Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2023 DHT Holdings Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's 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. To withdraw your question, you can press star one and one again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Laila Halvorsen, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining DHT Holdings 1st quarter 2023 earnings call. I am joined by DHT's President and CEO, Svein Moxnes Harfjeld. As usual, we will go through financials and some highlights before we open up for your questions. The link to the slide deck can be found on our website, dhtankers.com. Before we get started with today's call, I would like to make the following remarks. A replay of this conference call will be available at our website, dhtankers.com, until May 11th. In addition, our earnings press release will be available on our website and on the SEC EDGAR system as an exhibit to our Form 6-K. As a reminder, on this conference call, we will discuss matters that are forward-looking in nature.
These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations about future events as detailed in our financial report. Actual results may differ materially from the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements. We urge you to read our periodic reports available on our website and on the SEC EDGAR system, including the risk factors in these reports for more information regarding risks that we face. We have a so-rock solid balance sheet represented by low leverage and significant liquidity. Financial leverage is about 18% based on market values for the ships, and net debt per vessel was $12 million. The quarter ended with total liquidity of $346 million, consisting of $117 million in cash and $229 million available under our revolving credit facilities. You should also note that we have no new building CapEx commitments.
We achieved revenues on TCE basis of $93.9 million during the quarter and EBITDA of $71.9 million. Net income was $38 million, equal to $0.23 per share. We continue our good cost control with OpEx for the quarter at $18.4 million and G&A at $4.6 million. The vessels in the spot market earned $54,600 per day, and the vessels on time charters made $35,000 per day. The weighted average TCE achieved for the quarter was $49,100 per day. Earnings were impacted by 112 scheduled offer days in connection with the installation of exhaust gas cleaning systems and unscheduled off-hire, mainly related to one of our vessels which encountered bad weather damage.
IFRS adjustment for the quarter amounted to $5.4 million, equal to $3,900 per day. Hence, adjusted TCE for the vessels in the spot market was $58,500 per day. The IFRS 15 adjustment is simply due to the timing of when revenue is recognized and is impacted by load dates. These earnings will be transferred into the second quarter. We started the quarter with $125.9 million on cash, and we generated $71.9 million in EBITDA. Ordinary debt repayment and cash interest amounted to $5.4 million, and $61.9 million was allocated to shareholders through the cash dividend pertaining to the fourth quarter of 2022. We invested $14.8 million in our fleet, with $2 million in maintenance CapEx and $12.8 million for installation of exhaust gas cleaning systems.
In January, we terminated seven interest rate swaps and received $3.3 million in connection with the termination. In addition, we refinanced one of our large credit facilities with a net zero effect, and the quarter ended with a $117.5 million of cash. In January, we entered into a $405 million secured credit facility, including a $100 million accordion. This refinanced the outstanding amount on the ABN AMRO facility and is secured by 10 of the company's vessels. It is repayable in quarterly installments of $6.25 million, equal to $0.625 million per vessel, with maturity in January 2029. The new loan bear interest at a rate equal to SOFR + 1.9%, which is equivalent to LIBOR + 1.64%.
The mentioned refinancing is in line with DHT style financing, which includes a 20-year repayment profile and a 6-year tenor. In connection with the refinancing and as mentioned on the previous slide, we terminated seven interest rate swaps that would have matured in the second and third quarter of 2023. We received $3.3 million in cash in connection with the termination. Switching now to capital allocation. Our dividend policy was updated last year. Our key thought behind this was the combination of our strong balance sheet and no new building CapEx makes distributing 100% of net income good business. According to the new dividend policy, we will pay $0.23 per share for the quarter, returning $37.5 million as a quarterly cash dividend.
The dividend will be payable on May 25th to shareholders of record as of May 18th. This marks the 53rd consecutive quarterly cash dividend. The shares will trade ex-dividend from May 17th. In March, our board of directors approved a renewed share repurchase program of up to $100 million of the company's securities. The repurchase program has a 12-month duration and replaced the prior $50 million program. We have no immediate plan to deploy this program, like to have our toolbox equipped should the capital market present the right opportunity. With that, I will turn the call over to Svein.
Thanks, Laila. Our time charter book currently consists of seven contracts. Three of them are coming off during the third quarter. It is our intention and ambition to rebuild the time charter portfolio to the right opportunities with the right customers. We have recently secured a three-year time charter for the DHT Puma. The contract has a profit-sharing structure that includes a fixed base rate of $33,500 per day. The profit-sharing structure is based on certain indexes with the ship's actual economics as such, including the benefits of being an eco vessel fitted with a scrubber. The first tier of earnings from the base rate to $40,000 per day will be allocated 100% to us. Earnings above this level will be equally shared between the customer and us. We have good experience with these structures from past time charters.
As an example I reference, this time charter earned about $62,800 per day during March. We are here updating you on our bookings to date for the second quarter of 2023. We expect 620 days to be covered by our term contracts at an average rate of $34,800 per day. We further expect to have 1,390 spot days for the quarter, of which about 65% has been booked at an average rate of $70,300 per day. Combined, as of today, this indicates bookings of 75% of the total days at weighted average earnings of $55,800 per day.
In the last line, we are estimating the spot P&L break-even rate of $24,900 per day for the second quarter, allowing you to model a net income contribution based on your own assumptions for the unfixed spot days. The bookings for the second quarter to date is a healthy start to the quarter with good prospects for the quarterly cash dividend. We have, however, seen a drop in freight rates since the beginning of the quarter. Current rates for an eco scrubber-fitted vessel starts with a 4 handle, though the current sentiment suggests softening in rates. We discussed this on our prior call, and in order to avoid any misunderstanding, we take the liberty to show this slide again. The estimated P&L break even for the fleet as a whole is about $27,500 per day for the remaining three quarters of the year.
When adjusted for the fixed income that we have, the P&L break even for the spot fleet is about $24,600 per day. For the remaining three quarters of the year, we estimate the cash break even for the fleet as a whole to be $18,500 per day, with the spot ships requiring to make $12,800 per day for the company to be cash neutral. Keep in mind that our cash break even numbers include all true cash costs, OpEx, G&A, maintenance CapEx, cash interest and debt amortization. This illustrates a headroom of about $9,000 per day between cash break even and net income break even for the fleet, with a potential annualized cash flow of some $70 million that will be allocated to general corporate purposes.
This cash flow, combined with the capacity in our balance sheet, will enable us to invest when the time is right and the opportunities offer rewarding prospects. Here we provide you with an update on our project to retrofit the remainder of our fleet with exhaust gas cleaning systems. We have to date completed 6 retrofits of 8 of the retrofits and just have 2 retrofits remaining. We have not fixed the time for these 2 retrofits , but intend to use air pockets in the freight market to execute them. The project execution thus far has been according to plan, both from a cost perspective and in terms of plan or fire days for the ships. The fuel spreads have alongside weakening refining margins come off, but are still offering premium earnings for the ships with systems installed.
We now have 21 ships or 23 ships operational with systems and plan to be a 100% fitted within this year. As we have mentioned earlier, these ships are the focal point of clients wanting to pursue term charters. On this slide, we illustrate developments in seaborne crude transportation over the past 2 years or so and ton-mile development over the same time period. As you are all aware, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine disrupt the trade patterns which drove premium earnings for our smaller siblings. With a slightly longer retrospect following the COVID setback, it has been a fairly steady and positive development. Importantly for DHT in particular, the graph on the left shows VLCCs handling close to 50% of seaborne crude oil on a nominal basis.
Unsurprisingly, due to its size and competitive cost of transportation, it represents about 70% when measured on a ton-mile basis. The VLCC is the true workhorse of the crude oil transportation market, and we think it's reasonable to expect this to prevail going forward. These are extraordinary times from a geopolitical perspective, and our business is, as one would expect, impacted. We shall not offer you any geopolitical analysis or act as an oil market expert. That would be beyond our capacity. However, lifting the beams a bit, the three basic pillars for our business are positive. We have a growing demand for oil. We got increasing transportation distances and basically no new supply coming on. We think we are in the early innings of experiencing the benefits of these pillars, and it would likely continue to be volatile and seasonal.
OPEC+ surprised the market with its announcement a month ago. War, sticky inflation and increased interest rates, falling refining margins, raising concerns about demand, and certain financial turmoil are all tempering near term expectations. Maybe OPEC+ was ahead of the curve by trying to reduce the impact on oil price now and targeting a higher price for the forecasted recovery later this year. Our two cents only. China is however opening up and increasing consumption, and we do have a sense that non-OPEC supply will step up to compensate at least for parts of this impact, and that will mean longer transportation distances. The tanker market has historically been prone for disruptions. As we speak, there are tankers involved in seizures in the Middle East Gulf.
A certain significant flag state issued a security alert to its members. We understand some owners sailing under this flag have concerns about entering the area. If this plays out, it can abruptly decrease supply of ships in this highly important loading area. This certainly has risks to the upside in the freight markets. Unrelated, there was recently an explosion followed by a significant fire and fatalities in an older tanker anchored in Southeast Asia. We are seeing incidents and now accidents related to ships in the shadow fleet. If this trend evolves, it could make users of these ships, authorities controlling territorial waters in which they transit, and terminals accepting these ships think twice about accepting and using them. If this plays out, it could remove capacity, and again, it certainly has risk to the upside.
There are some near-term headwinds in the market, but we think one should not let this blur the long-term tailwinds supported by the key market pillars. Going forward, our plan is consistent and we will stick to our nipping. You should expect continued strong discipline in executing our business model and strategy. We have a great team of people in a no-nonsense company culture, all focused on delivering safe, reliable services to our customers and strong results for our shareholders. We are tuned to operate in the tanker market with a quality fleet of ships, all in the water able to generate premium revenues. A rock-solid balance sheet, a low-cost structure with robust break-even levels. We think returning 100% on net income to shareholders to be fair and square. With that, we open up for questions. Operator?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you want to withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We'll now take our first question. Please stand by. This is from the line of Chris Tsung from Webber Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Good morning. It's fine, Svein. How are you?
Doing very well. Thank you, Chris.
Good. On that time charter for the Puma, just to confirm, if rates are $50,000, DHT gets $40,000 plus another $5,000, the 50% on the upside over $40,000. Is that right?
Yes. Great. Above $40,000 a day on the, on the calculator is the 50/50 share of income. I think what's important to recognize there is that there is a pre-agreed calculator using this ship's specific economics. This is not a standard index ship. The eco benefits of the ship and the scrubber benefits of the ship is in that calculation.
I see. For the increase or the option at the year-end, will that increase for the base alone or is that for both the base and the profit share?
The base and the threshold for the profit share will increase.
All right, great. That was one question. Just on the second one, on your cash flow statement, I've noticed that investments in vessels are a little bit higher than expected. Is that just for one scrubber? How should I think about, what, you know, future investments could look like?
Laila, you wanna re-reply to that?
Yes. That's not just one scrubber, no. That relates to the scrubbers installed during the quarter. It's also worth mentioning that the cash flow effect is not timed exactly at the time of the installation. I hope that clarifies.
Okay. All right. Sure. Maybe just one final one before I pass it on. Just hearing about that vessel that was damaged by bad weather, how long will that vessel be out for?
The vessel is back in service, she was out of service for a while in the first quarter. You know, we had some, you know, rough weather damage and that's been repaired and that took a little while so. The ship is back fully classified and servicing its customers.
Perfect. Thank you guys for your color. I'll turn it over.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from Jonathan Chappell from Evercore. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good afternoon. I'm going back to the Puma contract. That's a terms that we haven't seen really in some time across the industry, maybe from the last boom cycle pre global financial crisis. Are those the types of contracts now that are becoming more prevalent, given some of the volatility in the market and some of the long-term tailwinds, that you mentioned in the presentation?
I'd say no. You know, this is a customer on some people we know well. It's not sort of a typical structure that is on offer, I think, in any way, but it has been developed between both the customer and ourselves, and it sort of worked well for both parties. I'd say liquidity in sort of term business is thinner now than it was, you know, say in the fall and maybe in the winter. Very few things got executed and the bid-ask spread was quite significant during the 1st quarter, hence basically nothing got done.
You know, we try to have close discussions with all our customers. We do have a sense that there is a, you know, genuine concern about supply or ships over the longer term as the order book is, you know, a good example of. Also because a significant portion of the fleet has migrated into sort of the shadow trades. The compliance fleet has shrunk quite meaningfully. It also means that there are less sort of operators or close service providers that they would like to engage in term business with. We expect there to be more opportunities to develop, you know, good cash flows with longer terms. We've had some brief discussions on both 3 year, 4 year and 5 year opportunities, one even longer.
You know, it takes a bit of time to develop and there's always a little bit of spread in what the two parties want. We have a sort of clear focus on an ambition in developing these. I think over the next, say, call it 6 months - 12 months, you should expect DHT to present more opportunities in different shapes and forms, but to give better visibility on earnings and becoming hopefully in the long run, a more investable business, not just a trading business.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you. My second question, you mentioned China demand, reopening, hopefully tail. I was hoping maybe you can explain a little bit on how you've seen that transpire so far. As you noted, the market has weakened of late. OPEC cuts really haven't kicked in yet. I mean, we're just in the early part of it, maybe a couple weeks of V- booking. As the V is being a good proxy for kinda long haul Chinese demand, and maybe some other industries, raising some yellow flags about the China reopening, has it been what you expected it to be? What gives you the confidence that the country will soon go back strong on its crude imports?
I think as we said in the press release, right, we have to sort of really see the details of how these cuts will play out. I think one sort of reasonable, or is also a lot of sentiment or psychology in this market, right? Just a few weeks back, the AG East market, or Middle East to the Far East market traded at a premium to the Atlantic markets. Now sort of that this sort of, if not reversed, is probably leveled out. That's sort of a reflection on the sentiment of expected oil coming out of the Middle East. China is for sure reopening, and we've seen the latest numbers that, you know, refinery runs are higher than what they were on prior months and prior quarters.
We do think that these runs are primarily tuned to increase in domestic consumption. We see now in the Golden Week now, the mobility in China is a, is a huge increase in flights and driving and whatnot. We're not suggesting this is a proxy for everything going forward, but it is an example that the society is moving in a more normal fashion. Golden Week is an annual event, right? It tends to move people in the same way as maybe Thanksgiving in your country. That, that is happening. Then, again, it's a bit too early to say how it plays out. Will all the caps be implemented, you know, by the meter or, you know, I don't know frankly.
Some level of impact we think it will have, but oil price has not really been able to hold up, right? You know, I think we need to see it really happening in practice, at least for the oil price to respond. Let's see what happens on that. I think that is might be a good indication on how this will develop.
All right. Thank you for the thoughts, Svein.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from Omar Nokta from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hey, hey guys. Good afternoon. Svein, definitely some good color you gave in your opening comments and then just now talking with John about, you know, the sort of the way the market is set up. Wanted to ask, obviously the OPEC cuts are, you know, they just started, and we've seen the impact on VLCC rates and, you know, you had the headwinds in the near term off of that. How do you think over the next, you know, several maybe call it three to six months, how the potential to replace those barrels are shaping up? Do you think there's an opportunity for cargoes out of the Atlantic Basin to potentially replace what we're not seeing from OPEC?
I think there's a, you know, Brazil has increased their consumption steadily over quite a while now, and they're up to 3.1 MMbpd, 3.2 MMbpd . They are, you know, supplying the Far East market in particular. We still have one ship on a term contract to the biggest producer in Brazil, and they do a lot of spot business, and there's still a lot of inquiries on that. That's sort of, I think, the most obvious area. West Africa in general is lagging a little bit behind, and they haven't been able to you know, step up production-wise and for a variety of reasons. They have the opportunity to sort of step aside for these voluntary cuts, right? Because they have other operational issues.
To what extent U.S. will be able to continue to grow, you might sit closer to the action than what we are. The latest sort of forecast we saw that people expect increased production of maybe 0.5 MMbpd a day this year. Europe has been an increasing, you know, an important market for U.S. barrels, and we've done a number of shipments on the ACC to Europe, which is sort of a new business. There's still sort of steady exports going to China in particular from the U.S. There might be some there.
North Sea is now basically all Europe, we don't really expect that to go to the Far East to the extent it used to do unless you get sort of willingness to pay for it, i.e., sort of the higher freight cost in particular, right? It's predominantly Brazil and, secondary, maybe the U.S. has something to deliver.
Got it. Thanks for that color. Then maybe just sort of, you know, there's been a lot of discussion here over the past few weeks about refining margins having come off from their, you know, very high levels earlier this year. You know, how do you see that translating into the market? Are we seeing an effect of that? You know, lower crack spreads, is that impacting vessel demand? How do you see that going forward if crack spreads were to remain at these sort of levels? Does that impact the VLCC trade or is it somewhat insulated from that?
I think it's worth noting that, the refining spreads are still positive, so the refiners are making money. As long as they're profitable, they tend to keep the runs going, right? It's more in the, in the event that they turn sort of neutral or, you know, even if it's theoretical negative, then of course, then runs will pare back and that will impact the, you know, the crude, feedstock immediately. I think for now it's still, it's still okay. Of course, this is an indication of maybe, you know, maybe supply for refined products was too tight at some point, lifting this margin and maybe now it's sort of getting into a more balanced market.
Whether it's sort of fallback in demand or whether it was just lack of supply that created those elevated spreads, I'm not an expert on that. Of course, it's something we have to follow because if they get too close to zero, that will impact the transportation of feedstock.
Yeah, makes sense. Thanks for that. Maybe just one final one, just a follow-up to your answer to John about the time charters. You mentioned, you know, for us to see, you know, for us to expect the DHT to do a few things later this year, customer-wise. Is that just specific to time charters or do you see an opportunity to take maybe advantage of this potential soft patch that's ahead and acquire assets?
So far there's no signal of at least estimated asset values to be softening. If they do, in our book, for us to make this sort of attractive opportunities, there has to be a quite meaningful correction in values. You know, there's different ways for us to invest. As Laila commented on, we have extended a share buyback program, but not only extended it, but also increased it in size. The reason for this is that number one, of course, the equity value of the company has increased as we have delevered, so we wanted to have more muscle.
Also, you know, this is a period that if for some other reason, not just so specifically in the tanker market, but if for capital market or economic reasons, things, you know, reprice negatively, buying our own ships through buying back stocks is maybe the most interesting investment as opposed to buying hard assets. We wanted to have our toolbox ready and if these opportunities, you know, come along, not that we necessarily wish for it to happen, but if it happens, we want to be ready.
Great. Oh, very good. Thanks, Svein.
Just as an example, right? Between the summer of 2021 and summer of 2022, we bought back approximately 6% of the company. At that time, you know, very attractive share prices, but from an investor perspective. We have been able to do this in the past and, you know, it could well happen in the future as well.
Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. This is from the line of Frode Morkedal from Clarksons Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Svein.
Hello, Frode.
I have a question on the VLCC order book, which is now approaching record lows. As you have seen, I guess there's been some new orders for LR2 product tankers recently. First, could you just talk about what do you think is holding back, new order sort of VLCCs? Secondly, what needs to change for people to start ordering vessels again?
I guess, you know, some of the interest in LR2 is maybe a reflection of the phenomenal performance that asset classes had over the last year or so, right? They really delivered, you know, tremendous earnings. Of course, that might suggest to some people that this time is different, but things are changing. I can't say whether they are or not, but I would suspect that that is the sort of good reason why people feel confident about that asset class. We are not, you know, studying that in, in detail, so I think other people are probably better placed to comment on that. There's also been contracted some Suezmaxes.
I think there's some simple reasons to this, is that prices now nominally are of such significant value that it is a lot of money to fork out, right? Recently, Suezmaxes have been done in the $70 million, there's some done in the low $80 million from maybe some of the really top yards. Compared to asking prices in Korea between $125 million and $140 million for sort of a VLCC. Just the ticket itself is significant. I guess the barrier, you know, is more, you know, edible to people at a smaller, at a smaller ship class. You could probably do things in China on the VLCC at a lower price.
I think another key consideration for many people with also with this amount of money being involved in such investment is that, you know, the ships will only deliver in the second half of 2026, probably today. You're looking at having dead capital for three and a half years before you're gonna earn any money. These forward deliveries are not offering any opportunities to, for instance, secure fixed cash flow reflecting on the value of the investment. Whereas you have another market, LNG, which is also significant order book, but where a lot of it is being built against long-term contracts. I would think that maybe some of the private owners that have typically been engaged in tankers, they find the LNG sector very attractive. One LNG carrier costs about twice as much as a VLCC.
You get delivery forward, okay, but you also get a long-term contract in 5 years , 7 years , 10 years , 15 years. It's a sort of different business proposition that's attracting, you know, capital away from maybe large tankers for a while. We think that this just bodes very well for our space, so we welcome it. I think those are sort of reasonable and rational reasons why you haven't seen ordering in large tankers yet.
in order to this to change, I guess what needs to change? vessel values needs to rise above new build prices, something like that?
I think, you know, if, you know, that happens, then it's because the immediate cash flow is significant, right? Justifying those investments. I think if delivery time shortens meaningfully, so if certainly it was, you know, 18 months -24 months for delivery, that might change the picture a bit. Also that alternative investments are, you know, fewer or maybe not as attractive. I think it will take a bit of time and if we move forward, you know. Maybe prices, you know, will adjust. Of course, we have also inflation on equipment and labor costs, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't mean that sort of new building prices will fall back to where they were two, three years ago.
I don't think there's gonna be a lot of ordering actually in these fees for a good time to come. You know, we will take it for sure.
Perfect. That's encouraging.
Yeah, we think so.
My second question is very simply, you mentioned DHT style financing. Could you just elaborate on that, what that means? Thank you.
Yeah. As Laila mentioned, and we said on a few calls, there's two sort of key elements to it. One is that, compared to what is norm in the market, is that as opposed to doing a five-year tender on the loan, we do a six-year tender on the loan. Key reason for that is that we typically like to refinance before debt becomes short term, which will be, you know, the last 12 months of a loan. If you want to refinance on a five-year-old loan, you need to do it at the end of the fourth year. It becomes rather short project compared to the fees that you have to pay up front, et cetera.
We managed to negotiate this with the banks to get it into a six-year period. Essentially we look at the refinancing latest at the end of the fifth year. That makes more sense to us. Secondly, is that the amortization of the loan is based on a 20-year economic life on a ship, assuming it's a new building. If it's a 10-year-old ship, it's a 10-year remaining life, right? Whereas most of the loans that you will see in commodity shipping like tankers, they have tenures or repayment profiles for 15 years , 16 years , 17 years , maybe 18 years, meaning higher amount per year, right? Or steeper, slightly steeper profile. We like this because 20 years has supported the cash break-even levels for us.
We paid probably, you know, a little bit extra on the margin to achieve this, but we think that has been a, you know, meaningful trade-off in how we want to run the company. There are also a number of other features inside this that is not disclosed in, you know, in detail, but that makes us manage just our balance sheet and our debt side very efficiently, we think. This is how it's not set in stone. It's at least a good practice when we do financing, that it's a repeat really of our terms every time we do it, we do with these features.
Perfect. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question. Please stand by. This is from Robert Silvera from Silvera & Associates . Please go ahead.
Hi, fellows. Thank you very much taking my questions. One of the things I wanted to compliment you on is a few years ago, two to three years ago, we were at $900 million + in debt, now you're down significantly to $369 million. In that interim period of time, for whatever reasons, I think one of the greatest ones is the tremendous reduction in debt, the way you ran the company and the price of the shares has more than doubled in that interim period of time. It reflects good management and I think significantly the reduction of debt.
One of the things you talked about as far as the new order book, could you mention what you see as having happened in the scrap rate? Do you see the scrap rate staying steady, increasing because of time on ships, et cetera? Could you give us a picture of that?
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, now we're essentially seeing zero scrapping on large tankers. Brokers estimate that you could get about $520 per lightship ton for a tanker or VLCC. The VLCC are typically, they have a weight between, call it 42,000 tons and 48,000 tons, depending on the design and the yard and size and so forth. There's nothing going on. I think a key reason for that is that the operators in the shadow markets, the gray or black for sanctioned trades, call it whatever you like, they've had a willingness and an ability to pay a significant premium for all tankers way above the theoretical scrap price. It's sort of been an alternative market or alternative use or to get rid of these ships.
You know, the ships, these ships, they serve a purpose, if you like, much less productivity than the compliant fleet. It is a bit of a nuisance. As we've said earlier, we think this could be sort of the new scrapping at some point, that these ships are essentially just disappearing from the trade eventually. Some of them are getting very, very old. In the near term, it doesn't seem to be willingness to, from the selling side to sell into scrapping because the price you get is lower than selling it for further trade into sanction business. For the scrap yards, they don't have the ability to pay the price that, you know, the competition is willing to pay.
It's sort of a very big bid-ask spread that is just putting that market to complete halt.
You'd say net, net, the fleet is staying pretty much the same size then?
Yes. For the foreseeable future, I would think so, in the maybe next year, maybe 2 years. You know, then some of these ships are getting very long in the tooth, and many of them will have to go to dry dock and, you know, spend money. Some of them will have to install maybe ballast water systems to be able to trade depending on the trade they do. There, there's gonna be CapEx for some of these ships. Then their remaining life is so short, so maybe some of them will just say, you know, bite the bullet and say, "Okay, let's get rid of this lady now," and they will move on. I think also this is the reason why the operators in that trade have bought older ships because they know that that market hasn't got long legs.
It's a period for 1 years, 2 years, 3 years they can play around with this, and then it's a risk of that market disappearing if you understand what I'm saying.
Yeah. Thank you. Very good. Anyhow, you talk about share buybacks. As a shareholder with thousands of shares, I'd like to put my input in from the standpoint of we would like to see you not do share buybacks at all, but rather accelerate further debt reduction. Say, take the over $100 million of cash and apply $25 million to debt. That brings me to the idea of what would be your breakeven if you got down to, in a theoretical way, if you got down to zero debt, where would our breakevens go to from where they are today?
If you look at our past sort of practice, number one, of course, we are committed to the cash dividend, and the formula we have on that, 100% net income, so that's gonna be in place. If at all we were to consider buybacks in the current environment, it will not be at the expense of cash dividends. It will be in addition if we decided to do it. What we have done in the past when it comes to buybacks, we've been quite opportunistic. It's been in pockets where the share price had been, you know, really dislocated from the prospects and the general market, whereby we felt that that was like buying a ship in the market just at a very big discount.
It was sort of adding earnings growth to the company, if you like, by reducing the outstanding shares. It has sort of a third priority. We will still like to continue to delever. I think, you know, with the cash flow we are generating, even if we were at zero net income, we still generate cash that will enable us to do maybe a bit of both or with priority potentially towards delevering. In order of priority, cash dividends, delevering, and then buybacks.
Well, we as shareholders in our group, particularly favor the reduction of leverage. One of my last question would be this. Over this past year, the number of shares increased by over 333,000. Are we to expect that this year that we're in now, we can expect the same kind of increase again?
The company has a long-term incentive program in place for board and management that involves stocks. It's predominantly or it's restricted stock units. They are mostly, you know. They have some vesting criteria. There's different structures and tranches. We, you know, when we present our annual 20-F, then you will see what that has been done in the prior year, right? But we are not printing shares to raise money or selling stock in the market. It's only related to the long-term incentive program for board and management.
Okay. That's pretty much it for me. I just wanna compliment you guys. I think you've done a tremendous job over the last few years, doing debt reduction and, just running the company in a difficult situation. Thank you very much and, we'll look forward to being in on the next call.
Thank you, sir. It's appreciated.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the conference back to the speakers.
Well, thank you very much to all, for listening in on DHT and following, our company. That's most appreciated, and we're wishing you all a continued good day. Bye-bye.
Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.