Good day and welcome to the Stolt-Nielsen Limited first quarter 2016 results presentation and conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2016 earnings presentation. I will be referring to a presentation which is on our website. We move on to page three, today together with me, as always, Jan Engelhardtsen, CFO of Stolt-Nielsen. On page four, the agenda. We will go through the highlights, I will take you through each of the businesses. Jan will take you through the financials in detail, we will open up for questions and answers. On page five of the presentation, first quarter 2016 highlights. Stolt Tankers reported an operating profit of $31.2 million. That's slightly down from $35.4 million, reflecting the impact of fewer operating days in the first quarter and loss on bunker hedges. The spot market remained healthy we also experienced lower bunker costs.
Stolthaven Terminals operating profit of $10.5 million, that is up from $2.6 million in the previous quarter, when results were held down by write-downs of certain assets, accelerated depreciation, and settlement of some customer claims. Stolt Tank Containers operating profit of $11.8 million, that's down from $13.1 million, reflecting seasonally lower freight rates and utilization despite an increase in shipments. Stolt Sea Farm operating profit of $5.5 million, compared to a loss of $2.5 million, accounting for inventories at fair value had a positive impact of $3.4 million, compared to with a negative impact of $2.7 million in the fourth quarter. Corporate and others reported an operating loss of $1.2 million, compared to an operating loss of $5 million in the fourth quarter. That gave us an operating profit of $57.8 million, a net profit of $30.4 million, and earnings per share of $0.55 per share.
Moving on to the variance analysis that we do between the fourth quarter and the first quarter. Net profit variance analysis. You can see we had a $21.4 million profit in the fourth quarter, slightly lower Stolt Tankers operating profit of $4.2 million. Improvement of $7.9 million in the Stolthaven Terminals division. Lower Stolt Tank Containers operating profit of $1.3 million, higher Stolt Sea Farm operating profit, and also the revaluation of the biomass of $6.1 million positive, and taxes, interest, corporate, and others of -$1.4 million, bringing us to $30.4 million. I will, as always, go through in detail each of the businesses. Moving on to page seven, Stolt Tankers. Initial comment is, I would say market conditions remains the same from fourth quarter to the first quarter. Deep sea revenue decreased by 5.9% from previous quarter, mainly due to fewer operating days and higher bunker surcharge rebates.
In other words, in our bunker clause, if the bunker price is low, we give more money back to the customer. Operating days decreased due to recycling of 2 ships and also some unscheduled off-hire of 2 other ships. Utilization dropped by 4.2% compared to the previous quarter, mainly caused by a drop in the transportation of acids. I wouldn't read too much into it. It was just scheduling wise. The average COA rates invoiced remained flat. Spot rates increased by 9.4% compared with the previous quarter. COA renewals annual rate during the quarter were on average up by 2.4%. If we move on to page 8, fourth quarter operating profit versus first quarter operating profit. The previous quarter, we had an operating profit of $35.4. Fewer operating days, the impact of the 2 ships that were recycled, but also the 2 ships that were taken off hire, $3.6 million.
We had accelerated depreciation as you have to accelerate the depreciation on the ships that you are scheduled to recycle for the year. As the steel prices are falling, you have to do accelerated depreciation of those assets. That impact was $3.8. We had barging and sublets. As a result of the 2 ships that had to go on off hire, we had to find solutions of transporting the cargo schedule for those ships. We had to sublet those cargoes, both by barging and taking in outside tonnage. Lower bunker cost of $9.9 positive, lower bunker surcharge revenue as a result of -$5.3. We had a loss on our hedges, and I will show you in detail those hedges, of $2 million for the quarter.
Lower shipowner cost as a positive contribution of $2 million and emission credits and gain and loss on sale of ships of $2.9 and others of $1.3, bringing us to $31.2. Stolt Tankers bunker cost on page 9, the net bunker cost decreased by $4.6 from the fourth quarter, excluding bunker hedges. The average IFO consumed decreased to $196 per ton from $259 per ton. The consumption during the quarter went down to $196 from $259. The average price of the bunkers that we purchased during the quarter decreased to $169 per ton, down from $240 from the fourth quarter. You see here that the bunkers that we purchased continues to fall. The COA bunker surcharge clause is covered on average approximately 67% of the total bunker price exposure in the first quarter.
On the bottom left-hand side, we have illustrated the bunker consumption that Stolt Tankers Joint Service, that's our deep sea fleet have. We consume approximately 488,000 tons per year. Out of that, 326,960 tons approximately is covered under the bunker clauses in our COAs. That means that we have 161,000 tons which are not hedged. On top of that, we also have volume from our regional fleet. We have hedged out of the 161,000 on spot consumption. We have hedged 92,000 tons at an average cost of $156, and that's for 2016. In 2017, we have hedged 72,000 tons at an average price of $210. I believe that that position, and that is approximately out of our total non-hedged position or our spot position in bunkers, we have now hedged half of it.
I don't think you will be able to hit rock bottom, but I think we're pretty close to the bottom. What I feel. You can see today's spot rate is 116. The average price that we bought in the first quarter was $169. We locked in at $156. The bunker loss that we have realized, in other words, the bunkers that we have consumed out of what we have hedged was $346,000. The mark to market loss, in other words, the position that we have taken but we have not yet consumed is a negative 1.7. That's the $2 million loss on the hedge that we mark to market each quarter. Hopefully that will be a positive number next time around. Moving on to page 10. STJS or Stolt Tankers Joint Service sale time charter index.
Here you can see I said the market was pretty similar from the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year. You can see there on the index that it leveled off. No decrease, no increase. Chemical markets supported by other segments. Page 11. The top graph shows you, the red line shows the spot rates, the blue lines shows the bunker costs, the bunker prices. As you can see, there's been an uptick in the spot rates, even though the bunker price continues to fall. Really the earnings that we're seeing, the profits that we're seeing in Stolt Tankers is really because the spot rates have not fallen in line with the bunker prices, which is good. There's theories to this. A strong CPP market has helped the chemical markets.
In other words, the swing tonnage that has operated in our segment has gone over to the CPP segment. The U.S. chemical export remains strong due to the low feedstock prices in the U.S. Gulf. Overall, positive. Chemical tanker fleet and order book. This is what we have shown you earlier. The order book as it stands is at 28.5%. That is out of the 18 owners that we compare ourselves to. Out of that, I would say 23% is stainless steel. A lot of it is not scheduled to be delivered. The years are actually not here, but the line with the red, yellow, blue, and green is 2016. That is this year. You can see that the order book is significant of new tonnage coming in this year and the next in 2017 and 2018.
We'll talk a little later about the likelihood of all of it being delivered, but as it stands, significant order book. Moving on to page 13. We have our new buildings being named the Stolt Pride, the Stolt Sincerity, Stolt Integrity, Stolt Tenacity, Stolt Loyalty, and Stolt Excellence. The ones that have been following our company for a long time, these are old ship names that we are reusing. The first ship is scheduled to be delivered in June of this year, and the next will be then the fourth quarter. Two are scheduled to be in the fourth quarter, three ships coming in. These are the ships that are replacing the ships that are currently being recycled. Outlook on page 14. Outlook for 2016 and 2017. Significant order book due for delivery the next two years, as I showed you on the previous slide.
Though cancellation and delays are likely due to the financial conditions of both the yards and also maybe difficulty of obtaining financing for the ones that have taken on orders, but have not yet financed those ships. We believe there is going to be delays, and also maybe not all of these ships, or the people who have placed the order will be able to obtain financing. The viability of the yards or the financial strength of the yards is also questionable. Global GDP growth is estimated at 3.1% in 2015. It is projected to increase to 3.4% in 2016 and 3.6% in 2017. Our business is very much driven by global GDP as we transport the feedstock for manufacturing. Manufacturing being driven by global GDP.
This is the latest from IMF. As you all read in the newspaper, these numbers were revised by the IMF in January. They were revised downwards. Let's hope that they are not further revised downwards. The World Trade Organization predicts that the trade growth in 2016 will increase by 3.9%, which is good. However, it is still below the average 5% that we have seen over the last 20 years. It is recovering, or they predict it is going to recover, but not back to the normal levels. Again, this is falling import into China and other emerging markets. Falling prices for oil and other primary commodities. U.S. export capacity, which benefits from the low feed cost, may drive the trade growth multiple back to the historic average of 1.3 to 1.7 times global GDP.
We are not there yet. Historically, trade growth or global trade, the multiple has been 1.3 and 1.7 of GDP. We have seen good export growth out of the U.S. Gulf. I would say that the strongest market, the biggest, the strongest market we are seeing today is from the U.S. Gulf to the Far East. U.S. Gulf to Europe is also healthy. The other segments are struggling. The area where we have the biggest competition is actually, or biggest challenges for as an industry, is to get the ships back. U.S. Gulf to the Far East is healthy. Return is a dog fight.
I would say that the reason that we only were able to get 2.3% on average up on our COAs is that the U.S. Gulf to the Far East, we were able to get healthy renewals. It is a big competition to get the ships or the contracts back, and that is why, on average, we were not able to get higher. We expect opportunities to acquire ships in the second-hand market. We also expect opportunities for consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions. I would say the chemical tanker segment, it is really ripe for consolidation. We would like to participate. Stolthaven Terminals. Operating profit improved following an increase in revenue in line with the expansion that we have put online. We also had lower M&R, maintenance and repair, a reduction in A&G as a result of the stronger dollar.
The reduction in maintenance and repair is back to normal. You would have seen that in the third and the fourth quarter, M&R was high, and that was catch-up work and investment that we had to do primarily in Houston. Now that has come back, and we have been able to get more cargo or more business at our terminals, picking up the utilization from giving 87.5% in the first quarter versus 86.9%. Ticking and moving along in the right direction. Underlying dynamics of the bulk liquid storage industry remains solid. If we look on page 16, the operating profit variance between the two quarters. The reported operating profit for the fourth quarter was USD 2.6 million.
We had in the fourth quarter, one-offs of impairment of goodwill and accelerated depreciation and settlement of some customer claims that we had in the fourth quarter, which we didn't have in this quarter. Positive improvement of USD 3.7. In the fourth quarter, we had the dilution in our investment in Nord Terminal of USD 0.7 million. We had higher storage and throughput at our terminal, positive of USD 1.1. Lower M&R compared to previous quarter of USD 1 million. Lower A&G expense because of strong dollar and others of USD 0.8, bringing us to USD 10.5. Stolthaven Terminals, owned terminals main concern, and this is what we reported last time, that since 2008 we have doubled our capacity of our wholly owned terminals to 1.6 million and we have invested USD 1 billion in this segment.
The rapid growth in capacity has not produced the equal growth in the EBITDA due to the falling utilization, operational inefficiencies, and cost creep. This is what we said last quarter, is that this is what is getting our full confidence or focus, that the market is there, that we believe that we will be able to deliver that EBITDA that was original in our investment case, but it's taken longer and cost a little more. As you can see on the graph on the right-hand side, on the orange, you can see a positive pickup between the fourth quarter and the first quarter, both when it comes to capacity utilization and invested capital versus EBITDA margin. It's ticking in the right direction. Moving on to page 18, action and achievements. Houston being the one area where it's our biggest wholly owned terminal.
That's where we have had the biggest challenges. There, we have changed management. We have invested in infrastructure improvements. We have started and we will continue. Integrate field operation with back office. We have expanded already our jetty capacity by building a larger barge jetty, and we also have approval to build a totally new jetty. We have also had a customer contract review where we have gone thoroughly through and done a cost-based analysis of each of our contracts to make certain that we fully understand the cost of operating each of our customer's contracts. We have had more than 20 API inspections. We have obtained the permit to build a new jetty, and we are on schedule to engage a contractor to build this jetty. Improved jetty scheduling and barge jetty expansion has been completed.
New Orleans, which was again hit by this famous storm, this flooding. We lost customers. We built a wall. We are now gradually getting more of these tanks back online, and we've been able to successfully obtain new business and attract new customers to the terminal. New contracts signed up and utilization is up to 70. I actually think as it stands now, slightly above 80. Santos, there where we were fully dependent on the ethanol business, we have now expanded the product mix and reduced the reliability on ethanol. We have gone like we've tried to continuously do, cutting costs to counter the high inflation there. We have added caustic soda contracts and utilization is now up at 99%. Singapore, pursuing new customers and new products.
There is an area where there's been a dramatic slowdown in business, but we have been able to capture new business and we have added some contracts and now we have been able to get the utilization up to above 83. Australasia, complete expansion at cost, improve profitability. There is the Newcastle terminal. We are in the process of the phase 3 expansion and also the jetty expansion, and it's moving along in the right direction. Lingang, where the explosion occurred, we lost our operating license. Everybody lost their operating license. That terminal has been closed. It says here, uncertainty on timing remains. We are hopefully or believe that we will be getting the operating license back in the summer. The challenge there, and this is for everyone, of course, the terminal is now empty.
Even if we get our operating license back, you need to build up a customer base. Stolt Tank Containers on page 19. Revenue down due to a combination of seasonality, that's the Lunar or the Chinese New Year, lower demurrage, and lower rebillable freight-related expenses. Transportation margin per shipment was marginally down. While shipments increased, utilization was slightly down due to faster return of tanks after voyage end and increase in regional moves with shorter voyage duration. If we go to page 19 and look at the variance between the fourth quarter and the first quarter in operating profit, we reported $13.1 in the fourth quarter. Lower gross profit utilization, demurrage revenue of -$4.2. Costs that we had in the previous quarter related to the recycling of some tanks that we didn't have in this quarter, $1.5.
Higher joint venture income and other bring us to $11.8 million positive operating profit. Stolt Tank Containers market situation, page 21. We've said this before. This has been one of our most profitable business, and it's still one of our most profitable business. The margins are coming down, profits are coming down. I don't think it's in a free fall. I think it's going to settle, but it is unrealistic to believe that we can continue to have the kind of margin and operating profits that we have had for such a long time. There's more competition out there. That's totally clear. The fundamentals, yes, there's a slowdown in trade like we are seeing in Stolt Tankers, but the fundamentals are still very good, where more product today are still being moved through drums than in tank containers. There's still large growth opportunities in this segment.
The market is growing steadily as we expand into new regions and continue to convert cargo from other modes. Lower economic growth in China is negatively impacting global activity, as we are seeing in Tankers. Increased competition is putting pressure on margins. We are focusing on growing utilization and turns per tank while maintaining margins per move. We will continue to develop our depot network in order to improve turns per tank. Yes, it's more competition, but still fundamentally a strong business and a good contributor to our earnings. Stolt Sea Farm. It's nice to see that everything here is blue. Seasonally strong first quarter with turbot. Of course, our first quarter includes December, January, and February. December being Christmas sales. Seasonally strong first quarter with turbot sales up 24% and caviar sales up 42%.
Sole sales were down due to slower growth affecting production at our farm in Iceland. While prices for turbot and sole remain flat, caviar prices increased during the quarter due to the strong demand around Christmas season. The accounting for inventories at fair value had a positive impact of $3.4 million, compared to a negative impact of $2.7 million in the previous quarter. What you're actually seeing here, the biggest impact on the improved earnings comes from the fair value adjustment that we have to do. That you do at the 10 last days of the quarter. Even though we didn't benefit that much from increased prices in the first quarter, but since the prices started to pick up at the end of the first quarter, we had to write off the inventory of our biomass.
I would say going forward now, the inventory has been picked up, in the second quarter, we should see improvement and will continue to solve earnings because we have higher prices. Hope you understand that. Okay. On page 23, fourth quarter to first quarter operating profit variance. Negative $2.5 million operating profit in the fourth quarter. Higher fat fish gross profit of $1.3 million. Fat fish fair value evaluation adjustment of $5.6 million. Higher profit from the caviar business, and also inventory adjustments for the caviar. Bringing us up to a positive $5.5 million operating profit from Stolt Sea Farm. Moving on to Stolt-Nielsen Gas to show you the similar graph that we showed last time, but I just want to clarify to the market our intention within this segment.
Today, Stolt-Nielsen Gas consists of a 7.2% stake in Avance Gas, 100% ownership of Stolt-Nielsen LNG Holdings, and then we have a intended Golar-Stolt joint venture company. In addition, we have also invested directly in Golar LNG. Stolt LNGaz, which was our first investment in LNG with the intention of delivering gas to the remote location in Canada. The mining industry and the mineral or the commodity prices have fallen, those customers are not there any longer, we have put that investment on hold or on spare saving. We would like to keep it alive, but I would like to remind everyone that all the investment and all the costs associated with this product has been expensed. If we decide not to proceed with this project in Canada, it will not have an impact on our P&L. We've already taken all of the costs.
We will see. The Sardinha project, HIGAS , that's our first small scale shipping storing and distribution. That is progressing. We are now working on offtake agreements, we've been able to achieve three contracts or three LOIs so far. When we have full capacity or close to full capacity at our storage and for our ships, we will take an FID. You have the Golar-Stolt joint venture. That's where we actually are looking at using the FSRUs from Golar and use that as a hub to further distribute small scale to stranded customer not connected to the pipeline grid. That's the thinking about the work that we would like to do with Golar.
Like all of these LNG projects, there's a lot of projects, there's a lot of talk, it's very expensive and takes a long time, so we need to be patient. LNG investment. This is on page 25. Build a global business of small scale regional LNG distribution projects, focusing on terminals in strategic location, serviced by a flexible fleet of ships, which are underwritten by a committed base load demand. Develop an integrated model to include sourcing of LNG, shipping of small scale terminal to two small scale terminals, 10,000 to 30,000 cubic meter, and distribute from the terminals via truck and ISO containers to the end user. Explore potential projects in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, South America, Indonesia, India, Africa, and Canada. There are more projects out there that we are presently, with our staffing, able to handle.
This is coming, we would like to be part of it. The project aimed at serving stranded demand customer out of reach of the conventional pipeline gas. Offtake agreements are currently in the 10 to 15 year range with suitable counterparty credits. That brings us to page 26, financial, where Jan will take you through financial.
Thank you very much, Nils. Good afternoon and good morning to those on the phone. If we go to page 27, just before I do, I'll go and provide a little bit more details into the financials, the figures that we have provided today. Let me also say that we have, in addition today, filed our three-month interim financials which ends on February 29th, 2016 with the Oslo Stock Exchange. The press release, the interim financials, as well as our annual report, as well as this presentation is on our website, so you can find it there. If we go to page 27, let's just look again at the net operating profit.
I'm not going to go through all the variances, but just to say here that if you take what we define as one-off, call it events or one-off charges, put those aside, then you really look at the operating performance of the various businesses. You can see for the first quarter, we ended up then at $63.5 million, compared to $56.2 million in the fourth quarter, the last quarter, last year. There has been an underlying improvement in the businesses. As Niels mentioned, of course, we got help here from the fair value adjustment in Stolt Sea Farm, and we also have a real improvement on the terminal side of roughly $3.5 million at the operating level from terminals. That brings us up to the new normal, and as Niels said, will be what we will seek continued small improvements every quarter as we go forward.
Before one-offs, of course, Stolt Tankers is down and Stolt Tank Containers is down, but still the difference here is more than $7 million improvement on the underlying. One-offs, Niels already talked about the accelerated depreciation, and just to make that clear, we have 6 ships that either have been or will be recycled in 2016 because the steel prices have come significantly down. We have to increase the depreciation so that by the time the ships are recycled, the price we get for the recycling, selling the steel, is equal to whatever the book value is left. You can see here that the actual amount for the first quarter is $6.9 million. It was only $4.1 million in the previous quarter. Stolthaven Terminals, we had some accelerated depreciation in the fourth quarter. We had a gain on sale of assets. These were the emission credits that we sold, $3.3 million.
We sold some assets with a loss of $1.1 million, and then this is the $2.5 million is the net. Altogether, $57.8 million is the operating profit versus $43.6 million. If you look at the non-operating interest expense, very flat, no change. We had a little bit less foreign exchange. We had a small gain actually, but we had more movement in the dollar in the fourth quarter, so that's why we had $1.1 million in the fourth quarter. The income tax, $3.1 million. As we said before, we're doing better on the terminal side. We're doing better on the Stolt Sea Farm side. Therefore that will attract taxation, and of course, we also pay taxes back to the government on the sale of the emission credits. Net profit $30.4 million versus $21.1 million. EBITDA $115.1 million versus $114 million. Let's go to the next slide, which is slide 28.
Balance sheet, the shareholder equity, $1.3 billion, similar to what we had, slightly up $31 million up from fourth quarter. Debt, $1.7 billion and tangible net worth at $1.568 million. That brings the debt to tangible net worth to 1.11 to one, and that is an improvement from the fourth quarter where we were at 1.14 to one. We have a healthy EBITDA interest expense, 4.41, and that's also an improvement from the previous quarter. In terms of cash, $63 million, unused credit lines, $396 million. Total is $459 million. In addition, we have $82 million of uncommitted lines. When you look at both the balance sheet, you looked at the KPIs, you look at the liquidity, we have plenty of cash to be able to retire and repay without having to go to the market. The $300 million bond issue, which is due on June 22nd.
That's for some of you that follow it, is SNI01. Out of reserves that we have, then be able to pay that back. In addition, we are working on a number of transactions to improve the loan-to-value of the loans we have where we have used our ships as collateral. A lot of our loans we've had for a long time. As you know, we repay the loans or pay down on the loans quicker than we amortize the ships. There's a, if you will, an underlying value in those ships. We are working specifically, and I'll go through later and name each of the transactions we're doing, but by just using the same collateral, we are expecting to generate between $170, let's call it $170, $180 million of additional capacity. The target is actually to have this done before June the 22nd.
That's not necessarily a requirement, but that's the target. We are 35% fixed in terms of interest. The average interest cost for us during the first quarter 2016 is 4.95%, which to us looks very, very good. Interest expense expected to be about $28 million for the next quarter. I go to cash flow, slide 29. If you look at the net cash generated by operating activities, $76 million, little bit down from the fourth quarter. Most of that is just a fact that we got less dividends from our investments in Golar and Avance in the first quarter. You can see that in terms of the rest, the net income is an improvement, and overall, we're down just by $10 million. In terms of net cash used in investing activities, $59 million went out. 50 million of that is capital expenditures.
A lot of it is progress payments on our new buildings in China, but it also includes payments towards new tank containers as well as some of the capacity expansion in the terminal section. You can see here that takes us down to $59 million. Previous quarter was $73 million negative. In terms of net cash that we used, provided by financing activities, is negative $31 million. You can see from this slide that what we paid back to the banks and what we drew down on facilities more or less washes out. We're left with the dividend payments that we made in December of $28 million. Altogether, that brings the cash and cash equivalent at the beginning of the period to $78 million and at the end of the period to $63 million. Going to slide 30.
This is the bar with the EBITDA figures by quarter. Of course, we have taken out sale of assets and other one-time items or events. We already talked about Tankers is down in terms of the EBITDA, but keep in mind what we said is that it's not the market, it's not the fundamental of the market. As you saw, the sale in index is the same. We have fewer ship days, we have fewer ships generating EBITDA. We also had some other events affecting the amount. Terminals, you can see, is slightly up. Tank Containers, again, for the same reasons we talked about with utilization is down if you look compared to previous quarters. If you go back a year and so on, we had much higher utilization, very close to 75%. Overall, the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter is $115 million. A&G.
This is slide 31. If you look at this, of course, the impact of the dollar, the strengthening of the dollar that we saw during the second half of 2015, and that also continued into the beginning of the first quarter of 2016, impacts all of our business favorably. Roughly 65%-70% of all our A&G costs are actually non-U.S. dollars. With the strength of the U.S. dollar, you could see that this is actually having a positive impact on our A&G side. Main difference why we are $9 million down for the quarter is a couple of things. Number one, profit sharing and long-term incentive payments that we accrued in the fourth quarter are less so in the first quarter 2016. Also, we had restructuring.
We moved the Norwalk office down to Houston, and the $1.7 million we had in the fourth quarter was the last of those costs. We are not going to see anything related to that restructuring going forward, only whatever the benefits are. When you look at the quarterly update, the guidance is slightly up $51.2 million. I do not need to go through the details there. Depreciation. We had $60.1 million versus $61.2 million. We are guiding at $61 million. Stolt Tankers, you can see is up. We talked about the additional depreciation that we took and the reasons why. Remember, we have also sold, for recycling, two ships, taking those two ships out of service again, which is reducing the depreciation. Net, it is $38.1 million, and that is the level that we expect for the next quarter to come. Stolthaven Terminals, $13.5 million versus $16 million.
We had certain write-offs that we have already gone through in the fourth quarter. They are not there in the first quarter. Stolt Tankers, that is pretty much the same, Stolt Sea Farm much the same. The picture going forward is not going to change very much. The next slide 33. Here, again, we are pretty close. $10.7 million, and that compares to $10.1 million, slight improvement. Of course, that also ties in with the improvement in the STJS, the underlying improvement that we saw for the JVs that we have, that have ships into the STJS. The regional JVs that we had did slightly worse, that is why it is not a material difference. Stolthaven Terminals, the same. Stolt Tank Containers, we had a little bit of improvement, and the other was $2.1 million. $10.7 million, and we forecast $10.5 million and guide $10.5 million going forward. Taxes. Let us see.
Taxes, I think I already mentioned $3.1 million, which is compared to $1.8 million negative in the previous quarter. The reason why the $1.8 million is negative, you come to the end of the fiscal year, you had four quarters, you go in and you true up all your books, and you realize that we have been over-accruing. In addition, we also finalized some cases that we had in some of our tax jurisdictions where we had provided too much tax. Overall, you can see there was a $1.8 million credit or a reduction in that quarter. You can see for the full year, it was $14.1 million. That is sort of where we are going to end up in 2016 as well. Next, the capital expenditure program, the total program is $892 million.
That is up from what we presented at the end of the fourth quarter, and most of that increase actually relates to the fact that we had three ships, Japanese-built ships under long-term time charter. We had purchase options, and it made sense for us to exercise those options, and those ships will be delivered to us during 2016. That has increased the CapEx as we show on the tanker side. The rest really relates to the new buildings in China. You can see here for tankers, it's $430 million. It's almost half of our program is in the tanker business.
Out of the $430, more or less everything is financed either through the Chinese Export-Import Bank or through the fact that the ships I was talking about that we have exercised option to buy, we can just put those into our revolver and get automatic financing, i.e., increase. Since we have the capacity under the revolver, we can just increase what we can draw. Half of this program already financed. For Stolthaven Terminals, I would say that most probably this reflects Houston. It reflects cleaning up Houston, including a jetty. It includes finishing up the expansion in Singapore and also in Australasia. Out of the $360 million, maybe as much as $150 million is already secured for financing or will be refinanced. Tank Containers, you can see it's very small. Sea Farm is very small. Bitumen, Stolt and others. Altogether, $892 million.
When you look from the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter 2016, it's still $448 million, which is a significant chunk of capital that needs to be invested. Debt maturity, you've seen this slide so many times. The orange here, the bonds, that's the $300 million that matures on June 22nd. We have the cash, you can see that the overall amount of refinancing that we need to do will drop down significantly in 2017. The next bond that is maturing is in 2018. If we look at the projects that we are actually working on, this should be seen in conjunction with what I said earlier about the transactions that we are working on. We are working on a second tank container, call it a sale and lease back transaction, or you can call it an asset-based financing.
You may recall we did one, the structure is called a Japanese Operating Lease Company. The Japanese are providing the equity very reasonable, we go out and get bank financing to top it up 70%, we lease the tank containers back. The cost to us on the first transaction we did was less than 4%. It was actually 4.6%, very attractive. We're now in the market to do a second transaction with 7,000 containers that we have on the balance sheet, as you see here, that will raise $120 million. The fact that we're using the tank containers as collateral to raise financing is nothing new. We've done Texas limited partnerships. We've done KSS in Norway. In the past, we have done tax leases in the U.S., we repaid at the end of the day.
We had no loans where we used tank containers, but now we have done these two, or will have done the second transaction by May. That's $120 million. We are doing $110 million refinancing of a term loan, which is secured by two ships, and we are in the documentation stage of that. We are also in the midst of renewing the company's $600 million facility. As a matter of fact, today, the max is $500 million, and we are going to go up to $600 million by rearranging some of the collateral that we can put in. If we can do that, let's say by the end of the third quarter, then we are basically renewing this one year ahead of when it is actually maturing. This is a very significant part of our liquidity.
We are also taking some of our older ships, and we are putting them into a sale and lease back situation where we aim to raise additional $100 million. That will really take them out, let's call it to the end of its life, and then there's a scrap value. We will take them back, and then the ships will be scrapped. Just before I hand over to Niels, I think overall, as has been commented by the media, the first quarter is relatively strong, $30.4 million and EBITDA of $115 million. Solid performance in tankers, steady tank container results in a very competitive market, and the fundamentals in the terminals remain solid. If you look at the first quarter annualized earnings per share, just take the 55 times four, you come up to $2.21. P/E ratio five, just above five, which is extremely low.
The price to net asset value, we are selling at less than 50% of net, the book value. Dividend, if we continue on the assumption we continue to pay $1, it's 9%. As we've said now many times, the liquidity situation, $459 million, which is available through our credit lines and CapEx. I hope that we by now have been able to take away all the concerns that have been out there among both analysts as well as investors and people looking to invest into our share about our ability to repay the $300 million bond. With that, Niels, back to you.
Since the passing of my father and at the end of last year, the passing of our chairman, Christer Østmoen , we have made some additions to our board. Rolf Habben Jansen, who is the CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, joined the board just before Christmas. We have also nominated Tor Olav Trøim, who has accepted the position, and he will be voted in at the AGM on the 21st. Also at the AGM, we are proposing Samuel Cooperman to become the new chairman of Stolt-Nielsen. As long as I'm the CEO, we don't feel corporate governance wise, it's right to keep both positions. Sam, by far the most experienced shipping man on our board, deep knowledge in the parcel trade, will then be elected in as chairman. Now six new people on the board. I'm sorry, six people on the board, two new ones. Key takeaways.
Group performance and cash flow continue to be strong on the back of the reasonably strong tanker market, which is supported by the low bunker price. It is important that, there has been a lot of question about it, as Jan emphasized, we have enough cash today without any further financing, even though we have projects on our way. We have enough cash to repay the bond coming due this summer. A turnaround at Stolt Sea Farm has begun. We expect to see small and gradual improvements each quarter. Ongoing actions to increase utilization, enhance profitability and performance, we are not expecting to see the full impact. We will see gradual improvement by the quarter in 2016. The full impact, I do not think we will see until 2017. We are working to improve the utilization in Stolt Tank Containers to counter the margin squeeze.
Our entry into the LNG sector will be based on confirmed long-term contract and customers and offtake agreements. This will take time. That completes the presentation. Before I open up for the phone calls, we will take the questions here in Oslo first. Are there any questions that we can try to answer?
Yes. A question related to the new building program in China. Originally, we understood that you were going to start taking delivery from December 2015, and now you are expecting the first one in the first quarter this year. Do you expect any further delays, or are you comfortable with the situation there now? That is number 1. Number 2 is, what you said about the exports from the U.S. If you can really quantify the exports are moving up. If possible. Thank you.
The two questions was, do we expect any further delays in the Chinese new building, originally supposed to be delivered in December or end of 2015, and it now looks at June 2016. The second question, can we quantify the U.S. exports, U.S. Gulf to the Far East? Talk about the new buildings. Hudong, I would say, is one of the better state-owned yards in China. They took on a job for Stolt-Nielsen, where we come with our specifications and our requirements. We have a strong site team. There has been delays. We feel the mid-June numbers is based on what our site team is saying, not what the Chinese are saying. We feel confident that they will be delivered at that time. Then we will see the next ones coming out, two more in 2016. There are some issues, of course.
Not issues, but there are, of course, clauses in the contract saying liquidated damage, et cetera. That's too early to say what the outcome will be. One thing that is the quality of the ship that we're seeing being built is we are very satisfied with. We have 13 people on the ground watching them, and I must say that we are confident that the ships will be top standard when they are delivered. U.S. Gulf to the Far East, that's the strongest market that we have seen. Well, it's positive that you're seeing that the feedstock that our main customers, the oil companies, are investing in production capacity, and that we're seeing as a result of the feedstock being cheap, that the U.S. market is competitive and we're seeing increased volume coming out of the U.S. Gulf.
The big story is, of course, what will happen to all the methanol capacity and where will it go, and how will that impact our segment. I think it's over-exaggerated. I don't think that it will be moving as much to China as we expect. We know that the United States, they import presently a lot of methanol. I think a lot of the production will be consumed domestically. I'm not holding my breath that the methanol will have a big impact. It's a positive, but if it's enough to be able to absorb all the tonnage that's coming in, it's the big question. Remember, the ships, if you don't make a proper round voyage, if you have to ballast back, the economics are not good.
Even though there's additional products going out of the U.S. Gulf to the Far East, it's going to be a dog fight to get your ship back with cargo. That's what we are seeing today, that we are able to get increased business to the U.S. Gulf out to Asia, but we're seeing fierce competition coming back. Another reason, I think that we are not alone in going long on contracts. I think we are seeing competition. People are expecting 2017 and 2018 because of this new supply coming, people are trying to lock in contracts. I don't want to go further and try to predict how much of the U.S. Gulf. It's positive that we're seeing a pickup, that Asia is buying product from the U.S. Gulf. It's a good indication.
Another indication, there are so many things that you can try to speculate on, but when you have a week, when we see a slowdown in the markets, we usually see a pickup in demurrage on the tank container side. In other words, the tank container, which is full, comes to the customer's factory, and they are not ready to consume the product yet, so they sit in their factory and pay us demurrage. Usually when there's a movement and change in the market conditions, we're seeing high demurrage rates. We're actually seeing lower demurrage, so the tanks are turning around quicker. Maybe a good sign. Yep.
Just trying on the tank container side, we've been talking about increased competition for several years actually. This level to see now with EBIT down $10,000-$11,000, is that a prospect you think or is it going to continue and how far down can we see this go?
We have an organization in place that have been focusing on chasing the highest margin business and focusing on the high margin business. There's more competition. It's too early to say so, maybe we should lower our margin and do more utilization, more shipments. We need to maybe be a little more aggressive on our pricing, be aggressive on capturing more business, which we know is out there, and which we have an organization in place to do. I would say, I don't expect the earnings from tank containers to fall further or a lot further. I think that we need to adjust our sales strategy a little bit and maybe get lower margin per shipment, but get the utilization up and get more turns.
You have $900 million of remaining CapEx and potentially on top of that you have LNG investments, which either from later this year. As you say, you have the liquidity to repay your bonds, but it's going to be taken from available credit lines. Are you comfortable with the leverage you're having right now and the leverage you're getting?
I'm comfortable with the leverage, but I'm not comfortable with the Of course, we cannot continue to have the same kind of capital expenditure until we start getting a return from the investments that we have made. We will make certain that the billion dollars that we have invested in terminals will start, that I feel comfortable that earnings, that revenue, that EBIT are coming from those investments will come. We will always continue to monitor the tanker market. I think that 2016 will be a reasonable year, depending on how we are ending up our contract negotiation, I think that 2017 also it's going to be more competition. Maybe the spot market will be more under pressure, but we are locking in quite a bit big contracts.
We have a strong balance sheet, we need to watch our cash flow, our net cash flow to make certain that we get the return on the investments that we have made before we proceed further with.
To make them further, you mentioned that you could or expect to see more opportunities to grow further in the Tanker side. Can you say anything about the internal requirements you have on certain investments versus, for instance, upping the dividend? You have a very conservative payout ratio.
I consider by saying that I see some strategic opportunities that will only come once in a lifetime. The day those opportunities come along in Tankers, we will pursue it. There's ways of doing it. Not necessary all cash, there could be a consolidation in other ways. If strategic opportunities come our way, we will go after it. The target is a 15% return. That's been our target.
I think what you say about capital returns is extremely important because that's probably why I hear you all show that the Tanker, the company is not especially high. In the last four years, your capital returns been around $3 billion a year, and the profit around 15, 16 average. That's quite low. Although I admit it's been low cycle. I believe we see that on your CapEx screen on the slide that was $900 million that you mentioned there is. There are now 20 investments into Stolt-Nielsen Gas. I've spoken to a lot of people in the room here, and I think everyone has struggled to see it on slide 24, the Stolt-Nielsen Gas slide. I think everyone are struggling to see how they're going to achieve your return goals by doing these CapEx for Stolt-Nielsen Gas.
I hope you and the board will consider to just skip it and wait for two years. As you mentioned, it's expensive to go in there. It's a long lead times and returns are very low. You show on the slide with a normally planned bus. A lot of people, of course, chasing these projects and for the last decade, if you exclude the first movers, the second, third, fourth key movers have achieved 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% returns. Very long way away from your 15 goals. I hope you skip the Stolt-Nielsen Gas business and look at your own share, which is down to half already.
I think it's important that you hear and that why I clearly state to you our ambitions within that segment. We would like to use the competence. We need to continue to grow our business, and that's our intention. To use the competence that we have within Stolt-Nielsen, within shipping, storing, and distribution, and pursue opportunities within LNG.
We are an exclusive player within shipping, with containers and terminals. We sit within those areas and wait these two years to go in further with the Stolt-Nielsen Gas business. People can buy the large shares or buy shares in Kristian.
Well, you heard what I said, and I've heard what you said.
It's maybe an alternative-
Sorry?
Maybe an alternative could be to separate out the LNG as part of your business, given that it's not necessarily directly linked to the chemical business.
Today, there's not very much to separate out. At the right time, if there's ways as I've always said, we are willing to look at separating out a lot of the businesses, not just to get the share price up, but to be able to generate a company or create a company that can make more money. We're willing to look at that. Just separating out for separating, just to get our share price up, we're not interested in doing. It is to be able to do within logistics that we have expertise in, to be able to apply that knowhow into other segments. The chemical tanker segment that we operate in is a low growth business. Just be realistic. It's at best, 2%, 3%. The terminal business, there are opportunities. Tank containers, there's opportunities.
Of course, we will allocate our investment capacity based on where we believe we will get the highest return. We would like we did in bitumen, try to pursue opportunities using the knowhow within our organization to develop new business where we believe we have something to contribute. We are usually very conservative in our approach, and we will not jeopardize the existing businesses, but we will pursue new opportunities within the organization. Any other questions here in Oslo before I open up for the phone call? Operator, any questions from the telephone?
Thank you. If any participant would like to ask a question, please press the star or asterisk key, followed by the digit 1 on your telephone. Please ensure that the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, ladies and gentlemen, please press star 1 to ask a question. We will pause just for a moment to allow everyone to signal.
Okay. I don't think there's any questions, thank you very much for attending. Thank you, operator.
Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.