Thank you. Good afternoon, good morning. Thank you for joining us for our second quarter's earnings release. I do apologize for the delay in the startup. We have had some technical issues in uploading the presentation that we are about to hold on our webpage, but you will be able to see the presentation, which I will be referring to. If you go to our webpage, to the section of investor presentations, you will follow it on the webcast. Again, apologies for this. Together with me, as always, Jens Grüner-Hegge as Chief Financial Officer. If we go to page three, which is the agenda page, I will go through the second quarter highlights. I will take you through the actions we have taken in regard to the pandemic, COVID-19. I will go through each of the businesses.
Jens will take you through the financials, and then we will open up at the end for question and answers. If we move to page four, which says highlights of Q2 2020, better than expected. We reported a net profit from continuing operations of $12.3 million for the quarter. That's up from a loss of $19.3 million in the previous quarter. Stolt Tankers reported an operating profit of $20 million. That is up from $4.7 million. That mainly reflects the increase in TC revenue, which was driven from healthy COA nominations, strong volume from the COA nomination, a strong spot market, and also increased number of operating days. In Stolthaven Terminals, we report an operating profit of $19.2 million. That is up from $18.9 million. I just got a message in here. The presentation is now uploaded on the website also.
Again, 19.2 in the second quarter, up from 18.9 in Stolthaven Terminals, as the market overall remained stable. Utilization rose to 95% in our wholly-owned terminals and to 97% in our joint venture terminals. Stolt Tank Containers reported an operating profit of $13 million, and that is up from $6.7 million in the first quarter. That is a result of higher demand and lower repositioning costs. The total shipments were basically unchanged, though we were able to get a higher utilization by 1.7% compared to the previous quarter. Stolt Sea Farm reported an operating loss of $4.7 million, which includes an impairment of $1.8 million, and that compares to an operating loss of $8.8 million in the first quarter, which reflected a $12 million write-down of our biomass in the first quarter.
We have classified Sterling Caviar as held for sale, we have taken an impairment of $8.1 million in the quarter. As always, I will go into more detail when I go through each of the businesses. If you go to page five, where we compare the net profit from the first quarter to the second quarter for the group. Operating revenue came in at $503.5 million. That is up from $479.1 million in the first quarter. EBITDA, $100, that is up from $100 million in the first quarter. Operating profit, $49.4 million, that is up from $17.6 million in the first quarter. A net profit for the quarter of $3 million. Now, I previously reported in the previous slide that we had a net profit from continuing operation of $12.3 million. The $3 million reflects then the impairment there and the write-down we did on our Sterling Caviar.
If you look at from ongoing operations, we would have actually had a $12.3 million profit. If you look at the variance analysis, we had a net loss of $20.2 million in the first quarter. We have $15.2 million better operating profit from Stolt Tankers, $300,000 better operating profit from Stolthaven Terminals, $6.3 million higher operating profit from Stolt Tank Containers. We had a lower operating loss of $4.2 million in Stolt Sea Farm, and $5.7 million improvement in corporate and other operations, and that mainly reflects a reduction in the accrual of profit sharing to the organization. We had a lower net finance expense of $1.6 million due to lower interest rates, slightly higher non-OpEx and FX losses of $1.3 million, slightly higher income tax of half a million, and again, the $8.3 million Stolt Sea Farm loss from discontinued operations.
That is again, the write-down of the Sterling Caviar, and that gives us a $3 million profit for the quarter. Moving to page six, COVID-19, the action list update. Our goal is, of course, to preserve cash. As I reported in the first quarter earnings release, immediately when the pandemic hit us, when we went into lockdown, we very much focused on preserving cash. We have taken actions and we continue to take action. We canceled our dividend, the final dividend for 2019. We cut back on all travel and entertainment and training. The board and the senior management did a voluntary salary cut. We cut back on professional fees and contractors. The total savings from those actions are so far $21 million. In addition, we reviewed all the CapExes in each of the businesses, and we identified $62 million, which we can either cancel or delay.
A total of $83 million of cash savings that we have identified in 2020. The target also was to secure sufficient liquidity to weather a substantial downturn. We went through each of the businesses, and we asked them to go through a scenario where we do 20%, 30%, 40% downside in revenue. Not that we necessarily believe it's going to happen, and this is important to stipulate, is that it is just a preparation. It doesn't mean that we necessarily believe it's going to happen. We really work under hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. The market and the world that we live in now is so uncertain. We want to make certain that we are in a position to ride out whatever comes our way.
At the end of the quarter, we had $411 million of available liquidity, very much thanks to Jens and his team of securing necessary liquidity. We have $65 million financing secured by two terminals. The term sheet is agreed upon and credit has been approved, that's addition to the $411. As you know, we did a successful $132 million bond issue in June, we're also in discussion of topping up existing terminal facility in Singapore. We're also considering an additional $100 million RCF loan credit facility. As it stands right now, we have approximately $465 million of cash and undrawn facility available. That's what we have now, we also have the other finances or opportunities that we are pursuing as listed on page six.
As you realize, it will put us in a position to have enough liquidity to repay the bond coming due in March of 2021. It also, with the additional financing beyond what we have already secured, but listed here, we will have enough liquidity to face a 40% revenue reduction and still be able to meet our obligation and still have liquidity reserves. Hoping for the best, but preparing for a prolonged downturn. If you move to page seven, page eight, Stolt Tankers second quarter highlights. I would like to remind you that the first quarter, we had a poor performance in Tankers, not very much driven by the COVID-19, but because of the repositioning of ships, and the delays in dry docking due to ballast water treatment installation and also scrubber installation.
We had a little over 300 days less operating days in the first quarter compared to the second quarter. Much of the improvement that we see is, of course, the more operating days because we didn't have the delays related to the dry dockings. The operating revenue came in at $293.9 million. That is up from $280.7. The EBITDA went from $49.5 up to $65 million. The operating profit again from $4.7 up to $20, the operating days rate went up from 6,018 up to 6,329. If you look at the operating profit variance from first quarter to the second quarter, our operating profit came in at $4.7 at $15.3 million higher trading results, $3.6 million higher net bunker costs. You have to remember that we are over 70% contracts of affreightments, and we have a bunker clause in most of those contracts.
When the bunker prices are high, we get a lot of surcharge. When the bunker prices are low, we need to give money back. That's why under the COAs, we have to basically give most of the benefits back when the bunker prices fall. Our net cost for the quarter was marginally lower, $1.5 million, but because we had a paper hedge loss in the quarter of approximately $4 million, the net cost for the group came in at $3.6 million. We had a $2.3 million lower operating expense, slightly higher depreciation of $1.1 million, and higher equity income from our joint venture of $3.4 million, bringing the quarter's operating profit for Stolt Tankers to $20 million. If you go to page nine, the contracts that we renewed in the second quarter were on average up 5%.
I would say under these circumstances, that reflects a relatively strong market taking the current environment into consideration. It reflects the balance between supply and demand, as it currently stands, is working in our favor. The volume were up a total of 9%. COA volume up 15%. When we have bigger nominations from the COA, we have lesser spot space. The freight rate overall of the volume that we carried was up 1%. The COA rates that we carried during the quarter was up 2%, while the spot volume was down 0.4%. We stated in the earnings release that the spot market was strong, and it was strong. The bunker prices fell significantly in the quarter. We really got the benefit from a lower bunker price, but the spot rates didn't go down.
Utilization went up by 3% and the sailed-in revenue for the deepsea fleet went up 13% for the quarter. Of course, the second quarter, we had a strong MR market, which then meant that the swing tonnage didn't operate that much in our segment. As a result, we saw the strong spot market, of course, enjoyed that. If you look at the Clarksons Spot Chemical Index, you can see that toward the end of the second quarter, the spot index fell, I think that unfortunately reflects the fall also in the MR market. That may be, of course, an indication of what is to come for the third and fourth quarter.
If we go to page 10, the average price of the IFO and the very low sulfur fuel consumed was $388 per ton in the second quarter. That compares to $501 per ton of the price of what we consumed in the second quarter. The average price of IFO and very low sulfur fuel that we purchased in the second quarter was $274 per ton. That compares to $546 per ton in the first quarter. As I already mentioned, much of the benefit of low bunker cost is passed to the customers, as Stolt Tankers was burning older, higher cost inventory, while bunker surcharge clause rebates based on the lower spot price. Only the net benefit that we had for the quarter was really $1.2 million.
If you go to page 11, which is the STJS, Stolt Tankers Joint Service sailed-in ton mileage index and sensitivity, you can see a nice significant pickup in the second quarter. You can read at your convenience the sensitivity. If we have a 5% increase in index, that gives us a net profit impact of $ 5.6. Every 5% is around $ 5.6 million on the bottom line for Tankers. If you go to page 12, we have a historic low order book in our segment, and I think that will continue because of the environment that we live in. The order book stands at now at 5.4%. That is slightly up from 5.3% in the first quarter, there were some few ships being ordered. Not really big ships, but more small ships.
During the same period, we also expect that the older ships from 2020 to 2024, approximately the same amount of deadweight will leave our segment, but probably towards the later part of that period, while the new buildings will come in in the earlier part of this period. The core chemical deep sea fleet growth will significantly drop. The growth will drop in 2020 and 2021, as you see on the chart here. We do, however, expect maybe that the pandemic is causing delays in the new buildings, in the orders, in the ships that are on order. As I stated earlier, we have had a challenging shipping market for a long time, and finally the order book started to come down and the balance between supply and demand came into our favor, and then this damn pandemic came along.
Still, under these challenging circumstances, we are able to get increases in our COAs, which I think is a reflection of this supply and demand being in our favor, and definitely so going forward. If you believe in a V-shaped recovery, I believe we will have a very strong market in chemical tankers going forward. 13, here is the market outlook. It's impossible to predict or it's very difficult to predict. We are hoping for the best, but preparing for a downside scenario, if that comes. The May sailed-in revenue was the highest we have seen since November of 2017, all freight rates were, of course, boosted by the strong CPP of the MR market and also the lower bunker prices.
The US Gulf to Asia and India market was strong, but we saw weaker demand or weaker shipping demand in the Atlantic, transatlantic East and West, and also in South America. The MR market is down. It came up to almost $72 or $73,000 a day, and it's today around $10,000, maybe even lower. What I can say is that nominations continue to be healthy. We are seeing more swing tonnage coming back into our segment because of the weakening of the MR market. However, again, the nominations are relatively healthy in most areas. July nominations look pretty good. We are a bit worried about what will happen in August and after that. The European fleet. I will go through the regional fleet. The European fleet is the one that is suffering the most. It's extremely low activity. We haven't seen it that slow.
Fortunately, we have a relatively small fleet there, so the financial impact is not that big. If you look at all the regional fleets, which we own 100%, which is the inter-European business, the inland barge business, the inter-Caribbean business, and the transshipment business in Asia, the actual results went from $1.2 million profit in the first quarter up to $3.5 million in the second quarter. There was an improvement primarily driven by SNITS, the inland tanker business, the barge business and the Caribbean business, while the European business was very challenging. If you look at the Asia Pacific business, that's what we call SNAPS, which is a joint venture with NYK. We saw an improvement there. We went from a half a million dollar loss in the joint venture in Asia, to a slight $200,000 profit in Asia.
I think that reflects the pickup of activity in Asia. We expect that SNAPS will continue to see improved performance. If we move to the terminal business on page 15, here again, we compare the operating profit between the first quarter and the second quarter. It continues to steadily improve. This is again, what I call the steady, long-term, steady cash flow coming out of this business. The team are doing a very good job in managing the situation. We talk about the people that are sitting and working from home. There are some work that cannot be done from home. Those are the seafarers, those are the operators that are on the front line. They're doing a tremendous job in keeping the operation going. My hats off to the whole team.
The operating revenue went from $ 61.7 million in the first quarter, slightly down to $ 59.7 million. The EBITDA from $ 33.4 up to $ 35.3, operating profit from $ 18.9 up to $19.2 million in the second quarter. Utilization went from 90.5% up to 95.2%. If you look at the operating profit variance, the first quarter was $ 18.9 million, slightly lower revenue. Lower revenue, but higher utilization. We were able to secure some trading business from some traders. We filled up our tanks with lower-paying business, but higher utilization. The overall positive benefit because there was lower operating expenses associated with those contracts. Slightly higher depreciation, higher equity income of $ 0.4 million, lower A&G and other expenses of $ 0.3 million, bringing the operating profit to $ 19.2 million for the quarter. Steady as she goes.
This, I think this is the segment where I feel the most comfortable because of the contracts and the customer base and the locations of our terminal. If you go to page sixteen, Stolt-Nielsen Terminals performance. Stable and steady performance throughout the quarter. The U.S. terminals were stable utilization and stayed up above 90% and fully operational during the lockdown. The Brazil and European terminals saw a drop in chemical throughput, we saw healthy ethanol demand in Brazil. The ANZ, that's the Australian and New Zealand terminal and Singapore terminal, saw an increased activity during the second quarter, which helped to increase the utilization to 94%, almost 95% up from 90%. The equity income from our joint venture went from $5.6 million up to $6 million through the quarter.
If you look at the graph below, it kind of illustrates the steadiness of the performance of this business. I think it will continue to do so going forward. If you look at the markets, the U.S. market, going forward, U.S. market overall steady, but chemical and base oil into automotive industry is still weak. Part of our business is, of course, vegoil, and of course those are still being stored, but there's very little throughput. We are seeing still lots of inquiries and we are pursuing lots of opportunities both in our Houston and New Orleans terminal. Asia. The Chinese chemical market showed signs of improvement post-lockdown. The Korean market remains stable for chemicals, but Southeast Asia is lagging in recovery. The European market, I think, was probably the most challenging because of the European economy.
European market remains steady for chemicals, although the broader market remains weak due to the significant exposure to industries such as car manufacturing. The petroleum storage, which we have at our Antwerp terminal in Antwerp, remains strong. The Brazil market is steady. The chemical market continues their signs of weakness, with a pickup expected once lockdown eases. The petroleum and ethanol markets remain more stable, including on the through-put. If you then go to page 18 and 19, page 19 for Stolt Tank Containers. O perating profit $ 135.2 million, that's up from $ 129.4 million in the first quarter. EBITDA increased from $ 16.5 million to $ 21.2 million. Operating profit up from $ 6.7 million to $ 13 million, and utilization went from 68.5% up to 69.7%. A very good picture.
I would like to remind you that we had an issue in the first quarter, where we had some higher costs in IMO 2020, which had an impact on our results in the first quarter. During the first quarter, we had a lot of empty repositionings because of the uncertainty. Tank containers is always an early reactor to changes in the market. If we compare the first quarter to the second quarter, we had higher transportation revenue up half a million. We had higher demurrage and additional revenue of $4.3. We had higher other revenue of $ 0.8. That's like these add-on charges that we get. We had lower move-related expenses, in the second quarter, so lower trucking expenses, lower ocean container line expenses. We had less repositioning expenses. We were hit by repositioning expenses in the first quarter, less so in the second quarter.
We had higher repositioning costs in the first quarter, less so in the second quarter. Higher other operating expenses of $ 3 million brings the operating profit for the tank container business to $ 13 million for the quarter. The tank container market highlights. Demand was firm during the second quarter. Shipments were slightly down, but margins were up due to demurrage revenue. The total shipments were about flat for the quarter-on-quarter, but actually tailed off towards the end of the second quarter. Volumes into and out of Europe were weak and continue to be weak, but it was offset by good volumes out of U.S. and South America.
The demurrage revenue was up due to strong shipments in February, March, and when the customers received the tanks, they've been holding on longer to those tanks, which again, I guess reflects that the product is not moving through the factory fast enough, and they use our tank containers as storage, and then we charge them demurrage, which is good for us. Repositioning costs were down due to well-positioned tanks relative to demand and less intra-regional shipments or more long-haul shipments. The ocean freight, as I said earlier, has come down as container line markets has softened. If you go to page 21, looking forward. The bottom graph reflects the development of the tank container fleets, and you can see that we have been growing and expanding aggressively for a long time. We hope and we will continue to do so going forward.
This market continues to grow. The fundamentals in this market are very strong. As I said earlier, there are more operators, more competition. Through our platform, we are very well positioned to be able to compete profitably. This market continues to grow. As we see the market now, we see that the Asian markets remain busy and good demand in oil and chemical trade, an increase in exports to Europe. The Asian export business is doing well, looking healthy. The European export is down due to the lockdown. Also the European demand is down due to lockdowns in Europe. The South American exports are strong. A positive outlook for the coming quarter. Demand in North America is holding up thanks to the diversification of our customer base. The food grade business is very strong and doing very well.
I guess we tend to consume more alcohol there when we sit at home in a lockdown. After second quarter, shipments were down. As we mentioned, we saw a drop in shipments in June. Actually, the July shipments or bookings have been picking up again. It's too early to say. It's very difficult to predict, but we thought we saw a drop in June, or we did see a drop in June, but we actually started to see a pickup again in July. Also, this is the summer months, so we usually do see a drop off. Is it because of COVID-19 or is it because of seasonality? It's difficult to predict. Overall, I'm bullish that Stolt Tank Containers will do well going forward. Moving to Stolt Sea Farm, that is the business that has been hardest hit because of the COVID-19.
I remind you that the turbot, what is it called in Norwegian? The turbot business is primarily sold to restaurants and hotels, and all of Europe and most, all over the world hotels are closed down. That has impacted our business quite significantly. On page 23, we compare the first and second quarter again with operating profit. Operating revenue, $13.6 for the second quarter. That's down from $24 million in the first quarter. EBITDA negative $1.6 in the second quarter, that is down from $2.9 in the first quarter. The operating loss was $4.7 million, that is down from $8.8 million. I remind you that we did take a $12 million impairment on our biomass in the first quarter, which we didn't have in the second quarter. Operating loss for the first quarter was $8.8.
Lower turbot sales in the second quarter, so less volume being sold in the second quarter at lower price. Lower sale of sole. We had lower operating expenses because of the actions that we have taken. Also when you harvest and farm less volume, of course, your expenses go down. We didn't have the impairment that we had in the first quarter. Less impairment of $11.6, slightly higher impairment of $1.8 and lower LNG of possible $0.2, which brings the operating loss of $4.7. If you go to page 24, the market has been weak for seafood, especially the high-value species like turbot and sole. We have adjusted our prices to the weak demand, which has allowed us to keep the flow of sales going. We have switched the sales, and we have pushed more into the retail segment, rather than the restaurant and hotels.
Our action plan as a result of the COVID-19, we have successfully taken steps to preserve cash. They have secured their own finance, local financing. Stolt Sea Farm has not been a cash drain on the group. They have been able to get extra credit from our vendors. We have held back on CapEx and hire freeze. We have achieved grants from the local government. They had a very much focus on the working capital with no relevant bad debt. They've reduced OpEx by the reduction of biomass. We have improved the feeding efficiency. We have reduced the energy consumption. We have tight control on the maintenance expenditures. How does the rest of the year look like? Well, we have written down the biomass.
I think that the value of the biomass that we have now in Stolt Sea Farm is at less than EUR 6. We are now selling above EUR 6. For us to go break even for the remainder of the year in Stolt Sea Farm we need to have a price of EUR 7.5, and we are around EUR 6.6 as we speak. I think we have reached the bottom, and the markets are now opening up again. As most of you know that Spain, Italy, France, they're all opening up. The restaurants are opening up, the hotels are opening up, and we are seeing actually quicker and earlier than we expected the recovery in this market. I believe the bottom has been reached in Stolt Sea Farm and, yeah, hopefully we'll get back to our normal prices quickly. Stolt Tankers Gas, not much to report.
We have, as you know, fixed one ship to PETRONAS, the first ship for a three-year time charter. The challenge here is, of course, that the ships are being built in China, and they are being delayed. We're working together with our charterer, with PETRONAS, and they understand, and we're working together. We do expect the ships to be delivered at the end of the third quarter, so that we will start generating a revenue there. We also have one ship on bareboat to Golar LNG, and we believe that ship will also be delayed. Again, we're working together with Golar LNG, and I expect that ship may slip into 2021. There's a lot of activity going on in Sardinia on page 27. The terminal that we're building there is also being delayed.
We now believe that we will be operational at the end of the year. Driven by COVID-19, also we are working on and making great progress in selling energy to the local market. It overall looks promising. When we get the cash flow from the two first ships it will certainly help. We do not expect that we need any further equity to be able to take delivery or meet the investment that we have committed to. That brings me to page 28. Jens, to take us through the financials.
Okay. Thank you very much, Niels. Again, good afternoon and good morning to those of you calling in from the U.S. I will, as per normal, provide details about the financial results that we released today for the second quarter. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, I'll also give you an outlook of our cash flow forecast going forward. It's something we usually don't do, we thought it was important to share that with you. I want to remind you that we have today filed our financial statements for the second quarter with the Oslo Stock Exchange. As per normal, you will find the press release, the interim financials, as well as this investor presentation posted on our website, which is www.stolt-nielsen.com under the section Reports and Presentations in the Investor section. Moving on to slide 29. This is the Stolt-Nielsen Limited net profit loss overview.
Operating profit before one-offs for the second quarter was $51.2 million. That's significantly up from the $29.5 million that we posted in the first quarter. That's really reflecting the good recovery in both Stolt Tankers and Stolt Tank Containers as Niels discussed, and a reduced operating loss in Stolt Sea Farm. Also Stolthaven Terminals had a steady performance, but a strengthening U.S. dollar during the second quarter masked the positive impact of the improvement in utilization that was achieved in Stolthaven Terminals, and that was predominantly in Singapore and Australia. During the quarter, you will see we wrote off capitalized expenses of $1.8 million. That was at our sole farm in Iceland. Consequently, the operating profit for the quarter was $49.4 million, up from $17.6 million in the prior quarter. Net interest expense continued to go down, and was $33.4 million for the second quarter.
That was a decrease of $1.6 million, and we had a small FX loss of $1 million. The group tax charge for the second quarter was $1.7 million, half a million dollar increase from the prior quarter. As Niels mentioned, in the second quarter, we reclassified the Sterling Caviar business as held for sale. In the process, we wrote down the assets of the business by $8.1 million. Consequently, we can report a net profit from continuing operations, which now fully excludes the caviar business. The continuing operations profit was $12.3 million, and that was a good improvement from the loss of $19.4 million in the prior quarter. The loss that we took from discontinued operations was $9.3 million. That is the $8.1 million that we wrote down the business with, as well as the quarterly running loss of $1.2 million.
You will see that we have excluded the caviar business from prior quarters as well. Consequently, the net profit came in at $ 3 million for the quarter, EBITDA came in at $ 122.8 million. Again, note that the EBITDA is before the fair value biological assets, insurance reimbursements, and other one-time non-cash items. Can we move on to page 30, please? This time, we have decided to show you a different view of the balance sheet, and we'll be focusing more on the covenants. If you look in the top left quadrant, you will see that the total debt at quarter end was $2.567 billion, and that's down from $2.585 billion in the first quarter. Tangible net worth remained flat at $1.58 billion. Consequently, we saw that the debt to tangible net worth ratio declined slightly from 1.64 to 1.62.
To look at net debt, subtracting out the cash, net debt was at $ 2.34 billion at the end of the second quarter as we had a significant cash balance of $230 million. Total assets for the quarter stood at just over $ 4.7 billion. Looking at the other column, the EBITDA to interest expense to the right, you will see that with the improvement in the EBITDA that we experienced in the second quarter, the EBITDA to interest expense ratio improved to 3.18 from 3.05 in the first quarter. Keep in mind, this is calculated over the last 12 months. Likewise, our net debt to EBITDA had a significant improvement from 5.64 to 5.27, as you will see in the bottom left quadrant. Our liquidity position at quarter end stood at $ 411 million.
That's made up of $230 million in cash, as mentioned, and $181 million in availability under the revolving credit line. This is down from the prior quarter. Keep in mind, at the end of the first quarter, we had just raised a $142 million bonds to prepare us for the bond that matured in April of this year, so during the second quarter. We move on to slide 31, please. This is the capital expenditures program. Year to date, we have done $73 million. For the quarter, the second quarter alone, we had about $40 million in capital expenditures. Remind you that this excludes what we pay for dry docking of the tankers. For tankers, we spent $12 million on non-dry dock expenditures, $15 million for terminals.
STC was about $2 million. Interestingly enough, we had negative $2 million for Stolt Sea Farm, as they received grants related to prior capital expenditures done in Spain. We also invested a further $10 million into our Avenir LNG during the quarter. We had spent $3 million in corporate. That leaves us with about $98 million remaining for the year. Some of the reduction that we had of the $62 million have been pushed in over to 2021. In 2021, we expect about $89 million of capital expenditures. Moving on to slide 32. This is a different view of our liquidity position or our cash flow, if you like, than what we normally show you. It's trying to give a bit more of a visual view. The free cash flow increased to $64 million in the second quarter from $23 million in the first quarter.
If you look at the graph, you start at the left-hand column, you will see we had liquidity available at the end of the first quarter of $511 million. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $108 million. We have capital expenditures of $36 million. That's different from what I showed you on the prior slide because that does not include the $10 million that we invest in Avenir, but it does include $6 million that we spent on dry docking. We had other investments, which included, was $8 million. That's $10 million invested in Avenir, less $2 million that we received in dividends from our joint ventures. We took on additional debt. As I mentioned, we drew down on the revolving credit line during the quarter of $130 million. Also, as Niels mentioned, Stolt Sea Farm took on advantageous loans of $14 million separately.
During the quarter, we paid down $155 million in debt, and that included $110 million approximately on the bond that matured in April, plus regular debt maturities of some $45 million. We also paid $9 million on finance leases, and FX had a small impact, and because we ended up at $411 million in the liquidity at the end of the second quarter. Moving to slide 33. What I want to share with you here is that since we acquired Jo Tankers back in 2016, and subsequently took delivery of what was a quite significant new building program, we saw a debt peak during the first quarter of 2018 at $2.448 billion. Since then, we embarked on a program to reduce debts, control capital expenditures, preserve liquidity, and we have since then seen that our net debt has been reduced by $280 million.
I remind you that this has been through what has been a very weak market for tankers. Even in a weak market for the main business, we've been able to improve on our debt situation. You will see in the first quarter and second quarter of 2020, the little gray boxes on the top, that's the IFRS 16 treatment of our finance leases, so the debt portion of those leases. Net debt now stands at $2.168 billion at the end of the second quarter, so down $280 million. Bottom left, you have a debt maturity profile, and having repaid the April bond, there's not much left in 2020, about $80 million.
With the bonds that we just issued now in June that actually settled on Monday, we reduced the March 2021 bond from a $232 million outstanding down to $154 million, as many of the bond holders rolled from that bond into the new bond. We have $159 million of regular principal payments. You see the bonds going forward, the $175 million bond in 2022 is a late 2022 maturity. There's lots of time to prepare for that. As mentioned, we did a $ 1.25 billion bond that settled on Monday, June 29, and it was $ 522 million that we repurchased. We are working on additional financing, as Niels mentioned. $65 million to be secured by the Moerdijk and Dagenham terminals is the one that has progressed the most at the moment. If you move on to slide 34.
Here we give you a view of the liquidity going forward, and this is in light of the bond that is maturing in March, and we want to give you comfort that we are in a good position going forward. We start with the left-hand column, $411 million in liquidity at the end of the second quarter. We did the bond now in June, $1 32 million. That's SNI01 . You see the dotted line going over to the $7 8 million redemption of the March 2021 bond. We had credit approval for a $ 65 million terminal financing, and we'll be working on the documentation. Over the next 12 months until the end of the second quarter 2021, we have done a conservative, emphasize conservative, of our operating cash flow of about $ 350 million.
We will have further capital expenditures of about $ 158 million in that same period over the next 12 months. We will have debt reductions, regular principal payments of $ 159 million, as well as the remaining balance of the March 2021 bond of $ 154 million, as well as interest payments, lest we forget, of $ 131 million. That leaves us with a liquidity position at the end of the second quarter of 2021 of $ 280 million, with the next more significant maturity being the September 2022 bond coming. This does not include the $ 100 million RCF that Jens mentioned. It does not include the terminal top-up financing that we are considering for the Singapore terminal. We also have further unencumbered assets, should that be necessary, that we can also use to finance further or to raise further liquidity should that be needed.
Just want to share that with you as a view going forward. With that, Niels, I would like to hand it back to you.
Thank you, Jens. Before we open the floor for questions, just the key messages that I want to give you is that we, as we showed you, have taken early action to improve liquidity position and to protect our revenue base. We have secured good contracts in tankers that secures volume. Each business is well positioned within their respective segments. If needed, we have done a downside scenario action plan, where we have established further OpEx savings and cash sources identified. We have made plans in each of the businesses, as I said, if it should happen, we have actions to be taken. We have unencumbered assets, as Jens said, available for further $200 million financing. We have ample room under our covenants. We have, as also Jens showed you, a liquidity to repay the March 2021 bond. It's already secured.
I feel comfortable with the position that we are in. Uncertain times ahead, but I think that whatever comes our way, we will be ready. Also in these times, there will always be opportunities that arise, and I hope to be able to take advantage of that. Operator, that concludes our presentation. We would now like to open up for any questions that the callers may have.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to cancel, you can press the hash key. That's star and one. Your first question comes from Erik Halvorsen from Pareto. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Just first on the opportunities you mentioned there. It's been a crazy six months, right? If you could be a little bit more specific on what type of opportunities, maybe which of the segments? Is it mostly on the tanker side or is it across all of your industries? Is it something completely new?
It's not new. As I remind you, we are very much focused on reducing our debt and conserving cash to ride out whatever downturn comes our way. We are seeing fantastic opportunities in the terminal business to expand which we would like to pursue. I don't think those opportunities will run away, but there are opportunities there for further expansion in the terminal business. Tank container business, we have expanded through buying or building our own tank containers, but we also expanded by taking over competitors. If there are competitors or other platforms out there that are suffering, we would like to see and pursue those opportunities. Of course, tankers. I think there is further room for consolidation, and there's many ways of doing that.
I think using our platform and using our balance sheet, hopefully we will be able to pursue some such opportunities. It doesn't necessarily mean that we acquire, but we can maybe see if there's a way of operating pool agreements. To answer your questions, there are opportunities that are arising in each of our businesses.
Understand. Second, when you have more than 95% utilization on your terminals this quarter, yet the EBIT increase from the first quarter isn't that substantial. Is it fair to say that some of the increase quarter-over-quarter was lower paying storage products? Second, how has that moved into the third quarter?
The reason that we have increased in utilization is because we took. As we said, we have had this challenging market in Singapore. We were able to secure some three-month contracts with some traders, which is lower paying business, lower margin business. The core business that we focus on is chemicals. That is steady. That hasn't changed. What we saw the pickup of utilization in Singapore and in Australia is lower paying business but higher volume. That's why the utilization picked up. It does not reflect that the core chemical market is weakening. It's actually remaining the same and it's healthy. We just took the opportunity to secure some trade business in that group. We'll see if that lasts in the third and fourth quarter.
Okay. There's nothing on the normal chemical storage business that has changed dramatically over the past, well, since the craziness of April, I would say.
No, not at all. I would say that to the contrary, we are seeing steady inquiries for storage of chemicals in our main terminals.
Fantastic. Okay. Finally, on the corporate and other operating profit, there is a, what you say is the delta there of about $4 million or $5 million positive on corporate now they are reflecting a lower profit sharing accrual. Can you shed some light on that and how should we model that going forward? Obviously, $4 million or $5 million per quarter is a substantial amount. Is it a one-off?
Yeah. Elaborate. I think it was 5.7 in corporate numbers. Can you elaborate?
Yeah, it's actually comprised of a number of small items, but the big one is clearly the profit sharing. We over-accrued in the first quarter, which if you look at the results, should not have been done and this was a reversal. I think if you look going forward, you can sort of keep it as a very small percentage of the net profit, not to really confuse the results. This was a one-time correction of an over-accrual in the first quarter.
Okay. It should still be Okay, I understand. Thank you.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from Anders Karlsen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a question on your contract coverage. You state that you are increasing your contract coverage. Can you say a bit more how much approximately you have on the contract or on the course now?
I think it was-
How do you see that going forward?
Yeah, again, our insurance approach, but we want to secure, so it was I think from 70% to I think 73%, so not that much. I remind you that most of the contract, because we've been operating in such a weak market for a long period of time, there is not volume guaranteed under these contracts. If you do a contract from Houston to Rotterdam for one particular product, the customer is obliged to stick with you at an agreed freight rate from those two ports. They don't guarantee you. They don't have to. There's no minimum guaranteed minimum and maximum volume under the contract. There is maximum volume, but there's no minimum volume guarantee. What we have focused on is really to fix additional cargoes where there is a minimum volume guaranteed under the contracts to secure volume that is out there.
I am of the opinion that we believe that the market will slow down. When you see what is happening in the airline industry and the car manufacturer and the construction industry, hopefully, we haven't seen the impact yet. If you believe that there's going to be a slowdown in the global economy, we felt it prudent to secure volume too. We have gone after additional business and we've been focusing on business that guarantees volume. Actually, we've been able to achieve relatively good rates. As we showed, the average rate increase on the contracts that we renewed was 5%. That's the thinking.
Okay.
So.
In terms of A&G expenses, it came down from about $52 million last quarter to about $45 million this quarter. How much of that is temporary effects following COVID-19? No traveling, no entertainment, whatever. How much of that could actually be translated into permanent savings?
Well, I think that we can't continue to have no traveling. We can't continue forever to not hire people. We have taken dramatic action on the hiring freeze. If people retire or people leave us, we have stopped all hiring. That can't go on forever. That will most likely come back again. It's probably going to take a while before we go back to normal, but I would say from $ 45 million back up to, I'm just guessing here, Jens, but around back to $ 50 million, most likely. Also, we volunteered to cut our senior management to take a salary cut and the board to take a cut, et cetera. Once we feel that we are through this storm, I think that it's only fair to compensate for the sacrifices that we made and go back to normal again.
On the permanent savings, I would say, as you know, working from home works. We are of course keeping an eye on productivity, but working from home works. Going forward with the systems, with the technology and all the things that we've done, there are savings, there are permanent savings that we can achieve. Less office space. I think that we will never go back to the same sort of traveling that we did. We find out that having these Teams meetings works very well. It will be different, but it's too early to identify, but it's very much in our focus to create permanent savings from the experience that we've had in this pandemic.
Jens, maybe I can add. In the second quarter, we also saw that the US dollar strengthened, which also has the impact of reducing the A&G in foreign currency locations in US dollar terms.
Okay. Thank you. Then one final one. In the U.S., you have the ITC terminal that is probably still out as far as I know, in Houston. Are you fully utilized there or is there more to add on to the utilization and revenues in the Houston and in the U.S. area on the chemical side?
In both Houston and New Orleans, we have lots of space to expand, which we are looking at projects. Even though we have capital expenditure restraints right now, there are projects that we are pursuing and looking at, and we have additional space to build additional tanks. We've put in place all the infrastructure. As you probably know, we built a new jetty in Houston, and we have the East property, which is not full, so there is plenty of room for expansion there. Also in New Orleans, within our wall, this protected wall that we built, we have plenty of space for expansion there. Really on top of the priority list on spending or capital expenditure once we open up again, is to develop and pursue these opportunities that we consistently see in the U.S. Gulf.
Utilization is high both in Houston and New Orleans. We are building additional. There are some tanks still being built in New Orleans, but it's all contracted out. What we've been focusing on now, since basically utilization is at max, we're doing control, culling low margin business and replace it with higher margin business. That is ongoing. That's why I say that without further capital expenditure, I think that we will still continue to see improved earnings from the terminal division, because we've been focusing on one, getting our operating costs down, but also getting higher margin business into the terminals. We have expansion for additional land, both in Houston and New Orleans.
The growth that you will see in the short run, it's coming from lower operating costs, but also higher margin business that we're replacing low margin business when the contract expired with higher paying business, taking advantage of the relatively strong market in the U.S. Gulf.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you. Operator?
Thank you. We have no further questions at the moment.
I guess then that completes our presentation. I would like to thank you for taking the time, and we'll talk again when we release our third quarter results. Keep well, and thank you for participating. That completes the presentation.