Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avance Gas Holding Ltd third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link any time during the conference. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Øystein Kalleklev, Executive Chairman of the company. Please go ahead.
Okay, thank you. Thank you everybody for joining this, third quarter webcast for Avance Gas. I'm Øystein Kalleklev, Executive Chairman of the company, and I'm joined here today by Randi, who is the CFO of the company, and she will be presenting the financial a bit later in the presentation. Before we begin, I think I just want to make you aware of our disclaimer. We will provide some forward-looking statements and some non-GAAP measures. Please, we advise to view the presentation together with the earnings release, which we published also today, earlier today. Let's begin. Q3 highlights. TCE revenues for the quarter was $39.1 million, which is slightly lower than the $44 million we delivered in Q2.
This is reflecting somewhat the weaker spot market with our time charter equivalent earnings coming in at $33,000 per day, which was in line with our guidance of around $32,000 per day. Net profit came in at $11.6 million, which equals to our earnings per share of $0.15. Please also note that we have had considerable gains on our interest rate swaps during the year, in total $25 million of gains so far this year, and Randi will tell more about this a bit later. The freight market has turned from very soft during the start of Q3 to now the strongest spot market we have seen since 2015. Actually, the Baltic LPG Index 1 from Asia to Japan this week hit its all-time high.
During the quarter, we also have sold one of our older ships, 2009-built Promise. In Q2, we sold the sister vessel Providence. The sale of Promise is giving us a book gain of $7.5 million. And the cash proceeds from the transaction is around $20 million, and we expect the transaction to be finalized by end of November, and this profit will then be booked in Q4. We have also recently entered into a 12-month time charter for the non-scrubber ship, Pampero, 2015 build, which then basically replace the time charter coverage we had on Promise until November next year.
We are replacing this with slightly better numbers for the time charter we have agreed with Pampero for our different clients. We are now booked 93% for Q4 with our estimated TCE of around $50,000-$55,000 on a discharge-to-discharge basis and then $45,000-$50,000 on a load-to-discharge basis. The market's been moving very quickly up, sometimes you can have a bit difference in whether it's on a load-to-discharge basis, which is the basis for the IFRS numbers and then discharge-to-discharge, which is what we usually focus on commercially- wise. For the quarter, we are also declaring our dividend once again of $0.20 per share, similar to the one we have provided in Q1 and Q2.
This gives our year-to-date payout ratio of 85%. The stock has been performing pretty bad today. Actually today you get not 11% of annualized yield. It's somewhere closer to 12%-13%. That should give our investors a attractive direct yield for by being invested in the company. Let's head for next slide. The fleet renewal, which is good for the environment. It's also very good for our profit and loss statement. We have now, during the year, sold three of our older ships. We sold Thetis Glory in Q1, Providence in Q2, and now in Q4 we are selling Promise. That mean we have divested three of the older ships in our fleet. In total, this has contributed with a book gain of $80 million and cash release of $67 million.
Today, given the stock price, we are priced around price book, 0.85. We are selling our older ships at considerably higher prices than our book value. Also we invested in six new ships there, as we have also in the slide, which were bought at around $80 million, while new building prices for similar assets today are $95 million. With this fleet renewal, we are selling off the older ships, getting ready for IMO 2023. Then delivering new dual-fuel LPG ships, all with A rating on the CII. These ships are reducing sulfur emissions by close to 196%, particle matters around 90%, and CO2 40%.
This is a combination of the fact the ship is bigger, it consume less fuel than our 2010 -built VLGC. In addition, we can use LPG as maritime bunkering fuel, thus also shaving off 20% of the emissions compared to a regular fuel oil. Let's head for the next slide, then we can give an update on the current fleet structure. As you can see, Promise sold, so she will be out of the fleet. We started the year with five, 2008, 2009-built ships, and then we are left with two ships, both on time charters until end of next year. We are fully mitigated by a more expensive bunkers cost today as these ships are then on a time charter and fuel is for the charter's account.
Today we have 17 ships. Very shortly, this will be 16. As you can see here, there are some different spec on some of the ships. We have the Wind class, the 215 class. Six of the eight ships are fitted with a scrubber, which is providing very good economics in today's market. The two ships which is not fitted with a scrubber is Chinook and Pampero. Chinook is on our variable time charter until the middle of next year, so we are not exposed to fuel costs for this ship either. The same goes with Pampero, which we recently covered on a contract now from November to November next year, replacing the time charter coverage we lost on Promise. The two new buildings, Polaris and Capella, also on a variable index time charter.
They are, as you can see here, fitted with LPG fuel. They are dual-fuel. The four next ships, Rigel, Avior, Castor, and Pollux, we also have these ammonia-ready. Ship number three and four are ammonia-ready in the sense they can burn ammonia as a maritime fuel. We recently also made a change order on Pollux. Both Castor and Pollux today are fully ammonia-ready also for having ammonia as a cargo. Of course, these are very big ships, the parcel size for ammonia is not really at this level today, but there's a lot of focus on blue ammonia, green ammonia. This market is developing, and we have four ships there which are very well fitted for this trade and also fitted for being zero emission ships.
Yeah, in general, we have a balanced portfolio. We have also taken out some FSA coverage. This is forward contracts basically on freight. We have recently covered 63% of next year for one ship. Then we had our legacy 33% coverage for Q1. The new 63% coverage we have done for 2023 is at $47,000 per day. The coverage we had from preexisting deals done about a year ago is set around $30,000 for the Q1. Well covered, then we have a lot of market exposures and all the new ships coming for delivery. We are fully open and can benefit from a much stronger freight market today.
We have two ships coming open early next year, and then you will probably notice there a bit in slip. Castor and Pollux were originally intended for delivery 2023 due to delays at yards due to various reasons, including labor strikes. These ships might very well both of them end up in 2024. That's a general theme for the industry, which I will come back to later in the market section. Last slide before handing over to Randi for our financial review is the dividend. We have just included a bit more color on the dividend. We kind of, to be frank, we just copied some of the concepts from Flex just to, you know, give you some color on how we are thinking about the dividend.
The dividend is, it's not really something you only consider the quarter you are in, but you are also looking at how is the outlook for the next quarter, how is our financial position. In terms of Q3 this year, it's a bit on the soft side. That's why we have a yellow light. The market outlook have significantly improved from what we had when we were reporting in August. It's a green light on that. The only reason why it's not dark green, given the fact the spot market is on fire is of course the fact that there are more ships for delivery next year. That's why I'm a bit cautious on the market outlook. Backlog and visibility will never be ultra green for Avance Gas. This is commodity shipping.
We do have some backlog, as I mentioned on the last slide. Liquidity position is super strong. Covenant compliance, here we have done a mistake. This should be dark green. We are passing the compliance of financial covenants with flying colors. Debt maturities, nothing before 2027. CapEx liabilities, yes, we do have $242 million of remaining new building CapEx. This is covered entirely plus some with the $250 million of debt facilities which will be drawn at on delivery of these ships. We will actually be cash positive on taking deliveries of the remaining four new buildings.
Other considerations is like green. You know, all in all, a bit soft quarter. We are keeping the dividend of $0.20. Earnings for next quarter is gonna be a lot better than for this quarter. With that, I give it back to you, Randi.
Thank you, Øystein. Let's go to slide seven and have a look at our results. The third quarter was, as Øystein already touched upon, softer than the first and the second quarter due to a slower freight market. The time charter equivalent or TCE earnings for the third quarter was $39 million, or a TCE per day of $33,000, which is ahead of our guidance of $32,000, and it's explained basically by more favorable positions than anticipated. Operating expenses were $9.8 million, fairly in line with the previous quarter, equaling a daily average OpEx of $8,200. As commented in the second quarter, airfare is making crew changes more expensive, having a negative impact on our OpEx and represents about $300 per day for the third quarter.
The OpEx per day is down from $9,000 a day levels we saw in 2020 and 2021, and the rollout of the vaccine are having a positive effect combined with a lower OpEx on our new buildings. Administrative and general expense, or A&G, for the quarter were down to $1.5 million compared to $1.9 million and represents a normalized A&G expense, which is approximately $1,200 a day and has been and still is the lowest A&G compared to our peers. Net profit for the quarter was $11.6 million or $0.15 per share. Looking at the year-to-date profits, we have $54.3 million, and it's the strongest nine months since the glory days in 2015 and is basically explained by a stronger freight market.
As we are reporting in accordance with IFRS, we have an estimate or an extended P&L, also called our other comprehensive income, where we recognize our derivative portfolio consisting of our interest hedges. As commented in the second quarter presentation, in July, we blended and extended an existing $50 million LIBOR interest rate swap and converted into a SOFR-based swap and increased the hedging with another $100 million, resulting in a SOFR-based hedge of $150 million at 1.87% maturing in 2030 and 2031. At quarter end, we had a LIBOR hedge with a notional amount of $202 million at an average rate of 2.82% maturing in 2025. We have benefited quite well on these positions, resulting in a gain of $7.8 million for the quarter, bringing the total gains for the year above $25 million.
Subsequently, we have terminated $100 million notional worth of interest swaps during the fourth quarter as the interest rates peaked. Out of the $100 million, $75 million was cash settled, which resulted in a cash receipt of $6 million, while the remaining $25 million was converted into a 30-month swap to take more coverage in the short term. For next year, we have 50% of our debt is hedged at a SOFR equivalent rate of 2.60%. In addition, we have a cash reserve of $6 million from the terminated swap. This compares to a one-year SOFR rate of 4.9% today. A few comments to the fourth quarter results before we move on. As Øystein commented, we have booked 93% of the vessel days at 50%.
As we have seen before, the IFRS 15 load-to-discharge adjustment will have a significant effect as the market has moved upward by the end of the quarter in our books. We expect a negative effect of about $5,000 a day, and this results in a TCE expectation per day between $45,000-$50,000 a day on a load-to-discharge basis, which is our reporting figures in accordance with the accounting standard. We also have some effects from the sale of Promise. The gain, of course, of $7.5 million and a lower depreciation expense of $300,000. Moving to slide eight.
On the balance sheet, we can see that we have 77% of our balance sheet are vessels consisting of 13 VLGCs, becoming 12 very soon as Promise is sold, and the remaining four new buildings currently under construction and scheduled for delivery in 2023 and 2024. The new buildings were contracted in 2019 and 2021 at the bottom of the cycle at an average price of $80 million per vessel and is valued at mid-high $90 million today. This adds up to excess book values of $90 million to our books, though it will be very nice to add this into our balance sheet.
This is not allowed in accordance with the accounting standard as our fleet is carried at cost less depreciation and any impairment, which is the most used accounting model within the shipping space. Our cash position has been significantly improved this year as we have sold the three older ladies, generating approx $67 million in net cash proceeds, and we have refinanced the fleet, resulting in a cash release of $83 million, combined with a strong freight market contributing $88 million in cash flow from operations. We recorded a cash balance of $188 million. Looking at the right-hand side of our balance sheet, we have maintained our solid shareholder equity, above 50% at quarter end.
We have a shareholder equity of $583 million, corresponding to our equity ratio of 54%, and a total interest-bearing debt of just below $500 million, equaling a debt-to-total asset ratio of 45%. The share has moved a bit down from yesterday, but it's still supporting our book value somewhat, and it's priced as commented by Øystein at 0.85 today. The next slide illustrates the quarterly cash movement. We started off with a cash balance of $199 million at the beginning of the quarter, and as the freight market is above our cash break-even level, we generated $60 million in free cash flow or net of cash from operations of $26 million and scheduled debt repayment of $10 million.
We also paid pre-delivery CapEx of $9 million in relation to the third dual-fuel VLGC Avance Avior, scheduled for delivery in Q1 2023, just a few months ahead. We have distributed $0.20 per share of $15 million in dividends for the second quarter. Other cash layout of $3 million relates to primarily transaction costs in relation to the recent sale-leaseback agreement and exchange rate effects as the U.S. dollar currency has strengthened against the NOK balance, which we have for primarily administrative costs only. This adds up to a negative cash movement of $11 million and a cash balance of $188 million at the end of the quarter.
For the fourth quarter, we expect the cash position to grow and to be well above $200 million, as we will receive $20 million in net cash proceeds from the sale of Promise and receive freight from a very supportive freight market. Moving to the next slide, looking at our newbuilding CapEx, we have now paid about 50% of the total capital expenditure, and $242 million remains to be paid. The total expenditure includes upgrade for preparing the vessel to sail on ammonia fuel for all remaining newbuildings and carry ammonia cargo for newbuilding 5 and 6, which results in a zero carbon solution from a well-to-wake thinking.
The two first dual-fuel VLGCs, Avance Polaris and Avance Capella, are financed by banks in the $104 million facility, which was drawn at delivery in January and February this year. The financing for the two next dual fuels, Avance Avior and Avance Rigel, to be delivered in a few months, are secured in a $115 million bank loan facility as a part of the fleet refinancing that we completed in May this year. The two last vessels, Avance Castor and Avance Pollux, scheduled for delivery in Q3 2023 and Q1 2024, are secured in a $135 million sale-leaseback agreement as announced in August this year. This means that we have no unfunded CapEx except of the scheduled dry dockings and the financing of our newbuilding program is now completed.
75% of our financing portfolio has been significantly improved this year, and we have achieved longer repayment profiles now between 20-22 years. We have achieved longer tenors close to six years with the first maturity in February 2027. We have increased our revolver capacity to utilize the flexibility to manage and optimize cash and avoid associated interest costs, and we have lower margins. Thereby, we have actually improved our cash break even by approximately $1,000 a day compared to previous years. Today's cash break even is about $21,800, and assuming today's freight market environment at $90,000 a day on a spot vessel, on a U.S.-Asia voyage, the Avance fleet has potential to generate about $50 million in free cash flow on a quarterly basis.
With that, I hand the word back to you, Øystein, for the market update.
Okay. Thanks, Randi. Let's do a short review of the recent market developments. Let's start just with looking at the LPG market because LPG is our versatile fuel. You can use it for a lot of different stuff. If you look at the world on global basis, it's basically 40% for the residential and commercial heating and cooking and then another 40% for the petchem industry and also a fairly big stake for the refining. You know, depending on the region to what the LPG is utilized for really depends a lot. You will see that in more developing countries it's mostly for ResCom. In U.S. it's LPG is mostly a petchem product, either petchem or refinery blending.
If you look at Asia, it really depends on a lot on the different countries. The biggest importer is China, where ResCom is only 40% in line with the world aggregate, while in India it's 90% is for this use. The other thing about Europe with a fairly big autogas market where LPG is also utilized as fuel for vehicles. Let's head into the market and the recent trends. On the export side, it's a fairly simple market. The two big markets are North America and the Middle East.
We've seen a very strong growth of the exports this year, 11% up, first 10 months of the year, driven primarily then by Arabian Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, all having a 30%+ growth, despite less oil volumes from OPEC. On the import side, it's healthy growth everywhere, basically. China has been reducing their LNG imports first 10 months of the year by 22%. This is not the same in LPG. LPG is also, as I mentioned on previous slide, very affordable. Chinese imports are actually up 9% so far this year. Europe, with the energy crisis are also substituting in more LPG and has been growing 67% this year, although from a much lower level than the Chinese demand.
If we're looking at the spot earnings, good times are back for sure. We are now at the highest level since we've been in the period 2013, 2015. As I mentioned, AG Japan index, the Baltic 1 has been on the highest level ever this week. This is represented by this smiling guy with some cool shades, because the last time it was good, and we were back in 2015, and Christian always had a good smile when I met him. If we look at the one-year time charter rate, it's of course a bit more stable than the volatile spot earnings, but still at pretty healthy levels. If we're looking at the next slide on the arbitrage. Okay, why is the rates moving this quickly up?
It's of course a conducive environment for the arbitrage. Here we do see the prices between Mont Belvieu, U.S. propane, and the Far East in the index in Asia, where propane prices are. If you're looking at the arbitrage, which is then becoming basically the limit or ceiling for what you can pay on the shipping freight rates, it's still keeping a theoretical earnings level for our scrubber ships of $60,000 next year, $56,000 in 2024, of course, somewhat lower for our non-scrubber ships. Of course, these are not only theoretical numbers. We have secured 63% of our ships in the FFA market recently at $47,000 per day for the AG - Japan route. You know, not truly the arbitrage for shipowners, but still a very conducive shipping market given these arbitrages.
If we're looking at this, what's happening in the market, it's a bit similar to what we've seen in LNG, where ton-mile is on the weak side because you have more imports into Europe, not on the same scale in LPG as in LNG. On the other hand, we do see ton-time mitigating the slow pace of ton-mileage growth. The average speed is down, for the ships are down 4%. Of course, this is also driven by the congestion in Panama, where waiting time is above 20 days these days, both on the north and the south bounds.
This is also the unpredictability of the Panama Canal when you're trying to schedule a ship also means that more and more shipowners are taking the ships longer route through Cape of Good Hope or alternatively through Suez in order to have a firm leg hem on the ship, which makes it easier to fix this because if you have an unpredictable date, it's hard to fix the ships. This is also driving up ton-time and ton-mile eventually. Of course, with the Panama Canal now increasing their hauling fees by basically doubling it the next couple of years, we do expect more of the LPG trade to be squeezed out of the Panama Canal, resulting in longer sailing distances than in the past.
Attrition, you know, of course, now we are in a very good market, and people generally don't talk about attrition and scrapping of ships. We have been in a market now, even in a weak market for many years, where we've still not seen any scrapping. Of course, this has been good in the sense that secondhand prices for older ships have been very firm, and this is one of the reason why we have also been selling three ships this year. Last time you had scrapping here was back in 2018. You have had very muted scrapping for a long time. While next year we will have the new IMO 2023 rules, the EEXI and the CII.
Of course, this will put more pressure on the compliance of the fleet than we have all have kind of illustrated this by the CII rating today or expected next year, and then the development. You will see a lot of the ships there will have struggle complying with the new IMO rules. We do think this will eventually impact scrapping and scrapping, which has been holding back for a long time now, will eventually increase. There is one reason, which I will come back to shortly, why we also see less scrapping, and that is related to the fact that more and more ships in the VLGC is leaving the traditional international shipping market and going into captive Iran-China trade instead. Let's just highlight the order book first.
I mentioned this, the order book for next year is 45, 46, 47 ships, depending a bit on how you count. We do see slippage, we have already seen it from the Avance ship where one or possibly two of our new buildings will slip from 2023 to 2024. We have seen issues on the Chinese yards where because of the COVID lockdowns, this has delayed the construction of new VLGCs. With the 12 VLGCs scheduled for Q4 delivery next year, we would expect some of this to bump into 2024 and some of the Q1 ships to bump into later in the year and just balancing the order book a bit better than what it looks today.
At the same time, we do see a lot of deferred maintenance, our numbers are around 70 VLGCs which will be doing the scheduled maintenance next year. With the scrubber economics today, very favorable, we wouldn't rule out that some of the owners will also utilize the opportunity to put in a scrubber in the ship to benefit from the cost savings. That will result in the period at the drydock typically doubling. You will have two effects there. There's just the regular maintenance and then possibly some scrubber installations as well. If we look at the fleet balance for 2023, it's a big order book as mentioned.
U.S. is exporting at healthy levels, EIA is expecting this to continue with around 10% export growth. Of course, U.S. cargoes tend to be sailing the longest. This is good for ton mileage, especially when the Panama Canal is congested. We have had a speed reduction trend which I also pointed out earlier. You know, you could have a reversal of the speed reduction trend, you probably would have higher ton mileage because instead of waiting in the queue in Panama, you are sailing a longer distance and avoiding the Panama Canal entirely. We do see the drydock off-hire, which I mentioned on last slide, the potential slippage. This market can balance out pretty well.
I think the more and more people are realizing this, and that's why the sentiment around 2023, which was pretty dire this summer, has now turned to be actually quite good. If we look at the forward freight rates, you know, freight market should be pretty good next year. But let's see. We will find out soon. Looking at the order book, this is a slide we have added a couple of times because we have seen this spike of deliveries next year. But again, you know, order book to fleet is 20%. Then as I said, you know, there is a pent-up scrapping demand in this sector with a lot of ships above 20 years and even 25 years.
Then also you do have a market which is growing quite rapidly on the volume side in terms of exports as well. Last slide then before going to the highlights I mentioned is, I alluded to this, a lot of ships are leaving the international trade and ending up doing the kind of captive Iran-China trade. My numbers checking last night is 44 ships now. This has grown from 30 to 44 ships. That's also why you see less scrapping. It's World Cup now in Qatar. The last time U.S. and Iran met each other was in 98, and Iran won 2-1. Let's see next week whether what the results will be of the new match.
With that, I think we conclude with the highlights revenues, $39 million, somewhat weaker than Q2 due to our softer spot market. We are generating $0.15 of earnings and paying out $0.20. Freight market has however turned the corner and gone from soft in Q3 to super strong now during Q4. We have sold another ship. We are continuing to renew the fleet by selling the older ships and taking delivery of our new dual-fuel ships. We are 93% already covered for Q4. The ships we are generally fixing now is for late December loadings, meaning that, you know, those bookings will be, will be turning up in our numbers in Q1 next year.
We are also then today we are booking very good numbers for Q1 next year. You know, earnings depending a bit on how you calculate it, around $50,000 expected for next quarter, meaning that we should make a lot more money for Q4 when we are presenting that in February next year. With that, I think I conclude, and I thank you all for participating. I wish you all a good Thanksgiving. And then you can wake up tomorrow, and it's Black Friday, and you can buy our stock, which has been tumbling today. With that, Heidi, the operator, maybe you can open up for some questions.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will take our first question.
Somebody driving into a tunnel. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think while we are waiting, you can check out whether that connection is good. We have had a chat. Question. It's a question I get every quarter on the flex course as well. It's basically, you have a lot of cash, how to spend it. Liquidity with cash balance, $188 million is huge. It's inefficient to have so much capital tied up since your new building program is already fully financed. What do you intend to use the cash for? Will we see special dividends like Dorian? It's a good question, fair question. I think we are paying out 135% of earnings in this quarter. For the year, it's, is it 86 or so.
We have had some asset sales, which is more like one-offs, earnings, which have contributed to our earnings. What we did when we start was, you know, this thing was that kind of we saw that we could get better financing terms in the banks. When banks are keen to lend you money, you should try to borrow. We refinanced basically on almost all of the fleet. During this refinancing, we have added a lot of cash to our company. How we have structured that is to add a significant revolver capacity, which at end of the quarter is fully drawn. How we manage this is to usually draw it at end of the quarter, we can repay this. It's a flexible loan.
When we are not utilizing the revolver facility, we are only paying a commitment fee of 0.75%. The cost of having that revolver capacity is very low. I can understand you think it's very inefficient, but actually, we are using this revolver to flex down the cash. We are maintaining a much lower cash balance on a regular basis. You know, one of the reasons why we also did this was, of course, the financing market was good, but also there was a lot of concerns about 2023 outlook with a lot of analysts putting in numbers where people were leading. You know, the last thing you want to have is a situation where people are starting to calculate your runway.
You know, how long how long does the money last? Because then you're gonna destroy equity value. We have seen this in this same company in the past when people are calculating how long are you gonna last. What we are doing then is add a lot of cash, which is a flexible cash, so that nobody needs to make such calculations. Of course, now the outlook for 2023 have turned during the last six months from being very dire to be very positive. Nobody is making these kind of calculations again. I think it's wise for the company to have ample access to liquidity to alleviate any concerns if there is a certain change in market sentiment that people will think that, well, you know, I can sleep safe at night.
The Avance people, they have sorted out the financing wisely and will be able to withstand even a tough market for, you know, one year or two year or even three years, you know. So that's why we have a lot of financial flexibility in the company. That said, I think we have sufficient cash. We probably have more than we need, as we are now fully financed on the new buildings. That's why we're paying out 135% on payout ratio for the quarter. We intend not to, you know, some of these shipping companies, they brag they're gonna pay 50% of their earnings in dividends. We are not gonna brag about that because we're gonna pay 100%.
We have more than sufficient cash, we intend to generate all the earnings we are generating, we will send back to you investors in dividends. We would have been thinking about doing buybacks given where the stock is being priced compared to NAV. However, we already have exemption from the Oslo Stock Exchange to be listed because the requirement there is no shareholder should have more than 75%. Our biggest shareholder, Hemen Holding, controlled by John Fredriksen family, owns 77% of this company. That makes it a bit difficult for us to buy back the stock. Instead, we are gonna pay you handsomely in dividends today and going forward. Heidi, did we manage to track that guy who was driving into a tunnel or?
We have one question from the phone line. This one is from the line of Climent Molins from Value Investor's Edge. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, team. Thank you for this very comprehensive presentation. We will see a lot of delivery in 2023, but the supply side outlook for 2024 and 2025 seems significantly more attractive. You've taken advantage of high second-hand asset pricing by disposing of some of your oldest assets. Is there any appetite to potentially order more new builds? Is pricing unattractive at current levels?
Okay, thank you. Good question. Yes, Randi said, we contracted six newbuildings. That's, I would say, call it the bottom of the market, $80 million. They are $95 million today. On our balance sheet, they will be at a historical cost of $80 million, not $95 million, which is the price today. It's basically almost 20% above book values in kind of asset values for these ships. Then we have been selling ships that, around 12%-13% uplift to book values as well on the older ships. You know, that's same cost. It doesn't really affect our view in terms of making new investments. I think one of the challenging things for us is that we have a stock price which is trading well below book value, and the book value is well below NAV value.
Then, you know, if you need to raise equity, you are diluting shareholders. It's not really accretive growth for the company. However, we do have some surplus cash we could probably put to work. However, you know, we also like to pay the surplus cash as dividends. That's a fine balance for publicly listed shipping companies. It's very hard to be contrarian when you are in the public market because most shipping investors are not really contrarian. They are procyclical. That means that a lot of the shipping companies, they will have a good stock price when the markets are red hot. Usually when the market is red hot, new building prices are also pretty firm. That means the public shipping companies, like my colleague Ole B. Hjertaker in SFL, have said in the past, they are programmed to do unwise investment decisions because they are investing at the top of the market.
Of course, the stock price is at the peak then. We try to be a bit smarter in this group of companies. We will consider it. I think, you know, we have had the order book 20% of fleet. New building prices have been picking up. Delivery slots now are more 2026. Yeah, we have looked into it, but so far we have considered that the best alternative for our shareholders is that we focus on chartering our existing ships, taking delivery of our existing ships and maximizing dividends for our shareholders rather than building more ships.
That's very helpful. Indeed, when trading below NAV, issuing equity does not seem like the best option. Turning towards the Pampero, you fixed it on a one-year contract. Could you provide some insight on the rate you locked it in? You also mentioned the 2023 FFAs imply a TCE of around $40,000 per day, whereas the implied rate from the arbitrage is even higher. How is the 2024 FFA curve looking at, like at the moment?
Okay, a couple of questions there. I think I need to start with the first one. Yeah, we did the Pampero. It's reported to be mid-$30,000. We fixed this a while back before the market took off. Today that might sound a bit cheap when you can do the FFA for, at $47,000. However, you know, you're comparing a bit apples and bananas there because the scrubber spread is $10,000-$12,000. The Pampero we fixed is a non-scrubber ship, and when we are doing the FFA, we are entering the FFA, and then we are hedging the IFO 380 heavy fuel oil because all our spot ships are scrubber fitted.
If you're making mid-$30,000 on a one-year time shot of the non-scrubber, you should be making mid-$40,000 on a scrubber ship. That was question number one. You had something about the FFA for 2024. Yeah, it's around $45,000 for a scrubber ship in 2023. 2024 is lower. For a scrubber, I don't have the number in front of me, but my guesstimate today is it's somewhere around $35,000-$40,000. You know, please don't shoot me down on that. It's softer and that's why we haven't fixed anything for that calendar year. Keep in mind, the FFA market is also pretty illiquid.
You know, if you are in the market for a time, you can get some deals done. Was there any more questions? I think there was a third one. Was it?
That was it. That's all from me. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Okay, thanks. Okay. I think we conclude. Thank you again, everybody also for contributing questions. That's always the most fun part of doing these webcasts. Thanks again, everybody, and have a good Thanksgiving, and we'll talk to each other again in February when we are reporting super strong Q4 numbers. Thank you.
Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.