Klaveness Combination Carriers ASA

OSE:KCC

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter result presentation of Klaveness Combination Carriers. My name is Engebret Dahm, I'm the CEO of the company. And I'm pleased to have Liv Dyrnes with me, who is the CFO and Deputy CEO.

In this presentation, we start with a short introduction, and we have four main sections, which is the first part, I will go through the market development and a commercial update. Second part, Liv will give an update of the financial performance. And we'll continue with going through the status of our sustainability efforts. And at the end, I will summarize our market view and the outlook for our company for the next quarters.

But in the start, I can't resist to tell you, remind you who we are and what we do. So we are owners of Combination Carriers. We have 2 types of ships, the cargoes and the CLEANBUs that are both tankers and dry bulk vessels, competing against the standard product tankers and dry bulk vessels every day. Our ships create value to our shareholders through 3 main value drivers: firstly, we are more efficient than the standard product tankers and dry bulk vessels. We combined the cargoes transported by these 2 standard ships with a fraction of the anti-time or so-called ballast, meaning we transport more cargoes than the standard ships, meaning that we have more earning days, and we have a substantially lower carbon footprint than the standard ships.

Secondly, the fact that we trade in both the dry market and the product tanker market, which tends to move in different positions. We have a diversified earnings base, which reduced risks and give downside protection.

Thirdly, our ships are more flexible than a standard dry bulk and product tankers. They can transport more type of cargoes and in more trades, meaning that we have more optionality in a very volatile commodity markets, and we have the ability to shift capacity between the markets that are the strongest.

So let's take a look at the highlights for the second quarter. It's been a remarkable quarter and the strong results, adds up to what is the best ever half yearly results of our company. The second quarter, of course, is supported by a very strong product tanker market and also an improving dry bulk market. But the story of the second quarter is much more than the strong markets, which we'll come back to.

The average earnings of the fleet ended at $38,376 per day, which is down around $2,000 per day. It compares well with the guiding that we gave back in May for the quarter, which was between $36,700 and $38,700, so ending up in a higher range of that guiding. And compared to the standard vessels, we outperformed the standard dry bulk vessels 2.5x. And we matched pretty well the earnings of the standard product tankers.

Going over to the operating results to the left. The EBITDA was slightly down. The average time charter earnings of the fleet was down -- slightly down. But the cargoes were up, but did not fully offset lower CLEANBU earnings. On the positive side, we had lower off-hire, on the negative side, slightly higher OpEx. In totality, as you see, a very strong quarter.

On the basis of the strong results and positive outlook, the Board decided to give a dividend of $0.30 per share, which equates to around 13% running yield compared to yesterday's share price. We'd like to remind you that we have paid out dividends every quarter since the IPO back in 2019. Over the last 12 months, we have paid in out $75.6 million. And since the IPO, we have paid out $176 million. So the payout for the second quarter is pretty much in line with the dividend policy of paying 80% of the free cash flow to the shareholders and the -- second quarter and set more than 90% of the free cash flow.

So looking at the market development, we see how, firstly, the development in the product tanker market. Here you see the LR1 spot market development. You note that the second quarter kept the -- spot market kept up well, especially the market for MRs in the East of Suez was very strong, kept fairly stable over the quarter and ended at an average above the first quarter. LR1 as the graph will show and then slightly below the very strong first quarter, which the strength was a reflection of the start of the tax on commercial shipping in the Red Sea at end of the 2023. Also looking at the dry market, the earnings -- spot earnings improved compared to the first quarter, which was, of course, impacted by the seasonal low due to the Chinese New Year in the first -- in January and February. Both markets has weakened in -- over the summer, especially the product tanker market, as you will see from the graph. Also the dry market has weakened somewhat over the summer.

Looking at our earnings. Here, we compare the average earnings of our fleet to the spot market for similar sized product tankers and dry bulk vessels. So as mentioned, the earnings for the fleet in the second quarter ended at $38,376, which is the third highest earnings ever, below the first quarter, as you will see, and slightly below the first quarter 2023 earnings. Comparing to the standard markets, the blue line shows the average of MR and LR1 spot market. You'll note we -- it ended down compared to the first quarter -- but still, we managed to match that pretty well.

You see the gray line, which is the spot market for Panamax ships. You will note that it increased slightly in the quarter, and we outperformed this by 2.5x.

Looking at the CABUs, it was an exceptionally strong earnings and profitability in the CABU segment in the quarter. Efficiency was high. We operate the ships -- all the ships, the full capacity consecutively in trades between Australia and the Far East and Middle East. The time in tanker trade still fell back somewhat, which is a reflection of longer duration on the dry bulk voyages in the quarter. We fixed the 3 shipments from Australia via Indonesia, which implies a longer duration compared to the direct runs we normally do. So this a bit different trading -- dry bulk trading had some negative impact on the ballast increasing slightly. But of course, if you compare the first and the second quarter, which ends up with a ballast around 10%, it still is an amazing list from efficiency.

The earnings of the CABUs, as mentioned, is the highest ever, ending at $37,656 per day, which is up compared to the first quarter. Here, we got, as mentioned, a very positive effect of the strong MR product tanker market in the Pacific through floating rate contracts. We also had a positive effect on -- of a stronger dry market and the Pacific dry market performed well in the second quarter compared to the average, which made the dry earnings of the CABUs improving. Looking at the CLEANBUs, which has also been a very strong quarter, and we utilized the high trading flexibility of the CLEANBUs to optimize the trading and get as much as possible out of the strong product tanker market. We fixed the 2 shipments with vegetable oils out of Brazil in the trade to Middle East and the Far East, simply because it paid better than the runs we normally do on dry with sugar and grains.

We also fixed the CLEANBUs as standard tankers to take advantage of opportunities in the strong product tanker market. So in this background, the capacity employed in the tanker sector as you will see to the left, increased from 75% to 79%. The ballast moved down by 5% to 18%, which is still very strong compared to any other operator of tanker tonnage but is still above our long-term target. Earnings -- timer charter earnings ended at $39,093 per day, which is down more than $7,000 per day compared to last quarter, which is mainly, as mentioned, is a reflection of the weak spot market for LR1 tankers.

It still keeps up quite well compared to the spot market development.

Another noteworthy news for the quarter is that we have restarted the trading of our CLEANBUs in the trades from Middle East to South America, which is one of our best paying and most efficient trades. As you may recall, the effect of the ban on Russian product imports to Europe led to Russians took over the diesel market in Brazil and shipments from Middle East, India basically stopped. The trade has now restarted, and we have to date made 3 shipments this year, which are supposed to impact on earnings and our efficiency of our business.

So with that, I will leave the microphone to Liv, that will go through the results for the company.

[Liv Dyrnes, executive]

Thank you, Engebret, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a financial update, and then I'll give a brief update on emissions performance for the quarter. Okay. So let's start with EBITDA. As expected, a very strong quarter. EBITDA of $36.2 million for Q2, only slightly down from Q1, approximately 4% down. If we compare against Q1, CABU TCE earnings, as Engebret mentioned, on the right, increased by approximately $2,800 per day, a total effect of $1.6 million. CLEANBU TCE earnings, however, down approximately $7,500 per day, a total effect of $4.8 million. CLEANBU off-hire was down due to less dry docking, in total $1.8 million in positive effect, while operating expenses increased by $0.4 million. I'll give you some more details related to OpEx on the next slide. But SG&A improved $0.3 million mainly related to bonus provisions made in Q1. But all in all, a historically very strong quarter.

If we look at the operating expenses, as mentioned, they increased Q-on-Q by $0.4 million. This is a 3% increase. We saw a two-folded development. CLEANBU OpEx was $9,659 per day in Q2, only a slight increase, and 2% up compared to the average for 2023. On the other hand, CABU OpEx increased by 15% compared to last year and ended the quarter at $8,882 per day. We do believe that the main part of this increase is temporary. It's related to both in Q1 and Q2 a quite high procurement as well as crewing costs. The crewing cost relates both to the crew matrix, overlapping of crew, et cetera. But we do believe that our second half OpEx will be lower than first half OpEx in 2024.

If we then have a look at the dry docking, we had 1 CLEANBU and 1 CABU vessel dry docking in Q2 and total 89 off-hire days. Both dry dockings were somewhat delayed. It was bad weather, it was shortage of manpower on yard as well as some unplanned repairs. For the remaining part of the year, we have postponed 2 retrofit projects until 2025, which means that we will have less off-hire in second half than what we informed about in the Q1 presentation. So off-hire for second half is expected to be approximately 75 days -- fewer days than what we have informed about last time. You can find some more information about the dry docking on Slide 38 in the presentation.

Then over to the full P&L for the quarter. As you can see here, depreciation, quite flat Q-on-Q, while net finance cost is down 0.6 million or close to 15%, sorry. We had positive FX effects compared to last quarter, but then we had somewhat higher interest on bond debt due to the tap issue in May. Profit after tax $25.1 million, a slight decrease from last quarter, approximately 3.5%. Dividend per share, $0.30 for the quarter. As Engebret mentioned, this is well above the minimum level in the dividend policy of 80% of the adjusted cash flow to equity, it's actually 92%. Return on capital employed on an annualized basis, 18%, and return on equity, 27%. With 2 strong quarters in a row, we conclude a record strong half yearly result for the first half of 2024. As you can see, net revenue increased by 6% or close to 6% from the same period last year. It mainly relates to increased TCE rates of approximately $4,000 per day for the fleet in average. This was partly offset by more dry docking days. Operating expenses increased by 11% from the same period last year. Well, we saw an increase -- sorry, a decrease through the year for the -- no, sorry, we saw in first half last year, we saw lower CABU OpEx, and they increased through the year of 2023. And we expect the opposite trend for this year, which means that the main impact of this increase is the CABU OpEx. SG&A increased by 2.6%, which is quite as expected. EBITDA for first half is $73.8 million, an increase of 4.6%, and depreciation is down 8.3%. We depreciate the dry docking cost over 2.5 years, but actually dry docking cycles are longer than this, which means that -- or is the main reason for this decrease. Net financial items or the cost is down 18.6%, mainly related to lower interest costs as we have lower interest-bearing debt. Profit after tax, $51.1 million, an increase of 14% from the period last year.

Dividend for the first half, $0.65. That's a payout ratio of 77%, and well above the minimum level on the dividend policy. Return on capital employed on an annualized basis, 19%, and a return on equity of 28%. So as mentioned, the quarter concludes a record strong half yearly result.

Some short comments to the balance sheet. In addition to the normal changes that we see mainly related to working capital, we saw increased bond debt of $29 million through the quarter related to the tax issue in May. Equity ratio, 57.4%, a slight decrease from the end of Q1, mainly related to higher interest-bearing debt.

The cash ended at $83.3 million at the end of Q2, an increase of -- from $60 million coming into the quarter. EBITDA had a positive effect of $36.2 million. And then we had a positive effect of changes in working capital of $7.4 million, more than offsetting the negative change that we saw in Q1. CapEx, $11.8 million, whereof approximately $5.4 million related to dry docking and $6 million related to energy efficiency investments. And then in addition, we had a small payment on the newbuilds. Ordinary debt service normally is around $10 million, this quarter, slightly below at $9.7 million, whereof $6.3 million relates to normal ordinary debt repayment. Then we had a positive effect of bond and RCF of net $22.1 million. As mentioned, we had a tap issue under the sustainability-linked bond with maturity in 2028. And we used part of this cash to repay revolving credit facilities. Then at the end here, dividends of $21.1 million. That's the Q1 dividend paid in Q2. Available liquidity, hence ended at $208.3 million, up from $180 million coming into the quarter. I have earlier mentioned that this -- or part of this cash or available liquidity position is also committed for future investments. So to the right here, you will see that we have adjusted available cash position for such future commitments. New building and energy efficiency CapEx amounts to $69.3 million, and this includes only the equity portion of the newbuild investment. This will be paid during 2024, but the main part in 2025. Then as part of the tap issue, we have as well repaid the remaining part of the KCC04 bond maturing next year. This has a negative cash effect of $20.6 million in August. Q2 dividends of $0.30 per share amounts to $18.1 million, that will be paid in September. So the adjusted available liquidity position is still a solid $100 million but it's more in line with the company size and activity level that we have. So we still have a solid cash buffer for potential events or weaker markets; in addition, some investment capacity.

Then a short overview of our -- an overview of the interest-bearing debt. As mentioned, we issued NOK 300 million under the sustainability-linked bond issue that we firstly issued last year, in May this year. It was priced at 104.26% of par, equaling 250 bps. So it's a very strong pricing for unsecured bullet 4.5-year tenor. We exercised the call option that we have on the KCC04 bond in July, and we paid approximately $20 million in August, which means that the first mortgage debt facility that falls due is in December 2026.

Then we'll shortly go through the emissions performance for Q2. We measure the carbon intensity of the fleet by the EEOI. This is emissions per transport work, which means that it's based on actual cargo carried and not the deadweight of the vessel. The EEOI was flat Q-on-Q of 6.9. The CABU EEOI was as well flat at 6.4, which is actually the target for 2024. The CLEANBU EEOI, however, was higher at 7.4. And that is mainly due to the fleet trading mainly in tanker trades. So while we are still highly committed to reducing our emissions, we will, this year, probably not reach the target of 6.4. But we work every day to improve this, both through energy efficiency measures, through trading and voyage efficiency. One example of this is the sustainability-linked freight contract that we have with South32. In this contract, freight is linked to the actual performance of the KCC vessels performing the voyages under that contract.

In the graph to the left, you will see our emissions performance compared to the baseline in the contract. And as you can see here, we have had great improvements since the contract started at the beginning of 2023. So while we started above the baseline, we are now down well below the baseline. So we work closely with the customer to improve their emissions. We cooperate when it comes to speed, cargo intake and waiting time, among other things. And then in addition, we in KCC try to optimize ballasting and trading pattern to reduce the emissions under the contract. So 1 example here is the trade that you see to the right, where we take iron ore out of Geraldton to Yangjiang in China. And then we only ballast 1 to 2 days into Mai Liao before transporting caustic soda under the contract. So since the ballast leg is included in the total emissions performance under the contract, we, of course, try to minimize this ballast prior to loading caustic soda. In comparison, the standard tankers doing the same work, typically ballast from Singapore or Australia. So I think this nicely illustrates part of the work that we do to reduce emissions by cooperating closely with the customer.

Then Engebret, over to you again for the outlook. Yes, just shortly before that, sorry, if you want to learn more about the sustainability linked contract, what we call the CAF, the carbon adjustment factor, you can hear the podcast that will soon be released. Then over to you.

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Thank you, Liv. So now we have come to what may be the most exciting part of the presentation is how we view the market outlook and how the company outlook looks like. I will start off with the product tanker market. And despite the weaker performance during the summer, we believe that the strong market fundamentals in the product tanker market still remains.

Looking first on the oil demand. We see that the upward trend continues despite weaker oil demand figures from China. [ IEA ] is estimating global growth in oil demand by around 1 million barrels per ton, both for 2024 and 2025. Also, the ton mile growth continues to be firm with increasing volumes and also increasing shipment sailing distances due to the situation in the Red Sea and also coming on the top of the war in Ukraine that adds inefficiencies. Clarksons estimates growth in ton mile demand of around 7% for 2024.

So looking ahead, of course, all eyes are looking at the situation in the Red Sea. And it is difficult to predict what will happen and when a normalization of this situation will happen. But looking at what has happened over the summer, with continued attacks on commercial ships and a very tense political situation in the Red Sea, we can't see that this unwinding over the situation will happen in the near future. But if you assume a status quo through 2025, the demand growth -- ton-mile demand growth is expected to be around 2%, so lower than in 2024. If contrary to expectations, the shipments through the Red Sea will normalize in the end of this year, there will be a negative ton-mile growth in 2025.

Looking at the supply side, we -- the cleaning up and fixing of [indiscernible] Suez maxes this summer into the clean market came as a surprise. And it was an effect of a very poor crude market during the summer. The crude market continues to be volatile, but has firmed up quite a bit, which leaves very limited incentives for crude carriers to continue cleaning and enter the clean market. On the contrary, there are rumors that crude carriers are returning to the dirty market.

On the contracting side, we see increasing ordering -- active ordering of both [ crude ] carriers, especially the [ KCCs ] and [indiscernible]. But the fleet growth for the next years is still fairly limited, around 2% this year, increasing to 5% next year for the product tankers. If you look on the total fleet growth for tankers, next year, it still is very moderate, down at around 2%. So in total, the market balance looks strong in 2024, where demand growth clearly outpaces supply growth. The market balance looks likely to be moderate a little bit than next year where the risks, as mentioned, are linked to China and to the situation in the Red Sea. On the positive side, we expect the product tanker market will get the positive impact from the crude market, which looks very strong, where capacity likely will be shifted from product tanker market, the clean market to the crude market.

Over to the dry market, despite the macro headwinds, we remain optimistic for the dry market. There has been a very strong demand growth to date where the second quarter just continued with a strong pace as we saw in the first quarter, when increasing shipments of bauxite, grains, of iron ore very much into China. And ton-mile growth -- sorry, ton growth in the first half and at around 4.5%, which is strong.

Going forward, for the rest of this year and next year, of course, the main risks seem to be linked to the prospect of iron ore shipments into China. We note increasing stock levels of iron ore in China. We note tighter or poorer steel-producing margins, which has negative impact on both iron ore prices and also on the profitability of the steel industry. So that is a risk. On the positive side, the strong harvests in both U.S. and Argentina is likely to lead to the strong and increasing shipments of grains in the second half of this year and next year.

Canal disruptions also for the dry market has a positive effect, where we see that the ton mile has increased by around 4.5% in so far this year. Over the summer, the situation in Panama has normalized, meaning that the disruptions in Panama will soon end while the situation in the Red Sea remains. And as mentioned, it's difficult to predict when the situation in Red Sea will normalize. But looking at the estimates of Clarksons, they believe that even taking into account the unlikely situation that shipments through Suez will normalize at the end of this year. There still is a positive growth in ton mile demand next year, around 1%. But again, we believe it will take longer time before we see a change in the Red Sea.

Looking at the supply side, the low fleet growth demand story in the dry market remains. There has been somewhat more ordering over the summer, but order book is still below 10%, and we have a fairly high predictability on the fleet growth in the dry market this year, 2025 and '26, which will end around 3% or below 3% each of these periods of time. And it seems that the ordering of dry bulk vessels keep being fairly moderate.

So looking on the balance, the supply-demand balance for second half of this year looks to be tight. And we are optimistic for the fourth quarter. 2025 appears to be slightly softer. But again, with limited fleet growth, that are definitely possibilities that the dry market can surprise on the upside.

So let's then just look on the forward pricing in the product tanker and dry market has been impacted on what's been happening over the summer. And here on the blue line, you see the forward pricing, the actual pricing of LR1s up to the second quarter of this year. And going ahead in the dotted lines, you see the current forward pricing in blue, and which we compare to the forward pricing in May this year, which is marked with dotted -- green lights. So not surprisingly, the forward pricing for the third quarter has reduced quite dramatically as an effect of the weaker market. But you will note that the fourth quarter pricing is firm, indicating a clear upturn in the market. And looking into next year, you will see that the difference between the pricing before the summer and the pricing today is fairly marginal for the first 3 quarters.

You see a little bit the same in the dark line, which is the foreign market for Kamsarmax dry bulk vessels. The seller market came in a bit softer than expected, impacting the profit pricing for the third quarter, but again, optimism for the fourth quarter and for next year, the pricing is pretty much stable compared to what it was before the summer.

So how have we positioned the company with this market backdrop? Looking first on the tanker part of the capacity of our company. As you probably remember, we are splitting up the capacity in tanker capacity and dry bulk capacity. Here, you see that the third quarter capacity is more or less fully fixed in the tanker market. And we have a couple of fixtures that will be concluded over the next week or two.

Looking at the fourth quarter, we have around 85% of the capacity either fixed or index-linked contracts or trading in the spot market, which means that we will highly benefit from the expected upturn in the tanker market in the fourth quarter. We are entering into the season where we renewed the caustic soda contracts into Australia for CABU fleet. We had 7 contracts, and 5 of the contracts are up for renewal this year. The pricing for this contract renewal as normal will be linked to our competitors pricing this trade, which historically has been very much linked to the forward pricing, the time charter, the 12-month time charter rates for -- going forward. It's interesting to note that despite the weakening spot market, time charter rates for MR tankers are keeping up pretty well. I may note in also in the fixtures that has been made over the summer that we are at high levels than on time charter than we were last autumn, which was the backdrop for the pricing of the contracts for 2024.

So based on that, the outlook for the pricing for next year looks good, but it remains to be seen, we are pretty early in the process. We would also try to increase the fixed rate booking on our CLEANBUs. We have one time charter of a CLEANBU expiring in early 2025, and we're investigating ways to improve and increase the fixed rate coverage. Likely, the fixed rate coverage for the tanker capacity of our company may end up between 30% and 40% within the end of the year.

Over to the dry coverage. As you see from the third quarter to the left, we are pretty much fully covered for the third quarter. For the fourth quarter, we have only 15% on fixed rate contracts, the remaining 85% on being index-linked or in the spot market. For next year, we have 21% of the dry capacity fixed, and that's represented by the new contract we concluded this summer in the trade between Australia and China for shipment of iron ore, where -- which is a very important trade for our cargo fleet to position the vessels back to the Far East to load caustic soda. On this contract, we doubled the cargo volume and pricing was considerably up compared to the pricing for this year, which was fixed last summer in a much weaker dry market.

We are guiding on the earnings for a company 1 quarter at a time. And let's take a look on the third quarter guiding based on how we have positioned the company and again, the market backdrop. So the third quarter of this year looks to be another historically strong quarter but will be lower than the 3 last quarters that has been exceptionally strong. This is especially relating to the CABUs, where we are guiding for earnings of between $28,000 and $29,000 per day. This is a reflection of a much softer MR tanker market, which has an impact through the index-linked contracts, caustic soda contracts. Another important negative effect in the quarter is we have had lower caustic soda shipments in the quarter, which is pretty much a normal variation in the number of cargoes differing between each quarter. But the fact this quarter was that we had more than 1 ship of the 8 cargoes trading as standard dry dock ships, which is -- gives a substantial lower earnings than the high paying combination trading that these ships are built to make.

But if our market outlook is right, the third quarter earnings will be a dip in the road, as we like to say. We have high bookings of caustic soda shipments for the cargo fleet in the fourth quarter, which will fully employ the CABUs in the high-paying combination trade. And around 50% of the tanker capacity of the CABUs will be on index-linked contracts where we will benefit from the expected stronger product tanker market in the fourth quarter.

Looking at the CLEANBUs, we are guiding earnings at $33,500 to $35,500, which is a rather small decrease compared to the strong second quarter. We also have -- the CLEANBUs note the effect of a softer LR1 spot market, but the CLEANBU earnings is keeping up very well compared to the underlying LR1 spot market, which has been [ full ] by to date in the third quarter by around 20% to 25%. So regarding in total for the fleet is earnings -- time charter earnings of between $30,700 and $32,200 per day, which, of course, looks lower than the 2 last quarters, but is actually in line with what we delivered for the second and third quarter last year, which was strong quarters for our company. So we are optimistic that we will, and confident that we remain delivering high profitability, enabling us to deliver a high dividend yield to our shareholders.

So at the end, I will, as normal, like to remind you about how the value drivers of our company is impacting the attractiveness of investing in our company. We'd like to show you this graph where we compare KCC against other listed product tanker and dry bulk companies. In terms of average return on invested capital on a vertical axis compared to the volatility in the return on capital. And the further up in the left-hand corner you are, the better relations you have. So as you see on this graph, KCC maintains the position, having the best relation between returns and volatility. And I think it's important to remember that we are going into a period of time, which are likely higher market uncertainty and also higher volatility. And in this market circumstance, we are confident that KCC with its business model will excel. There are higher efficiency, the diversification and the flexibility, we are confident we'll continue to deliver the best risk-adjusted return in the industry and continue to give sustainable value to our shareholders.

At the end, just reminding you about the latest podcast we released where you can get more information and more background of the incredible journey we have had with the CLEANBU fleet over the last 5 years. That answer presentation and we are more than pleased to answer your questions.

[Unknown Executive]

Yes. So the first question we have here, considering your more cautious market outlook, are you considering taking a more long-term coverage, for example, over a year?

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

I think it -- on the CABU side, it is a limited possibility to fix long term. It's pretty much up to our customers, the duration of the contracts. If we had a choice, we may have added a bit longer coverage, but we are comfortable with adding up most of the contracts for another 12-month duration on the CABU side. On the CLEANBUs, as mentioned, we will consider to -- we will increase the duration of fixed rate coverage and it may be -- we'll seek to extend that more than 1 year, but that remains to be seen.

[Unknown Executive]

Next question, can you expand on the terms for the dry bulk contract from Australia to China? And are you looking to increase fixed coverage for dry bulk in 2025 as well?

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

The contract is a fixed rate contract and -- which as mentioned, came in earning-wise pretty well. But the main motivation for this contract is to secure cargo volume and efficiency of the operation of the CLEANBUs on return lag from Australia to the Far East. So actually, we obtained 2 benefits: one, we fix in earnings at a pretty good level. And secondly, we secure the efficiency of operation. We will continue to look for contracts that will secure the efficiency of the -- of our CABU and CLEANBU operation. And we probably will seek to add a couple of more contracts which will have a duration of probably only 12 months. But the main motivation, as said, is the efficiency.

[Unknown Executive]

And 1 last question. Will you be able to maintain dividends if the tanker market declined significantly in 2025?

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

As you know, dividends are linked to what we call the profitability and the cash flow of the company and the strategy, as mentioned, is to pay out minimum 80% of the adjusted free cash flow. I think the advantage we have is that the flexibility of our fleet is that we can position the fleet to the market that is strongest. So if the tanker market weakens quite a bit, you will see that we will add capacity into the dry market. And we'll also add more capacity into combination trading where you also get this diversified earnings and efficiency that keeps up earnings and profitability of the company. So that means that, yes, we will be impacted like all other companies of a much weaker market, but we believe that our business model, we can maintain a higher dividend payout than most other companies in these volatile dry bulk and tanker markets.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, and that's all the questions for today.

[Engebret Dahm, executive]

Thank you for joining us this morning, and you know where to find us should you have further questions. Thank you.