This series, company management highlights the company's current operations, business development, growth prospects, and sector outlook. We are happy to have with us today the senior management team of Navigator Gas: Mr. Mads Peter Zacho, the CEO; Mr. Gary Chapman, the CFO; Mr. Oeyvind Lindeman, the CCO; and Mr. Randy Giveans, the Executive Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Business Development. Navigator Gas is the owner and operator of the world's largest fleet of handysize liquefied gas carriers and a global leader in the seaborne transportation services of petrochemical gases such as ethylene and ethane, liquefied petroleum gas, and ammonia, and owns a 50% share through a joint venture in an ethylene export marine terminal at Morgan's Point, Texas on the Houston Ship Channel, USA. Navigator Gas's common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NVGS.
In terms of logistics, we begin with our company presentation, followed by a live Q&A. Please note that participants can submit their questions through the Q&A button on your screen during the webinar. Your questions will be answered during the Q&A session. Before we begin our webinar, I'll kindly note that this discussion is strictly for informational and educational purposes and should not be relied upon. The webinar does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities, or investment advice, or advice of any kind, and Capital Link bears no responsibility for the content. Let us now begin with our discussion. I'd like now to pass the floor to Mr. Zacho. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you so much, and please pass us on to the next page. Welcome, everyone. It's a pleasure to present Navigator Gas to you, and look forward to interesting questions afterwards. Please move to the next page. And here you can see the four of us. So it's Randy, Gary, Oeyvind, and myself, and we'll be presenting in sequence. Please move to the next page. And next. Okay, good. This is where you see the overview of Navigator Gas. We're the world's largest owner and operator of handysize gas carriers. And you can see here our fleet composition. We own and operate 43 handysize gas carriers. 16 of these are ethylene-capable. We own nine small gas vessels and five mid-sized gas carriers, of which four are ethylene-capable. And on top of that, we have six new buildings on order that will be delivered 2027 to 2028.
In addition to the vessels that we own and operate, we also have the 50% ownership in Morgan's Point, the world's largest ethylene export facility, which has a capacity of 1.55 million tons per year. As you can see on the map, we have an extensive office network as well. We are represented in all the time zones in Asia, Europe, and the Americas as well. Please move to the next page. This is a little quick overview of our history. So we came into operation in 2000 with five handy-size gas carriers. We were listed in 2013, and in 2016 we moved into the mid-size segment as well. Around 2020, we initiated the Morgan's Point terminal and had the first cargoes delivered from the terminal. In 2021, we merged together with Ultragas, which brought 18 vessels into our company.
And that's how we've grown in the past. We've done a number of mergers and picked up second-hand vessels, through acquisitions as well. So gradual growing our fleet, during the first 20 years of operation. We announced that we would expand the Morgan's Point terminal, back in 2023, and it came into operation now in 2025. And in the meantime, we initiated our capital return policy also in 2023, and that was the kickstart for share buybacks and dividends, which Navigator had never done before, but which is something that we will talk a little bit more about. It's a key focus for us. We've started ordering vessels for the first time in 2024, after a number of years being absent from the new building market and with the order book now consisting of six vessels, four ethylene carriers and two ammonia carriers.
And then you can see here in last year, 2025, it's been a busy year with the expanded terminal coming on stream with more share buybacks for the third year in a row of $50 million, and with the ordering of the two ammonia carriers. Last thing we did before ending the year was that we announced an increase in the dividend in the cash dividend payout, and we look forward to doing more of that. We're pretty active in the recent past couple of years, and it's been 25 years of history. Let's move to the next one. This is an overview of our fleet here. On the left and on the right, you can see an overview of our customers. And when you look at the customers on the right-hand side, you can see it's pretty much who is who in petrochemicals, transportation, and cargo ownership.
These are the most demanding and the largest and the most creditworthy counterparts that we can have. We've had no credit losses on these very strong counterparts. If you look at the left-hand side, you can see the subsegments of our fleet, and you can see here that we have a number of vessels in the handysize segment and mid-size and small gas. What goes across is that you can see all the green tick marks in the middle. Those tick marks really indicate that most of our vessels can carry a multitude of different types of cargoes from butane, ammonia, propane, ethane, and ethylene. That's an important point because that's the reason behind the stability in our cash flows. Because if one market subsegment is weak, we can reallocate our fleet and trade other types of cargoes.
That really explains, you could say, the stability in the rates in our segment and also the cash flow generation that we are seeing. In the bottom, you could see here, 57 vessels is what we own and operate, and with 32% of the handy-size market, we are the clear market leader with quite a long way down to the second largest operator, and that has important consequences for our the way that we can interact with the customers and understand the market dynamics as well. Please move to the next page. This is really an overview of the trading patterns that we are seeing. A lot of the cargoes that we are moving originate from Texas, from the Americas, and transported either to Asia or to Europe. Those are the long routes. They are the most important part of our earnings days.
But we also have a number of, you could say, regional trades where we are distributing the cargoes in Europe, in Asia, and in the Americas as well. So it really is a global trading pattern, that you see, and hence the location of our offices and our teams. Next page, please. I don't know if you noticed, but we just had Webber Research and Advisory. They brought out just before Christmas their latest ranking on corporate governance. They have an ESG scorecard where they map out, you could say, the corporate governance of 64 mainly listed shipping companies. And over the past five years, Navigator Gas has moved from 16 to 11 to seven to three and to first place, just recently.
We're incredibly proud of that, but it's also a reflection of the work that we've done over the past years in really improving our corporate governance, ensuring that there are no conflicts of interest between the company, the major shareholders, and the financial investors in our stock. We'll continue to ensure that we are progressing on this and we'll try hard to defend this first place. This is an important thing for us and a big focus area. Within ESG as well, you can see that we are working where it makes business sense. We're looking for markets in clean ammonia, in CO2, and we expect over the mid to long term to derive an important part of our earnings from these types of cargoes.
But as I said again, we'll only do that once those markets are maturing and developing so that we can do so, profitably. Please move on to the next page. And with that, I'll just pass it on to Oeyvind, who'll give you a quick overview of our commercial operations.
Thank you, Mads. I'll shed a little bit more light on the supply and demand situation within our segment and then talk about rates at the end, so I think what is important to take away from Mads' initial comments is that of stability and flexibility, so the fleet we have is very unique in the way that it can carry different cargoes, different grades, which makes utilization high, earnings stable, and cash flow production. The cargoes we carry are very essential for the global demand. LPG, which is propane and butane, services the energy demand in many places of the world. The petrochemical cargoes we carry services consumer goods production, so that is, when we talk about ethylene and propylene and ethane, that is that, and then we have, we do ammonia, and that is, goes into fertilizer production for food and agricultural production.
So you can see there are clearly very different demand drivers in energy, consumer goods, and food production. And we are participating in all three in a heavy way. So that is very, that is one thing to remember. And if you look at the next slide, on our earnings days mix, you can see this, in real life. So here we are depicting the entire fleet, the Navigator fleet, and what they are carrying. And you can see the light blue is petrochemicals, a fairly large chunk of our earnings days, i.e., the cargoes we carry. LPG is the middle blue, and then ammonia. So it's the interplay between what the ships are doing and the different dynamics that are changing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
We are able to capture, move in one, move out of another one depending on those dynamics at any given point in time. I think that is important to keep in mind. If we go to the next slide, Mads mentioned a little bit about the subsegment. The ships are quite complex, slightly different. We're not going to go into the exact details of the different ships, but what they do is that we are putting the ships where they're supposed to be working or carrying cargoes. On the ethylene ships is the top right. You can see what they are doing. They are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: ethylene and ethane. If you look on the bottom left, these are the semi-refrigerated ships that we have. We have 23 of them, mostly doing LPG.
And then the fully- refrigerated ships, bottom right, are mainly doing ammonia. So here you can see the interplay, on the different ship types we have and the three different key cargo segments we operate in. And if you put it all together, that comes out with a fleet utilization, which is shown on the top left. And we are back up to sort of 90% utilization level for third quarter. And that is, in our consideration, a healthy market. But what drives all this, this growth, and so forth, we're going to get into that now on the next slide, is where does the earnings days come from? On the right-hand side, the larger image is exactly that. So the 60% marks on North America, the light green, 60% of what we do for last year was derived and loaded from North America.
Very, very, very important. You can see the other areas, the continents of the world where the cargoes are going. From North America, it goes to Europe, not surprisingly, and also Far East, you can see the demand side there as well. What is more important is the linkage then between our fleet and our onshore investment, this world's largest ethylene export terminal. On the table on the left on our North America, you can see that 60% of those 60%, 67% of the 60% of our earnings days comes from petrochemical. If you scale back five years ago or even ten years ago, that was very, very little. North America, particularly the U.S., is very important. On the next page, we can understand why it is important today, but also in the future.
Where does the growth come from? It is very much zoomed in on U.S. natural gas liquids production. Even with a low oil environment, natural gas liquids production is increasing. And expectation is that by in three years' time, by 2028, LPG, ammonia, and petrochemical global seaborne trade will exceed 200 million tons from 175. So there's a growth story there, which is great. On the supply side, there's very low order book on the next slide. In our segment, there's about 11%. There's also an aging fleet. So we are very comfortable in the supply picture. In the handysize segment is the one with the dotted line. And that is great. So if you add the supply and demand picture for the handysize segment, we are quite optimistic about the future over the next few years.
In terms of rates, where we are today, on the next page, you can see the bold line. So the green, which is ethylene, the dark blue is the semi-refrigerated, and the lighter blue is fully- refrigerated. They're a little bit different, but they have stabilized and at a very healthy level, which Gary will mention what our cash break even and so forth, which is very comfortable. So all in all, quite a robust situation at the moment for the handysize and Navigator Gas in particular. So over to you, Gary.
Thank you, Oeyvind. Hello, everyone. I'm just going to take a few minutes to sort of summarize our latest financial results and position and hopefully leave you with a good sense that Navigator is in a strong position today. So here on this page here, you can see our recent third quarter, 30th of September last year results. And we were very pleased to be able to report strong results and some data points that were even record-breaking for Navigator. And that's despite the ongoing political backdrop that we've seen, starting in early 2025.
The results were a function of many things, things like, certainly what Oeyvind has mentioned around cargo diversification, geographical flexibility, also our market position, as Mads mentioned, but also our strong financial foundations and obviously the people side of our business as well, particularly with the customer relationships that we have and the strong market knowledge that we've gained over many years. We reported the highest quarterly time charter equivalent in the last 10 years of $30,966 per day, leading to our highest quarterly EBITDA record of $85 million. Just for those of you that are not aware, the time charter equivalent, or TCE, it's a commonly used shipping measure of the average daily revenue performance of a vessel or a fleet. It's sort of designed to make different vessels and different time periods more comparable.
Utilization of our ships and our fleet rebounded in this third quarter up to 89%, practically at our preferred benchmark, which is 90%. That's up 5% compared to the second quarter of 2025. We sold a vessel in the third quarter, the Navigator Gemini, as part of our fleet renewal strategy for net proceeds of over $30 million, resulting in a book gain of around $12.6 million. Our ethylene terminal throughput volumes from our Morgan's Point facility were solid at 270,000 tons, resulting in a quarterly profit of around $3.3 million. We expect our vessel operating expenses, which are a big part of our business, to be on track to meet our budget this year.
After considering some other non-cash unrealized movements on our interest rate swaps, depreciation, general and admin cost tax, etc., overall for the third quarter, our net income was $33 million, which is our highest quarterly net income on record, with basic earnings per share of $0.50, which is our highest quarterly EPS in the last ten years. The next page, as Oeyvind was mentioning, shows our latest estimated all-in cash break even for 2025, which at $20,510 per day per vessel is more than $10,000 per day below our average TCE revenue for the third quarter of 2025, as mentioned. The graph on the right shows how this headroom sort of developed over the last few years, and you can see the consistency of our business, particularly across the last four years, but even going back further.
This all-in break-even rate includes the forecast scheduled debt repayments, our scheduled dry dock commitments, our OPEX, etc., and so captures all of our big cash items. We like to show this graph, and while nothing else is certain in life, along with our strong liquidity position, we do believe it shows Navigator has a lot of downside risk protection in the business. Our balance sheet on the next page continues to show a really strong position with cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash of $216 million at 30 September 2025. If you include our available but undrawn revolving credit facilities, we had total liquidity of $301 million into November 2025, which was our last publicly reported figure. This is all after paying out around $95 million in the quarter on scheduled loan repayments, dividends, and share buybacks, plus the installments towards our new build vessels.
It's worth noting that our investment in the Morgan's Point terminal, that's been mentioned already on our balance sheet, sits at an equity value of $252 million, but it's fully unencumbered now with no debt sitting behind that asset, which gives us flexibility into the future. Alongside this and to date, we've paid from our own cash a total of $99 million at the end of the third quarter last year towards the vessels we've got under construction. And the small difference here to the number shown on the balance sheet is just represented by some capitalized interest. On the next page, we just want to highlight the relationships with our very supportive and first-class banking group over a long period.
With our track record, we've been able to materially reduce our credit margin for new loans over time, with our weighted average cost of debt being less than 6% today. Reflecting this also, our Oslo-listed 2024 unsecured bond and the 2025 further tap of the bond that we did closed with the tightest spread for any USD-denominated shipping bond in the Nordic market since the financial crisis in 2008, again reflecting our strong credit quality. The next page on the bottom axis shows our shipyard installment payments due for our six new build vessels. These are what we call our four Panda vessels, the ethylene vessels that Mads talked about, and our two more recently announced ammonia new build vessels that we refer to as Coral.
Plus, on the top, our expected debt financing drawdowns for those vessels that we anticipate will cover the vast majority of the cost of the vessels. We're anticipating closing financing for all of these six vessels within the first half of 2026, and as Mads mentioned, the first vessels due for delivery in the first quarter of 2027. In a similar fashion, the next page shows us a summary of the $280 million we have invested into our Morgan's Point terminal alongside Enterprise Products Partners in our 50/50 joint venture, as well as the now repaid original first debt finance we had on the terminal and the cash distributions received back to date. The expected payback period for the terminal as a standalone investment is good, and with potential future leverage on the asset, future cash flows look strong.
And on a similar note, on the next page lists certain of our vessels today that are not encumbered with debt, but which could allow Navigator to raise over $100 million more as needed. And then lastly, on my final page, we have some further support around our financial position. You'll see on the top left how our business segment, market position, diversification of cargoes and vessels has allowed us to return consistent profits over time. And on the top right, we've seen these strong results allow our net debt- to- market value of our on-water assets reduced to around 30%. And in the middle bottom, similarly, we've seen our net debt- to- adjusted EBITDA fall to around 2.3 x compared to over 6x five years ago. The other two graphs, bottom left and bottom right, show our debt stack and our scheduled loan repayments.
Today we've got no significant refinancings due until 2029. Taking all of this together with Oeyvind's commercial outlook, we think it paints a picture of Navigator as a business with growth opportunities, great financial resources to take on those opportunities, while at the same time returning value to shareholders as we have with our recently increased return of capital policy and share buybacks, while still having significant headroom and liquidity to cope with any unforeseen events that might occur. Finally, I'd just like to plug that we'll be releasing our fourth quarter and full- year results in the early part of March, so please do look out for those. For now, I'll hand you over to Randy, who's going to provide a bit more color on some of our recent developments. Randy?
Thank you, Gary. So yeah, going to some of these developments, as Mads mentioned. A couple of years ago we announced a new return of capital policy, and then a couple of months ago we increased it from $0.05 to $0.07 per share on a quarterly basis in terms of a fixed dividend and increasing the return of capital payout to 30% of net income, up from 25%. So with our NAV trading at $28 or more, we've continued to opt for share buybacks on a quarterly basis above and beyond that fixed dividend. Then every quarter we will assess it going forward in terms of where we go from here with the dividends and the payout. As earnings increase, as cash balance increases, as debt decreases, we hope to continue to increase this going forward.
In addition, on the next page, you'll see we have done ad hoc share buybacks above and beyond our quarterly policy. So I want to highlight our share count there on the bottom left. It was stuck around 55, 56 million shares for quite some time. We did that merger with Ultragas and a Ships for Shares acquisition that Mads was alluding to a few years ago. So that jumped the share count up to around 77 million shares. But since then, we've repurchased 12 million shares for $174 million, all at an average price of a little over $14 per share. So with that, over the last three years, we've paid back $210 million to shareholders. That's including dividends and buybacks, equating to $3 a share based on our average share count of around 70 million shares during that time.
So we expect this to continue going forward, as well as share buybacks will remain a priority for us going forward. If you look on the next slide, you can see the analysts who are very, very smart, intelligent analysts here, all with a price target above our current price target, buy ratings, the vast majority there in the average price target of $21. Current share price is right around $18. So we, like the analysts, believe there is significant upside from these levels. So we expect to continue these ad hoc share buybacks going forward. Switching gears to our Morgan's Point terminal on the next slide. So we have a 50/50 joint venture, as Gary was alluding to, with Enterprise Products Partners. This is for an ethylene export terminal out of Morgan's Point, about 20 miles east of Houston.
So over the last handful of quarters, we've done around $5 million a quarter in terms of contribution to us. So it really stabilizes our earnings, stabilizes our cash flow. It supports our shipping business as well. So now that the completion, the flex train has completed on that expansion, we expect volumes and the EBITDA contribution to continue to increase in the coming quarters and years. On the next page, you'll kind of see the more recent throughput. So 3Q was near a record high for the third quarter of 2025. Looking ahead, if you look on the bottom right chart, you'll see the forward curve of the domestic U.S. ethylene price. This is an important metric, right? So this is where we are sourcing the U.S. ethylene, roughly $0.20-$0.21 per pound, equivalent of around $400 per ton.
With that, there's a large arbitrage between what we are buying it at domestically, liquefying it here, and then shipping it to both Europe and Asia. The landed cost in Europe and Asia is $700, $800, $900 per ton. So a large arb there between us. We expect a strong throughput for this year with the ethylene exports out of Morgan's Point. Switching gears to our fleet, over the last few years, we have sold six vessels. Our most recent sale came back in September. We expect to add to this in the very near future. So stay tuned on this space. We are not empire building, right? We are selling our oldest vessels and replacing those with some modern tonnage. Like we did in October, we bought an additional 15% of five vessels.
So almost an entire vessel there, 75% of the five vessels that we acquired a few years ago in our Greater Bay joint venture. In terms of newbuildings, we have six newbuildings on order. In the next slide, you'll see the first four. These are all ethane- ethylene carriers. They are getting delivered throughout 2027. They're 48,500 cubic meters. So these will be the largest vessels in our fleet. Dual fuel can go through the old locks of the Panama Canal, really giving us a significant improvement in our vessel age as well as size. One of them is already on time charter. We're looking at time charter a few others. So these are our four ethane- ethylene capable ships. On the next slide, we also have two ammonia-fueled ammonia carriers. We ordered these last year. They are on five-year charters with Yara starting on delivery in 2028.
They're already on fixed-term charters from 2028 to 2033. These are going to be ammonia-fueled as well. We got some Enova grant money to lessen the CapEx and the equity needed from us. These will then be the largest vessels in our fleet at 51,000 cubic meters getting delivered in 2028. Turning to the next slide, you can see here, you know, earning a stable cash flow is very important, and it's frankly rare in shipping, but we have proven we have done that over the last quarters in multiple years. With that, what you do with that money also matters, and we have really spread that out over these five pillars: reducing debt, paying dividends, buying back shares, investing in our fleet, as well as the energy infrastructure business, our marine midstream.
So we will continue to outlay capital to all five of these pillars going forward, but we just wanted to kind of show you the breadth of our capital deployment in recent years. With that, I'll turn it over for some closing comments from Mads. Thank you.
Thank you for listening in to our quick presentation here. I hope that you can see that Navigator Gas is on good footing. We will continue to focus on developing our business by investing into our core shipping business with handysize and mid-sized vessels, and we'll continue to look for opportunities to invest into the infrastructure marine midstream business where we can expand the supply chain and take part in a bigger part of that chain as well. In addition to those growth ambitions, we are also very keen to continue and develop our capital return policy so that we gradually, over time, increase the proportion of our earnings that are paid out to shareholders as well. So we should have the capacity for doing that with the strength of our balance sheet and the resilience of the cash flow that's generated from our core business.
So I hope you see that we are in good shape and we have a constructive view on 2026. With that, I will pass it on to the Q&A.
Thanks so much. All right, we have a question from Commercial here. In terms of calculating whether to go through the Panama Canal to Asia or via the Cape of Good Hope to Asia at any given point, what are some of the variables that go into that decision?
The Panama Canal is depending on congestion. So all our ships and our new buildings are able to go through the old locks, so less of an issue in terms of congestion, which is great for our customers in terms of reliability and scheduling. Depending on where to go through Suez or Cape of Good Hope, then that depends a little bit lately and recently on certain activities in the Red Sea. So that is more risk averse or risk consideration, depending also on the market conditions. So the question is whether the customer, whether they dictate or whether you have negotiated a certain arrival, and therefore you can then potentially also save by going a longer route, although it takes a longer time.
So there are different things that come into that calculation, but mostly it's about economics, and mostly it's about then Panama Canal, really, and that's coming up to be a big, big topic and congestion for the larger ships. But we are not too impacted on that.
Thank you. Gary, for you on the all-in cash breakeven, is that including the scheduled debt repayments, or does it also include some voluntary prepayments?
Yeah. The short answer is it includes the scheduled, but no voluntary prepayments. We're scheduled to pay more than $100 million each year going forward, but we don't include any voluntary prepayments into that number.
That makes sense. Mads, for you, can you explain your future dividend policy?
We instituted, as we discussed before, the capital return policy in 2023, and we've continued to develop it over the past two years, and where we've increased the payout from 25% to 30% and from $0.05 to $0.07 fixed dividend per quarter. So on top of that, we've also done share buybacks where we've repurchased about $50 million additional per year over the past three years, and we think that has really worked well for us. We've been quite pleased with the way the market has received those initiatives, and of course, that has given us confirmation that we are on the right track. I think that over time, we should continue to gradually return more capital to the shareholders, so you could say keep watching this space, and we'll continue to develop it as we go along. We have the capacity right now.
We have the strength of the balance sheet to continue doing so, and we can even continue to develop and invest into our business at the same time, so we will continue to develop this dividend and capital return policy so it becomes gradually more attractive over time.
Thanks, Mads. Outlook for Morgan's Point. I'll take this one. You know, for the last couple of years, we've done around 970,000 and 980,000 tons of throughput. We'll announce our 2025 throughput here in six to eight weeks. For 2026, we expect more than that, right? A lot of it is contingent on domestic ethylene prices as well as in the international ethylene prices. Fortunately, we have been returning some cargoes or going back to Asia for an extended period of time. The vast majority of cargoes, almost all of them, are going to Europe. But in recent months, we've had a few going to Asia. In the next few years, we think structurally Europe will remain short and be needing to import more ethylene directly from the U.S. to run all their polyethylene and polymers and their derivatives plants there.
So we do expect that to continue, that trend of shifting more and more cargoes to the European markets. In terms of off-take contracts, you know, obviously that is going to depend on the customer's needs. We've been doing a lot of spot cargoes above and beyond the contracted levels, but we are certainly in talks with multiple off-takers for one, three, five-year off-take contracts. So the outlook for Morgan's Point 2026, we expect to be better than 2025 in terms of throughput and contribution. Over to you, Oeyvind for a technical question here. Why do the handy semi-refrigerated vessels observe earnings in a TC premium versus the fully- refrigerated vessels?
There's a very simple answer. The semi-refrigerated ships are more flexible. They can also do, in addition to LPG and ammonia, they can also do what we call easy petrochemicals like butadiene and propylene. So they have more demand for those ships, and therefore they can attract a higher rate. That's really the added flexibility on those ships.
Makes sense. Mads, over to you maybe. Are there any acquisition targets you're looking at to further your market share, particularly some that may be traded below their asset values?
Yeah. We are constantly monitoring this space. We have a keen interest in consolidating the handysize segment as well as the mid-sized segment. So we are looking for opportunities here. The handysize segment is maybe a little bit less fragmented, so it's not a huge number of potential candidates for joining forces, but we know who to talk to, and we have active discussions with most of them. In the mid-sized space, it's a little bit more fragmented, more to talk to, but it is a keen interest for us to find if there are opportunities to add vessels to our platform. We think we have a very strong platform with the listing in New York and with the strong governance platform that we have and a capable, flexible organization as well with the integrated ownership, operation, vessel management, etc.
So we think we have the flexibility and the capacity to add more vessels to our existing platform without increasing overhead. So yeah, we will continue to look for these opportunities, and we know who to talk to.
Thank you. Oeyvind, any guidance or expected utilization for the fleet in 2026 versus 2024, 2025, and what are some of those underlying drivers?
So in the opening few slides there on the commercial side, so we touched a little bit upon supply demand, manageable supply side over the next three years, which is great. So we ticked that box, either number of ships available. And the demand side is relatively robust in terms of petrochemicals. We talked about particularly from our U.S. and ethylene terminal and also LPG and ammonia. So the supply demand balance should continue as we have discussed and therefore give a healthy utilization level. What that is, whether it's 90 or 90 plus or 90 minus, we shall see, but the fundamentals are robust.
Perfect. In terms of new building prices, can you comment on the current market? Where are prices now? What's the kind of outlook for that? And will the new build prices be supported in potentially a softer freight market later this year, 2027, 2028?
New building.
Go ahead, Oeyvind.
Yeah. Newbuilding prices are really set by the large ship sectors being dry bulk, containers and tankers and for LNG. So if those markets are doing well with a lot of orders, then newbuilding prices are high. So it doesn't matter really what the chartering market is for the gas carriers that we operate. Saying that there's very few shipyards that have interest and the capacity, capability to construct the ships that we own that are quite complex. So it's a tricky question. It depends on many things, but the major impact will come from the health or not from other ship sectors.
Yeah. Given the stability in rates earnings, why do you think shares trade below NAV? Is this a fundamental misunderstanding by the market, or is the market saying that it believes underlying asset values are too high? I'll start here. I think it's a combination of factors. For a while, there was low trading liquidity, right? We were around $1 million, maybe $1.5 million per day, trading 100,000, 150,000 shares a day. In recent years, that has gone up dramatically. In 2025, for the full year, we averaged around 350,000 shares a day and $5.2 million per day. In 2026, we're above that number as well.
So now that the daily trading liquidity is above that kind of $5 million threshold, it's attracting larger funds, hedge funds, obviously institutional investors and others who can really invest and hold the name and get in and out of the position a little more quickly. Also, our earnings stability, right? We've kind of shown that, right? Highlighted that over the last few quarters. Obviously, the second quarter of 2025 was a little bit of a blip there, the anomaly around liberation day and port fees and all these other things. But since then, 3Q has rebounded. We've already guided that 4Q is going to be good as well. So now that you have some more stable earnings at higher levels, that should drive a higher multiple and a tighter discount, right, to the NAV.
But yeah, our story is not super simple in terms of it's not just crude tankers carrying oil or even the VLGCs taking propane, right? There's multiple commodities at play, geographic diversity. With that, it helps support our earnings stability, but it is a little more robust of a story to tell. All that said, I don't necessarily think it's a belief that underlying asset values are falling dramatically. We've experienced that in our recent sales, right? Every sale we've done has been above the broker valuations in recent years. So with that, I don't think that's necessarily an answer to it, but we have tightened the NAV gap. We will continue to do so. And while the discount remains, we will take advantage of that through share buybacks.
Looking at our fleet for the nine or so remaining 2008, 2009 built vessels, are you planning on taking some of those through their fourth special survey? That's going to be coming due in the next two to three years or potentially selling them before that survey.
Maybe I can take that one. We sold a couple of vessels in the past few years, as reviewed by Randy, and we'll continue to do so. I think the priority would be the vessels that have crossed the 20-year line in terms of age, and we have a few. Typically, we like to operate the vessels until they get close to 25 years. After that, we would like to sell them for regional trade. So I think many of the vessels that were built in 2008 or 2009, they still have plenty of mileage within our fleet, but it still means that if we get a good offer and we think the price is right, we may sell them, but it's not high priority. We think we can operate those ships for many years still.
Okay. Two quick, real quick questions here. In terms of the new build financings, Gary, any updates on that?
As I mentioned, we're hoping to close all six of them in the first half of this year. We've got four that are very well advanced and two that are on a slightly slower track that will follow. No, we've had really strong interest from all of the banks. As I say, we've got four transactions that are really well advanced, two still to come, but we're really confident that we're going to get those all finished within the first half of this year at really good terms and conditions and rates for us, particularly given our credit at the moment is very strong given where the business is right now. We've seen some really supportive responses from our banking group, some new people as well that we've been out to speak to. Yeah, we're in a good place with that.
Excellent. Last question, one minute, Oeyvind on Venezuela. Navigator used to operate five vessels in Venezuela, obviously zero in recent years. Any updates on the market down there?
Many years ago, or a few years ago, we had five and six ships trading on the coast in Venezuela taking LPG from the east side of Venezuela to the west side where people, that's the populated areas, and that was for energy demand, so cooking and heating for the Venezuelan people. I think that trade will come back, so there's a lot of news articles and so forth, developments in Venezuela, oil of course, but LPG as well. It's in the news, and certain traders have been granted license to operate and export, so it is going to come. The question is when and how much. Perhaps I think it'll take longer time for very large gas carriers to export large volumes of LPG from Venezuela, but handysized cabotage for the Venezuelan people more likely sooner.
So we are following that very closely and would love to be back in Venezuela.
Excellent. We'll be mindful of time here. I think we have a hard stop. So, Paul, I wanted to turn it back to you. Thanks again for hosting us.
Thank you, Randy, and thank you to the Navigator team. This was an amazing presentation here, a great amount of questions, and we'd like to take time here to thank everyone for joining us today. Please note that this webinar will soon be made available for access upon demand on Capital Link's website, capitallinkwebinars.com, and Capital Link's YouTube channel. Thank you again, everyone. Take care. You can now disconnect.
Thank you.