EBITDA to interest expense was also pretty flat at 370 versus 369. At the bottom left, you will see that although not a covenant, but it's an important measure of our debt service capability is the net debt to EBITDA. This increased from 478 to 497, that's due to the added debt that I mentioned earlier, as well as a slight reduction in the 12-month rolling EBITDA. Our target remains to reduce this to below 4. For those of you who want to track this going forward, you will note that when we report next quarter, the third quarter of 2020 will fall off. That was a significant EBITDA quarter at $144 million. It is a big quarter coming up, so it puts a bit of a challenge to the businesses on improving the EBITDA for the third quarter. If you could take the next slide, please. Looking at capital expenditures, they were this quarter $30 million, down from a significant $150 million in the first quarter when we acquired those CTG ships. Also note that this excludes drydock costs, which for tankers was $5.9 million during the quarter. For the full year 2021, we expect to spend a further $127 million, which predominantly reflects the new build costs in tankers for the barge that we're building for BASF. Some terminal CapEx that was postponed from 2020, construction of a new jetty at our Dagenham terminal, and investment in STC depots and tanks. The board recently approved the acquisition of a further 1,000 tank containers to accommodate further growth in STC. Next slide, please. Cash generated from operating activities, as you see on the top part of this slide, was for the quarter $90.9 million. That was marginally down, that was because higher operating results and JV dividend receipts of $8 million that we experienced during the first quarter was actually offset by an increase in working capital during the quarter of about $17 billion. Hence, we were slightly down quarter-on-quarter. Interest payments were up, this is not a reflection of debt or interest rate, we have a number of loans that are on six-month rolling interest payment basis, that typically falls in the second and fourth quarter, that's why you have a higher interest load during those two quarters. As a consequence, the net cash generated from operating activities were down by just over $20 million from the prior quarter. Cash used in investments was $31.5 million, which included investments in JVs, that was down quite a bit from the $119 spent. I already talked about that. During the quarter, we raised $77 million against the 3 CTG ships, drew down $70 million on the revolving credit line. We also made principal payments of $202 million, and that included the $154 million on the bond, as well as regular principal payments, as well as $10 million on capital leases. Net cash flow for the quarter ended up at a negative $50 million. The difference between the free cash flow that was reported earlier and this number is predominantly the debt repayments. Next. This resulting cash and cash equivalents of $122 million at the end of the first quarter, slightly down from the $173 million that we had at the end of the first quarter. Keep in mind, then we had put cash aside to support the repayment of the March bond maturity. That gave us a total liquidity position. If you add in availability on the revolving credit line, which at quarter end was $274 million, gave us total liquidity position of $396 million at the end of the second quarter. If you can go to the next slide, please. This is, as you're familiar with, the debt maturity profiles we've now shown for a number of quarters. We differentiate between regular principal payments, which are shown in the very dark color. You have balloon payments in the light blue color, and you have bond repayments shown in gray. We currently have just over $81 million in regular principal payments remaining this year, most of the debt maturity that we have for 2021 is taken care of. The next big bond maturity is the $175 million in 2022. That matures in September of 2022, it's still quite some time before that happens. During the quarter end, we completed the conditions precedents for a new $100 million revolving credit facility, which currently remains completely undrawn. When I mentioned that revolving credit line was $274 million, that includes that $100 million as well. What we haven't showed you in the past is the bottom right graph, where we look at the average cost of our debt. You can see that our interest expense and average interest rate on the debt has been coming steadily down as we have reduced our exposure to the bond market and benefited from lower interest rates in general. If you look at the run rate, so year-over-year basis, we have reduced our annual average interest expense by about $11 million. That of course, helps lower the average cost base for the group. Now we're in a potential high inflation environment and therefore this could of course swing back up again. As of the end of May, we had fixed approximately 84% of our existing debt, which does lock in quite a bit of that gain. As it stands, as new loans come up for renewal, we will of course have to renew them at whatever the market dictates at that point. Just want to share that with you. Nils, with that, I would like to hand it back to you. Thank you, Jens. Key messages. We're seeing increasing activity across all of our businesses. We have said we have a positive market outlook also across all the businesses, though yet that needs to be reflected in the earnings. We are seeing a positive trend. We are well-positioned on an improving market. We have a strong asset base, which supports the positive free cash flow. We have, as Jens showed you, a relatively robust balance sheet and a healthy liquidity position. Our focus is still, we are keeping an eye on the debt level and we'd like to continue to get that further down. We have access to competitive funding going forward, we believe, and our goal of zero harm for people and the environment is our number 1 priority. We will start to answer questions. We kind of read them out and then pass them on to the right person. The first question we have is from a shareholder. That's good to hear. Had expected more gains from containers since there's such a boom there. Yes, there is certainly a boom or a strong activity in the tank container segment. We need to be patient because, with this high number of shipments, with the increased cost of transporting these containers, it is just a matter of time before we're able to catch up and pass on all of that additional cost to our shareholders and we will then continue to see, I believe, the margins improve. I'd also like to remind you is that big part of our business in the tank container segment is also like we're in tankers, we have contracts. These are multi-year contracts that we have in Stolt Tank Containers. Some of these contracts you're not able to adjust the price. We only adjust the price on the service for 6 months. When we see increased transportation costs from the container lines, we have to bear that cost until the new rates come in and when they adjust it, and that we do twice a year. That is a significant part of our business. Of course, that also helps us when the market changes. Long-term, that's the right trend. The results will come, it just takes a bit of time. It's extremely positive the situation and the activity that we're seeing, and we don't see actually to the contrary, we're seeing continued demand, growing demand for the transportation of our container shipments. Next question, also another shareholder. DNB have a sell recommendation but say stock is a value trap. There are good values in the company, but the stock is topping off at $130 for many years. Yeah, it's been topping off at $130, but we haven't had a good shipping market for many years. I would expect that once we start seeing an improvement in the shipping market, I do believe that that will be very quickly reflected in the market. Also, as we mentioned earlier, we have considered the value trap being we have so many underlying things in our company that is of value that is not reflected in the share price amongst other Stolt Sea Farm. We did explore the opportunity to do an IPO of Stolt Sea Farm in the beginning of the year. We felt that in January, February, March, there was such a huge amount of activity, companies trying to do an IPO, raising equity. We felt that we didn't get the necessary attention that we need to be able to sell our story and the prospects that we see in both Turbot and Stolt. It's a relatively small deal, so I think that the market was prioritizing big deals that could be done with a simpler and easier story. We will continue to explore. I think as we have said all along, we don't need to do an IPO Stolt Sea Farm. We don't need to do an IPO of Stolt Tankers. The conditions needs to be right. It needs to be at the right time when both for the shipping market, but also the right time for the equity market. It's important for us that it's a fair price both for the potential buyer, but also it needs to reflect the underlying values. After the summer, we will continue to explore the opportunity for doing an IPO of Stolt Sea Farm. The only reason to do an IPO of Stolt Sea Farm, the growth plan that we have for Stolt Sea Farm, we can handle with our own cash flow, both in Stolt Sea Farm and if Stolt Sea Farm needs any more support, they can get it from Stolt-Nielsen. The only reason that we are doing or considering doing IPO of Stolt Sea Farm is to make that underlying value more transparent for the Stolt-Nielsen shareholders. Lucas, this one is for you. If you unmute, you can just answer. How much must the product tanker rates have to rise in order to avoid spillover effects into the chemical fleet? Yeah, thank you, Nils. I think we primarily look at the mid-range tankers, of course. If you look at their current earnings per day, it is around $7,000, which is off the historic low that we saw in the months of May, which was more around $5,000. However, for that segment really to move out, we would expect around $14,000-$15,000, the tankers will start to move out at around the $10,000 level or so. If I can just add one more comment to that. If you look at the broker expectations of this segment, they expect quarter four earnings to be around $17,000. It gives us that sentiment that, yes, the time is coming that they will start moving out. Thank you, Lucas. The next question I think I can answer is the acquisition done with Jo Tankers? That was done in 2016, and the integration has been fully done and all the synergies taken out. Will it mostly be joint ventures from now on? No. One of the reasons that or the main reason for us considering doing an IPO or wish to do an IPO of Stolt Tankers is to make Stolt Tankers a standalone company so that we can make it easier to, of course, value Stolt Tankers, but also explore opportunities of both joint ventures, acquisitions, and mergers. It won't mostly be joint ventured. It will be acquisitions. We are interested in seeing if we can further consolidate this industry. That was a big part of the reason of doing IPO of Stolt Tankers is so that we are in a position to both use cash and shares in an acquisition but also in a merger. Next question. This, Lucas, is for you. In the press release, it was stated that bunker costs were up by $10.8 million, and then they quote us, "The improvement in revenue mentioned above was offset by $10.8 million increase in bunker costs." Why is the increase lower in slide 9, bunker costs? Yeah, that's a good observation from a sharp reader. I think the difference between the $10.8 and the one you saw on slide nine is what I said is the natural hedge that we have because of the contract. If you look at our surcharge revenue, in quarter one, it was around $50.6 million, and in quarter two, it went up to $54.2 million. That differential, $3.6, that explains the difference between the two numbers. Thank you very much. We go to the next question. Jens, the first part is covered, but for you is for you. You repaid 1 Norwegian krona bond in March, and you have a USD bond coming up for maturity in September next year. How do you view the outlook for refinancing these in the current bond market? The bond market has been giving us a lot of flexibility, and we are in constant contact with the market so that we understand where we can price ourselves. What is nice with the bond market is that it's cash flow benign, and that you don't have principal payments until the balloon at the end. We like to maintain that kind of flexibility, and therefore the intention is to maintain the kind of maturity profile that we have in the market. We want to get away from the big issues that we've had in the past, where we've had up to $200 million maturities, but keep it more in the $120 million-$150 million and sort of steadily rolling. The intention is for us to be back in the market when the timing is opportune, but we won't go too early because then we have to carry that on our books for a long time. Thank you, Jens. The second part of the question. Could you give an update on the strategic initiative in Stolt Sea Farm and Stolt Tankers? Are public listings with certain cornerstone investors still the goal? To start off with Sea Farm, I just mentioned that, yes, it is. We are not in a rush, but we want to make certain that we find the right shareholders that understand the potential of what we have created. We will continue our efforts in Stolt Sea Farm. In Stolt Tankers, we have worked since 2017 in separating out Stolt Tankers as a standalone entity and cleaned up the corporate structure there. Lukas has come on board and built up a team, and we are basically ready to go for an IPO. Again, it needs to be under the right market conditions. To sell something in today's market, I don't think is the right thing to do, and it's also we don't have to do it. Yes, we'll do an IPO of Stolt Tankers, both Stolt Sea Farm and Stolt Tankers, at the right time. Hopefully, Stolt Tankers type here will be sooner. As Lucas showed you, and as I very carefully started to say that I'm quite bullish about the situation in the chemical tanker segment going forward. Hopefully that opportunity will arise sooner rather than later. Next question. You are ordering 1,000 tank containers. What is your current and targeted market share in this business? How much capital would you like to deploy here, given it is your most profitable segment from a return on ROA perspective? A tank container costs anything from $15,000 to $20,000 to build. We're not talking about a lot of money. It is more what utilization you can have on the containers that you buy. We are basically growing as fast as we can. Mike and his team are doing a tremendous job in growing the fleet and in really ordering or leasing new tank containers. We will go as fast and grow as hard as we can and we'll continue to do so. Of course, we need to be able to maintain the utilization. If the utilization falls off, there's no reason to add additional tank containers. We have bought, I think we bought 2,000 last year. We have bought 2,000 for this year, next year, and most likely either we will buy and continue to lease more tank containers as we go along. Could you offer some more comments on the risk from port congestion and COVID-19 related disruptions, et cetera, to your businesses and an expected earnings recovery in second half 2021, 2022? I give to Lucas. Yeah. Thanks, Niels. I think, of course there is port congestion out there right now. It's primarily around southern China, which is the Yantian, Shekou, Shenzhen area. As you well know, that's not necessarily where Stolt Tankers is. As to see, we'll have some impact of that. I'm not concerned with port congestion, maybe some concerns around the Panama Canal congestions over there. It's not that material. I think the biggest impact that I now foresee on COVID related disruption is still related to the seafarers and the ability for us to change the crews as quickly as we would want. There we primarily see cost increases. We see the cost of flights going up, particularly into Manila. I think for an economy ticket, it is already a $2,000 charge these days. That goes up. We also see that because of the situation of the pandemic in Manila, that a lot of shipping companies are going to different countries for getting their seafarers. Therefore, we see increases in the salaries of seafarers. That's the only thing I see right now. I don't think there is a material impact on the expectation of the earnings recovery for Stolt Tankers in this respect. Thank you very much. Unless there are any further questions, I don't see any more new questions coming in. Thank you very much for participating. Thank you, Lucas and Jens, for your excellent job. That completes our second quarter earnings release. Thank you for joining us, and I wish you all a healthy and relaxing summer. Thank you.