Hello, and welcome to the Scorpio Tankers Inc third quarter 2021 conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Lee, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and thank everyone for joining us today. Welcome to Scorpio Tankers third quarter earnings conference call. On the call with me are Emanuele Lauro, our Chief Executive Officer, Robert Bugbee, President, Cameron Mackey, Chief Operating Officer, Lars Dencker Nielsen, Commercial Director, James Doyle, Senior Financial Analyst. Earlier today, we issued our third quarter earnings press release, which is available on our website, scorpio tankers.com. The information discussed on the call is based on information as of today, November 11th, 2021, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements. For discussion of these risks and uncertainties, you should review the forward-looking statement disclosure in the earnings press release that we issued today, as well as Scorpio Tankers SEC filings which are available at scorpio tankers.com and sec.gov.
Call participants are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live on the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. An archive of the webcast will be available on the investor relations page of our website for approximately 14 days. There are slides available on scorpiotankers.com on the investor relations page under Reports and Presentations. For those asking questions, please limit the number of questions so everyone has a chance. If you have any specific modeling questions, you can contact me later and discuss offline. Now I'd like to introduce Emanuele.
Thank you, Brian, and welcome to our third quarter results call, everybody. Over the quarter, the market weakness caused by the pandemic has disappointingly continued. We continue to believe that the recovery has been deferred rather than canceled, the reasons for these convictions are the following, really. First, world refined products consumption is normalizing. Diesel, gasoline, and naphtha demand are already back at 2019 levels. Jet fuel is lagging a bit behind, but with signs of improvement as we are seeing the U.S. and European travels, for example, now flowing freely, since earlier this week. Asia should follow suit soon, with key strategic locations like Singapore who have eased their travel restrictions.
Second, the seaborne ton-mile demand per barrel consumed is higher as a result of an acceleration of refinery shutdowns from the pandemic and new refineries who have opened and come online. We expect ton-mile demand to exceed 2019 levels over the next few months due to refinery closures, and seaborne exports of refined products is expected to increase by over 5% in 2022, meaning that we will exceed pre-COVID levels soon. Third reason is that steel values have inflated significantly, and at Scorpio Tankers, we have a very high gearing to this. Despite cash losses in the quarter, our equity NAV per share may have increased actually. The asset values on a five-year-old MR have increased by 8% year- to- date.
5-year-old LR2s have increased by more than 20% year- to- date, and both new building prices on MRs and LR2s are year-to-date up more than 20%. Fourth reason, scrapping has picked up and yards are full, meaning supply will remain constrained for several years. Product tankers scrapped year-to-date 32 MRs, which is the largest number of MRs scrapped on record. In addition, there have been three LR1s and eight LR2s, which have also been scrapped so far this year. Lastly, with our eco and scrubber-fitted vessels, we are well-positioned in an environment of rising fuel prices and widening spreads between grades of fuel. The spread between the scrubber-suitable HSFO and VLSFO is $150 per ton at present, and it is growing.
Because of our investment in scrubbers, this means that at this current $150 per ton spread, the company would generate an additional $70 million in TCE in 2022. To sum up, our modern spot exposed fleet remains very well positioned. We have continued to focus on sensible balance sheet management and liquidity management ahead of the normalization of ton-mile demand and ahead of the upswing in rates which we are finally experiencing now. With that, I would turn the call to Lars, please.
Thanks, Emanuele. Let me first say that, you know, much of the world, excluding China perhaps, continues to roll back COVID-19 related restrictions. The predominant trend towards reopening is a realization of COVID-19 as an endemic issue and restricting movement through a lockdown is not a viable long-term solution. Nevertheless, the widespread vaccination rollout continues to be a keystone solidifying the clean tanker recovery. During the second quarter 2021 earnings call, we stated that we would only expect a meaningful rally at the back end of 2021. This prediction is maintained, and we can now see several green shoots developing in various product tanker segments. The demand picture is improving by the day. In the last call, I stated that the U.S. have recovered to near pre-COVID demand levels. Still, we looked for Latin America demand to recover as a critical market determinant.
We can now note that South American mobility indices are up by 33% year-on-year through October, with the vital product import region of Mexico well in recovery mode. Argentina is the first major South American economy to post gasoline demand at pre-pandemic levels. Overlay that with the closure of the Limetree Bay Refinery in the Caribbean and the ton-mile exposure to supply Latin America will be compelling for the products trade. We have now subsequently seen a material rise in the U.S. Gulf MR market index, with daily earnings rates increasing from $6,000 to between $16,000 and $20,000 per day over the last two weeks, led by the strong Latin American and Mexican demand. This increase in implied product demand immediately impacts the U.S. product export markets and has had immediate positive earnings impact on the MR and LR1 sectors.
Furthermore, we can see from the mobility data that vehicle utilization is recovering well within India, +82% year-on-year, the Eurozone +42% year-on-year, and of course, North America with +35% year-on-year. These mobility trends should continue to see further recovery, but the positive inertia remains and is translating in rates improving daily. It is evident from the data that the world is in recovery mode, and it is encouraging that global refinery runs have now exceeded 80 million barrels per day for the first time since pre-COVID. We've also already seen a return of 8 million barrels in refinery runs since November of last year. The new easing of U.S. travel restrictions will add at least 250,000 barrels a day of crude demand through increased jet fuel and consumption.
While jet holds the promise of an imminent, albeit more gradual product recovery, the EIA has reported that U.S. gasoline and distillate consumption has finally returned to the five-year pre-pandemic seasonal averages. Conversely, stocks are drawing at pace. The tail end of refinery maintenance, the backwardated price structure, and rising consumption have reduced stocks to the lowest since November 2017, and with the U.S. East Coast gasoline inventories at the lowest in nearly seven years. U.S. jet inventories last week alone posted a 1.79 million barrels stock draw. The market fundamentals here on in will be supportive for the transatlantic arb opportunities and product markets. According to Energy Aspects, global commercial crude stocks are now at 34 million barrels below October 2019 levels, which constitutes a very material and rapid draw of 600 million barrels from May 2020.
The much-discussed global overhang has disappeared and today offers minimal slack in the crude supply chain. Refinery margins remain positive and will underpin higher run rates globally. As the market is emerging from the seasonal refinery maintenance period, we anticipate a robust end of the fourth quarter with firmer rates across all product segments. Put simply, in October, refinery maintenance generated a decrease of 8.7 million barrels of refined product per day globally. For November, approximately 4 million barrels per day capacity comes back on stream at a further 2 million barrels per day in December. Thus, we anticipate 7 million barrels per day global refining capacity will return by the end of January. A substantial return of volume into a market with low stocks facing a high refinery margin environment where weather delays and increased ton miles will add to bottlenecks and logistical complexities.
This confluence of factors is bullish freight. Ton miles have also shown growth signs led by an increase in long-haul trade of naphtha going east and gas oil middle distance moving west. Add the various refinery closures, they have all had a positive contribution to the ton-mile dynamic over the year, while volumes have steadily increased. On the back of these increased volumes and long-haul rate nature of the trades, LR2 have now moved substantially by $300,000 to $500,000 on both East and West destinations. This again, has moved up spot earnings from the mid-teens to $25,000 per day. Furthermore, we anticipate that Australia, having now closed half of its refining capacity, will see a dramatic increase in import volumes as that region emerges from their extended lockdown and product demand invariably returns.
Going back to basics, given that demand is up, stocks are down, refinery utilization continuously north of 90%, supply is inelastic with a benign order book, we expect to see a material upturn in market pricing. The growing pains of logistical chains trying to adapt to a post-COVID world will provide a lot of positive market volatility over the next couple of quarters. The fleet continues to age with 7% of the world fleet over 20. Scrapping is accelerating, and so far, over 150 tankers have now left for the breakers. In addition, as Emanuele said, new-build prices have increased 20% to 25% this year, and tanker new-build berth capacity is taken up by containers, bulkers, and gas. We feel well-positioned as the largest product tanker owner with a modern eco fleet to take advantage of the next market cycle.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Lars, very much indeed. I think we'll just go straight to questions, please.
Thank you, sir. At this time, we would like to take any questions you might have for us today. If you would like to ask a question over the phone, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that would be star one on your telephone keypad. We have our first question from the line of Omar Nokta with Clarksons Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hey, guys. Good morning. You know, Lars gave a pretty, I thought a pretty good overview of what's going on in the market and you discussed the outlook. I wanted to maybe dive into that just a little bit deeper, and this is perhaps maybe a bit bigger picture. If there's one thing or if there's a theme that appears to have taken shape here this earnings season, is that pretty much after a bunch of difficult quarters for the tanker market, the third quarter is becoming increasingly viewed, I think, as perhaps the trough.
We've seen, you know, the low rates in 3Q, but everyone's now showing guidance that suggests 4Q is gonna be quite a bit healthier, and obviously spot rates today have improved, and you're showing that in your guidance as well. I wanted to ask, do you feel that the way things are shaping up at the moment, that fourth quarter is sort of potentially the pivot to a stronger market in 2022, and do you agree that indeed 3Q can be viewed as the low point and that this improvement that's currently underway is the one that has legs for recovery?
Omar, was that a question for me?
Yeah, Lars, please.
I mean, I think, you know, Q3 has been for a number of years been the kind of considered to be the trough. You know, there's always been some discussion about is the market gonna pick up by Thanksgiving? Clearly it has certainly done so way in advance of Thanksgiving. There's obviously a lot of different things that are playing into this particular thing, you know, be it the high flat price, be it the low stocks that we talked about, refining margins being healthy across the board, the run rates now moving up.
We haven't even talked about, you know, all of this stuff about the energy substitution effect, because of the issues around nat gas and stuff like that, or the high pricing on propane and what that means, you know, for people wanting to crack naphtha, et cetera. There's a lot of things that are playing into this thing exactly at the same time, and it's not really a surprise to me that we have seen kind of, you know, when suddenly all of these things come into play at one go, the markets, they like churn through the position lists that have been kind of long and elongated for a while, and then suddenly you're seeing, well, oh, there's no further ships available.
We saw that in the U.S. Gulf, you know, last week and the week before, but suddenly, boom, it moved up very quickly. We could see all the data. We've been talking about the data for a while, and suddenly says, "Okay, here we go. Now the market has moved." I'm confident to say that it is based on these elements that are playing in. We just gotta kinda generate and digest through the positions that have been building up and then, you know, you suddenly see a much more balanced market. The same thing is going on right now in the Middle East with the distillates moving west. That's been going on for a while, obviously. There's no substitute for the crude carriers because they're not being delivered from the newbuilding yards.
Now it's coming into a more natural environment. Naphtha has been moving very strongly throughout the year, and that really has not changed and is not going to change according to the reports that we're seeing. What we're seeing here is that the different markets are moving now in unison. That really is important because suddenly you can start seeing that the utilization levels are increasing past a particular point where volatility really plays in. You know, rates west to east, as I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, they moved up from last Friday to yesterday, I think, by $500,000 in one go.
That's material, but it's not surprising to us, and I don't think it's surprising to a lot of the bigger players in the market to see this actually playing out.
I think, Omar, that one thing to add here is, you know, it's just so significant. It's very difficult to, you know, to get it across when a market is coming off a very bad market. You know, what Lars is talking about, this sort of real drive forward, the gapping of the LR2 rates, how they've slowly creeped up, taking weeks and weeks to get up to $20,000, and then in a matter of, you know, two or three trading sessions, I mean, just went straight to $25,000. That is a very, very important thing, and I think that's, you know, also amazingly encouraging that this is happening, you know, at least two, two and a half weeks before Thanksgiving.
You know, so it's coming early, very early in the season on top of what has been an, you know, a record warm October. The market still hasn't had dislocation, it hasn't had cold weather, none of these other things for it. This is, as Lars is saying, truly supportive of, you know, this change and what you were saying, you know, this confidence now that we've moved past the low point, as it were.
Thanks, Robert. Yeah, it definitely feels like, you know, we're getting the confluence now of the seasonality and the cyclicality coming together.
It's not just happening in our markets. You know, you're seeing, you know, a little bit of tightening here in the Aframax market and Suezmax market too. That's helpful.
Yeah. Right, yeah. It's broad-based. Just a follow-up. You know, Lars, you discussed the LR2s. I think you gave a pretty good rundown of what's going on in the MR market in Latin America, but you know, especially the LR2s, you know, with them gapping up, as you say, Robert, to 25. Anything in particular that's been driving that?
Omar, just quickly, it's not really just what we're saying. This is in your report itself this morning. We're only sort of echoing what you have already published this morning.
Yes. Yeah. Can you give maybe just a flavor of what you've seen? Is it a particular type of cargo? You mentioned naphtha, or is it just as you also just said, it's kind of this broad-based churning out of ships?
Well, yeah. I mean, I'll try and put some color around it. I mean, we're seeing LR2s moving from the continent down to West Africa. We're seeing LR2s out of the U.S. Gulf going east. We have seen obviously the usual stuff out of the U.K. continent and the Mediterranean, which has been the staple trade on light ends, naphtha primarily going long haul into Asia. You know, the TC1 east runs, AG east, have picked up again. You know, there has been some turnarounds in the Middle East as well that they have completed. What we've also seen, which is interesting, is a lot of product moving into Australia on big ships as well.
You know, it doesn't take very much to kind of move the whole supply dynamics into kind of the owner's favor because you're really stretching out that position as they are now doing a lot of different types of business. It's quite clear to me that we're seeing an increase in the diversity of cargo business.
Great. Well, very good. Thanks, Lars, and thanks, Robert.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jon Chappell with Evercore. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon. Lars, starting with you again, and maybe a bit of a follow-up to Omar. We've had a bit of fits and starts, you know, with this recovery that everyone's been calling for for some time, myself included. The LR2 momentum recently seems to be giving a bit more confidence that this time it's real. Maybe a two-parter here. One, does the LR2 market tend to be a leading indicator to the rest, given some of the dynamics you just laid out? Two, what could go wrong that causes this to be another head fake?
Well, you know, we've had some fits and starts, as you said, Jon. I mean, you know, obviously as the market had moved up the first time around, we maybe were seeing that this was coming. One of the things that we unfortunately were kind of seeing as short-term pain in the past was the immense stock draw that was taking place, you know, in pretty much all regions. The second thing we also were seeing, of course, is that, you know, the front-end pricing was so strong as product was required that, you know, the backwardated structure meant that people weren't obviously doing any storage, anything like that.
I think, when it comes to the LR2 market, it is obviously a very important market in the product trade, together with the MR markets being the two primary, kind of things. They sometimes work in unison, and sometimes they don't work in unison. Right now we're seeing it in the West, it's moving very strongly. We're seeing it very strongly having moved up before the LR2s in the Middle East. Suddenly now the LR2s have come up. Just before the LR2s, we saw a very big jump up on the LR1s, as the positions in general kind of were trying to get into the sweet spot.
I think it's fair to say that when suddenly you have an LR2 market, which now is moving across the board in a positive direction, meaning both in the stuff going on in the West that I was talking about, strong activity out of the Middle East, not only with the TC1 east runs, but also now with the distillates moving west. We're seeing also exports coming out of China, going long haul on the LR2s. It really soaks up a lot of the vessels. This then benefits the LR1s, and they will come afterwards. You know, the MRs tend to operate in a kind of a different market environment.
There certainly are correlations, but because of the logistical kind of constraints in terms of size and stuff like that, they tend to sometimes also operate in a different way. If you look at over a longer time period, it's quite clear to me that the general trend is upwards across.
Okay. That's fair. Robert and maybe Brian, you know, we know the market's all that matters, but with Scorpio specifically, there is this immense focus on liquidity. You laid out pretty well in the presentation, the path to $280 million, and of course, you have a little over $70 million of quarterly debt amortization with limited CapEx. Listen, based on everything that Lars has laid out for us, there's gonna be cash flow generation in the very immediate future. If there isn't, and it's another head fake, what's the plan B on bridging the gap through the debt amortization for next year, including the convert, with the liquidity situation today?
Well, firstly, I would say that you can see from the announcement, as you just said, it's, you know, it's well laid out, that, you know, you still got a lot of time here.
For us, it's, you know, the primary strategy at this moment has been to allow ourselves the liquidity to play for time. That's the primary, you know, strategy. We're seeing the world itself, you know, continue to improve in all of its dynamics, whether it's people vaccinated or et cetera, et cetera. That's the primary position you have got. If that changes, if that forward view changes that the world is fundamentally improving, you know, you still have a lot of, you know, levers related to that in the sense that you are paying down amortization, so you can still refinance things along the way, that you have got a brand new fleet that, as Emanuele indicated, is, you know, desired. The number of ships on order are very low.
The time charter market is strong. You know, you're with a company that is trading above NAV. There wouldn't be any below NAV substantially. There wouldn't be any issues in that strategy long term to sell assets either. This is where we are at the moment. You know, we're not going to act, you know, related to some doomsday scenario. You're correct. Lars has said, yes, you may have something terrible happen in the world, but that's an if, and there's no reason to, for us right now to think that way. It's best just to carry on doing what we've been doing. I mean, I don't know if Brian would like to add to that.
Again, vessel values have continued to increase here. Refinancing each time has added to liquidity. We have availability to sell or to refinance ships and add liquidity.
Okay. That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you, Brian. Thanks, Robert. Thanks, Lars.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jon.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Randy Giveans with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Howdy, gentlemen. How's it going?
All right, Randy. How are you?
Good, thank you.
Thank you, Randy.
Good, good. All right. Two questions from me. First, let's just look at the fuel spread. Kind of you mentioned that a $150 fuel spread would result in, I believe, $77 million in cash savings for 2022. Is that just a random number or why use 150? Is the forward curve there or is that what your expectation is? And if so, are you able or willing to hedge some of that spread?
James?
A couple of things, Randy. I'll give it a shot. The $150 is simply because that's where the spread is today. So we conservatively pick that number rather than assuming that it will increase like we expect. So that's that. On the hedging, you know, the short answer is we haven't looked at it. It would be arguably a speculative move rather than not. So we haven't discussed it, to tell you the truth. So you shouldn't expect us to hedge it.
Okay. Your expectation is that $150, I think you used the word conservative, is that right?
That's right. We see it increasing, but since we are, you know, given the oil market dynamics, but since we are at $150 now, we picked the $150 that we're experiencing now and projected it for 2022 just to show a number of the impact that that would have in 2022 if the conditions or the assumptions stayed the same.
Got it.
Maybe we should have used the phrase that we expect the spread to widen, but at present it's only $150. But i f it does remain at $150, we will make $77 million or so. We apologize for that.
No. Just asking the question. No problem. You can use whatever estimate you want. All right, second question. Obviously, no Scorpio call would be complete without multiple questions on your liquidity. Let me follow up with some more. Looking at the liquidity, you continue to raise liquidity with the sale leasebacks, boosting your cash position for sure. But how does this impact your weighted interest rate and maybe your breakevens now?
Well, our breakevens have gone down over the past year and a half because interest rates have gone down. We've got some savings there. Yeah, but also you gotta look at, again, the reason why we're able to do this is vessel values have gone up.
Sure.
We're able to do that because of that. Yes, that has gone up, but overall leverage to market value hasn't gone up that much. Don't forget, when you repay debt, you're repaying it based upon a vessel amortization profile of 15 years, zero to 15, so that the debt is repaid by the time the vessel gets to 15 years of age. If you've got a five-year-old vessel, you refinance it, you're paying off that debt over 10 years of amortization payments to go to zero. That's not the term of the loan, but that's the profile you're dealing with. You still have 10 more years after that of the vessel's life.
You're paying off 10%, but also only 5% of the vessel life is being depreciated, and the present value of that is not going down by 5% in the first year if you do a discounted cash flow model. That's where you get these refinancing liquidity events.
Got it. Okay.
I think.
Go ahead.
I mean, Randy, I think also that, you know, I think you have to put this in the two key things, that this is a new fleet. This strategy wouldn't work on a middle-aged fleet and would be totally impossible on an older fleet. We just very strongly believe that this market is improving. Those are the indicators. That's what the customers are doing. You know, Lars right now is with a whole bunch of customers. We're not guessing that this market is improving. What we've indicated right now, you know, today is a day when we're actually making positive cash flow right now. This can swing very, very fast with the leverage, the operating leverage this company, you know, has if we just have moderately good.
Sure. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of operating and financial leverage in the system here. I guess just to clarify, the increased liquidity is not coming at a cost. Meaning, yeah, we raised $30 million, $50 million, $60 million liquidity, but it's at 12%.
Correct. Yeah, you're correct, and that's a great point. It's not coming at a cost. You know, obviously, it's not coming, it hasn't come at an equity cost. You're definitely correct in pointing out that an actual base rate interest cost is not as if we're paying a distressed rate of interest. Yes, your point is very well made.
Got it. All right. That's what I wanted to clarify. That's it. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Randy.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning and good afternoon. Just agree with Lars, great update. Noted, I just want to hit on the MR really quick because you noted different markets move different prices. If new build prices are up to the extent you're talking about, I just want to understand MR is more muted in terms of their 4Q guidance and bookings. Is there a reason for that disconnect relative to the other groups as you were kinda highlighting?
I'm sorry, Ken, what do you mean by muted?
I'm just looking at your 4Q bookings, your rates- to- date, where you've got obviously bigger moves in some of these other groups. You highlighted the LR2s step up, but the 42Q outlook rates seem to be flat with flat on your outlook.
Well, obviously the guidance given is obviously from the 1st of October. You know, obviously as we went through October, it was still very much in the trough. A lot of bookings were taking place. What we're seeing now over the last couple of weeks is exactly what we anticipated and also what we talked about on the last call, what we expected to happen, and I believe very much this is what's going on right now. I think it's really a case in point about what happens in Latin America because that was the thing that we were missing out on during the last quarter. You know, the U.S. was coming back very nicely. We had very good vehicles tons traveled. We had good inland jet demand, et cetera, et cetera.
We could see, of course, because of the vaccination, the stocks were still drawing. What we were missing out, which is a very big important part of the whole kind of Atlantic basin picture, is what goes on in South America. During the last quarter, of course, we had lockdowns, severe lockdowns, and particularly in Argentina, Brazil as well, and Mexico. All of those countries are now back on track. You know, and you look at Chile as well. Chile is now importing more than they have done in the past because of the issues around, you know, the hydroelectric issues that they had. We're seeing this continue through the fourth quarter and the first quarter.
You look at demand balances on these things, and you know these are the markets where you primarily would use MRs primarily, and to some extent also LR1s, that at some point it will be a flick of a switch. It suddenly happened two weeks ago, and this market is now going very strongly and doing exactly as what we anticipated and what the data would, you know, kind of suggest. That's moving well. You could say, well, let's go into another layer of the onion here. Why has the TC2 market, which is the market moving from the continent over to the States, not moved? Well, you know, that's also because the stocks in the U.S. and in Europe are very much down.
You've got a closed up to some extent, but at some point it's gonna force the issue. We're starting to see, you know, this, the ballasts from the normally that were up on the AC, not moving over to the continent. They're now moving to the Gulf. They're being absorbed. You've got a NAFTA hub that's opened out of the U.S. Gulf. So you have all of these different things that are happening at the same time, as we had anticipated it will. When it does, it moves. That's what we're seeing. That's also exactly what we're seeing when it comes to the market in the Middle East on the LR2s and to some extent also in the LR1s a couple of weeks before.
Particularly the LR2s being the case in point and for us being as big as we are in that market, we can really see that the markets in the West have moved strongly, and they have continued to do so. The markets in the AG have started to move big time. When those two markets suddenly move in unison, you suddenly have a market, and that's what we're seeing. Then you add on the issues that we talked about with cargoes moving out of China, moving long haul. You don't have the cannibalization of the VLCCs and the Suezmax because they're not being delivered in November and December. They're gonna be waiting for January and February.
At that point in time, I would imagine that you're starting to see the OPEC crude increases starting to filter in as those markets are coming back to life. We're seeing the Aframaxes move nicely in the Mediterranean and in the West in general, both on the continent and also in the U.S. Gulf. Suezmaxes, which have been very, let's say, hit by the lockdowns and so on, have started to get a life again, and they're now moving up. It's not gonna take very much for them to start moving as well. Then suddenly it's across the whole barrel. Then, you know, if we really got to sell to market. We're doing a lot of volumes right now on condensate out of Australia. That usually is an Aframax market.
As I was saying before, we're moving a lot of product on LR2s into Australia. We're now doing the condensates out of Australia and back into Asia. You know, we're doing laden voyages both ways, which of course adds to the earning capacity of the LR2.
Quick question on that then. If you get this pricing gap that moves up, is there any move to reopen any shuttered refining capacity in Australia? Just wondering, back to the question, does anything impact this rebound? Same vein, is there any thoughts on a potential impact of a reestablishment of the U.S. crude export ban?
Oh, I mean, the last question I can't answer. I mean, that's very much a political question that, you know, I think very few people really have a clear answer to. You know, if that should happen, you know, I don't know what to say, really. You know, the U.S. refineries, they like very much the heavy crudes that come out of the Middle East and so on, and the light sweets that come out of the U.S. are very much kind of geared for Asian refineries. I think that there is a price spread there that talks to the logical answer of keeping the product moving.
When it comes to the refinery question in Australia, I think it's not as easy as just saying, "Well, you know, now you shut the refineries. It looks as if that was a bad idea because the products are going X, Y, and Z way. Just open it up." I mean, that's a long-term decision. It's quite clear to me that, you know, ton miles, as we've been talking about the last couple of quarters, continue to increase across the board. As the volumes are now increasing, as the world is opening up, it's a two-pronged effect. You've got longer haul, more product to move, and you're gonna need a lot more ships, and the market's gonna move.
Great situation. Just to wrap it up then, any reason that the company didn't buy stock with you repaid $450 million of debt. You have $200 million of cash. Obviously, Mr. Bugbee's buying stock, so any reason the company didn't in the quarter?
Yeah, absolutely. Because the company has stated, you know, consistently that, you know, we want to ensure that we're, you know, that we've seen these stop starts, we've seen these positions. We're not arrogant enough to act as if, despite how strong we believe in what's going to happen, we're not going to act as if it's 100%. We consistently said that until the markets, you know, cross over, you know, $17,000, $17,500 a day, which is when we suddenly start to really make real net cash and build cash, that we, you know, aren't going to look at buying back stock, and that we're going to continue to focus on maintaining our liquidity until that happens.
Appreciate it. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Lars. Appreciate the update.
I think, I'll just sort of say about this U.S. export thing in the product market, you know, whatever the U.S. does on its, you know, policy of exports, which Lars is correct, we haven't got a clue, it's not going to change the demand for the products for South America or change the demand for products elsewhere in the world. You could fairly quickly argue for products that, you know, it could be a net positive for products if that happened.
Agreed.
Because-
Agreed.
It'll just create more inefficiency and longer ton-miles.
Great.
Thanks, Ken. Thank you.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Greg Lewis with BTIG. Please go ahead.
Hey, Brian, thank you, and good morning, everybody, and good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Actually, I only have one, and it's for Brian. Brian, you know, not to put you on the spot, but you know, when I look at that recent, I guess you did it earlier this month, that new sale and leaseback transaction for the four LR2s and the two handies. You know, you mentioned you know, the increases in advance rates, higher asset prices, realizing that these vessels were probably rolling off lease or financing from a previous financing that was you know, probably one, two, three plus years ago. Is there any way to kind of think about the increased liquidity you're mentioning?
You know, maybe not on a specific vessel level, but maybe in terms of percentages? Like those six-
You have to-
Yeah.
You have to look at the entire fleet where it's financed. It's which I think you can go through our 20-F and see where our vessels were financed and take it from there and try to figure out that way. It's just gonna happen organically here. When vessels come up for near maturities, we're just going to refinance. Given that we have 131 vessels and 30 financings plus out there, we're going to have that on a regular basis. I don't think you can look at it as a percentage because-
No, I was wondering if the amount able to borrow on those six ships has gone up or down.
Oh, yeah. No, it definitely went up. Yeah. It came off some of the bank financing and went into sale leaseback. Yeah, it went up. Also the vessel value went up since we did the initial financing on those a few years ago.
Yeah. Okay. All right, guys. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Greg.
Thank you. Next one, we have Magnus Fyhr with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good morning. I just had two questions. First, I mean, the rates have been really weak over the last year. Your clients have been used to, you know, getting very attractive rates. Rates have moved up here in the last two weeks. Has that caught your clients by surprise? Do you see them preparing maybe to, you know, go longer on time charters?
It's very clear to me that we are seeing a lot of our clients wanting to take long-term charter coverage now. You know, there are people there looking at one, two, three. We have people looking at wanting to do five years. They're obviously seeing that, you know, as we're moving out of the trough of the market, that now might be the time to go in and get some cover. That for sure is taking place and is accelerating at the moment. Rates that have been concluded in the market b est testament, too, that they are willing to pay a lot higher than what the market had been printing on the spot to what they're willing to pay for the future. You know, as a leading indicator, it's clear to me that our clients, and it's across the board, all believe that the market is on a rebound.
Okay. You know, maybe rates are too low for you guys, but you know, is there a level where you guys would entertain time charters now, or is this the best time to do time charters? You don't need to say the level. Because it always seemed like either the charter is too high or too low or yeah.
This is, I mean, there's no supply, hardly any supply on order. This is a record supply low. You know, we're all focused on the short term and, you know, will this change and is this the bottom, et cetera. You know, once if we get this confirmation over these next few weeks, I mean, really, it's gonna be a few weeks, you know, three, four months. We're into a position where this is very difficult then to provide a supply response in the product market. You know, we're all focused on the demand. Is it coming back? Are inventories being drawn down? When will the rates improve?
If we start to move and continue in the direction that we're going, then the debate is going to swiftly turn, whether it's the customers, whether it's yourselves as analysts or investors on, wow, it's really difficult to have a supply response to this and crush this improvement short term. Therefore, we are going to be set up for multi-year, you know, strong markets and strong returns. This is definitely when we're only just seeing the turn off the bottom. This is definitely not the time where Scorpio Tankers, after going through all the pain together with our shareholders, should start to, you know, avidly charter our vessels.
Great. Thanks for that flavor, Robert. Just one more question. You've been playing defense, you know, as you said, for the last year, and most of the questions have been focused on the liquidity going forward. With the market improving, maybe it's a little too early to start playing offense, but you have the buyback in place, you've been paying down debt. Are you happy with your fleet now? You know, I mean, you have a big fleet of eco tankers. You know, one of your competitors announced a merger today, expanding into the chemical market. So just curious if you feel like you're well-positioned now, or if you feel you have the right fleet over the next two, three years.
Oh, we have the largest, you know, product fleet in the world by deadweight and the newest public product tanker fleet in the world. We have, you know, we've put in the various modifications for, you know, the environmental regulation changes, and we've put in scrubbers in all of the vessels that we've virtually all vessels, but now that we believe that that'll do it. We've had majority of our dry docking done in this weak market. We're set. We don't have any CapEx. What we, you know, hopefully able to do is to set our stall to really provide the returns to the shareholders for this company that is, you know.
There's no other company that I look at that is in tanker land that has the leverage that this does to an improving market. There's certainly no need to go out and buy one or two ships to improve that. We have tremendous earnings per share, cash flow per share, leverage to an improving market. I would say we're confident that we're extremely well-positioned right now. I would just leave it at that. I mean, I can understand why others feel the requirement to do things, but we just don't feel any urgency or necessity to change the fleet we have.
Great. That's what I wanted to hear. I appreciate you answering my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Liam Burke with B. Riley. Your line is now open.
Thank you, and good morning. Robert, I just wanna ask the question again, and I apologize. I'm taking the other side of the argument that, you know, your cash flow is pretty respectable in low rate environments. As the leverage kicks in, you have the assets in place, declining CapEx, accelerating cash flow. The priority after debt service, I presume, is to return cash to shareholders 'cause you're happy with your asset base. How would you look at returning cash to shareholders?
Well, I think, again, we've been fairly consistent that we, you know, first have to get ourselves into that position, and that's what we're focused on doing. We're focused on, you know, we may indeed find that, you know, we're already there and that that's the high probability now is that the markets are going to trade as an average above the $17,000 to $17,500 position. You know, then we will look at it and we're not go and we will take it in stages. When we are there, we will then decide what is the optimum thing to do. Otherwise, we're just gonna stay with it. We're not gonna count the chickens before they hatch.
Fair enough. Just on the market side, the refinery closures have been going on since late last year through now. Has that finally run its course, or do you see an additional bump from the realignment of global refinery?
James?
Hey, Liam.
Hey, James.
I think we're definitely seeing it. I mean, Lars has mentioned the increased volumes to places like Australia. I also think there's gonna be a second bump, you know, as product demand picks up and seaborne export does as well. That's going to magnify or accelerate what those closures have done. I think we'll see it throughout the end of this year and through next year, as these refineries close. Most have, but there's still a few left, and they're gonna need to replace that lost production.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Emanuele Lauro, please continue.
We have no further remarks. Thanks very much for attending the call today, and we look forward to speaking soon. Thanks very much.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.