Accompany today's presentation, not only on the screen in front of you, but also on our website at www.globalshiplease.com. Slides two and three are the standard slides reminding you that today's call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions, and are, by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the Safe Harbor section of the slide presentation. We would also like to direct your attention to the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on our 2024 Form 20-F, which was filed in March 2025. You can find the form on our website or on the EDGAR site, or on that of the SEC.
All of our statements are qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. In the appendix to this presentation, you can find reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to which we will refer during this call to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. With that, I would like to thank you all for joining today and ask that you turn to slide four. First, for those of you who are new to the company, I'd like to set the stage and explain a bit about who Global Ship Lease is and what we do. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2008, we have a market cap of around about $1.3 billion.
We're a leading independent container ship owner and lessor focused on providing operationally flexible, mid-sized, and smaller container ships to container shipping lines, and we're a top-tier provider of such ships and capacity to the world's leading liner companies. Our global footprint and customer base align with the overall growth of containerized trade, which was up around about 5% in 2025, year-on-year, rather than with any limited subset of trade lanes. To put a finer point on that, our business hinges far less on the health of U.S.-China trade relations than may often be assumed, and I'll come back to this point later. We have nearly $2 billion of contracted revenues spread over a 2.5-year average duration, with 96% coverage, of our positions for 2026, and 74% for 2027.
We offer an attractive dividend, and we have worked diligently over the past few years to fortify our balance sheet, achieving low leverage, low break-even rates, strong cash flow visibility, a low cost of borrowing, and strong credit ratings from leading credit rating agencies. We're poised to maximize value throughout the cycle, optimizing the durations of attractive charters amid charter market strength, while also being highly opportunistic and dynamic when countercyclical investment opportunities arise. On Slide five, I want to draw an important distinction between what we do as a container ship owner and lessor, versus what the container liner companies, variously referred to as our customers, charterers or lessees, do. As a lessor, we own and manage the vessels, which are leased to the liner companies, typically under time charter contracts with fixed day rates.
This means that we're responsible for the maintenance, crewing, and technical operations of the vessel, but importantly, it is our customers who are responsible for the fuel and for the sourcing, loading, and discharging of cargo, and for determining the ship's trade deployment throughout the life of the contract. It is also our liner customers who are exposed to the ups and downs of the freight market, which have no direct or immediate bearing on rates earned in the container ship charter market, which is the market in which we operate. In recent years, the liner companies have materially consolidated, have become much stronger financially than was the case in the past, and have more recently been highly acquisitive, often buying ships from owners instead of leasing them.
This has shrunk the size and liquidity of the charter market, which has added scarcity value to the ships that remain in the charter market, to the benefit of those of us who have remained in that space. Turning to slide six. This slide offers a closer look at the segments we operate in, mid-sized and smaller container ships. These ships are the backbone of global trade, the majority of which takes place outside of the so-called main lane East-West trades, like China-U.S. or China-Northern Europe. These ship size segments have only grown in importance in recent years, as supply chains have fragmented and decentralized, and as the world overall has grown more unpredictable and volatile, leading to greater value being attached to optionality and flexibility, which are exactly the qualities our ships provide for the liner operators. We also focus on ships with high reefer capacity.
That is, the ability of a ship to carry refrigerated containers, as refrigerated cargo is the fastest growing and most lucrative segment of the container market. On slide seven, we have included a comparison of where we stand now relative to where we were five years ago. Simply put, the company has been transformed. Revenue, net income, Adjusted EBITDA, and Normalized EPS have all risen sharply, while we have also made tremendous strides in fortifying our balance sheet, reducing our leverage, and earning increasingly positive credit ratings. We even have some investment-grade paper in our capital stack, which is not at all common in shipping. In line with our dynamic capital allocation policy and reflecting the virtuous cycle that we have experienced now for several years, we have done all of this while remaining disciplined and prudent.
Also while increasing our dividend multiple times on the back of our improved free cash flow, resilience, and forward contract cover. Turning now to slide eight. I'll be brief on this slide, as it's fairly self-explanatory. As of September 30, 2025, we have a little over $1.9 billion in contracted revenues, spread over an average of 2.5 years, and across really what is effectively a who's who of the global container shipping world, as you can see here. Turning to slide nine, here we cover how the recent geopolitical volatility has, perhaps surprisingly, actually been supportive of earnings from a container ship owner's perspective. Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty have altered supply chains, fragmenting and diversifying them.
This has resulted in increased complexity and inefficiency, both of which tend to increase demand for shipping capacity, especially operationally flexible capacity such as ours, even if the overall volume of cargo doesn't change very much. In this case, however, global containerized trade volumes, demand in other words, has also continued to grow. Volumes were up around 5% last year, which has further compounded the need for additional capacity. Meanwhile, the mid-sized ship segment remains underbuilt. A shrinking charter market exacerbates this scarcity, and Global Ship Lease finds itself with precisely the type of highly flexible and hard-to-come-by ships that this new age of uncertainty calls for. On slide 10, we look at the situation in the Red Sea.
Previously, by which I mean before the Red Sea was closed by the activities of the Houthis, some 20% of global containerized volumes passed through the Red Sea and Suez, and 34% of global container ship capacity was deployed there. As safety concerns led vessels to reroute around the southern tip of Africa, roughly 10% of global ship capacity was effectively absorbed by these materially longer voyages. This led to an increased demand for ships, and rates in the freight and charter markets rose accordingly. We cannot say for certain when things will return to normal in the Red Sea, but liner operators are looking for a period of sustained safety before changing their networks, which is costly, and returning there in earnest. As far as we are concerned, the safety of our seafarers is and will always remain paramount.
Slide 11 looks at the experience of 2019 as a potential guide on container supply chain evolution in the face of trade tensions. During that time, Trump 1.0 effectively, direct trade between the U.S. and China did in fact reduce, but the diversification of supply chains throughout Asia and increased intra-Asia trade ultimately increased not only total container ship demand, but also the relative share that needed to be moved on mid-sized and smaller ships, like ours, rather than on the jumbo-sized ships shuttling between Shanghai and Los Angeles, say. The current situation remains volatile and unpredictable on almost a daily basis, but many of these same effects, from supply chain diversification to inefficiency to regionalization, are in evidence once again, and thus far at least, with a similarly positive impact on demand for mid-sized and smaller container ships. Turning now to slide 12.
Here we highlight our dynamic capital allocation policy that I touched on earlier. We've worked hard to strengthen our balance sheet and build equity value by de-levering. Increasing our liquidity has allowed us to meet the rising CapEx demands in an inflationary environment with evolving regulatory demands, while also giving us the ability to make opportunistic transactions in a prudent, disciplined fashion. It also allows us to return capital to shareholders through our dividend, which we recently further increased to $2.50 per share on an annualized basis, which is roughly a 7% dividend yield. We also have completed $57 million in opportunistic share buybacks under our current program, with authorization for another $33 million.
Our model is intended to provide investors with a stable and liquid platform to invest in, capitalizing on the upsides of the shipping cycle, while managing on their behalf and minimizing the downside risks. Slide 13 shows our success in accomplishing just that. You can see that we have a history of purchasing vessels at the lower end of the cycle, while remaining patient and locking in the good times of elevated charter rates during the upcycle. Simple in theory, but not always so easy to accomplish in practice. We're very proud of our track record in this regard of creating and stewarding value throughout the cycle, which is facilitated by our dynamic capital allocation and strong balance sheet. Slide 14 highlights the progress we've made in strengthening our balance sheet and building resilience and equity value.
The graph on the left shows how we've reduced our outstanding debt from $950 million at the end of 2022 to an anticipated sub $700 million level at the end of 2025, and we're on track to get that well below $600 million on a status quo basis by the end of this year. The graph on the right tells a similar story, but in starker terms. We've brought our financial leverage down from 8.4x a few years ago to 0.5x today, and this progress is acknowledged in our strong credit ratings. The story continues on slide 15, where we've reduced our cost of debt to a blended 4.34%, down from 7.56% in 2018.
Likewise, we've lowered our daily break-even rates to under $9,600 per vessel per day, even as daily operating expenses have grown in an inflationary environment. Slide 16 shows the order book, which is equivalent to roughly 32% of the fleet on the water. However, this point is very important, this skews heavily to the very big ships. The order book to fleet ratio for the segments where we operate is much lower, at around 15%, with deliveries spread over the next three or four years. Furthermore, the consistently high demand for container ships over the last several years has kept older ships on the water, earning very good money, much longer than is typical.
Taken together, if we were to assume that all vessels 25 years and older were to be scrapped through 2029, which is sort of the visibility on the order book, while the full order book is delivered, the fleet under 10,000 TEU would actually shrink, it would contract by more than 5%. On slide 17, we see a breakdown of the charter market. Our daily break-even rate, just under $9,600 per vessel per day, as I mentioned earlier, is well below the market charter rates that you can see on the right-hand side of this slide. While it's impossible to know where the market will go next, we are proud to have put ourselves in a position of strength. Now let's go to slide 18 to summarize.
So we have forward visibility on our cash flows, having added $778 million in contracted revenues in the first nine months of 2025, bringing our forward contracted revenues to $1.92 billion, spread over an average of 2.5 years. In the midst of geopolitical and macro uncertainty, we've focused on maximizing optionality to both handle the risks and to capitalize on the opportunities that are intrinsic to the cyclical and volatile nature of shipping. We have seen supply chains fragment and become inefficient, resulting in increased demand for mid-sized and smaller container ships, upon which our fleet has long been focused.
We've strengthened our balance sheet with debt at a weighted average cost of just 4.34%, average maturity of 4.7 years, and SOFR capped at 0.64% for roughly 76% of our floating rate debt. Furthermore, we've made tremendous progress on reducing our leverage to 0.5 times, reducing our average break-even rates below $9,600 per day, and achieving strong credit ratings to reflect our robust business and balance sheet. We remain disciplined and opportunistic, with an eye towards fleet renewal as our cash cows begin to age out. As always, we remain committed to returning capital to our shareholders. Our dividend now sits at an annualized run rate of $2.50 per share, which, as I gestured to earlier, is a dividend yield of around 7%.
With that, I'll turn the call back to Nicolas to take your questions.
Thank you. Thank you, Tom. You can turn your camera on if you want, and we can. So we have a number of questions coming through, as, as expected. So let me start with the first question. You have strong forward contract coverage over the next few years, and as these charters that you have on the book right now, they roll off, what are you seeing today in terms of charter demand and duration for mid-size and smaller vessels? Actually, we've been reading that there is a increased demand for the smaller ships, and that liners may be looking for longer charter hire than usually. Is that the case?
Yes. I mean, I think if I go back to what I said about, you know, the positions that we have covered for 2026, which is 94%, and for 2027, which is 74%, a very significant slice of those positions were covered off by way of charters that were put in place with very significant forward starts as a result of the competition between the liner companies for mid-size and smaller tonnage. So the liners' appetite for such tonnage has been sustained. And what is, I think, limiting the fixing activity is the fact that the charter market has shrunk, as I mentioned, because a lot of lines have been buying ships out of the second-hand charter market, and also because the liquidity within that market has been reduced, because pretty much anything which is available for charter...
is chartered. So the appetite is there, very much so, and the charter rates are attractive, and the durations are also attractive. You know, for ships below 4,000 TEU, you'd be looking at, you know, two or 3 three years, of charter duration. For ships of, say, 6,000 TEU -10,000 TEU, you know, maybe you're looking at four or five years. So strong appetite, strong rates, and strong charter durations.
So we have been used to looking at the medium to smaller ships, for, you know, when they go to the charter market for shorter duration. So now we can be looking for longer duration, which means more predictability in terms of your cash flows.
That's right, and I think, you know, if I go back to the point I made in answering your earlier question, the charter market's shrunk, so there's scarcity value that's been given to the ships that remain in it. And the reason it's shrunk is because the liner companies have the calculus that it is cheaper for them to own ships, hence buy ships, rather than chartering them, which obviously the flip side of that is true for us. If it's more lucrative for the lines to buy rather than chartering, it's more lucrative for us to hold on to the ships and precisely to milk them for cash flows by way of the charters. So it's a very, very positive earnings environment at the moment.
So, Tom, can you also comment on the fact that, as you I mean, we have a question. You have shown that the majority of the order book is on the larger vessels. However, the larger, again, the trade lanes served by the larger vessels, they represent about 26% of the containerized trade?
Yep.
So that means that you have the medium to smaller vessels, they represent the majority of the containerized trade, but there, the order book is 10%, or in the smaller vessels, even negative, which should lead to a tighter market, obviously?
Yes. I think so, and I would, I mean, we're often asked, you know, Why is it that the order book is so heavily focused towards the big ships, when, number one, it represents only, you know, in volume terms, a little over a quarter of global containerized trade volumes? And number two, you know, the order book for smaller ships has been largely ignored.
And I would say that actually it's a fairly logical approach for that to have happened or to come to pass, because under a stable trading environment, which was the case up until, you know, a year or two ago, it made tremendous sense for the lines to invest their capital in the really big ships, to drive for economies of scale in the big East-West arterial trades, China to the US, China to Europe. However, what has changed, and it takes the industry a while to adjust to this, is that those big, stable trade lanes are no longer that stable. They're beginning to fragment. Why? China is looking to diversify its risk away from Europe, and particularly from the US, so they're beginning to focus their export markets on Latin America, the Africa trades, the Middle East.
So the flow of cargo out of China is fragmenting, and also, the US is looking to diversify its sourcing of cargo. So the whole thing is becoming much more fragmented, much more inefficient. But because, as I said, when talking about the order book, the order book stretches out to 2029, it's not easy for the industry to retool, let's say, for this new fragmented environment. We, as owners of mid-size and smaller ships, which have been underinvested in the order book but are in huge demand today, are obviously profiting from that.
So Tom, you mentioned about the fragmented market when it comes to the smaller and medium-sized vessels. Within the regional trades, is there any market that is, you know, growing faster than the rest?
I think what's often overlooked, Nicolas, I'm not necessarily saying it's growing faster than the rest, but it is actually the largest single slice of global trade, is the intra-Asia trade, which I think represents roughly 35%-40% of global containerized volume. So I think that's a largely overlooked trade, at least by the trade press, and it's also growing somewhat rapidly, given to the dispersion of the supply chain. So rather than sourcing out of China exclusively, countries are looking to source out of China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, et cetera, et cetera. And this is driving the intra-Asia trade, as well as fragmenting the longer haul trades, both of which helpful for us and for our business.
So we have a question here about the credit quality of your counterparties, if that is ever a source of concern for you. I don't know-
Okay
if you would like to address that, yeah.
Sure. So, we tend to focus upon the top-tier liner companies, all of which have made staggering sums of money over the course of the last few years. So their balance sheets are very robust indeed, and I would say that while we always keep an eye on credit quality, of course, you know, that's a big part of getting this game right. I would say that the credit status of our counterparties is probably in the strongest place it's been historically for the industry.
Thank you. Now, turning to your fleet profile, you mentioned that the reefer segment is one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative segments of the market. Would you like to comment on it, and tell us a bit the positioning of Global Ship Lease in that segment?
So, I mean, container shipping is a comparatively mature industry, and, you know, in a good year, you would expect it to grow in volume terms more or less in line with global GDP. So if global GDP grows at 2.5%-3%, you would expect global containerized trade to grow by more or less that same quantum. The exception to that is refrigerated cargo, and refrigeration is a little bit of a misnomer. They're really controlled atmosphere containers, and as the technology of those containers improves, they can carry an expanding pallet of goods. So it's not just now carrying fresh fruit out of Chile into Northern Europe during the Chilean fruit season, it's now carrying, you know, medicines.
It's carrying, obviously, fresh and frozen, fruit, it's carrying seafood, it's carrying, et cetera. The list goes on. So as a result of the technology, combined with the ability to carry huge volumes at low cost, which is what the container shipping industry does, it's encroaching ever more on other modes of transport, including air freight. So that's why it's growing faster than the overall, containerized trade itself.
In order to be able to carry such reefers, and it's worth saying that these are really lucrative cargoes for the liner shipping companies, you need to have a ship with a lot of installed power that can essentially run these fridges on a reliable basis as the ship goes from A to B, which means you have to invest in high-specification ships with a lot of installed power, and that's exactly what we've done. We've also discovered that, you know, obviously, we're a long way from having experienced a down cycle in this industry, but what we discovered in the past is that refrigerated cargo is one of the more robust demand elements.
Even when the rest of the market is comparatively soft, if you're providing high reefer vessels into the market, there tends to be sustained demand for those vessels, even in the leaner times of the cycle.
Thank you. Now, another question that has come through is, when we look at your fleet expansion, are there any plans in terms of acquiring second-hand vessels or putting in some new build orders?
Sure. Look, I mean, we're not empire builders. So we only buy ships when we like the returns that those acquisitions are going to make in relation to the risk. So risk-adjusted returns is our mantra. So we will only buy or sell ships if we think that's the best way to make money for our shareholders. Now, having said that, Nicholas, we are conscious that ships ultimately are wasting assets and need to be replaced over time. They're cash-generating assets, and if you want to continue to generate cash, you have to replace an aging fleet. So fleet renewal is certainly very high on our radar. But we will only... I'll repeat this point, we will only proceed with any acquisition if the merits of that acquisition make sense on their own terms.
Now, whether that's second-hand tonnage, and we recently acquired three 8,500 TEU ships at the tail end of last year, in a deal that we liked very much, or whether it's new buildings, we're not dogmatic. It's wherever we can make money and make the best risk-adjusted returns.
So we have a question on this topic also, that with charter rates being robust, apparently there may be less motivation for the owners of older vessels to scrap them. Do you see less scrapping activity? Do you think that might impact the supply-demand balance? And when it comes to your fleet, what are the criteria you might be using in terms of selling a vessel or scrapping it?
Sure. Yeah, let me tackle each of those points in turn. You're absolutely right, or whoever raised the question is absolutely right. Because it's been such a strong market, for so long, it's been possible to make a tremendous amount of money, even out of over-aged ships. And of course, as long as a vessel is making money, why scrap it? I think moments of clarity come for ship owners, every five years or so, because every five years you have to put a ship through a Special Survey and Dry Docking, and depending upon the age and size and specification of that ship, it means you've got to put $2 million or $3 million of CapEx into renewing the Special Survey and keeping that vessel trading.
So you will only put that $2 million -$3 million in to retain the option value on the vessel if, in your view, you're going to earn that back and more over the subsequent five years. So I would say every time a ship hits its Special Survey, that's the moment of truth when an owner decides, "Hmm, I don't have enough confidence in the market to invest in doing this, so I'll scrap it out." So far, that hasn't happened. Why? Because the charter market has remained super firm, and everyone's making a tremendous amount of money. However, when the correction eventually comes, that also means that there's a sort of safety valve on the supply side, because there's a tremendous amount of over-aged tonnage, which has made a lot of money for its respective owners. That can be scrapped out if demand were to soften.
So I see it as both a positive, it's on the water because we've been making so much money, and a positive because it can be scrapped out to reduce available capacity, available supply in the event of a downturn.
Thank you. Another question that has come through is on green shipping. I mean, what is your strategy on that? Is it still a topic of high priority?
Green shipping. Yeah, I mean, this has been a 2025 has been a very confusing year, let's say, for the shipping industry. So the global regulator, the IMO, the International Maritime Organization, had been working very hard to put in place a green shipping framework, a decarbonization framework called the Net Zero Framework. It came up for the vote in, I think it was October of last year, and it was actually pushed back. So it was pushed back by the U.S. and Saudi in particular. And I would say that the industry is now in a little bit of a regulatory limbo as far as green shipping is concerned. The European Union continues to push ahead with its emissions reducing regulation, the ETS and FuelEU.
But globally, it's hard to say where things are going. So in the meantime, the industry itself is looking very heavily at LNG as at least a transition fuel, and everyone is looking to try to build as much optionality into any new buildings so that they can pivot from LNG to ammonia, or to methanol, or to whichever fuel becomes the standard of the future. So decarbonization is still a part of everyone's thinking, but the regulatory environment has not provided the clarity that we were all hoping for.
Thank you. Now, let's turn to your capital allocation. You have reduced debt, you have strong cash flows, reduced debt, high liquidity. You've been using share buybacks, dividends, and so on, so you've increased your dividend. So if I am a shareholder, am I looking at essentially continuing your current capital allocation? Am I looking at potentially something new?
No, Nicolas, nothing, nothing new. I would say that our story remains the same. We're reassuringly boring in that respect, in that we say what we do, and we do what we say. So, we will pivot between different allocations of capital, depending upon, you know, the risk environment in play at any given time. However, going back to an earlier question someone raised, clearly, as our fleet ages and as the cash cows begin to age out, I think we will be leaning more into fleet renewal, perhaps, than we have done to date. So that would be perhaps a slight change of emphasis versus where we've been, you know, historically.
So then that means you continue your current share buyback, to continue your current dividend payout, and then you allocate potentially, when the opportunity arises, more into fleet renewal.
I'll be more granular. So, the $2.50 per share dividend, we've sized that very carefully, with a view to it being, you know, something that will remain in place. So the dividend is very important to our story, and returning capital that way is important to our story. Share buybacks, we see as an opportunistic play, so if the capital markets move in such a way where we see that there's a disconnect between the intrinsic value of the business and where the share is being valued as a result of a sort of weird macro change of sentiment, then we will consider share buybacks.
Fleet renewal, I would say, is very much a part of our strategy and will become an increasing focus as time passes.
We have another question on this topic of capital allocation, debt, and so on. Would you consider redeeming your preferred shares, given your focus on decreasing the overall cost of debt or level of debt?
Redeeming the pref. Okay, so just for those who don't know, we've got a little over $100 million, I think $109 million, of 8.75% perpetual preferred shares. They are very covenant light or close to covenant free, and it is treated by the credit rating agencies as sort of quasi-equity. So we see that as being, first of all, given that the volume is rather low, the cash burden of servicing that part of our capital stack is comparatively limited. And we see the benefit of retaining non-dilutive quasi-equity, which is very difficult to place from fresh, but we can grow by way of our ATMs as having more value than the cost we would save by taking it out.
So no, no intention as things currently stand to take it out. We see it as a very useful part of the, the capital stack.
Tom, we have come to the end of our questions, and I appreciate you've always been, you're always very, very punctual and detailed in your replies. So thank you very much for-
My pleasure
... your insight, sharing the presentation, your strategy, and replying to all these questions.
My pleasure.
Uh-
Thank you very much for having me on.
Of course. Now, in conclusion, I'd like to thank everybody for being with us today. And please note that this webinar will soon be available for access upon demand, and it will be available on Capital Link's website at capitallinkwebinars.com, and also at our Capital Link YouTube channel. Actually, the website is www.capitallink.webinars.com, so I stand to be corrected. So Tom, thank you. Thank you to everybody, and we look forward to having you with us again.
Great. Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you.