Mr. Robert Bugbee, President; Mr. Lars Dencker Nielsen, Chief Commercial Officer; and Mr. James Doyle, Head of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Scorpio Tankers is a provider of marine transportation of petroleum products worldwide. Scorpio Tankers currently owns or lease-finances 93 product tankers, with an average age of 9.8 years.
The company is listed on the NYSE under the ticker symbol STNG. In terms of logistics, we begin with a 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, 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, Inc. bears no responsibility for the content. Let us now begin with our discussion. I'd like now to pass the floor to Mr. James Doyle. Go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin the presentation, our President, Robert Bugbee, would like to give some introductory remarks.
Hi, good morning, everybody. Well, 30 days has certainly been quite a short time, but it has resulted in a real change in the product market and certainly our attitude towards it. So, 30 days ago, we were, you know, let's say, quietly optimistic. It was a very strong market back in early, mid-December, but quietly optimistic for what was happening, going to happen in the first quarter and through the first half.
Now, we are very bullish about what's happening in the present. Rates have moved in the product market continuously stronger through that 30-day period. They're, even as we speak today, making a significant move upwards. I'm probably a little bit behind the market at the moment, so even myself is really looking forward to listening to what Lars has to say a bit later. And we expect these rates today to continue to strengthen further.
Time-chartered demand is extremely strong and diversified. Almost every type of charter is represented somewhere in terms of demand: national oil companies, oil companies, traders, and even some of the owners. Clean tanker prices, especially vessels 12 years or less, continue to go upward. I don't want to go into present negotiations at the moment, but those negotiations that are ongoing that we know about, and I'm sure we don't know all of them, are certainly already indicating stronger prices than whatever has been announced up to date.
The futures markets and customer activity is also very indicative of a higher expectation of rates going forward. And the Q1 in products is starting very strong relative to 4Q and extremely strong relative to the Q1 last year. So, on that note, I'd like to pass it over to James, and we'll hear more about the markets from Lars later.
Great. Thanks, Robert. We're starting on slide five, which is in front of you. Part of this was discussed by Paul, but we are the world's largest product tanker owner. We transport gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and naphtha from the refinery to the consumer. We're listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market cap of $2.9 billion and trading liquidity of $50 million per day.
The company has a net cash position of $383 million and trailing 12-month EBITDA of $520 million. Slide six, please. Investor highlights. We have significant operating leverage. A $10,000 per day change in rates equates to $332 million in incremental cash flow. We maintain a constructive outlook on our industry in both the short and long term and anticipate continued export and ton-mile demand growth.
Our strategy is to operate a high-quality fleet with a strong balance sheet, positioning the company to generate attractive returns and return capital to shareholders through the cycle, not just at the top. In the last few years, we have repaid $2.5 billion in debt and returned over $1 billion to shareholders in share repurchases and dividends. Slide seven, please. Today, we operate a fleet of 93 vessels consisting of 14 Handymax, 42 MRs, and 37 LR2 tankers.
To the right, you can see the average age of our fleet compared to the worldwide fleet, which is substantially younger. Operating modern fuel-efficient vessels offers multiple advantages, including greater customer acceptance, better fuel efficiency, and lower emissions. Slide eight, please. From 2012 to 2020, Scorpio Tankers expanded its fleet from 11 to 135 vessels through two phases. First, building a modern, eco-efficient fleet through its new building program.
Second, scaling and upgrading the platform through Navig8 and Trafigura acquisitions, each undertaken at what we believe were attractive entry points in the cycle. More recently, we've been harvesting value by selling older vessels at strong prices and selectively reinvesting to keep the fleet young and maintain scale. Slide 10, please. As Robert kind of highlighted towards this, over the last four years, product tankers have experienced a fantastic rate environment.
The ongoing strength in the product tanker industry is the result of, one, demand consistently outpacing supply, two, increased ton miles as changes in refinery capacity have reshaped global flows, and three, geopolitical events exacerbating points one and two. Today, spot rates for MRs are $32,000 per day and $47,000 per day for LR2s, but that may be slightly outdated. We can get that information from Lars in Q&A.
But either way, it's a meaningful step up from Q4 and consistent with the steady increase in rates we've seen over the last 12 months highlighted in that orange circle. Next slide, please. Slide 11. Demand for refined products remains strong. We expect demand to increase 1.2% this year or close to a million barrels a day, and this is just for refined products. This growing demand is driving seaborne exports, which averaged 21 million barrels per day last year, and we expect this to continue.
Next slide, please. We're not only seeing higher seaborne volumes, but longer voyages as well, both driven by structural shifts in global refining capacity. Ton-mile demand is up roughly 20% since 2019. New export-oriented refineries in the Middle East are adding supply, while closures in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia are removing it.
As refineries shut down, their lost output must be replaced from farther away. California alone will see 300,000 barrels per day of capacity closed by Q1 of this year, which could effectively double West Coast product imports, largely coming from Asia. Slide 13, please. There continues to be impacts from geopolitical events in our markets. I'd say vessel transits through the Red Sea have increased since early last year. A reminder that full reopening may prove less impactful than many expect.
Russian refined product exports, which were briefly disrupted by Ukrainian drone strikes last fall, have largely returned to prior levels, but this situation remains fluid, and I'd say the trade hasn't fully normalized because much of this volume now moves on Gray Fleet vessels, and this is tonnage that will have a difficult time finding employment in regular or premium markets if the conflict's resolved.
And in short, these flows persist, but the inefficiencies around them still remain. Slide 14, please. There is still much to be determined regarding the implications for Venezuela. Venezuelan crude exports have declined significantly since 2016. Last year, exports averaged 700,000 barrels per day, with the majority of volumes going to China. As shown in the chart in the top right, most Venezuelan crude delivered to the U.S. historically has been transported on Aframax LR2 vessels.
And so the potential incremental demand for Aframax LR2 tonnage will really depend on export volume from Venezuela. But at one million barrels per day of Venezuelan crude going to the U.S., we estimate demand for approximately 23 additional Aframax LR2 vessels. Next slide, please. The product tanker order book currently stands at 19% of the existing fleet. At face value, this may appear elevated, but context is critical.
If you look to the right, roughly 21% of the product tanker fleet today is older than 20 years. And by 2028, when these new builds deliver, that figure rises to approximately 31%. It's also important to consider what is on order. Roughly half the order book consists of LR2 vessels, and about 53% of LR2s on the water today are trading crude oil. And that crossover meaningfully reduces the effective growth of the clean product tanker fleet. Next slide, please.
Today, roughly 26% of the Aframax LR2 fleet and 9% of the Handymax MR fleet are sanctioned. And these ships are old, with an average age of 20-21 years. In a more typical market, much of this tonnage would have been retired already or scrapped. And to the right, we show the order book compared to the age of the fleet.
The fleet is quite old because you had a lot of vessels delivered between 2002 and 2010 that are now hitting 20 each year or have. So today, there's 264 MRs on order. By 2028, nearly 637 will be older than 20 years old. And this is a similar story for the Handymax LR1 and Aframax LR2 vessels. Next slide, please. Putting this together, headline fleet growth likely overstates effective supply growth.
Between the age profile of the fleet, the high proportion of sanctioned vessels, and the meaningful share of LR2s trading crude, actual fleet availability for clean trades may grow far more slowly than the order book suggests. In our view, this sets up a market where modest demand growth can have an outsized impact on rates.
In both the short and long term, the market's fundamentals remain strong, driven by structural shifts in global refining, longer trade routes, and an aging fleet. Slide 19, please. In the third quarter of 2025, you can see our results to the left. The company generated approximately $150 million in EBITDA, supported by an average TCE rate of $26,000 per day. As you're aware, rates are well above that today.
During the quarter, we also increased the quarterly dividend to $0.42 a share, and this really reflects our strategy to operate a high-quality fleet with a strong balance sheet that allows us to generate attractive returns and also return capital to shareholders through the cycle, not just at the top. Slide 20, please. We had a press release out yesterday that provided an update on liquidity, new build CapEx, and our debt position.
Please have a chance to look at that if you have time. This summarizes some of the information. As of January 9th, our pro forma cash stood at $992 million. In addition, we have $784 million of undrawn revolving credit capacity, making our total liquidity approximately $1.7 billion. On the right, you can see the CapEx schedule for our eight new build vessels. The remaining payments through 2028 are $558 million, and this excludes any potential debt refinancing or debt financing, sorry.
So taken together, this leaves the company in a very strong and flexible liquidity position. Next slide, please. Since 2021, we have reduced our total indebtedness by approximately $2.5 billion and sit with a pro forma net cash position of roughly $383 million. This transformation was deliberate, not reactive, and designed to make the company more resilient across cycles. Slide 22, please.
The company has reduced its all-in daily cash break-even to $11,000 per day. As shown on the left, this break-even level allows the company to generate positive cash flow nearly over every historical period and would remain roughly cash flow neutral during the worst rate environment during COVID. On the right, you can see the company's operating leverage. At a market rate of $30,000 per day, the fleet would generate approximately $630 million free cash flow.
And while our outlook remains constructive, we remain mindful of the industry's cyclicality and have positioned the company to perform well in even a low-rate environment. And that's something we're really proud that we've achieved, even though we're in a very, very strong market today. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Q&A. If you start populating some of the chat, I'll review the questions that are coming in.
We will try to organize these together, focusing a little bit on the market, capital allocation, etc. I'll give a second for those questions to come in, and then we'll get started.
All righty. While these questions come in, I think, Lars, it would just be really helpful if you could give us a high-level overview of what you're seeing in the market today. We know there's been a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks, so maybe just an update on the market rates, where you're seeing things being fixed, etc. I think that'd be very helpful.
Sure, James. Let's start with the LR2s. It's certainly been a great follow-through since Christmas and going into the new year. We have today seen over 200 Worldscale fixed out of Korea going to Australia, which is one of the base routes.
In terms of TCE, time charter equivalent, we're now trading north of $50,000 a day on pure round voyage. The Middle East market, the TC1 Platts route, has also been extremely active over the last couple of weeks. And we will also be seeing north of Worldscale 200 on that route, probably already now or latest by tomorrow, and probably also shoot north of that.
That, again, is also trading between $45,000 and $50,000 a day purely on round voyage. As many of the people who are on this call will understand that shipping is very much a triangulation game. And what you would want to do is try and optimize over and beyond that.
But in terms of understanding where the direction of travel is, it certainly has been a very interesting couple of weeks since the new year where supply in all the primary regions, and that's North Asia, the Middle East, and also in Europe, have kind of tightened a lot on the position side, and we've seen rates kind of move up at the same time.
I think it's also interesting, just as we talk about LR2s, is that in the past, we've seen LR2s kind of swinging like a seesaw together with the Aframaxes. What we're seeing today is that the Aframaxes, which are the LR2 equivalents trading crude oil, are also trading extremely strongly, particularly in the West. So we have multiple markets that have moved up at the same time, which kind of provides you with the underlying base that both markets can be stronger.
We're not going to see substitution in the near future. So in terms of the large ships, we have a very strong view on the market. It's also not only our own view on the market that we're seeing today, but it's kind of reflective also on a very, very busy time charter market where we have seen a lot of activity from all of the major players wanting to look at time charters from anything between five years, of which we've done a couple over the last couple of weeks, but also three-year deals have been done quite a few times now.
So it's good to see that there is this kind of belief in the market, also from the big players, which is not only ourselves that believe in that, but it's certainly been very active since the new year. On the MRs, it's the same story.
Asia has been very strong from the get-go of this year. Rates have moved up. We're trading kind of just shy of $30,000 a day on pure round voyage as well there. The U.S. Gulf market has, as always, proven to be a volatile market.
But just as people think that the market is going down, it comes up again by another 50 points, also trading very strongly, so we have a beautiful story where both East and West is trading well on the MR section.
Great, and thank you, everybody, for the questions that are coming in. We're getting quite a few. We're going to try to structure these together, so we'll hit them. Lars, we have a question on time charters and Venezuela. I just want to hit Venezuela maybe quickly. Do you think that we could see more switching to the dirty trade if Venezuelan volumes continue to increase?
And then there was another question on what Venezuela was exporting last year, and that was actually. I'll answer that part around 700,000 barrels per day, but it had periods where it peaked up to a million barrels per day. So Lars, just maybe a little bit on potential for how you see Venezuela and what it means for the market.
Look, Venezuela is still early. It's still very early in terms of where we are on that, but I think it's also very clear on the direction of travel on what's going to happen there. They obviously have infrastructural problems. It's going to take a while for them to grow and so on.
But the cargoes that need to move out of Venezuela or indeed also into Venezuela when it comes to the naphthas that they use to kind of soften up their own crudes is certainly going to be happening on primary trade vessels. So we will start seeing a benefit for the mainstream tonnage.
In terms of the markets, we have seen over the last 10 days, maybe 10 ships, further 10 ships that have moved from clean to dirty, from LR2s into Aframaxes, and it's also a testament to people's belief in the strength of the market.
There's no doubt that the opacity of that sanctioned market will require now that modern ships that are trading in the primary trade need to come to the forefront because the other ships simply cannot do this type of business, and we will start seeing a lot more trade in the Atlantic Basin.
Some of them will be shorter haul. Some of them will be longer haul. But in terms of fundamental requirements for mainstream tonnage, it certainly is going to increase.
Great. That's really helpful and sounds quite encouraging for us. This question may be for Robert or may be for Lars. How do you balance the bullishness in spot rates with the attractive availability of long-term charters today? And I guess, how do you think about balancing that going forward? Historically, we've had, over the last few years, 15 to 20 ships on charter. But I guess, how do you guys think about that going forward and any takeaways from that? Lars, can you go first?
So, I think it's this. Look, we've charted out, as you've seen, a few of our older 2004 ships for five-year charters at rates that really securitize the income and the value of those vessels for a long period of time and create a very healthy position. That's what I would call a structural strategic position. The rest, I would leave to Lars because the shorter term is really up to him.
I would just add that we haven't kind of overly increased our time charter book compared to what it has been in the past. What we've done is kind of done decent housekeeping. The ships have come off. We have seen that the market has moved up, and we have been able to kind of recycle some of those time charters.
And one of the most important things that we always tend to do is to make sure that the people that we do the time charters with, we tend to have a strategic relationship with and are the top-tier names in our industry. So that's super important. When it comes to shorter-term time charters, it's obviously something that we look at every single day.
We have a tactical view and a strategic view that kind of depends on what we want to do. It also very much reflects on a particular market that we might maybe want to go into or not. But we're looking at today at time charters that for one year are hitting for an Aframax, modern Aframax LR2, north of $40,000 a day. We have not seen those kind of numbers since the heydays of the early days of the Ukraine invasion back in 2022, right?
These are really serious numbers that we have not seen for a very long time. Same thing goes for the numbers that you can do for three and five years. And then people can talk about, well, the ship's got to be super modern. They're going to be this. But okay, we've got modern ships in Scorpio, but we're commanding very big numbers for ships that are built in 2015. So it's across the board in terms of time charter interest. But of course, it's a reflection of a very strong spot market in all different areas.
So it sounds like a good place to be, especially with a $11,000 a day break-even. We're getting some market questions, but Robert, we're getting a lot of capitalization balance sheet questions. So I'm going to pivot here. I guess one of the things that people have asked is, how are you thinking about your exit from DHT at a great return and your movement into the VLCC segment? Is there anything more there, or are you happy with what you've done so far?
I think that we've been very bullish on the crude market, and correctly bullish for quite some time, a year and a half or so, since we put our first position down on DHT. And DHT was trading above net asset value. And we had the opportunity to take all of our money out of DHT at a great return and then order vessels that were actually in value terms below where DHT was trading for a forward delivery with stunning payment terms. And as you can partly see from the press release we made yesterday, so that has purely been an investment.
Great. And I guess kind of continuing a little bit here on new builds, Robert, because we've got a question as people are trying to understand, how are we thinking about additional new builds? We've ordered eight vessels last year, but we've sold 11 vessels over the last 12 months as well. So I guess, how are you thinking about the other new builds, the four MRs and the two LR2s that were placed last year, and any ideas or more comments on fleet renewal or strategy?
I think that you take things one at a time. The opportunity we took on all the new buildings recently, that we felt the undercurrent of a really improving new build market because the valuation curve is pretty steeply backwardated.
And yet your future paper was rolling up, so it was natural to expect your newer vessels or your vessels on order to start to move up in value too. So here was just a straight swap to start clearing out the older vessels. I don't think we're really in any rush to renew a fleet.
But I think that you could expect to see us continue to securitize the sort of whatever you want to call it in simple terms and that asset value of the fleet and improve the quality of the earnings we have and the quality of our balance sheet position so that if any opportunities arise, then in good positions or bad positions, we'll be able to take them.
I mean, it's very compelling when you've now got an NAV that you can see from our last disclosures yesterday that is moving very steadily towards the 90s. It's a very simple thing for us to look to securitize that by way of long-term charter or sale of older assets.
Helpful. Helpful. I guess because you mentioned it, and we have quite a few questions on it. You've paid roughly since 2023, $850 million or spent $850 million in buybacks and $200 million in dividends. The cash balance per yesterday's release is getting close to $1 billion. How are you thinking about buybacks? How are you thinking about dividends and capital allocation? And does the current market change kind of that approach?
I think that we spoke about dividends back on our earnings call and back in the autumn, and what we want is a regular dividend policy. We would like that dividend to be able to increase over time and to be able to be very clear to shareholders that we can continue to pay that dividend and ideally increase that dividend through all stages of the market cycle.
I think that will then generate an overall, once the market can trust in that, it will start to generate a much better valuation for the company and a steadier capital structure. That's the first priority. There will be no. I can tell you what there won't be is there won't be any extraordinary dividends, and there's not going to be a movement to do high payouts based on earnings. They're going to be very traditional, regular dividends.
As I said, increasing in our cash position now, I think when we sit down to consider dividends, I think it's fairly obviously the percentages are increasing all the time that we would look to move the dividend up. I think that's where that is. The buybacks are really not going to talk about. I think that there's no rush to, first of all, we're entering into a quiet period. Second, we're earning a lot of cash, a tremendous amount of cash, and the security of the balance sheet is immense. You don't have to buy back.
And we're, as a management, pretty experienced in buybacks compared to most, and you don't have to rush to do that every day. In a situation you have at the moment, we are earning a tremendous amount of cash. And it's best to go along, allow the shareholders, we ourselves are shareholders. We're the largest shareholders as insiders to take advantage of the situation, and the company can always come in at a later date if it's the right thing to do.
Helpful. That's very helpful. We received a couple of other questions, one around how you think about closing that price to NAV discount. I think you just answered it there with kind of highlighting this stable and sustainable increasing dividend that appeals to a larger investor base.
We're getting quite a bit on the market, Lars, so Robert, if you don't mind, I'm going to pivot back. We're getting a fair bit of geopolitics here, Lars, so I'll try to kind of summarize, but the one that I guess is most recent, and there's many, is how do you think things with Iran are developing and what are the potential impacts on the market? I'll add a little bit in here.
We've seen volumes going through the Red Sea. There was a slide on it from 700,000 barrels a day in early January last year. We're up to 1.4 million, but there's still over a million barrels a day going around the Cape of Good Hope. So that's kind of where we are today. But layering in what's going on in Iran, how do you see this potentially developing, and what would be the implications on the overall market?
Well, this is obviously still early, but you can start seeing on the oil trading side that some of the end users are thinking about kind of sourcing product from other sources at the moment just because there's so much uncertainty out there. But I think it's fair from a shipping perspective that as this escalates, the whole issue of sanctioned dark fleet, etc., people wanting to use these types of vessels, which of course covers all of the Iranian crude and products for that matter, they will be additionally cautious about using that.
Again, adding the same kind of level of hesitance that we've seen on the Venezuelan story or the Russian story and the enforcement rules that have come around those things have just meant that we have seen mainstream tankers come to the fore. Iran is a big player in the dark fleet. And if this escalates further and into some other elements where Iran is sanctioned further and cannot even sell their product or crude to some of the players, it will change the shipping map even further.
That's helpful. I guess you mentioned it. We've got some questions on it. Maybe I'll take a little bit of a start. I think one of the things that people are wondering, and it obviously varies quite a bit with how those peace developments are going, is what are the potential implications of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, and what does it look like on the market?
And I think I'll just highlight some numbers for you, Lars, that we had in our presentation, and then you can provide some commentary. But most of the product tanker fleet that's sanctioned has been operating in Russia. So you've got about 25% of the Aframax and LR2 fleet. You've got 9% of the Handymax MR fleet. And the average age of these vessels is 20-21 years old.
So maybe in the event of a peace agreement, the 16- and 17-year-old vessels that were operating in Russia, maybe if they're sold to another party or something like that, maybe they could come back into the fleet. But is it correct for people to assume that those 22- and 23-year-old ships that have been trading in these sanctioned trades, how difficult is it going to be for them to come back? And is the scrapyard really the next stop for them in the event of peace?
I think it's fair to say that the scrapyard is the destination of choice. Most of these ships are not insured by any international shipping finance institutions or anything like that. They're not covered by any SIRE approvals by any of the oil majors or anything like that. Standards have dropped completely.
But the most important fact, which is the one that you highlighted, is that the age profile kind of tells the story. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't have been in any type of trade, and they would have been at the breakers already. So these ships cannot trade in the primary mainstream trade, and they will go to the scrapyard.
So in terms of numbers, I think there's huge potential in terms of when you look at the fleet that's on order and in terms of what the percentage of fleet will be post-peace, which of course we all wish would happen because the age profile is such on the Aframax LR2 fleet, but also on the MR fleet that will require a huge amount of rejuvenation, which is also obviously starting to begin, but nowhere near enough to kind of give a full renovation of the fleet as they grow older.
Yeah. And there's been a couple more questions on this. And I mean, it feels to me like 31% of the fleet by.
James, can I just interject just one thing I just want to go back to because I have to go really shortly? It's one thing I just want to make clear: there is nothing out there that we're going to use the capital for in terms of buying another company. There's not a single company out there in our space that has a fleet that is the quality and the newness that we have.
And certainly, with where the stock is, we wouldn't, we certainly wouldn't start doing that as a preference over buying our own stock. So those people who may be afraid we'd go and buy a competitor with a building of a war chest or whatever one would want to call it, that's really not going to happen at this point. Thanks, James.
No, thank you, Robert. Yeah. So I guess just finish.
I just forgot one thing as well, which I think is important in this thing. Sorry, James, is what happened yesterday. I mean, up by the Black Sea where you had the drone attacks on a couple of tankers as well, one Aframax owned by a prominent Greek and a Suezmax owned by a prominent Greek, which were both attacked as well.
So there are so many different parts, which in my book tells you that this is going to be really interesting because there's so many ships that are not going to be able to trade.
Right. And it feels like 31% of the fleet, right, is going to be older than 20 years by 2028. So you would have probably already seen the scrapping, right, of these older tonnage . These sanctioned trades have given life to those other vessels. But it seems like with the recent developments, that's going to start to come in a little bit and pressures increase, and you highlight some of the attacks. That's really helpful.
Well, I guess it's also one of the reasons why you're seeing a lot of the oil majors and the traders taking long-term charters.
One more question, Lars, and I think this is helpful and probably a good way to end it, is could you just highlight once again, briefly, where spot rates are for LR2s and MRs and maybe kind of where they were a month ago to give those people who aren't as familiar an idea as how much they really moved up or maybe starting Q3, for example, where maybe MRs were 20,000 and LR2s were 28,000 as a starting point. That's where we were then. Where are we now?
Sure. Right now, if we did a snapshot on an LR2 round voyage, I think I mentioned that we had the voyage out of Korea going to Australia was just north of $50,000 a day. And we're heading towards that as well for the long round voyage business for TC1 as well, which is the Middle East going to North Asia. The rates from the west to the east are trading $45,000 a day.
That's a backhaul voyage. It's incredible that it's that high. The front-haul voyage would be doing middle distance from the Middle East going to the west, which is also doing extremely well. The crude markets in the west are probably trading $60,000-$70,000 a day on pure round voyage at the moment. TD25 is probably trading $240,000-$245,000 Worldscale a day. That's definitely $60,000-$65,000 a day pure round voyage.
Very volatile as well. But again, the underlying is that all markets are moving very nicely in unison. The MRs, just to finish that off, is trading probably close to $30,000 in Asia, which is wonderful. Going back six months ago, it was kind of a little bit slow in Asia. We've seen a very strong resurgence as we moved into the fourth quarter and throughout.
And passing through into 2026, it has just taken and gained strength. A lot of activity. The west has generally been very strong. Huge volatility in the U.S. Gulf. Utilization levels in the refineries are north of 95%, 96%. And you can definitely see that in the exports.
And it's interesting to see that there's a lot more kind of longer-haul business that's going out of the U.S. Gulf, where we have seen some of the displacement of the sanctioned barrels from Russia to Brazil has been displaced now with U.S. Gulf barrels moving into Brazil, increasing the availability of cargoes for kind of the main trade MRs, increasing the overall spot market in the Atlantic Basin.
Also trading around $30,000 a day if you did that as a snapshot. If you look back to a month ago, I think that was your question, which probably moved up, I don't know, $5,000, $6,000 a day in both markets. The thing that I like is not just one market moving because we've seen that many times before. One market that then goes into another market. But here we have a market which has moved up in unison.
It is not only on MRs. It is also on LR2s, but it certainly is also on the LR1s. I mean, the LR1s has had a great day today in the Middle East, moved up to roughly 217, I think it is, on TC5, and it's good to see, so it's across the board on all markets.
That's great. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining today's call. I think to highlight the company is in a great position. We have a strong underlying market that's not only high on historical levels, but improved through solid fundamentals over the last 12 months and very recently, as Lars has highlighted. The financial position of the company is in amazing shape with positive net debt and the low cash break-even of $11,000 per day on a very, very young fleet.
And the company will look to keep a conservative balance sheet, maintain a sustainable and strong and growing dividend through the cycle. With that, I'd like to thank everybody again and pass it to Paul.
Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. Please note that this webinar will soon be made available for access on demand on Capital Link's website at capitallinkwebinars.com and Capital Link's YouTube channel. Thank you, everyone, again. You can now disconnect. Thank you.