Good morning, everyone. I'm Nicolas Tirogalas. I'm the CEO of Stainless Tankers, and I'm joined here with Irene Michael, who is the CFO of Stainless Tankers, to present to you all the third quarter 2026 results for Stainless Tankers ASA. Moving to the presentation. On slide three, you will see the highlights for the quarter, where the net pool earnings averaged $17,200 per day in this third quarter, which is better than last year, which was $16,800 per day in the third quarter of 2025. Of course, given the seasonality of the chemical market, the references to last year are more relevant on a comparison basis versus the last quarter, which was $21,000 per day and was a very strong quarter. In any case, we did better than last year.
More importantly, though, we're looking ahead for a fourth quarter where October has been fixed 100% at about $19,500 per day. November, at over 90%, is fixed at over $21,500 per day. We do have some indication on where December has started, and it is looking very strong as well. The outlook for the fourth quarter, as we had expected, it's looking rather promising. What that means in third-quarter results is that the NAV total return was about 5.6%. Net revenue was $9.3 million, and EBITDA was $4.2 million. That's compared to $10 million and $4.4 million in third quarter, but obviously, we had one less ship this quarter compared to last year, partially. The Gwen was sold within that quarter.
Compared to the second quarter of 2026, revenues were down because second quarter, they were $11.3 million and $6.6 million of EBITDA, but that, of course, is related to the seasonality that we just talked about. Since inception, the NAV total return has been 84%, which on a per-share basis, is $5.38, and depending on the exchange rate that you use, it's about NOK 49.8 per share in terms of the NAV as of the third quarter 2026. In terms of dividend distribution, we declared another third-quarter dividend of $0.135 per share, which is going to be payable on or about the 1st of December 2026. That, given today's or yesterday's stock price, it's about 12% annualized yield. Since the IPO and following this distribution, the company will have distributed about 68% of the initial capital raised.
In terms of supply growth and slippage, we expect about 3.5% annual growth of the fleet through 2029, and this is very much on a confirmed orders basis. Some people have seen other numbers, but we are looking at confirmed orders when we look at the fleet growth, and those are the scheduled deliveries between 2026 and 2028. But we have seen significant delay in deliveries of ships in the last couple of years, and those delays can be up to nine months, which, of course, is a favorable news to the outlook for our type of vessels.
Most importantly, though, in terms of outlook, following the failure of the peace initiatives, and we are reading things every day on this, but the tight tanker market that we see going from crude down to product and now very much into chemical in the near term, we think it is extremely supportive for the outlook of the chemical market. It is so supportive that whichever analysis we are running internally in terms of holding vessels or selling vessels points to holding vessels. However, as we have previously said and announced to all of you, and because of the original intention of this vehicle to be a limited-life vehicle of up to five years, we are working on these sales that we have previously discussed. Before you ask too many questions around them, when we do have news on these potential sales, we will let you know.
At the moment, we do not have any. As I discussed briefly, what is important on this next page four is the NAV performance since inception. We have a total NAV return of about 84%, which on an annualized basis is 19.5%. We consider this a really good outcome, and we have seen a really nice rebound in the NAV performance, as you can see on the chart on the left here, in the last two quarters, which we expect to continue to see in the next quarters and, of course, until the end of life of this vehicle.
In terms of market value and NAV percent, the bar charts on the right show the components of it, starting from the IPO net proceeds, the net operating profit, change in vessel value, and of course, the dividend payments, which gets you to the $5.38 per share on 30th of September 2026. The market outlook, and obviously what we have seen recently, and I touched upon briefly on that, sanctions are one of the drivers for the tanker markets. You can see on the left side that the sanction fleet stands at about 17% today of the fleet. Second driver, we would say definitely is the situation in the Middle East and the particular importance of the shuttle tanker trade, which is obviously touching on the larger crude size vessels.
But as we know in shipping, other vessels get pulled into the trades, and that you can see in the results of the overall tanker earnings, where the crude has It is on a vertical line in terms of their earnings and their rates. The product is very much starting to follow that vertical line, but always with less volatility than the crude markets. The chemicals, as we indicated to you in terms of what we see as Q4 numbers coming in, which are stronger than our budgets, is a very positive sign for the outlook of the next quarter. The medium-term support is also there, and the reason why the medium-term support is there is other factors which are non-geopolitics driven, which are mainly around inventories, for example.
We expect that these inventories that have been drawn down significantly will be replenished over the medium term in order to maintain security of supply, which is another very positive and favorable driver of demand. The high deliveries that people expect on next slide, page eight, is obviously something that we watch on a consistent basis. As I said earlier in this discussion, we talked about the fact that we are looking at confirmed orders. Occasionally, people look at orders that are rumored and include them in their analysis. We are looking at confirmed only, and it has proven to be the right strategy because, for example, over 2026, at the beginning of the year, there was an expectation that a significantly bigger number of ships would be getting delivered in 2026, and it turns out that half of those ended up being delivered.
At the moment, when we are looking at our numbers, this medium-term fleet growth is about 3.5%, as I mentioned. We think this is manageable because the CAGR that we expect on a tonne-mile demand growth basis is over 3.8%, and also because the fleet, some of this fleet is aged, and as we know, scrapping tends to happen after a certain age of ships in the chemical markets, which we think is going to be supportive if the market was to soften. With that, Irene, I will pass it on to you for the financial performance.
Thank you, Nicolas. Before discussing any further details, you will notice that this quarter around, we have included the third quarter of last year, as we believe this provides more comparable figures, and as also noted from Nicolas earlier. This quarter, net pool TCE came in at $17.2 thousand per day, the strong utilization of 98.4%, and this brings us to a net pool revenue of $9.3 million, compared to approximately $10 million of the third quarter of last year, and $11.3 million in the previous quarter. Vessel operating expenses at $4.5 million, slightly below last year and slightly above this compared to the previous year. This brings us to an EBITDA of $4.2 million compared to the last year of $4.4 million. Net profit for the period for this quarter was $370,000.
below last year's net profit, but adjusting last year's net profit, the gain on sale of the Gwen, which materialized last year during the third quarter. This gives us a net profit for this quarter around $900,000 higher compared to last year's quarter. Moving on to the balance sheet. Cash at the quarter end worth $3 million. Fleet market values slightly up at $102.3 million, which this supports an improved LTV of 33.1% and market-adjusted NAV of $72.6 million. As noted in the footnote, the vessels' market values used in our NAV calculations do not take into account any cost to sell.
Moving on, the second quarter 2026 dividend was paid in September, and for this quarter, a dividend of $0.135 per share at the same level of the previous quarter was declared, representing an annualized yield of 12.1% based on the share price of yesterday closing of NOK 42. This is payable on or about 1st December. Repeating Nicolas’ comments, including this dividend for this quarter, cumulative shareholder distributions since the IPO come to $3.38 per share, which is approximately NOK 34.7 per share, and equivalent to approximately 68% of the initial capital raised. This concludes our presentation, and we can move on to
Thank you, Irene. I think to sum it up, it was obviously a softer quarter, this quarter as expected, but as we saw a better quarter in terms of earnings of the pool compared to last year. Despite the seasonality, it was a relatively good quarter. The next quarter is looking really good, Q4 2026. As I said earlier, we will update. I am addressing one of the questions that has come in. I do not think I ever said that we are talking about fleet growth. To the contrary, what I did say was that we are working on the realization of the fleet as we have discussed, and we will give you an update when we have something. However, I also highlighted that our internal analysis is pointing to a better investment decision being to keeping the vessels and not selling the vessels in terms of returns expectations.
Because we have said that we will sell the ships and return the money within the five-year period since the IPO, we will do so. However, the right investment decision would be to keep these ships. So that is clarifying one of the questions that came in. The higher OPEX and lower utilization, I think this is just some smaller
This was some small off-hires across the fleet due to some operational unplanned issues. Nothing major. The higher OPEX were quarterly supplies across the fleet with some unplanned costs due to these off-hire events.
But we do expect that over the year, the budget will be met on the OPEX front.
Yeah, was moved out.
We are still on track for on-budget OPEX. There are prepayment fees for the company debt, and they, over time, though, reduce the longer you keep the duration of these vessels in your ownership. As Irene said, the NAVs that you see are obviously not taking into account the cost of the prepayment of the debt. They are not taking into account the cost of the brokers that sell these ships on our behalf, et cetera. So, there will be adjustments that, when you look at previous sales of ships, have been in the range of 3%, 4%, or whatever, 5% they can be occasionally. And we are trying to take very much, obviously, into account that the reduced prepayment costs are also taken into account in the timing of the sales. A question about the realization timeline to be extended past the 18 months. Simple answer, no.
People will note that we actually answer these questions live as they come in to our mix, which is good. I do not see any other question at the moment that is outstanding. I think we have addressed all the questions. If there are any, please pass them along. The outlook in the market is really strong. I mean, we are very happy to have the ships that we have. We are sad that we have to sell them, but we are going to sell them. But the outlook, we will do so only at the right price because the numbers are good, and people are going to make money when they buy these ships anyway, so. With that, we will speak to you in three months' time latest. Thank you very much.