To the key highlights, we've introduced a new measure of looking at the net asset value this quarter. I'm very pleased to announce that the NAV of the company is currently estimated at $7.59 per share, which is just over 83.5 NOK per share at last night's close. And that is after cumulative dividends being paid of $0.76 per share, giving us a total return since inception, including the dividends, of 71%. The EBITDA for the quarter, for Q2, was at $9.5 million, on net income of $4.5 million, revenues up at $17 million. Very strong pool results during the quarter, with a time charter equivalent, a TCE, at $23,800 per day.
During the quarter, we saw a continued strengthening from Q1 at the beginning of the quarter through May, and we then saw a slight tailing off through June, which we have continued to see through July into fairly traditional lower summer months earnings, but still remaining well ahead of our budget. Looking at the fleet, we see and anticipate fleet growth of approximately 2.5% per annum over the next couple of years, and we continue to project demand growth slightly in excess of that fleet growth. The company has declared a dividend, as you will have seen, at $0.275 per share. That's a total dividend payment of $3.71 million. It represents an annualized yield on the invested equity of just over 22%.
That dividend will be paid as a return of capital on or about the fifteenth of August. We'll briefly look at the outlook as well, but we remain very positive on freight rates and on values, and we fully expect to be able to remain a stable dividend as we go forward moving into the coming quarters. As I say, we've got a new slide here, introduced for the first time, so I'll just take a little bit of time explaining it to you for those of whom it may be new to. On the left, we're looking at the book value per share and the NAV per share in the light blue bars and the darker blue bars.
Of course, you'll remember that the accounts for the company, the vessels are recorded at historic book value and depreciated over an assumed useful life, and are not marked to market. So in effect, the light blue lines are the development of the book value per share, and the darker blue lines are what the value per share is if we were to revalue the fleet at current market levels. The line shows on the right-hand scale the total return, the total return index, over the various quarters. As you can see, to start off with and during 2023, there wasn't a lot of value growth in the fleet over and above the depreciated book value.
During the course of 2024, over the last two quarters, that has accelerated dramatically, as we have stayed in this, higher freight rate market environment. On the right-hand side, we've just got a gap chart showing the movement, on a dollar per share basis, from the IPO net proceeds to the $7.59 per share that I mentioned, in my introduction, and just showing the elements of what that breaks down into. Operating profit contributed $1.90, per share since inception, and the change in the values that I've just described contributed $1.72 per share. When we subtract the dividend from that, we arrive at the market-based NAV of $7.59 per share, as we've mentioned, as we've mentioned in the, in the summary.
Looking at the market, we have on the chart on the left, we have the earnings on a $ per day basis, with the red line representing the Womar Pool distributions, and the blue line, being Clarksons' reported 1-year time charter equivalent. Now, of course, the pool is a mixture of earnings, predominantly spot, although there's some COA, as we've mentioned, on the right-hand side. And so we would expect, as is seen, for the pool to be more volatile than the 1-year TC, but should track relatively closely, as is the case, as can be seen. Time charter rates have indeed flattened out over the last quarter, and we see that fall, over the last quarter in the pool results.
Nonetheless, pool results on average over the quarter, about $2,800 a day ahead of budget, coming in at $23,800. And as I said previously, weakening due to seasonality, dropping off from May through June, and we've seen that continue into July. We've noted here the August coverage at $22,300 per day. Actually, looking at that literally just before I came into the presentation, August is now 87% covered at $22,600 per day, and we also have about 33% coverage currently in September, actually at higher rates, but we may expect that to come down. The pool coverage remains at roughly the same levels as was reported in May, which was 30% coverage of the overall book by COAs, contracts of affreightment .
These are, in effect, fixed rate movements, and that 33% is currently covered at about $23,000 a day. So that gives us a very strong underlying fixed component, if you like, of the overall variable pool results. Pool utilization, as measured by number of ship days available to the pool out of the total ship days in the pool, that increased during the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023, and so again, then there's slightly more ships working overall within the pool again, which boosts the earnings. Just looking at the time charter market, Clarksons report that current one-year time charter rates for J19 tonnage, similar to ours in the pool, is currently at $22,500 per day.
This is slightly hypothetical number, as there are a very few numbers of actual fixtures in this market, and we suspect it may be slightly on the high side. But clearly, this is an area where we will keep a very close eye on the development and the liquidity, indeed, within the time charter market, because if rates of this level are achievable in any, in any volume, then this may be something that we might look at, if we wish to take some risk, off the table of the variable spot rates. So we're keeping a close eye on the time charter rates. Disruptions, physical disruptions at least, we've reported previously and continue to report on the chemical tanker transits through Panama and Suez.
I'll handle Panama first, because if you like, that's maybe the easy one. The water levels in the lakes in the Panama Canal system has improved considerably due to rainfall in the region, higher than expected rainfall in the region, and transits now in Panama Canal are now returning, sorry, returning to near normal levels. It is still slightly more costly to go through because there are still a few restrictions, but let's assume for now that Panama is returning to normal. Suez, of course, is a completely different issue and is very much a geopolitical disruption rather than an environmental disruption.
Passages of chemical tankers globally, this is not, this is not stainless figures, this is a global figure, remains at very low levels, and indeed, just under about 50% of what would be considered normal traffic there. With regard to stainless tankers and Womar Pool vessels, we have not had transits through Suez since the beginning of the crisis. And indeed, there is very little traffic of Womar Pool vessels within the Eastern Mediterranean. And I think that's quite important, considering the current tensions within the region. Having said that, the Arabian Gulf does continue to be a relatively major hub for chemical tanker traffic.
About 17% of Womar liftings and discharges actually happen in the Arabian Gulf area. So it's important area to us. It's not a majority by any means at all. But I think the main message here, Suez traffic remaining a problem, vessels continuing to take longer routes around the Cape, little activity from Womar in the Eastern Med area, none in Suez, and 17%, as I say, in the Arabian Gulf area. The chart on the right just shows the freight rates as opposed, i.e., $ per ton, rates for the various routes, as an average, which is a true reflection of the spot markets, which, as you might have seen from the previous slide, is a very close match to the pool results, as one would expect.
The fleet, and we're looking here, the chart on the left, is looking at the net fleet development over the last decade and a bit. We're looking here at 10,000-25,000 deadweight stainless steel chemical tankers, so very much our peer group and the peer group, not just of stainless, but also of the Womar pool vessels. The overall order book, so this is a measure of the ships currently on order in the world's shipyards as a percentage of the total fleet, is now about 8% of the fleet, with 9 vessels added to that order book since March. This puts the order book now at about 50 vessels. With that figure was 43 last quarter, so clearly, we've had a couple of deliveries and 7 all shows...
9 new orders placed. Sorry, 2 deliveries and 7, so 7 net addition. I think the order book is very important to look at because it gives us strong visibility on how the supply side is likely to develop in the medium term. In this case, over the next 2.5 years. It's very unlikely that further vessels now will be added to the order book, specifically for deliveries in 2024 and 2025. There may be some possibility in 2026, but I'd be surprised if the 2026 number changes materially, as most shipyards are now full with other vessels through 2027. So this gives us a very clear indication of supply side growth, over the next 2.5 years.
Clearly, growth is also tempered by potential scrapping, or vessels going out of service. We have made an estimate here purely based on the aging of the current fleet, i.e., we assume that a percentage of all ships reaching 25 years of age are actually scrapped at that time. Clearly, if the market remains as healthy as it currently is, there is very little likelihood of many vessels being scrapped, because if you can earn the higher rates, even with an older ship, you may as well keep it in service, rather than actually scrapping it.
But what it does do, clearly, is that it builds up a store of potential scrapping candidates, that if the market were to turn at some stage over this next 2.5-year period, then there is a larger store of vessels which then will be removed out of the system. So if you like, you can look at it as a downside, as a potential downside cushion, against fleet growth in the future, if rates were to fall. In summary, therefore, we anticipate, fleet growth in the region of 2.5% per annum, over the next 2.5 years. Current demand growth is projected at slightly higher, on average, at 3%.
And therefore, we continue to project a healthy freight market and vessel value market as we go forward over the next two and a half years. And I think with that, I'm going to pass over to Irene, who will give you a summary of the financial performance. There's a lot of numbers on this page, so we'll take it slowly. But please feel free to post any questions, which we can get to then when we've finished with the financial performance. So, Irene, over to you.
Thank you, Andy. As Andy mentioned, we will now present our financial performance for the quarter. Starting from the revenue, during the second quarter, our revenue, the revenue earned was $17 million, reflecting a 12% increase, which is approximately $1.8 million compared to the first quarter. This increase was driven by higher pool earnings of $23,800 per day as the market strength. The vessel under time charter earned a net rate of $15,250 per day until joining the pool.
Our revenue was mainly impacted by a total of 53.7 off- hire days, relating to the third special survey of the Orchid Madeira and the Orchid Sylt, driving our utilization to 91%, lower by 6% compared to the previous quarter. The Orchid Madeira completed her third special survey on April 17, at a cost of $1.3 million, and the Orchid Sylt completed her survey on May 14 at a cost of $1.23 million. The cost for both dockings were in line with our planned budget. To note that, there will be no further dockings for the rest of the year, thus no planned off- hire periods are scheduled for the remaining months of the year.
Moving on to the fleet's employment, 8 vessels were trading in the Womar Pool, with the one remaining time charter vessel joining the pool on May 6th. Our net income for the quarter is $4.5 million, an increase of $1.5 million compared to the first quarter, representing a 52% increase. Our fleet's value stands at approximately $174 million as at the end of June, which is approximately $35 million higher than our fleet book value.
Additionally, we note an increase of approximately $11.5 million in our fleet's market value compared to the end of the first quarter, which results in a decrease, apologies, in our leverage ratio to 45.5%, compared to the 50.3% at the end of the first quarter. Our increased fleet values drives NAV to $102.5 million, equivalent to $7.59 per share, approximately, at NOK 83.55 per share.
Finally, we're stating on this earlier statement on the call, the company's board of directors resolved to distribute a total cash dividend of $3.71 million, or $0.275 per share, which represents an increase of $0.025 per share from the previous quarter. Having said that, I'll hand it back to Richard, so that we can conclude our presentation and address any questions you may have.
Thank you, Irene. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please send your question through the Ask a Question button on the right bottom corner of the player. So far, we haven't received any questions, so Irene and Andy, you're happy, we just give it a few minutes?
Yeah, we are absolutely happy to wait, Richard. I mean, I would normally take it that if there are no questions, we've done such an amazing presentation that we've covered everybody's thoughts. But you know, I think just while we're waiting to see if there are any... I mean, clearly we have good results. It's a very good quarter, but I think it won't escape anybody's notice that there is a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment. You know, what with the activities on the stock market over Friday and Monday, interest rate issues in the U.S. and Japan, potentially you know, further geopolitical issues, potential change of government in the U.S. and trade wars and sanctions.
So I think there are a lot of areas, potentially, for us to be cautious, and I think I'd just say to that, that our forecasts for next year are for freight rates to be down on where we are today, despite our view on the continued tight supply within the market. And therefore, we're being very cautious with the forecasting and the planned dividends. Yeah.
We've received one question, Andy.
Great.
Two-part: How is the S&P market for J19s at the moment? And second part, has there been any interest in your fleet?
Yeah. I mean, the S&P market in J19s has been reasonably buoyant over the last six months. I haven't got the number of transactions to hand, but there have been a lot of inquiries coming out. So, you know, this is a fluid market, I think is the answer to that bit of the question. You know, yes, there have been inquiries on vessels within the fleet, and in particular, some interest in some of the older vessels.
Okay, our next question: With the strong 1-year TC rates seen currently, how is your appetite for taking some chips off the table over the next 12 months?
I was wondering if that was actually chips off the table or ships off the table, but we'll take it as both. As I mentioned earlier, Clarksons are reporting one-year TC figures as being $22,500 a day. We are not aware, nor are Womar, of anybody actually fixing at that level. And what tends to happen when Clarksons report this type of data is that they're taking the last vessels that actually fixed, which may not have been J19s. They may have been 25s, or they may have been some other vessels, and they then extrapolate in between to say that's the market. I think the TC market, at least of what we have seen fixed-...
in J19s, modern J19 tonnage, is maybe at $20,000-$21,000 a day at the moment. And I think that we might expect to be at the lower end of that type of scale if we were to try and fix at the moment. I think it needs to be a little bit higher before we would look to take some risk off the table, as I mentioned earlier. If that Clarksons rate were achievable at $22.5, we would definitely be, we would definitely be discussing looking at taking some of the market risk out of the equation at the moment.
Okay, our next question asks: At what point in time, or at what values would you consider selling assets?
Yeah, I mean, I think that really sort of goes back to the previous question. We don't necessarily look at absolute values. I'd be more inclined to look at the level of interest. And so, I'd go back to my answer to the previous question. I'd go back to my answer to the previous question. I think inevitably with the older ships, particularly the two ships that we added into the fleet most recently, they the values of those ships is maybe in the region of $16 million, maybe a bit more, each at the moment.
Again, I think it has a little bit more to go, but it's something we are definitely looking at very closely at the moment, and we'll continue to do so over the remainder of this year. So, I think it's too early just to say just now if there are, if there are actual sales coming up, but it's something we're actively looking at.
Okay, and our final question received up to now is: Any interest in doing TCs, and what do you see as current one-year or two-year TC rates?
Well, I think I've really already answered that, Richard, in the second question, that you know, I've already mentioned the one year. We haven't seen much liquidity in two-year charters at levels we'd be interested in at the moment. But again, an area where we are keeping a very close eye at the moment because we are on that cusp of changing, you know, some of these strategies, if we see a bit more liquidity in that time charter market. So, maybe by next quarter, we may be reporting to you some changes in the rate fixings, and potentially also in the fleet disposals. But I think it's slightly too early at the moment.
Let's let this summer lull finish, hopefully get back into a stronger market again, in the back half of Q3 and into Q4, and then I think we can take appropriate actions along the lines that the questioners are, quite rightly, putting forward, issues.
Okay, we haven't received any further questions.
Oh, yes, we have.
Yeah, there's one more just come in. If you were to sell the two older ships, how would the cash be deployed?
Well, that's a very, that's a very good question. So, something, of course, that we will, we need to look at when we know what numbers are actually involved. Clearly, the older two ships were very highly leveraged when they actually came into the fleet. So, the first priority for cash disposal will be to pay down the high levels of debt, which are actually on those two ships, and the debt is tranched, per ship. So those older two ships have a much higher proportion of the debt than the ships that were in the existing fleet. So clearly, that, you know, is a mandatory first priority.
As stated in the prospectus, our intention is to return capital, and so that would be our second priority for cash so released.
Okay, there's no additional questions. Would you like to wait another minute, or would you like me to close the call, Andy?
Well, I think if there's no more questions, there's no more questions. I think, people know how to contact us. We're not hiding behind anything here. So, if anybody does have a further question or is there something you didn't want asked in public, or you want to just have a private chat with Irene or myself, anybody, any investors, please, please feel free to contact us. We're very happy... We're very happy to chat.
Okay. Thank you for joining today's call, everyone. You may now disconnect.
Thank you.