Good morning and welcome to the third quarter 2025 results presentation for Stainless Tankers. Andrew Hampson and Irene Michael here, both in London at this time, to run you through the third quarter presentation. I'll take the first bit and go through the highlights, and I'll talk a little bit about the market, and Irene will fill in after me in a little bit more detail on the financial side. As with previous, I think if you look down the bottom of your screen, there is a window which says "Ask a Question." If you've got any questions during the course of the presentation, please list them there. We will try and get to those at the end of the presentation if we haven't actually covered them during the course of the presentation. Without further ado, let's just turn to the highlights page, and I'll take you through that.
We're pleased to report a third quarter NAV total return up at 1.3%, and that now we have 54% total return, including distributions, since inception. The NAV per share is at just under $5, just over $50 knot, which, if you recall, is back where we issued that a few years back. EBITDA for the quarter is up at 4.4. Despite the fact that Gwen has not been in the fleet for roughly half of the quarter, the revenues were slightly higher at $10 million versus 9.6 last quarter, not due to higher rates, due to higher utilization because of less planned and unplanned off-hire days. The pool results have not been as strong as we had hoped, and we're averaging 16.8 in the third quarter versus about $1,000 a day higher during Q2. And November and October and November have also been trending slightly softer, at just under $16,000 a day.
We're still optimistic about the future, and we expect a slight improvement in the rates during the latter part of Q4 and as we move forward into 2026. I think we have a fairly balanced market. We're projecting annual fleet growth over the next few years of around about 4%. It's going to be slightly higher in 2026 if the scheduled deliveries do actually deliver, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And slightly lower in the latter part of the coming few years. I think overall, on average, over 2026, 2027, and into 2028, we are roughly balanced in terms of fleet growth and demand. Turning to the dividends, which are the important thing that we really wanted to discuss today.
You will recall in September that we paid an ordinary dividend at $0.275, and we also topped that up following the sale of Gwen with a special dividend at $0.335, both of which were paid during September. 54% of the initial capital raised has now been returned to investors since inception. That 54% is, of course, the same figure as the total NAV return since inception because the NAV share price is the same as the issue share price. That is coincidental that those two figures are turning out the same for that reason. Clearly, we now have six vessels left in the fleet, whereas previously we had nine vessels within the fleet, and we are also now handling an average pool earnings in the high teens figures versus $22,000 a day that we were experiencing at the peak just over a year ago.
Clearly, that means that the current dividend level at $0.275 a share going forward is non-sustainable at that level. We've got two-thirds of the ships remaining, and we're also having the lower freight rates. The company, however, does not intend to change its dividend payout policy, and we will continue full cash flow payouts, clearly with an eye on the CapEx and the forecast earnings coming up. What we intend to do going forward is to fix a minimum level of dividend, which we're currently pegging at $0.135 per share per quarter. We will look during the course of next year when we have greater visibility on the pool earnings and also on the progress with the last two dockings that we've got coming up over the next few months.
We will look at topping up that dividend periodically during the course of next year. $0.135 a share being declared for Q3. That will be our target level going forward, and we will top that up during the course of next year, freight rates and pool earnings permitting. From an outlook point of view, as I say, we remain optimistic about the supply-demand balance. Clearly, the geopolitical environment, which has created so much uncertainty this year, is not something that we have a lot of control over, but I think things are quietening down slightly in that area, and hopefully, therefore, we have some positive input from that going forward. Just turning to the next slide, I think we've been through this before. This is just a development of the NAV in terms of share price.
Sorry, in terms of NAV per share and book value per share. You'll note from the chart on the left, the dark blue bar is the NAV per share, now back at $4.99 per share. The light blue bar, the book value per share, is currently at $4.18. And bearing in mind that this is following the disposal of three of the nine ships that were previously in the fleet. The GAAP chart on the right just shows us the development since inception of the NAV per share. The net proceeds being slightly under $5 a share at $4.73. That having been topped up with the operating profit and the overall increase in vessel values over the period. After allowing for $2.70 in dividend total payout, brings us down to the $4.99 per share figure, which we are reporting today. Just turning to the market.
The chart on the left is showing the spot index in the blue bars, as we can see, has been falling over the last year and a bit from its peak at just above $24,000 a day. The dark blue line is the Clarksons' reported one-year TC rate, which they're currently reporting around about $17,000-$18,000 a day. I would just note on that that there are very few one-year fixtures in this J19 class, and therefore that figure maybe needs to be taken with a little bit of skepticism. The red line and the dotted line for the forecast going forwards is the historical WOMAR J19 pool results, which, as you can see in the past, in the rising markets, has been considerably better than the reported TC rate, as one would expect. We have fallen slightly below that reported line over the recent quarters.
Expectations from the pool are that there is an average earnings of around about $18,000 a day during the course of 2026, and that is denoted by the dotted line going forward, gradually increasing. As I said before, pool results TCE for the quarter is at $16,800. We are seeing a little bit of pressure on that during the October figures. In the near term, I think we've had demand growth has been challenged a lot, mainly by uncertainty coming about through the tariffs. Consequently, we've had to lower our rate forecasts. As I've reported, the U.S. sort of China trade tariffs has been going a bit tit and tat, backwards and forwards, but it's clearly had an impact on the chemical trade demand so far this year, particularly generally and overall confidence. I think it has led to a tightening market, and clearly the trade route reconfiguration, particularly issues around Suez.
Not transiting through Suez has caused quite a lot of trade route reconfiguration, which I think has been marginally positive d uring 2025. We think that these issues will stabilize during 2026. Sanctions will just come onto, but the sanctions remain a big issue, more in the crude and product markets, but that flows through, as we know, to the chemicals at the end of the day. Overall chemical tanker demand tends to trend very closely to overall GDP growth over the longer term. The chart in the top left is looking at the ton-mile demand. Overall compound annual growth rate of approximately 4%, but there are clearly periods where things stall slightly in that. In particular, the more recent geopolitical tariff issues that we have had during 2025, and also a bit of a stall during COVID, where we see lower periods of demand growth.
We're confident that we've got about a 3% demand growth going forward, and that is in line with IMF forecast for GDP growth. We've added a slide in on the right, just actually looking at the speed overall of the chemical tanker fleet. This is something we look at quite closely across all sectors, but interesting to note over the last decade that we've had an ongoing decline in average fleet speed, and that this appears to be continuing. Whilst one could always say that that's a sort of escape safety valve, if you like, that things could speed up if things get better. I think that despite what's happening at IMO at the moment, I think there is ongoing environmental pressure to keep emissions low, and the easiest way to keep emissions low is to reduce speed.
We do not see that changing in direction anytime soon. I mentioned the geopolitics before and the sanctions, and we have just tried to take a few high-level figures here. On the left is just looking at various selected cargoes and looking at the tariff impact on those, to just look at the percentage in tons of global trade which has been tariffed or freshly tariffed, new tariffs in 2025. The biggest impact, I think, as we are all aware, has been very much in the car carrier trade and also in the gas and container trades. Chemicals are there, with about 8% of chemical ton transportation now freshly tariffed during 2025. A lot of this just creates uncertainty and creates artificial changes in the demand scene. Also, clearly, from a trade route configuration, that changes and has increased ton miles during the course of the year.
On the sanctions side, the chart on the right is showing progressively the percentage of tankers which were sanctioned from five years ago, the gray bar, the light blue bar being a year ago, and the dark blue bar being where we are today. I think the message is quite clear that there is an increasing number of vessels in the world fleet which are now falling under various sanctions, majority of this being Russia-based in terms of the newer vessels or the vessels more recently sanctioned. Clearly, as and when sanctions are more relaxed, I think there is a big issue as to what happens to these vessels. A lot of them are not as well maintained as the core trading international fleet, and there is a big question mark.
As and when these vessels are, if you like, released back into the market, if they will actually be able to be operated back in the internationally traded fleet. Our expectation is that they won't be, and that therefore there is potential for around about 4% of the tanker fleet to be permanently excluded from the international trade that we operate in. Although we're looking here at crude and product, we know that there is a cascading effect into the chemicals as well, which we believe to be positive news for the overall supply side of the market. I think we will, sorry, one more. Fleet growth, supply side. I nearly forgot to talk about the supply side. We're looking here only at the 10,000-25,000 stainless steel chemical tanker segment. We had 15 deliveries in the year to date.
The order book is currently 15% of the global fleet. It's slightly down. There haven't been any further orders. The vessels are slowly delivering. There does appear to be quite a bulge of deliveries in 2026. We are very cautious that that figure will actually play out as reported. When we look at the Chinese yards building a lot of these ships now, there's only really one out of the five main yards who are building them who have a consistent track record of delivery of stainless tankers. The other four are all new at it, and we think it most likely that that delivery bulge in 2026 will, in fact, not happen, and it will cross over with a lot of slippage into 2027. In addition to that, some of 2027 will swap over into 2028.
We're looking more at the average deliveries coming up over the next two to three years rather than the annual numbers. We've had slightly less vessels scrapped than we might have expected, but we've had two vessels out so far in the year, and we reckon there's maybe potential for four more. Orders now are down dramatically. There's only one vessel ordered in this size range during Q3. We've seen that across all shipping segments, with new orders falling quite dramatically, a lot of it on the back of the USTR threats for port fees on Chinese vessels. That has had a big impact, I think, not just in the chemical tanker sector, but across the other fleets as well. Our forecast fleet growth is around 4% over the foreseeable future. We believe that there are opportunities. On the upside in asset values from the various geopolitical events happening. I think I will pass over to Irene to run us through the financials. Irene, over to you.
Thank you. Turning to the financial performance for the third quarter and starting with some information around the fleet. All vessels, including the Gwen until the time of its sale, operated in the WOMAR pool throughout the quarter with available ship days, total available ship days following the sale, 609, and revenue ship days, 594, lower than the available by 15 days. Reflecting off-hire days. Utilization at 97.5%. Higher than and improved than the previous quarter, reflecting also the reduced off-hire days following the second quarter dry docking and repairs for the City Island and La Braggi. Net revenue. Slightly below $10 million and higher than the previous quarter. As already mentioned, with an average net pool TC rate of $16,800 per day compared to approximately $17,800 per day. Vessel operating expenses slightly higher than the previous quarter m ainly due to costs associated with the sale of the Gwen and SG&A costs below.
The previous quarter total expenses, resulting in an EBITDA $4.4 million, higher than the $3.9 million in the second quarter, mainly driven by the higher utilization and the impact on the lower SG&A cost. Moving on. The sale of Gwen was completed on the 26th of August and realizing a book gain of $1.5 million and a net profit of $1 million, compared to $2.8 million in the second quarter, primarily due to the book gain realized on the sale of the Gwen of $3 million and a higher depreciation for this quarter. Following an adjustment to the amortization schedule for dry docking for the 30 term median surveys. This is a catch-up because of the adjustments on the amortization schedule and dates and will smooth out in the following quarter.
Moving on to some selective balance sheet items, we will note that cash at the end of the quarter was $7.6 million. Following the sale of the Gwen, total fleet market value was decreased from $116 million- $99.3 million. Resulting in a third quarter NAV at $67.4 million or $4.99 per share. LTV reduced also from 41.7% in the second quarter to 40.3% in this quarter. Other highlights to note that the warrant holder exercised tranche one in September, and the company resolved that this will be cash settled, and they were settled during the same period. Also, the company paid a Q dividend of $0.275 per share. Following the sale of Gwen, the company paid a special dividend of $0.335 per share, both paid in September.
Finally the company declared a Q3 dividend of $0.135 per share, which represents an annualized yield of 12.5% on a current share price of $44.2. To note that this was the yesterday's share price, and the dividend is payable on or about the 2nd of December. Taking into account this dividend. This reflects the total return of $0.0283 per share, which is equivalent to over 57% of the IPO profits. We can now conclude on our presentation and move on to any questions. Thank you.
Irene, thanks very much. Thanks very much for that. We haven't got any questions on the screen at the moment, so I can only assume, therefore, that we've covered everything that was possible in the presentation. Unless there are any questions, happy to take them now if anybody wants to type any. Equally happy if you want to message Stainless or Irene and myself personally if there's any further clarification that any of you need. In the absence of any questions, we'll call it a day. We'll look forward to talking to you in the early part of 2026. Hopefully, we have more stable markets and good news to impart to you at that time. Thanks very much for your time and your attention. We will talk soon. Thank you.
Thank you.