Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Avance Gas Holding Ltd third quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question over the phones, you can press star and one on your telephone keypad, or you can also type your questions into the webcast. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, the CEO, Kristian Sørensen. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Avance Gas Q3 presentation. I'm joined here today by our CFO, Randi Navdal Bekkelund, and our Chief Commercial Officer, Ben Martin. We can go to the next slide, please, with the latest from our lawyers. Slide three, please. Okay, so let's have a look at the highlights for the quarter. We achieved TC earnings of $31.6 million, equivalent to $27,548 per day, which includes the ballast cost we accounting-wise had to recognize in the report for our three older vessels which were fixed on time charter for two years at healthy levels at $30,000 a day.
Looking at the spot market, it was more or less floating along the same pattern as in the second quarter, with solid exports from the U.S., despite relatively high U.S. domestic LPG prices. Middle East exports, which were still trailing behind the pre-COVID export levels. We report an EBITDA of $19.4 million, a net profit of $4.2 million, and earnings per share of $0.06. We maintain our solid cash position, which currently stands at $105 million, and we are very pleased to again declare a dividend, this time $0.05 per share or 90% of our net profit for the quarter. Moving on, a key event for the quarter was obviously Hemen Holding Limited's mandatory offer for all the shares in the company after it broke through 33% ownership in September.
The result of the offer should be well known to everyone, with Hemen now controlling just shy of 77% of the shares. Over to you, Randi, and the financial highlights for the quarter.
Thank you, Kristian, and good afternoon to you all. Moving to slide five, I will now take you through the financial takeaways from the quarter. As Kristian touched upon, the VLGC freight market was impacted by low U.S. inventory levels, high U.S. LPG prices, and thereby narrowed U.S.-Asia arbitrage being the main driver behind our results. Looking at our commercial performance, we recorded a time charter equivalent or TC earnings of $31.6 million, up from $30.7 million previous quarter. The third quarter includes a ballast cost of $700 a day related to the three time- charter contracts announced in October, as Kristian already mentioned. Operating expenses were $10.3 million or $8,600 per calendar day, down $700 a day from previous quarter.
The corona is still among us and creates challenges related to the crew change, along with the high container and air freight costs impacting our third quarter operating expense by $650 per day in total. For the fourth quarter, we expect the OpEx to come down to low $8,000 a day as most of our crew have been vaccinated. Administrative and general expense were slightly higher than last quarter due to non-recurring expenses. This leaves us with an EBITDA of $19.4 million, up from $18.1 million previous quarter. Depreciation expense were $11.4 million, in line with indications given in our previous earnings call and is the normalized depreciation going forward. Finance expense is down from previous quarter due to lower average debt and interest costs combined with capitalized borrowing costs.
With that, we recorded a net profit of $4.2 million or $0.06 per share for the third quarter, compared to $1.5 million or earnings per share of $0.02 previous quarter. As Kristian stated, we are happy to announce cash dividend payment for the fourth time this year, accumulated to $23 million in 2021, including the $0.05 per share announced today. Turning to slide six, I will take you through the cash movements during the year.
We had a cash position of $102.3 million as of September 2021, up $24 million from year-end, driven by cash flow from operations of $71.5 million, equity raise of $64 million, offset by capital expenditure of $42.1 million related to our new building program and the three cash dividend payments of $19.3 million and scheduled repayment of debt and interest of $46.5 million in total. Since 2019, we have paid $78 million in CapEx related to our new building program, corresponding to approximately 41% of the pre-delivery capital expenditure. We have secured sustainability linked financing of the two first new buildings, Avance Polaris and Avance Capella, scheduled for delivery in January and February 2022.
Assuming the same financing for the remaining new builds, we have approximately $83 million in new building CapEx to be sourced by cash in hand and cash flow from operations until delivery of the final vessel in 2023. Moving to slide seven. We have an estimated cash break even of $22,900 a day for the fiscal year 2021, implying that the cash break even for the fourth quarter will be below $22,500 to the OpEx coming down to low $8,000 a day, which is expected. Furthermore, we are exploring financing on the remaining new builds to be financed, and we are expecting to achieve attractive financing that will reduce the average cash break even for the fleet.
Furthermore, today we actually received credit approval for the refinancing of the Iris Glory by way of a sale- leaseback transaction previously announced in October. A few comments on our fleet employment before I round off. We have an estimated TCE of $28,000 a day contracted for 94% of vessel days for the fourth quarter. This includes time charter or TC coverage of approximately, that is 40% at an average $31,000 a day. The guidance of $28,000 a day also includes approximately 50 days waiting time, northbound in the Panama Canal, which is obviously hitting our results. Looking into 2022, our current TC coverage is 23% at $30,000 a day, primarily representing the three two-year time- charter contracts earlier stated.
Based on the current market sentiments, with freight rates exceeding $40,000 a day, we expect improvements in Q1 2022 bookings. I will now hand the word over to you, Kristian, to talk about the market.
Thank you, Randi. We can go straight to slide nine. As mentioned initially, the VLGC market in Q3 was very similar to what we went through in the second quarter, where the U.S. exports was the main driver despite the high domestic LPG prices. For most of the time, there was a very slim price differential between the U.S. and the Far East. The Middle East exports was slightly up, but the spot market was still dominated by Indian charters, while Far East and Western charters were pretty much absent from the spot fixture list. Going forward, we expect the Middle East exports to gradually increase, especially from Saudi as reversed OPEC cuts and technical issues on gas plants release more cargoes for exports. Next slide, please.
At the end of the third quarter into the fourth, we experienced more inefficiencies in the global VLGC fleet. This is particularly around the Panama Canal, but also increasingly in the Far Eastern and Indian discharge ports. Recently, we have seen waiting time for Panama Canal transits up to 21 days on the transpacific ballast leg, while we are currently seeing more than 14 days waiting on the laden leg from the U.S. Gulf to the Far East. In the short term, this is causing operational challenges, but in the medium term, this has started to translate into more capacity being absorbed from the fleet and increased rate levels in both the AG and in the Atlantic Basin. Next slide, please. As you all know, the U.S. gas prices have been at record high levels since the cold freeze in February.
U.S. LPG inventories have still not reached the same levels as last year, and we are still well below the five-year average. Nonetheless, the demand side has proven to be less price sensitive than expected, as LPG is not only an alternative fuel source, but also the main energy source for millions of people in the residential sector and a growing number of PDH plants in the petchem sector. Over the last years, capital discipline, solid balance sheets and dividend capacity have been the priority among most drillers in the U.S. However, on the back of high energy prices in general, we are starting to receive some reports from the third quarter results about increasing CapEx for both shale players and large energy companies, which usually is a leading indicator for increased production, although it is still early to say.
Provided a normal winter in the States, we believe in a 6% increase in U.S. production and exports reaching approximately 53 million tons next year and further growth but at a slower pace from 2023 onwards. Slide 12, please. Looking at the demand side, Asia will continue to be the dominant off-taker of seaborne LPG as approximately 80% of all VLGC cargoes up East of Suez. Indian LPG imports seems to end close to 16 million tons this year, while China seems to be passing 22 million tons, thanks to its massive expansion of PDH plants in the petrochemical sector. Globally, Poten & Partners estimate a growth in seaborne LPG trade from approximately 118 million tons this year to 125 million-126 million tons in 2023.
The majority will be on the VLGCs. The demand growth will be first and foremost in Asia, with India, Japan, Korea, and China still being the dominant importers. While LPG continues to penetrate new markets in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Next slide, please. There is naturally a lot of attention on the order book, especially in 2023. Although we are sharing some of the analysts' concern, we maintain our bullish view on 2022 and a cautiously optimistic view on 2023, by also taking a few measures to reduce the risk but maintain proper market exposure. We do see the upcoming regulatory measures to reduce vessels emissions, as well as increased inefficiencies and uncertainty around programming of vessels, especially for U.S. Gulf loadings, as considerable absorbers of fleet capacity, which we believe will moderate the added capacity from the order book. Next slide, please.
This is showing the latest developments around the Panama Canal and the waiting time. To illustrate the inefficiencies, you can see from the graph on the left that the waiting time on both sides of the Panama Canal has soared from Q3 into Q4. 23% of the Panama transits in total were LPG carriers so far this year. From January 1st, there will be no more pre-booked slots more than 14 days in advance, and we foresee increased scheduling uncertainty around the vital Panama Canal. To recapitulate on our final and last slide. Avance Gas report the time charter equivalent of $27,548 per day, including the recognized ballast costs for our three older vessels entering two years time charters.
We are very happy to declare a dividend of $0.05 per share, which means that we have paid a total of $23 million in dividends in 2021. Market-wise, the U.S. exports were maintained in the third quarter at the high level with the support of a robust demand side in Asia. Looking at the financing side, we are in the process of closing the refinancing of the Iris Glory in a sale-leaseback transaction, where we expect or we will release about $16.6 million in cash. We are further, as Randi said, exploring refinancing on the remaining four newbuildings. For Q4, our guidance on daily TCE is $28,000 per day, including approximately 50 waiting days for owner's account in the Panama Canal. We are currently experiencing a firming market with spot rates in the $40,000 territory.
We anticipate a firm market over the winter period with inefficiencies and increased export volume supporting the market sentiment. Finally, we are looking forward to take delivery of our two new dual- fuel vessels in January and February next year. We should benefit from strong tailwinds in the market. By that, I would like to open up for the Q&A session.
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Thank you. There are no questions there from the webcast either. I believe this concludes our conference call.
Yes. Thank you everyone for listening in. Let's round it off if there are no more questions. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.