Good afternoon, dear participants. Welcome to Tallink's investor webinar, introducing the financial results for the third quarter of 2023. My name is Anneli Simm. I'm the Investor Relations Manager at Tallink, and will be moderating this webinar. Today, the results for the third quarter of 2023 will be presented by Margus Schults, the member of the management board. Paavo Nõgene, the CEO of the company, will comment on the questions you have already sent to us. Or if you have not sent the questions prior to this webinar, you may post this to the chat function of this webinar. Since the time is limited, I will now hand the microphone over to Mr. Margus Schults.
Thank you, and, also good afternoon from my side. My name is Margus Schults, and I'm Group CFO in Tallink. So the third quarter results, if we start about the key facts, then the key facts have not changed very much. We still have a fleet of 15 vessels, under two strong brands, Tallink and Silja Line , and out of that 15, one third of vessels are currently chartered out. We have restarted all our ferry routes after COVID, except Riga-Stockholm route, and also we operate now for all our four hotels, three in Tallinn and one in Riga. So the key numbers for nine months are the following: Our revenue are over EUR 640 million. We served 4.4 million passengers and transported almost 250,000 cargo units.
Our vessels are in our balance sheets, and therefore, our asset base is about EUR 1.6 billion. Our staff is currently 4,600, and we are very happy that our third strong brand, Club One, our loyalty program, have 3.1 million members. And as we are listed in Tallinn as well as in Helsinki, Nasdaq, we have almost 40,000 shareholders and Finnish Depository Receipt holders. So we are now entered to the low season after Q3, which is typically our high season, but of course, this year, the high season is not so volatile or seasonal as in the past, due to the fact that in 2023, we had several vessels chartered out.
Normally, we have very high July and August, because consumer demand is on the highest peak, but this year we had less capacity in operations, and the rest of our vessels were chartered out, so it makes the whole seasonality more stable. The economic environment, as you all know, is quite challenging, starting from interest rate, geopolitical challenges, energy prices, et cetera, et cetera. Consumer confidence is on very low level, but in spite of that, we managed to have EBITDA in the third quarter over EUR 82 million. Also very glad to see that during this year we have paid a lot of debt, and our net debt to EBITDA has reached already 2.7. As it says, we have chartered out several vessels.
We had five vessels at the end of October, chartered out, three vessels long term and two vessels short term. Happy to say that as we already announced to stock exchange, one short-term charter for Galaxy was extended until spring next year. Also, we had two vessels which returned to just to our disposal during Q3. These are the Romantika and Victoria. And also one of the highlights in the terms of ESG is that all our hotels are now certified with a Green Key eco label. And as we have also informed stock exchange in October, then also the short-term charter for Silja Europa was extended until end of the next year. So this is a summary of our vessels.
On the left side, our operating vessels, we have five cruise vessels on two on Helsinki-Stockholm, one Turku-Stockholm, one Tallinn-Helsinki, and one Tallinn-Stockholm. Then we have two shuttle vessels between Helsinki and Tallinn, and then we have two cargo vessels between Estonia and Sweden. And then we have five chartered vessels. Atlantic Vision is chartered a long time to Canada. Isabelle is also chartered out for a long time, for long period, and is going to be used in Canada. And then Star, or current name is Oscar Wilde, is chartered to Irish Ferries and is sailing between Ireland and U.K. And then on top of that, we have two short-term charters, Galaxy and Silja Europa. Both are located currently in Holland, and as mentioned recently, both charters were also extended.
So if we go to the number, then you can see that in Q1, we had almost 1.9 million passengers, which is 6% less than last year. But the last year, we had still Galaxy and Europa most of the Q3 in operation, so this minus 6% basically reflects lower capacity what we had in operations during this year. Number of cars is also in the same correlation, but of course, we see that the cargo market is going down due to the economic recession. For instance, construction materials do not move almost at all on our vessels, and therefore, the cargo units are down. The number of cargo units is down by 26%, which is proportionally more than in terms of passengers. Our costs are also decreased partly due to charters.
So these vessels are not in our costs and partly also due to the saving in fuel cost. So the total costs are down almost EUR 27 million. Out of that, EUR 20 million is coming from saving in fuel. And this all ends that we had EBITDA for third quarter, EUR 82 million and the net profit, EUR 38 million. Both figures are significantly higher than in Q3 2022. And our assets, our vessels, 1.6 million, are still there and net debt is decreased to EUR 620 million. From the beginning of year, the decrease is almost EUR 120 million.
We had also CapEx of EUR 6 million during the quarter, and these two main things what we had in CapEx, one was planned docking for cruise vessel Baltic Queen in September, which made the vessel much more energy efficient for the future. Also, since Victoria started operating between Helsinki and Tallinn for 22-hour cruise in October, we needed to prepare vessel for operations. If we look the development of sales and result by segments, then you can see that, like I said, the turnover has decreased about EUR 15 million from last year, and the decrease is coming from Estonia-Finland segment, as well as Finland-Sweden segment, and both are related to the reduction of capacity on those routes.
But as it has been mentioned already, the fuel price has been positive to us comparing last year, same period, so even the revenues for segments have decreased and the net result to revenue were positive. Other segment decrease, EUR 5.2 million, is reflecting very much the reduction of chartered vessels. If you look operationally, then we can see that the ticket sales is very much in the same level as last year, in spite of the smaller number of passengers, which basically says that we have been able to keep very strong ticket per passengers. Restaurant and shop sale, on-board sales, is also on very good level, but this is correlated to the number of reduced passengers. Cargo, as it mentioned already from.
We can see that from already from spring this year, the whole market is down about 15%-20%, and this is also here, you can see the reduction of sales by almost EUR 5 million. But on the other hand, I just remind you that cargo is only 9% of our total revenues. 46% is coming from on-board sales, and then 30%, over 30% from ticket sales. So cargo, even it's declining, is below 10% of our total sales. As mentioned already, then our results are now less seasonal since the past. We have now carried 4.4 million passengers. Number of passengers is more or less equal as in the past, and also cargo unit more or less equal to the past, minus reduction of the total market.
And our six- and nine-months revenues are on the level of EUR 640 million. But then when we come to the level of EBITDA, then we can see that we already in nine months exceeded the level of 90, 2022 full year or also we exceeded EBITDA of 2019. So I think that this has been in these economic circumstances, very positive trend. And when we got to the net profit levels, and you can see that the seasonality is now less in the past, when you look 2019 figures, then we had typically very high net profit in Q3, Q2 and Q4 were made a small plus, and then Q1, due to low demand, has been normally loss-making.
We had two and a half years of very harsh COVID time when we made basically loss both years, 2020 and 2021, and then started to recover during the second half of 2022. But then in this year, we have already in nine months made EUR 77 million net profit. And as you can see, the seasonality comparing 2019 is more stable due to the charters. I already mentioned most of the items in our income statement. So yes, sales has decreased slightly, but on other hand the costs are under control and have decreased as well, mostly because of the fuel, but also other costs which have been removed from our income statement due to charters. And the result is that our EBITDA is now EUR 82 million, and EBITDA margin 34%.
On cash flow statement, you can see that after delivery of MyStar at the end of 2022, where we had high capital expenditure, we have now relatively stable and so to say, normal capital expenditure, EUR 6 million per quarter. And we made positive free cash flow of EUR 54 million. And then we had, of course, capital debt financing down payments, what we had during the quarter by 39 million euros. And then we had also interest, which have risen slightly plus, and of course, we have now MyStar-related loan in our balance sheet, so these are some therefore, somewhat higher than in Q3 last year.
Our asset, as I mentioned, not very much changes in our balance sheet, EUR 1.6 billion, and these are our 15 vessels. What is maybe significant is that, our interest-bearing liabilities have been reducing during this year significantly, and we have paid back during the year, loans in the amount of almost EUR 170 million. If you add a positive trend of EBITDA, then we have been able to reduce the net debt EBITDA ratio from 5.4 at the end of last year to 2.7 level. Our loan portfolio is still stable. We have loans or long-term loans for almost EUR 600 million.
The maturity is from 13 months to 11 years, and all of the those loans are euro-denominated. Some of them are fixed rate, some of them are floating rate loans, and totally, we have seven loans. On top of that, we have overdrafts in the amount of EUR 135 million, and as our liquidity position is strong, these overdrafts were not used at the end of September this year. Thank you.
Thank you, Margus. We will now start with the Q and A session. We have received several questions in advance, but if you do have questions, please feel free to post them to the chat function. I will read out the questions, and then Mr. Paavo Nõgene will comment each question. I'll start with the first one: How has the Turku-Stockholm Kapellskär route performed, and are you satisfied with it?
No? Okay. Sorry, there were some technical issue. First, I would like to thank Tallink employees. We have had three and half years survival courses, and I think that we have now succeeded, if you take a look the nine-month result, which is a course of record in Tallink history. Let's hope that in fourth quarter, everything continues a stable way, so we can achieve the record net profit in Tallink history for by end of the year. For the question about the Turku-Stockholm, Turku Kapellskär route, we this route doing well. We have our passenger niche. As you know, we depart, our departure during the low season is much earlier than we had scheduled to Stockholm.
So, our customers have more time on board to enjoy the cruise, and yes, we are fine with Baltic Princess results, and we are not planning any changes there in the near future. As the second question actually is that, does the company have plans to bring back the second vessel? Then I answer this as well, that no, we don't have at the moment such plans, and we don't have also suitable vessel. We made the decision to continue with one vessel only, and we haven't changed this, and not planning to do it in the near future, at least.
Thank you. The Marine Atlantic CEO recently said that Atlantic Vision will be replaced by the new build from China in their fleet. Has Tallink received official word that the charter for Atlantic Vision will not be extended? If so, will Tallink be looking to sell or charter her?
Yes, we can't comment the charter contract negotiation, sadly. So, if there are any decisions coming up, we will let you know via the stock exchange release.
Thank you. The Stockholm-Tallinn route seems to be doing very well. Can we expect a second ship on the route in the coming year, for example, Romantika? Can you update us in general about the plans for Romantika?
Our current results are based on the flexibility of the company and the right capacity on right routes. So at the moment, yes, we can say that Tallinn-Stockholm route doing very well with one vessel. If you add a second one, our estimation is that both vessels can even reach the negative result instead of positive. So no, we don't have plan to add a second vessel at the moment. Of course, we look carefully the market, the changes. There are coming also some extra costs for shipping industry from beginning of 1st of January, which means that we need to apply the emission tax to our tickets. So currently, we plan to continue with one vessel. Regarding Romantika, there are different negotiations ongoing.
Our first priority is to send Romantika to charter, but, as said, before we announce it, when we have something signed and we do it via the stock exchange release.
Thank you. There is another question about Romantika. Did you collect all the receivables from Romantika that was returned earlier than expected? And if there was uncollected receivables, did you make a provision for this in Q3?
We didn't any provision. This is a complicated case, but we have a deposit in our bank accounts. So as the partner company went bankruptcy, this can be quite, quite long bankruptcy process, but we have secured our most important asset. The vessel is back in Estonia, and as said previously, we're looking forward new work for Romantika. So at the moment, everything is okay. Of course, we didn't get the money we were expecting because the charter was ended before planned. But at the moment, we haven't had any losses from beginning back the vessel to Estonia, instead of the losses what vessel earn, as she don't have work at the moment. But generally, deposit covers all our needed works we need to do to bring her back to the standard we would like to have our vessel.
Thank you. There are two questions about dividends. Given the strong result, is there a chance banks will allow you to follow your dividend policy already this year? For example, payout of EUR 0.05 per share. And the other one is, as you have mentioned, returning back the previous dividend policy, at least EUR 0.05 per share, as results are record high, could investors expect a bit higher than EUR 0.05?
Thank you for very good questions. If there are no big surprises affecting our operations, we plan to resume paying the dividend next summer.
Thank you. How large, share of fuel was hedged in Q3, and is hedged for Q4? Hedging policy for 2024?
We have hedging. We have hedged only for the LNG, LNG, and it's around half of our consumption. We need LNG, but generally, it's maybe only 15% from total amount of fuel we need in our operations.
That seemed to be the last question we received.
Yes, thank you for everyone for joining this webinar. Once more, I think that Tallink is now back in the quite good, stable situation. And as said, during the crisis, which actually held more than 3.5 years, our aim was to bring Tallink back stronger than we entered the crisis. And at the moment, we are happy to say that nine-month results showing that this has, this achievement is achieved. And let's hope the fourth quarter going well, and we can announce the record profit of the Tallink history in February next year.
Thank you, everybody, from my side as well. We will hold, or Tallink will hold its fourth quarter results webinar in February 2024. Thank you again, and enjoy the rest of the day.