Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the webcast and conference call for the Q4 2020 of Avanska Holding Limited. As you just heard, my name is Erandin van Bekelen. I'm the CFO. And with me today, I have our Commercial Chief Officer, Ben Marte. We will start today's presentation by going through the financial highlights of the quarter, which will follow with a market and company update.
We appreciate your interest, and we'll take questions at the end of the call. I will now move to Slide 3, going through the financial highlights. The comments will focus on our financial position and results on the unaudited numbers for the Q4 as well as comments on the dividend announced today. Turning to our chartering results. We have an achieved time charter equivalent rate of 40,700 per ship day on a discharge to discharge basis, which is in line with our guidance of 40,000 a day.
And Further, we have a commercial utilization of 99% for the Q4. With the rates picking up at the end this quarter as well, we had a negative effect of IFRS 15 of $4,600 giving a TCE rate of $36,100 a day on a load to discharge basis. This compares with the TC rate of $21,500 in the previous quarter. Vessel operating expense came in at $9,400 a day for the Q4 compared to 9,300 in the Q3. As commented in the previous quarter, the vessel operating expense is partly impacted by 1 offs relating to technical manager change and the COVID-nineteen situation still remains challenging.
In total, the change in Technical manager and COVID-nineteen expense represents approx $900 a day for the whole fleet. We would like to emphasize that our Highest priority is ensuring safety of the crew and resolving the crude chain challenge. For instance, Avan Scott Holding Limited is the signatory of the Neptune declaration on seafarers well-being and crew change. We have fully completed the technical manager change in Q4, and we expect to improve the technical efficiency of our fleet and expect to reduce the operating expense to normalized levels in 2021 and going forward. The administrative and general expense were SEK 700 Per ship base, slightly down from previous quarter, reflecting improving cost focus.
Net profit for the quarter was 46 800,000 corresponding to an earnings per share of $0.73 compared with earnings per share of $0.04 previous quarter. The net profit includes a writeback of vessel impairment charge of $33,700,000 Adjusted for the writeback, we have an earnings Per share of $0.21 Looking at the cash position, we generated approx $100,000,000 in cash flow from operations during the year. We raised $30,000,000 by selling our oldest lady, Avans, and we successfully completed the sale leaseback transaction on the VLGC Panfero. We paid 20% of our pre delivery CapEx of our new Building 12 and 98% of dry dock and Scarborough installations. Further, we paid CHF 19,100,000 in dividends.
We reduced our interest bearing debt by €37,000,000 leaving us with a cash position of €75,900,000 in Q4. Today, we have a cash position of NOK 93,000,000 and based on the strong long term fundamentals, we expect to further strengthen our free cash flow generation. We also increased our equity ratio to 50.4% and 2020 up from 45.7% in 2019. And we are happy to announce that we return value to our shareholders. The Board declared a dividend of $0.11 per share, representing 52% of net profit adjusted for the write back of impairment charge.
We believe this is a compelling way of returning value back to our shareholders And the capital allocation of dividends, investments and further balance sheet strengthening will be carefully considered by the Board going forward. Turning to Slide 4, a snapshot of our operating and commercial utilization. We had a strong commercial utilization of 99% for the fleet in Q4 and 97% commercial utilization for the year. We had 3% scheduled dry dock off hire for Q4 and 10% for the year, Approximately 3% is impacted by COVID-nineteen. In addition, we had 2% off hire in Q4 and 1% off hire for the year, most of which related to change of technical manager.
By Q4, our drydocking program and technical manager change are fully completed and 506 scrubber has been installed. Turning to Slide 5, looking into the next quarter and the coming year. We have, based on the current information at hand, an estimated cash breakeven of $22,000 a day in 2021. For the Q1, 70% of vessel base is contracted for approximately $48,000 a day, including both stopped and time charter contracts on a discharge to discharge basis. We have no scheduled drydocking, leaving us with a nearly fully tradable fleet, and we have a TC coverage of 25% at an average rate of $30,000 a day for 2021.
And with strong long term fundamentals on the supply production and demand side, we has a potential significant free cash flow generation. And in Q4 this year, we will take delivery of our 1st Geo Fuel newbuilding, enhancing the green profile of the Avangas fleet and taking an important step towards decarbonization. And with that, I leave the word over to you, Ben, for the market and company update.
Thank you, Randy. So if we move to Slide 6, please. Q4 has seen a return to incredible freight levels not seen for many years. Combination of stronger than expected U. S.
Exports, Goodbye and demand in the Far East markets and market inefficiencies allowed yards to stay wide open and freight rates to rise to close to $3,000,000 TCE per month for certain voyages. Move on to the next slide, please. U. S. Exports averaged around 77 cargoes a month, which is up from 68 cargoes a month in Q3.
Year on year, there were 8.37 VLGC carvers exported in 2020 versus 7.44 in 2019. December, in particular, saw a huge export month with close to 80 cargoes being exported. This plentiful U. S. Cargo coupled with the main destination to be Asia Increased on miles and despite freight rates.
Next slide. One of the main drivers for the rate surge we've seen in has been the U. S. Production data. We've seen better than expected production, coupled with lower than expected domestic consumption, which allowed for excess propane and butane to be exported at competitive prices.
Hand in hand with this has been the expansion of terminal infrastructure, specifically in Targa, which now means that U. S. Terminals can export up to 90 cargoes a month should there be And removing this bottleneck has been a major positive for growth prospects of the LPG market. More recently, the EIA renewed its outlook for 2021 based its February review, which implies 5.5% growth for U. S.
Production to 90 2,000,000 tonnes per year, which is an increase of 2.6%. They're also forecasting flat domestic consumption, which means that possible exports can rise by as much as 11% to 52,000,000 tonnes. Production for 2022 is currently estimated to be up Nearly 2%. These revisions and increases were in line with our views from Q3 reporting that production would increase year on year as well. As we've seen this past year, abundant U.
S. LPG is positive for the freight markets. There has been concerns around what the effect President Biden's moratorium and drilling means for U. S. LPG production.
We're still working to fully understand this picture. However, it appears that short- to medium term, it could be largely muted. The moratorium refers to drilling on federal land, which accounts around 20% of LPG production in the U. S. States like Texas, one of the biggest producers, has as little as 5% land being under federal control.
Further, during the Trump administration, many permits were issued for drilling on federal land, And around 50% of these are yet to be used but still remain active, thereby effectively negating any real immediate concerns and medium terminology shortages. And as we see oil price continue to strengthen, we could see these wells being drilled as well as ones which are not on federal lands, which can further improve the production outlook. On to Slide 9. The Middle East Gulf region has seen variable exports this quarter with fluctuations in volumes between months, specifically to do with the cuts in Saudi. As a result, the AG loaded on average 53 VRGCs a month in Q4, which is slightly down from the Q3, which is principally, as we mentioned, due to OPEC cuts.
When we will see these volumes come back is a subject for discussion, And we need to review that as and when we see the outcome of the next OPEC meetings. Our view still remains that cuts in U. S. In Middle East gold production, we'll likely need to be replaced from somewhere and that somewhere is usually the U. S, which as we said before, is positive for long term miles and therefore likely positive for freight rates.
On to Slide 10. Asia remains a driving force of the LPG market with 80% of the demand being centered there. With 70% of demand residential, contrary to what we might Intuitively expect for a pandemic effect, the lockdowns enforced in Asia actually increased imports and helped support the VLGC market. India and Indonesia were of particular note here. China remains a big influencer on the markets despite being less active last year.
We expect them to come back strong this year with new PDH plant demand likely to mean in excess of 2,000,000 tonnes additional consumption. Then as we're seeing now, a higher oil price also puts LPG firmly in the top spot for cracker feedstock. On to Slide 11. Looking at the shipping supply side of things, We see a positive outlook for newbuilding deliveries being relatively modest over the next 2 to 3 years. We see 37 ships on order for a global fleet of 305 ships.
We have 21 due for delivery this year and 10 due for the following year, meaning a manageable supply increase, which given the currently expected dry dock schedules, we believe will be largely offset. If we look at the age profile of the existing fleet, we have almost 10% that is over 25 years old, a sign of some scrapping to come. This age profile, together with more focus on ESG policies and potential carbon taxes, could accelerate scrapping and create possible fleet shrinkage. So on to the conclusion and to round things up. On the supply side, The shipping supply looks reasonable.
The order book is 12% for now, and we have a finite number of deliveries between now and 2023, giving owners pretty good visibility for the next 2 years. We see that the new buildings coming in will be largely offset by the drydocking program. And as we mentioned, we have a moderately old fleet with close to 10% of the ships being over 25 years. The outlook for U. S.
Production is now more positive than it has been for some time, and a stronger oil price should have a positive effect both on drilling new wells and also opening arms for deliveries to the Far East. We see the demand centers in Asia growing. And with the U. S. Being the swing supplier, this is positive to margin in our view positive LPG freight.
On the overall outlook, as Randy previously advised, We have already booked approximately 48 ks TCE for Q1 on approximately 70% of our vessel days, which puts us in a nice position given where the market currently sits. Clearly, we're in a period of rebalancing in terms of pricing and unprecedented cold weather snaps. But we believe once U. S. Prices normalize and buying comes back from Far Eastern counterparts, Given also the size of the drydocking schedule that we will see a return to tightness to the market and with the increased positivity for owners.
Avance Gas is a fully tradable fleet with significant cash flow generation potential, which we'll be ready to take advantage of when the time comes. The cherry on the cake from a company perspective is we start to take delivery of the most eco and green dual fuel VLGCs currently available in the market, something that marks a real milestone for the company and a commitment to clean LPG shipping. And finally, we're looking forward to welcoming our new CEO, Mr. Christian Sorensen, He joins us on the 1st April. Christian will bring many years of experience and add some great direction and focus to the Avan's Gas Management team, and we look forward to
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. There appears to be no requests coming through. There are no questions at this time. Please continue.
Okay. Thank you, Ella, and thank you for dialing in For Avanska's presentation for the Q4, if you may have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us directly. And I wish you a nice weekend.