Welcome, everyone. It's good to— good morning, and a special welcome to everyone here in the audience. Also a warm welcome to everyone watching us online from all over the world. I'm here with Anders Redigh Karlsen, who is our Head of Investors. So, Anders, I will start with you. What can we expect today?
I guess another good quarter is basically what we're delivering. It's a bit boring, but, you know n ot boring.
It's good. It's good. We will do the usual drill. We'll very soon start with our CEO, Lasse Kristoffersen. He will do the business update. He will be followed by our CFO, Bjørnar Bukholm, who will do the financial update. Then Lasse will conclude that part. After that, Anders, you will run the Q&A session.
Yeah. If you have any questions in the audience, we will open up for that. Also, on the webcast, please post your questions in the Q&A session of that, and we'll address those questions as they come. Do remember it takes a little bit of time before, you know, they arrive. Put them in ahead of time rather than later.
Good. Then we're ready.
We're ready.
And the Lasse, the stage is yours.
Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for tuning in and listening to us. I will jump straight to the headlines and then take you through some more details afterwards. All in all, as said this morning, we are delivering another strong quarter and adjusted EBITDA of $471 million. That is adjusted for a sale of a vessel. We still see that there is strong demand for our services, and in particular, the growth out of Asia continues. I will come back to that, to some detail. We are also growing our network in logistics. We are partnering with more customers in logistics, and we are proud to announce that we opened three new facilities in Australia in the quarter. I will come back to that too. We sold the vessel with a gain of $16 million.
Of course, as most have heard, in the quarter, there were announced port fees in the U.S. They were increased for what we thought was $14- $46 per net ton. That has an impact on our operation, on our customers, and possibly on our financials. I will come back to that. If you look at the underlying business, that is still strong. We are expecting another strong quarter in Q4 in line with Q3 before we take into account any effect of the U.S. port fees. All in all, Wallenius Wilhelmsen is performing well. We are delivering well on most parameters, and we also expect to do so in 2025 and into 2026. Let me then give you some updates on the market. I will talk you through some highlights from the business and the quarter, and also touch upon sustainability as we always do in the quarterly presentation.
Three themes for the market review this time. I will share with you a little bit more about the growth and where does it come from and what can we expect going forward, possibly. I will touch on both the tariffs and the U.S. port fees and also the utilization and the balance in the market. Let me start with the overall demand. Deep sea volumes are increasing and are expected to increase in pure volume this year, with 3%. These are in most trades, but there is no doubt that the general trend is that the growth comes out of Asia. That continues, while the volumes going back to Asia, principally out of Europe and the U.S., are reducing.
This is what we have alluded to earlier, that we are seeing an increasing imbalance in our business, meaning that we are fully loaded vessels and we have full utilization, and we allocate all our capacity that we can out of Asia. We are not able to fill up the vessels going back as much as we have done in the past. The story out of Asia, the growth story out of Asia is China. As you can see, China has seen a massive growth in exports of cars over the last few years. Since 2021, they've had a CAGR, an annual growth of 33% every year, and they're approaching close to 6 million cars, maybe 5.7 million cars exported this year.
If you look on the forecast for 2026 and 2027, and we use S&P as our main source for that, they believe that the export will fall into 2026 and into 2027. We are challenging that assumption, and I'll share with you a little bit why. On the right side of this slide, you can see that there are quite some achievements made by Chinese car manufacturers. I think we need to start rethinking why the Chinese car manufacturers succeed. Historically, China was a cost arbitrage. Western OEMs moved production to China to reduce cost. Then there were Chinese OEMs coming online with a cost advantage. Now, the reason why Chinese are winning market shares is because they innovate themselves. If you look on the left side of this graph, this is a third-party assessment of technology leaders in the industry.
As you can see, we're taking out the names for sensitivity. As you can see, out of the top five, four are Chinese. That means leading in technology, and that's EV technology and drivetrain technology, but not least, digital computing and the cloud technology. The Chinese producers have gone from being cost leaders to now being technology leaders. There are also many of them fully integrated end to end and have full control of their supply chain, and they have their own developed computing capabilities. We believe that the Chinese competitive advantage in the car market is still there. We expect that to grow. Our base case is not that China will, exports out of China will reduce over the coming years. Last comment on China, we cannot think of China as one thing. In China, you have, I mean, you could very simply talk about China in two ways.
One, you have established OEMs already at scale, not being technology leaders. They are at the bottom of this slide. Then you have new players, not at scale yet, but are technology leaders. They are typically at the high end of this. Some of these players need to get to scale to survive, but they are growing fast. That's why we are focusing in a lot on being a partner to these Chinese companies. This is where Wallenius Wilhelmsen comes at its best. If you're a new started OEM, you are starting your exports, you need presence abroad, you need terminals, you need shipping, you need processing, you need distribution, and we're a one-stop shop. We're quite unique in offering that to the Chinese market. The other key story, of course, in the quarter are the tariffs. One are the tariffs on the cars.
And just to put this into perspective, the tariffs on cars have an effect of maybe $4,000-$6,000 per car imported into the U.S. While the port fees have a cost of maybe $200-$300 per car. These are of very different nature. The problem is that the last comes on top of the first. Of course, this comes also on top of OEMs that are struggling with their performance, with their market shares, and also with their financial performance. Generally speaking, although it's not fully implemented in cornerstone, it seems like we have come to a conclusion. U.K. is concluded. EU seems to be concluded as well. They need to approve it first, but that is expected to happen. Both Japan and now Korea have confirmed 15% tariffs. There is still uncertainty where we will end on Canada and Mexico.
What you will see later on is that export still is strong. On the other hand, on the USTR, that was announced on, I think it was October 10th, and then it was implemented on the 14th. Remember, the 13th was a day off in the U.S. Basically, the day before implementation, this was announced. We might have been the first company in the world paying a port fee. We did that on the 14th of October. There are some exceptions to this. U.S.-owned, U.S.-flagged vessels, we have some of them. Also, we can mitigate through different measures. One is that there is a maximum of five, I mean, you can only get five port fees a year on a vessel, meaning that if you are circulating vessels more than five times into the U.S., you can get an exemption for the last entries.
Last week, there was an announcement that the whole scheme will be postponed one year. We have not seen anything confirmed. We have not seen any details. I can assure you, we have made quite a few calls to figure out. This is not confirmed and concluded yet, but that can happen anytime soon. Until that, we are assuming that these port fees are here to stay. I'll share with you later on a little bit of the effects of that. Generally, in the U.S., there has been a strong sentiment on car sales. The import tariffs have not changed the appetite for new cars in the U.S. The recent growth is probably driven a lot by the end of EV incentives. Still, there are quite a good level of sales in the U.S. We also see now that the production in the U.S. is starting to pick up.
We're not on historic peaks. We're still below historic highs of the last few years. We are seeing that domestic production is growing somewhat. While on the import side, we see different markets performing differently. In general, you can say that the Mexican and Canadian volumes and the Asian volumes out of Korea and Japan are more or less flat. They have decided to keep on pushing for market share and delivering volumes to the U.S. and have not really taken any stance when it comes to the tariffs. The opposite is the case for the European OEMs. As you can see, throughout the year, they have been declining in volumes into the U.S., and this is a trend now that maybe recent months have started to stabilize. Still, they are significantly down from what we saw last year.
The losers so far in market share have been European OEMs in the U.S. market. Last item I want to touch on in the market is the future utilization and also the new building deliveries. As most will know, there is quite an extensive order book in the RoRo segment that is starting to deliver. This year is the, call it, the strongest year, the highest year in terms of deliveries. We also have another year next year where there will be more volume coming in. The update so far is that we are still seeing high utilization, and we have not yet seen a direct negative effect of the new vessels coming in. To the right, you can see Clarkson Research's assessment of fleet utilization. In 2025, they are still expecting 96% utilization. When you see the 100%, of course, that is a theoretical max.
The reality was that for the last few years, the demand has been higher than supply, and that has caused a lot of cars to go into containers. We see that is coming back now. In reality, we have had a utilization well above 100%. Even though we have a lot of vessels coming in, according to Clarkson Research, they expect utilization close to 90% over the next couple of years. Historically, that is a good utilization of the fleet. If you look on the market assessment, there is not going to be a massive reduction in fleet utilization, and through that, you can expect the market to hold up somewhat. There is no doubt that we are beyond the peak. If you look at the more spot numbers on freight coming out of Asia, they probably peaked a year ago, but they are still historically strong.
As you can imagine, there are quite a few things happening around us. We have here just shown you what it is like to be global infrastructure. Wallenius Wilhelmsen, we are global infrastructure. Whatever happens in the world hits us. The good news is, whatever happens in the world, we are able to manage. I will not take you through all these. As you can see, there have been massive disruptions in ports, in trades, in tariffs, now in portages. We are able to manage through, and as you can see, an amazingly strong and stable financial performance throughout these things. This is due to a couple of things. One, we have a fantastic book of business. I would claim, and that is my claim, that we have the strongest book of business with the best customers in the industry.
I think we have the best team being able to adapt to whatever happens. I can assure you, if something happens like USTR, Wallenius Wilhelmsen is at its best. Last, but not least, we have a global presence across the full supply chain. We are an integrated part of our customers' logistics, and they need us to deliver. That leads me into the performance for the quarter. Bjørnar, I will give you more of the numbers. I will give you more on the business side. Very briefly, you can see we have a relatively stable performance throughout the years. Strong performance in both shipping and logistics, and government. All of them are, well, both shipping and both logistics and government are slightly up, while shipping is marginally down. I will come back to some of these factors that have caused this.
We are continuing to add into our book of business with the contract negotiations ongoing and what we expect to renew this year. We expect 2026 to be another sold-out year. We have added around $300 million of contracts in the quarter. We now have a total book of business on shipping of $7.8 billion and a duration of 3.4 years. On logistics, it is around $3 billion. When I talk about our book of business, this is our book of business. This is what we are going to live off in 2026 and into 2027. Very little of what we do will be short-term spot market cargoes. Of course, we do that as well. On shipping, we saw a slight decline, quarter over quarter. That was due to somewhat lower volumes. There were a few reasons for that.
One is that our biggest customer in Korea, HMG, had a strike for a little period. They had somewhat lower volumes. Also, the fact that we have less volumes going east from Europe and North America, meaning that the total volumes are decreasing, although we are completely busy and have full vessels going west. On volumes, we also see that we have probably passed the bottom on the high and heavy. For those who do not know, high and heavy, that is excavators and harvesting machines addressing mining, construction, and agricultural industries. We see that agriculture is still weak, mining still strong demand, and we are now seeing signs of somewhat recovering in the construction sector. We are not expecting the high and heavy volumes to go up fast or steep, but we do think that the bottom is behind us.
What countered the lower volumes in the quarter was somewhat higher rates. Quarter on quarter, the rates are more or less stable, and you should expect there are not big things happening. If you look year over year, you can see that we have been able to reprice our book of business, adding close to $2 per net ton in terms of higher rates. We also see that we have more trades out of Asia, which pays better than the return cargo from Europe and North America. We have also done some transactions in the quarter, and I wanted to bring this in to show you the value of the book we have on vessels. We have sold vessels with good book value margins.
We also have a significant portfolio of up to 11 vessels on time charters where we have purchase options or purchase obligations, all of them largely in the money. There is quite a lot of value hidden in our time charter book. We showed some of that value in this quarter where we declared a purchase option for a 15-year-old vessel below $15 million. At the same time, we sold two vessels, 30 years-ish, for a total number of $40 million. Basically, we are buying half the age for less money, and we have plenty more of these opportunities going forward. Quickly, on the U.S. port fees, we are maybe the biggest player on the U.S. market. We are certainly one of the biggest, but we believe maybe the biggest player in the U.S. market, significantly bigger than other players out of the same region, let's say Norway.
We have shared now the numbers of what is our exposure, and our exposure this year is expected to be up around $100 million. These numbers are not accurate. As I said, this just came to the market. We do not know yet how many calls we will have and when they will hit the U.S. and so on. In the range of $100 million, that is our exposure. Next year, the total exposure, in other words, in theory, what we can be exposed to paying in fees is somewhere between $350 million-$400 million. You can imagine these are substantial numbers for us. The big but is, of course, we are working actively on reducing this bill. We know we will do that. We know that we will not be in $350 million-$400 million in actual cost next year, but we do not know how much we can mitigate.
On top of that, we are working together with our customers for them to recover these costs for us. Our target is to recover all of these costs, minimize the cost as much as we can, and then recover what's left with our customers. It's hard for us to say how much we will succeed and where we'll end. So far, we see strong understanding from our customers that this is something that we simply cannot carry and a cost that we have not brought to our customers. On the logistics side, we see somewhat increasing performance. I'll start at the bottom because that's the main reason. We have strong performance in our terminals. In general, we see good volumes and good activity, except for two things.
That's the auto side in the U.S., which has been a little bit softer, and also in the high and heavy, in particular in the U.S., where we see that the market currently is soft. Generally speaking, we see strong, strong volumes, high activity in our logistics sectors, and also increasing margins both on the auto side and on the terminal side. While on high and heavy, the margins are falling. That's basically because we have much more storage than we have actual processing, completing of equipment, where, and that's really where we make our money and that's where we should make our money. I told you that we are growing our business. We have previously shared that next year we will start up in Gothenburg with the terminal. We have shared that we are likely investing together with Bertel O. Steen in a new facility in Drammen.
This quarter, we opened three new facilities in Australia. We are, generally speaking, one of the leaders, maybe the leader in the Australian market, both on shipping and logistics. We have grown tremendously over the last few years, and that will continue. In the quarter, we made a major breakthrough with a very fast-growing Asian car producer. You can imagine where they come from, but I can't tell you. We are now doing their shipping. We are doing their processing, meaning finalization of cars in Australia, distributing to dealers. We're basically their supply chain out of their called manufacturing country into the Australian market. This will add somewhere in $25 million-$30 million worth of revenue, that contract alone, per year. We see further growth opportunities with new players coming in.
To us, this is a very good example on how we are uniquely positioned with growing OEMs that need help to establish an overseas presence and also to get to overseas markets with shipping. Quickly on government service, this is how our business volume and our commercial volumes comes in. The majority of what we do are US flag required business, meaning government moving cargo, requiring a U.S. flag to move it. Then we have income from the stipends, the stipends, meaning that we have support from U.S. authorities to run on the U.S. flag. Then there's an element also on top, which is the commercial cargo, meaning the cargo that the government business gets from the rest of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen system, normal cargo.
As you can see, we had a good development in terms of volumes and revenues into this quarter, although somewhat down from the same quarter last year due to a technicality with the U.S. activating one of their reserve fleet, which we believe will come back to rest soon. In general, we would say that the government segment is performing well, and we see high demand of U.S. flag cargo. Before I pass to Bjørnar now, let me touch on sustainability. Every conversation in Wallenius Wilhelmsen starts with safety, and we have on the top of our strategy to be a leader in safety, security, and compliance. I think we are increasingly getting there. We are never happy with our safety scores.
We believe that we can avoid any accident happen, but we do see that what we do, how we work, and how we invest in culture on safety helps. We are improving our performance, and we are well below our targets for the year. On emissions, we are also doing well on the stuff we can control, meaning the emissions per, call it, nautical mile we're traveling. Although, due to the increasing imbalance, we have less cargo on our own voyage, meaning that we have higher emissions per cargo unit. That's the EOI on the right-hand side. The absolute emissions are going up, but that's simply because we have more activity. If you look at the emission per vessel and per nautical mile traveled, it's down 0.1%. We've been consistently reducing our carbon footprint and increasing our energy efficiency for quite some quarters and years in a row. With that, Bjørnar. The numbers.
Thank you, Lasse, and good morning, everyone. It's great to stand here today for the third quarter and really, really seeing the consistency of, you know, our performance despite the market turmoil and, you know, the numbers we are showing. I'm really, really impressed by the organization and everything that we actually able to deliver in such challenging times. With that, let's look at the numbers. Revenues came in at around $1.3 billion. It's down 1% quarter- on- quarter, largely driven by the shipping segment. We had lower fuel cost surcharges and also slightly lower volumes on seasonality. If you compare to the same quarter last year, also revenues down 1%. This is driven by the sale of the MIRRAT Terminal that we sold in April this year. EBITDA came in at $488 million, 3% up quarter-on-quarter.
That also included an exceptional item with a sale of one vessel when we had a gain of $16 million when that vessel was delivered to her new owners in the third quarter. When we adjust for that vessel sale, we had an adjusted EBITDA of $471 million. That's on par with the previous quarter. Slightly weaker contribution from the shipping segment and then somewhat better contribution from logistics and government services. When we compare to last year, there is a drop of around $30 million. $20 million is explained by underlying slightly weaker contribution for the three main segments, and then $10 million is explained by the MIRRAT Terminal that we had last year, but we didn't have it this quarter. Moving over to net profit, $280 million.
Adjusting for the sales gain, it's $263 million, which compares to $268 million in the previous quarter when we adjust for the $135 million sales gain from the sale of the MIRRAT Terminal. It's slightly down quarter-on-quarter. This is explained by taxes. We had higher tax expense in this quarter as we upstreamed cash or took dividend from our operations in UCOR in Southern Korea, and then we need to pay withholding tax. That was $6 million. That explains the difference. Very, very stable quarter-on-quarter, and also comparing to last year, $259 million. Very, very stable performance in a challenging market environment. Moving over to net debt, our net debt position increased by $150 million in the quarter.
This is explained by the dividend of $465 million in the quarter, partially offset by the very strong operating cash flow we had in the quarter and had for many quarters in a row. Moving over to the financial targets on the right-hand side, again, very pleased to see that we deliver a return on capital employed in the area of 19%-20%, nearly two times what we have over the cycle, a long-term target of 12%. Stable equity ratio at 40%, leverage ratio remains at around 1x. Over liquidity reserves at the end of the quarter was $1.7 billion. Note that this also includes undrawn credit facilities that we have with our core banks. Some details on the shipping side. Revenues came in just north of $1 billion. It's down 2% quarter- on- quarter, largely explained by lower fuel surcharges due to falling bunker prices.
As Lasse commented on, seasonally somewhat weaker volumes, factory shutdowns in UCOR, a strike with our key customer out of Korea. This was partially offset by net freight rates being up 1% compared to the previous quarter. Please note that this was due to trade and customer mix. The underlying prices with our customers are relatively stable. No repricing effect in the quarter. If you compare to the same quarter last year, it's basically flat. Very, very stable volume, slightly down. Rates are up. Moving over to adjusted EBITDA, $407 million. It's down 1% quarter-on-quarter. A couple of reasons for that. One is slightly lower volumes. The second effect is a retroactive charge of $12 million. Related to increased devedoring cost in the U.S. following substantial rate increases in certain unit ports, double-digit rate increases in percentage terms.
This is actually dating back for the last, previous, 11 months. It is a one-off hit in this month. The recurring cost going forward on a comparable basis is around $1 million extra per month, certainly not $12 million extra per month. We also had a negative effect as the fuel surcharges went down $21 million, but all fuel cost only went up $15 million. You know, over time, we are fully covered more or less through our bunker adjustment factors. From quarter- to- quarter, there may be swings as the bunker prices are moving up and down. If we compare to the same quarter last year, we see also that our EBITDA is slightly down. This is related to volumes partly offset by net freights. We had these, let's say, extraordinary items in the quarter on the cost side.
I know some of the analysts have picked up on the vessel cost actually was down in the quarter. This is also largely explained by a one-off event that we got a recovery of $3 million on damage repairs in the quarter. It is relatively underlying, it is relatively stable on the vessel opex. All in all, a good quarter on the shipping side. Moving over to logistics, revenues flat quarter-on-quarter. If you adjust for the sale of MIRRAT, we actually see that revenues are up in the quarter. If you compare with the same period last year, yes, it is down 7%. If you adjust for the sale of MIRRAT, it is largely stable also compared to last year. EBITDA came in at $34 million. It is up 6% quarter-on-quarter due to the strong performance for the terminals.
If you adjust for the sale of MIRRAT, we actually see that result is up 10%. If you look at the various segments in our business, we continue to see that the auto business is performing below our targets. That is driven by the U.S.., while we see that our operation in Canada, in Mexico, and the rest of the world is doing well. Similarly, on the high and heavy side, we have a big footprint in the US. The high and heavy market in the U.S. has been sluggish. You are seeing some signs of recovery, as Lasse mentioned, but for now, this is impacting our results in the U.S. For other parts of the world, we see that the performance is relatively, relatively good. Terminals, that was the shining star in this quarter.
Even without MIRRAT in the quarter, we actually had $3 million better performance from the terminals in this quarter. Part of that related to underlying strong performance across all of our terminals. Part of it related to specific events. We had some price increases in Southampton, with the effect dating also back in time. We had a government grant for our terminal in Pyeongtaek in South Korea. That helped to boost already strong results on the terminal side. Moving over to government services, where we continue to see that the activity level is good. The results are solid. Revenues were up 6% quarter- on- quarter. That was driven by seasonality. Q3 is typically a stronger quarter seasonally for the government U.S. cargo that we carry. When we compare to last year, our revenues were actually down $5 million, as Lasse pointed out.
This was due to a specific event, where some of the cargo that we typically carry was carried by a government-owned vessel. We expect that to be a one-off event. We typically do not see this type of reactivation of older vessels. This also impacted our EBITDA in the quarter when we compared to last year, as we were missing some revenues that we expected to carry, and we had the capacity to carry those volumes. Still, we see that EBITDA of $44 million is up 7% compared to the last quarter. That is due to the seasonally stronger volumes, despite losing out on some volumes that we hoped to carry. All in all, government services continues to perform very, very well. Moving over to the cash and liquidity position, it remains very, very solid.
At the end of the quarter, we had a cash balance of close to $1.1 billion. It is down 21% quarter- on- quarter due to the dividend payment of $465 million during the quarter. We have also done some voluntary repayment of our debt during the quarter. Operating cash flow of $482 million with a stellar cash conversion rate of more than 100%. Some of you may ask, how is that possible with more than 100%? That is a technicality in how we calculate it. We calculate that adjusted EBITDA versus the operating cash flow and not EBITDA versus the operating cash flow. That is purely a technicality, but it is very, very strong. Investing cash flow, - $23 million. We have CapEx on our newbuilding program, and we have certain other CapEx. We had the sale of one vessel that partially offset this CapEx.
On the financing side, it has been a very eventful quarter, - $740 million. Of course, a large part of that is explained by the dividend. We also had regular payments on our bank loans and our vessel leases and terminal leases. In addition to that, we did a $100 million or $98 million repayment on a credit facility. After that, we have no drawn credit facilities in the group. We bought back $26 million in the bond maturing in March 2026. The reason for doing this is that we want to improve our cash management and liquidity management and not having drawn debt when we have excess cash in the group. Although some of the cash is not placed where we want it due to the relatively complex structure we have with UCOR, government services, logistics, and the traditional WW ocean shipping side.
Finally, our balance sheet, as you know, we continue to have a very, very strong financial position, strong equity ratio of 40%. Moderate debt level continues, will continue. Leverage ratio remains around one. And then we have liquidity reserves of $1.7 billion. It is down $200 million, quarter-on-quarter. This is explained by cash down $300 million, mainly due to the dividend, but then the credit facility part is up by around $100 million as we repaid the only drawn facility we had during the quarter. With that, I will leave it over to you, Lasse, for the outlook.
Yeah, thank you, Bjørnar. I will make that short, and we have touched it already. Generally speaking, we see that demand is still strong, both demand for shipping and for logistics in general. There are some weaker signs of auto and high and heavy in the U.S. In general, we expect these activity levels to continue into Q4, and that we will have an underlying performance in Q4 in line with Q3. That is before any effects of the USTR. We have shown you a little bit of what that possibly could be, but we are optimistic that we will be able to mitigate and recover most, if not all, parts of those fees. We expect anytime soon any confirmation on whether they are still applying or not. Maybe already today, we will have news in that regard. We expect 2026 also to be another year with high utilization, thanks to our very strong book of business, long-term partnership with our customers. The uncertainty for 2026 is largely linked to the USTR port fees, the size, if they apply, and also our recovery. With that, we will stop the presentation and invite for questions.
Okay. Just again, if you have questions, please feel free to post them in the chat on the webcast. We will start with a few ones. Lasse, you deliver a very strong Q3. Focus is now on the challenges for Q4. What are your thoughts around that?
I think what we can control in our company are doing, are working well. We believe that Q4 will be largely in line with Q3 and also that we will have another strong year in 2026. Factors on USTR we cannot control. I would say this organization has been exceptional in the past on making sure that we have minimal impacts of these events. We showed that on the historic line. We also believe that the impacts of the USTR will be manageable.
Generally, our outlook for Q4 is in line with what we've seen so far this year, and we expect another strong performance into 2026.
Okay. One for you, Bjørnar. You know, a few quarters, or three quarters into being a CFO. You came from the company previously, but what is your key takeaways from the current period?
Yeah, I think that's a very good question. I'll probably say it's a combination of two factors, if that's allowed. I didn't expect, and you didn't tell me, Lasse, that the world was going to be this volatile with tariffs, U.S. port fees, some customers struggling, some customers doing really well, a lot of capacity coming into the market. I didn't really expect that. Thanks for that, Lasse.
What I neither didn't expect is that in these very, very special market conditions, the ability for Wallenius Wilhelmsen to deliver such consistently fantastic results with Q1, Q2, Q3 actually being exactly at the same level, plus minus $5 million. You are saying, Lasse, that Q4 should be, give or take, in the same area before any potential impact. You're telling me, Bjørnar. Yeah. We agree that Q4 will also be a good quarter before any potential impact of the USTR port. That surprises me. So much volatility in the world, but Wallenius Wilhelmsen keeps on delivering.
Okay, we can start off with some of the questions from the audience. Jermund Lien has some questions here. Firstly, he asked about our ability to mitigate and how can we mitigate the effects of the USTR port fees.
Yeah, so the mitigation, by mitigation, he means how much can we reduce the fee before we claim it from our customers. There are a couple of things we can do. As I mentioned earlier on, we can put specific vessels into strings, so we can have more than five entries during the year. Then you are exempt. We also are in a unique position with having a U.S.-flagged business that we're already using in our operations. Also, we can do other measures. We make sure that every time we go to the U.S., we can have full vessels. As you know, this is a cost per net ton of the vessel, meaning that whether it comes in empty or full, doesn't matter. If we can bring more cargo into the U.S. and not least more cargo out of the U.S., that would also affect it.
That's the three main areas. I think we have a list of 15 measures that we are looking at implementing and starting to implement to mitigate these costs.
He's also got a follow-up in terms of what, what can you share about our conversations with customers in terms of recovery?
We are fortunate. We have customers who consider us being their partners, and we consider them being our partners. When things like this come up, we sit down and we have a good conversation. Those conversations are constructive. They are positive. Our customers largely understand that this is a cost we cannot carry. We're currently in the discussions on where do we land it, how do we do it, how much is it really. I would say, generally speaking, we have constructive, positive dialogue with all our customers.
Finally, he's questioning our math skills, our math skills.
Math skills, okay.
Yeah, because that's part of our department. . If we add up $100 million in Q4 in port fee, you know, estimates, we say $350 million-$400 million for the year. How do we make that balance?
I was hoping for that question because it's an elegant one. And was it Jürgen?
Yeah. Okay, Jürgen.
I mean, you could have figured this out, Jürgen, but I'll tell you. The thing is that the port fees start to apply from the 14th. Any vessel arriving from October 14th and later will pay a port fee. Quite a few voyages started before October 14th. For every voyage coming in before, starting before October 14th, when they get to the U.S., we pay a port fee. For every voyage that starts after October 14th, we need to take into account, when you calculate the result of a voyage, the expected future port fee.
You get the full port fees for the period from the 14th of October until the end of the year, prorated for all the days we have. Also, we have the addition of the voyages starting before October 14th. This represents more than a, than a quarter, or a short of a quarter, of costs. I hope that was an answer, but that was.
That was a good answer. We shed some lights on purchase options. What, what are our thoughts around those and what, what, what do we do about them?
Of course, we're not sharing our commercial decisions upfront. We have some purchase obligations, meaning that we will buy the vessels, and we are happy to do so because they are very attractively priced. When it comes to purchase options, that's something we love. We love optionality. In a market with uncertainty, we can choose what we will do or not. The good news is that we have options, which is far below the current market. For some of these vessels, these are vessels in our core trades, with core capabilities, unique capabilities. We expect to have several of these coming in and that we will actually declare the options when they come due. But that depends, of course, on the market and the need at that time.
Okay. There was a follow-up on that as well in terms of our fleet, but it was related to new builds. Do we plan to order any new builds?
We have no plans to order any new, new builds, as of now. But of course, as a long-term player, vessels being 30 years, trading for 30 years, and we are positioning ourselves for future competitive advantage. We always look at how can we develop our fleet. For now, we're more than happy with the Shaper program that will deliver 14 vessels. We will have the biggest, we think, the greenest and the most cost-efficient vessels in the industry, half of them being 9,300 and the other half close to 12,000 CEU. These will really put us in a strong competitive position in 2026, 2027, and 2028.
Thank you. Next one is for you, Bjørnar. The question is, what do we plan to do with all our cash? And is the USTR port fees impacting our dividend?
The boring answer is that the USTR port fees will not impact our dividend policy. When we set our financial strategy, I think we had three clear targets. One is we want to deliver stable earnings. Two, we want to have a moderate debt level. Three, we want to deliver consistent returns to our policy in line with the policy. We are not changing that financial strategy and those policies because of the USTR port fees. The impact may be, if we do not recover all that, it will impact net profit. If net profit is impacted, of course, dividends will be impacted because our dividends are based on 30%-50% of net profit. We are not changing the policy or the financial strategy.
Next one is on markets. First of all, what share of our, you know, cargo is linked to the U.S.? We have not disclosed that in a big way. I think we will keep that. You will stop me from answering, okay? To the fact sheet. The second part is, you know, what are our expectations in terms of growth for the coming years?
As we alluded to earlier on, we believe that the growth out of China is more structural than just short term. Our expectation and what we position ourselves for is to grow with the exports out of China. Both, of course, Western OEMs producing in China, but increasingly so, Chinese OEMs growing out of China. This goes for autos, but also less noticed for high and heavy. The growth out of China in high and heavy is also very strong, both with foreign OEMs and Chinese OEMs. We think that will continue, and that is adding a lot of ton miles, and that is what matters for us.
You can, every marginal volume coming out of China requires a new vessel because that vessel does not have return cargo, on the marginal, counting, meaning that every volume coming out of China will need to be counted on demand on their own voyage basis. The vessel goes maybe all the way to South America and back. That growth, we will think will continue. We see there is still good demand into the U.S. from Asia. These key trades are still performing well. We see growing demand coming out of South America, of the Middle East. The big one to watch, of course, in our industry now is also the supply side of the equation. So far, we have not seen that that has deteriorated the market balance. That is to be, you know, considered going into 2026.
In general, we have contracts, we see strong volumes, and we expect 2026 also to be a year of high utilization for us.
Next one goes back to USTR port fees and our calculation about, you know, for next year, $350 million-$400 million. What is the number of port calls and what is the average cost per vessel bay that is behind?
If you take the average typical vessel in the world fleet, and not just talking about us, and we are not, I mean, we are relatively similar, it is just north of a million dollars, let's say $1.1 million every time a vessel comes into U.S. territory. Not every time you call a port, it is one time on every string, as we call it. One time when you get in there. Roughly speaking, the average will be north of $1 million. Maybe we can challenge Jürgen Beck and then do the math in terms of the exposure and the cost per vessel.
The next one goes on customers and their ability to capture these costs on top of high rates. What are your thoughts around that?
There is no doubt that for quite some of our customers, this is a big challenge. Having said that, and I showed it earlier on, there is a zero in difference in terms of the tariffs impact and these port fees impact, but it comes on top of everything else. If you look on, in particular, maybe European OEMs where they struggle with market shares in Asia, they are stating themselves that they are running quite some extensive cost cut programs. Of course, this is a challenge.
Then you have other players, maybe out of Asia and other places in the high and heavy, certainly in the breakbook, where they do not really see this as a problem, where we have already reached agreements. In general, I would say that our customers, of course, are not welcoming these extra costs, but they are accepting them, generally understanding. And they are at a level that they will be able to accommodate, although there's a commercial agreement to be made with each one of them.
Okay. Then we have some questions about our book of business. Why is it down quarter over quarter and why is there so few contracts being signed during the quarter? I think that's a, it's a relevant question, but it's a...
No, I, this is, we have quite some big contracts and some of them come due and some of them do not come due. I mean, we had a major renewal with Hyundai Kia. We have had major renewals with our biggest customers on high and heavy and auto previously, and those contracts are going for quite some years. And of course, you eat a quarter of that backlog every quarter. So unless you do all of these big things often, you will see changes in the book of business. But generally speaking, wherever we are trying to renew business, we are renewing business. And if anything, we're growing in volumes with our customers.
Yeah. There is a relevant question more on the composition of our fleet. What number of ships do we have that's US flagged?
We have a total of 11 U.S. flagged, whereof 10 are qualified under the MSP scheme.
Okay. There are also a number of questions here that are kind of, we'll respond to those in email later on because they're kind of very detailed. But here's the one. I think it must be an employee that's asking, because Wallenius Wilhelmsen has a great reputation of being a great place to work. How will you describe your culture and your employees' dedication to transforming and innovation?
Oh, that's a good lead. Let me start with what I referred to earlier on. I think these organizations, I mean, the commitment of our people, the competence of our people, the expertise of our team, I think is second to none. The global reach is second to none. When things happen Friday night, this organization mobilized over the weekend, meet, work out to figure out how do we solve this USTR problem. And Monday afternoon, we had a plan. I think I've never been in the organization being so agile in managing these, all these things that get thrown on us. As you saw on the timeline, we've had quite a few, but our performance is just rock steady. In a very volatile environment where we're really running after one challenge after the other, we're also trying to build a future fit company. We're investing quite a lot into modernizing our technology. We have said in our company that the digital in, carbon out is core to our strategy. We will continue to do that. So, for those who work in Wallenius Wilhelmsen these days, we're trying to do two things.
Keeping up performance by making sure that we are keeping sales up, we have cost control, and we are managing the yield of our assets at the same time as we're running a big transformation program because we need to become much more digital, much more, even more agile, and much more data-driven to be successful in another five, ten, and twenty years. We've been around for decades, and we will be around for decades going forward.
There is another one on our fleet, and it's from Petter Haugen on our new building options. Do we still hold any new building options? And if so, when can it be delivered?
I don't think so. I have to look out. Can I get some help in the audience? I don't think we have new building options on our hands. That probably tells you that if we had, we wouldn't be very active in discussing them. I must admit, top of my head, I don't think we have more options.
Yeah, then there's one from an investor saying that, you know, in our contracts with customers, do we have the ability to pass on these USTR fees? If so, you know.
It varies. These are for lawyers to conclude, but we never start with a legal approach with our customers. We've been serving the likes of John Deere and Hyundai Motor Group and Mercedes for decades. We will continue to serve them for decades. We want to find solutions together. Every dialogue with the customer starts with the relationship and trying to find a commercial solution. Very rarely we need to bring in the lawyers to figure out what does the contract say. In general, I would say that our customers are understanding of this cost. They understand that we cannot carry it. There are still discussions on how and when and how much can they carry.
Questions are starting to run out. There is one about, you know, what information do we have around the postponement? I guess we said that quite clearly. We don't know.
No, and we need to act on confirmed, granular information. We had, not that last week, we had an indication that the intention is to postpone 301. There's no doubt that that's the intention. When we call the people, senior people involved with this, they also tell us that they don't know yet exactly how this will play out. We do know that they are planning to come out with a specific guidance on this and ruling on this anytime soon. Could even happen today.
The general read is that the 301 is paused for one year until November next year. but until that is confirmed and what that implies, we are acting as if it's still port fees in the U.S.
Yeah. Whilst we wait to see whether there are more questions, are there any questions from the audience?
Seems to be, yeah, there's one back there.
Hey, I just have a question about, you mentioned the expansion to Australia.
Hold, hold on. I can, I can, okay. Yeah.
Sorry. My name is Lars. I'm a student at BI and just, an investor in your company. Really exciting to be here. You mentioned the expansion to Australia.
Yep.
And I was just wondering, what metrics do you use to make sure that it's demand-driven and not ahead of the market or, or, too soon?
Thank you for that question. And that's, of course, a balance you need to do, every time. In this specific occasion, we had developed a plan on growing the, the auto side of the business. And we triggered that when we got a contract. So we have a contract now with a fast-growing, Asian OEM, that are securing us $25 million-$30 million worth of revenue into these processing centers, already. We started in Q3, actually. And then we have set them up so we can grow more. We can have more customers coming in. And we see that our unique integrated offering on bringing freight from Asia to Oceania, managing all transport in Oceania, completing the cars, making them ready, and just for them to bring them to their customer. It's a unique offering. And, many of these fast-growing companies ask for that specific integrated service.
So I would say we have already a contract in place, but there is room to grow, and we expect that to grow.
Okay. Some, some additional comments or questions have come in. One is on our fuel consumption. You know, cargo volumes are flat, but, you know, fuel consumption is actually down. Quarter of quarter. How can we explain that?
Because we have invested systematically, over years in energy efficiency. We do that on technical measures, changing bulbous bows. We're optimizing, painting on the, on the, on the hulls. We have operational procedures, and we even use AI, as we have explained earlier on, to optimize speed on the vessels. So I'm extremely impressed with, with what the, the marine operations team together with our ship managers are able to do.
And we have consistently, more or less every quarter, we had, a reduction in our, energy consumption measured towards the activity level. And then the, as I said, the emissions per unit transported goes up simply because we have less units going back to Asia. And you need to distribute. More or less the same, but slightly less emissions on fewer cargo units.
Okay. Then there's one on logistics in Australia slightly, or a little bit of the same, but is our growth quarter over quarter on logistics entirely linked to the Australia operation?
No, it's not. The Australia operation just started off in Q3, and we will see the full effects from Q4 and into 2026 of the new auto. In general, we see very good performance in Canada. We see good performance in Mexico. You saw that export still is strong out of Mexico. Europe is a bit more volatile, but also some strong performance there. We have strong performance in Korea, in China. Generally speaking, if you take out the auto volumes in the U.S., also affected actually by the cybersecurity incident with JLR, and the soft demand for construction machinery in general in the U.S., logistics is performing relatively good.
The remaining questions are mainly things that we can address via email. You know, it is something we will do. Summing up, Lasse, what is your thoughts around the quarter?
Taking a slightly bigger perspective, as you saw on this graph, we are global infrastructure. Wallenius Wilhelmsen is hit by everything that goes on in the world. Despite that, our performance has been very strong and very stable for many quarters. This is what we also expect going forward.
The uncertainty now lies with how can we recover and minimize the cost of USTR if that scheme remains. We are still expecting strong demand. We have a strong book of business, and we are writing new business at the moment, which have very strong earning potential in it. Generally speaking, we are in good shape. We expect the underlying performance to continue as we see it today. Of course, being a global infrastructure, there is always uncertainty.
Thank you.
Thank you.