Wallenius Wilhelmsen ASA

OSE:WAWI

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Financial Quarter with Promising Future Growth

In a solid quarter, the company reported an adjusted EBITDA of $503 million and strong cash flow, ending with $1.8 billion in cash, despite paying $452 million in dividends. Shipping segment revenue was stable, yielding a record EBITDA of $416 million. The Logistics segment saw a 7% revenue drop, but margins held steady. Looking ahead, the company expects 2024 EBITDA to exceed 2023 levels, with strong demand anticipated to continue into 2025. Newbuildings are underway, enhancing competitive positioning amid rising fuel costs.

Strong Performance Underlined

In the latest earnings call, the company reported an adjusted EBITDA of $503 million for the quarter. This figure reflects solid underlying performance, despite a recent increase in selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses, which diminished the headline number. Excluding these extraordinary costs, the adjusted EBITDA could have been even higher, potentially marking an all-time record for the firm. The company's cash flow remained robust, closing the quarter with a significant $1.8 billion in cash reserves.

Segment Breakdown: Shipping, Logistics, and Government

Breaking down the performance by segment, the Shipping division reported an impressive adjusted EBITDA of $416 million, setting a record for the segment. Revenue remained stable with improved rates quarter-on-quarter, although the Logistics segment faced a 7% decline in revenue attributed to seasonal factors. The Logistics EBITDA settled at $47 million, reflecting consistent margins year-over-year. Conversely, the Government services sector experienced strong demand, particularly for U.S. flag cargo, bolstering overall revenue.

Navigating Challenges in Logistics and Auto Markets

Despite strong performance in most segments, the company noted a slight decline in the Logistics segment. This downturn, partly influenced by seasonality, resulted in lower volumes for auto-related services. However, management expressed optimism, emphasizing that the underlying demand remains strong and anticipating that Q3’s performance was due to temporary conditions rather than a permanent change in the market dynamics.

Debt Management and Dividends

The company successfully reduced its net debt to $1.5 billion during the quarter, signaling effective debt management. Additionally, it paid out a substantial $452 million in dividends shortly after the quarter's end, underscoring its commitment to returning value to shareholders. The management reaffirmed its dividend policy, suggesting that 2024 would continue to see strong dividend payouts, aiming for roughly $740 million distributed to shareholders over the year.

Market Outlook: Growth Prospects Ahead

Looking forward, the management is optimistic about the company's performance in 2024, expecting it to exceed the results of 2023. The EBITDA guidance suggests growth is anticipated, although specific numbers were not provided. The team appears confident in maintaining a healthy contract coverage of near 100% in the Shipping segment, with a significant portion of contracts set to renew in a favorable market. By 2025, management expects even stronger performance driven by recent negotiations leading to higher rates in new contracts.

Anticipating Challenges in High & Heavy Segments

Management acknowledged slower sales in the high & heavy sector but attributed this to cyclical factors rather than a downturn in demand. They conveyed confidence that the market will stabilize in 2025 and project growth in volumes post-2025 driven by ongoing conversations with customers and the overall economic outlook. Despite the current challenges, they are integrating sustainability elements into their operational framework, acknowledging growth opportunities from a shifting landscape in vehicle exports.

Strategic Contracting and Risk Management

A significant focus during the earnings call was on the ongoing contracting season, with expectations to renew at least 45% of the shipping volume. The management highlighted their efforts to achieve balanced terms in contracts, which historically had favored OEMs, resulting in less predictability. The new agreements are positioned to distribute risk more evenly, enhancing operational stability moving forward. They also mentioned the necessity to adjust strategies based on evolving economic signals, especially considering the impacts of key political events, notably the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Final Thoughts and Investor Confidence

Overall, the earnings call illustrated a company poised for continued growth despite facing temporary challenges in certain segments. The strong financial health, evident in cash reserves and reduced debt, combined with an optimistic outlook for both 2024 and 2025, solidifies investor confidence. The proactive approach to contract negotiations and focus on sustainability further position the company favorably in a competitive landscape.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Anette Maltun Koefoed, executive]

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to our Quarterly Presentation. I'm here with our Vice President, Investor Relations, Anders-Redigh Karlsen.

What can we expect today?

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

I think another strong quarter, and we deliver as promised.

[Anette Maltun Koefoed, executive]

And very soon, our CEO, Lasse Kristoffersen, will take us through the highlights, followed by our CFO, Torbjorn Wist, who will take us through the financial highlights before Lasse takes the outlook. And then Anders, you will conclude with a Q&A session together with Torbjorn and Lasse. So, please submit your questions during the presentation.

And with this, Lasse, the stage is yours.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Thank you, Anette and Anders. We are really proud of another very strong quarter, and this is thanks to the unique team we have and their resilience on whatever we throw at them. This is thanks to the long-term partnership we have with customers and not least, thanks to the fact that we have leading positions in all the markets and products that we are serving. And that has led to very strong financial, operational and not least commercial results in this quarter, and I'll take you through some of the details behind it.

Starting with the EBITDA. Another strong quarter with an adjusted EBITDA of $503 million. We see a strong performance in all our segments and both Shipping and Government have adjusted EBITDA above last quarter. Logistics declined quarter-over-quarter, partly due to seasonality and product mix factors, but still delivers underlying strong results. We see very strong progress in our contract renewals, and we are confident that we will present new contracts before the end of the year, exemplified by the contract we announced earlier this week on a large and long-term high & heavy customer. In the quarter, we upsized some of our newbuildings to 11,700. These will be the largest vessels that has been built in our segment, and we believe this will ensure competitive advantage into a time of increasing fuel costs. And we see that we have continued strong demand for all our services in Shipping and Logistics despite somewhat weaker sales signals in autos and in high & heavy. So summing it up, we will have a somewhat better 2024 than 2023, and we believe we will have another strong year in 2025.

In Shipping, we delivered $416 million of adjusted EBITDA. We are basically sold out in all our segments -- in all our trades and the activity level is high, although we are still seeing disruptions, one of them we saw on the East Coast of the U.S. with the strikes only for a few days, which also happened and hit our Logistics business that saw a somewhat weaker quarter and Government still see very strong demand for services to support U.S. government in transporting goods, in particular across the Atlantic.

Our strong cash flow development continues, and we see another high of our last 12-month average. And also, we are really happy to see that we have a cash conversion close to 100%. So our cash flow really has been strong also in this quarter, and Torbjorn will give you some more details of the cash flow.

A few words about the market. We have seen a somewhat slowdown lately, and we have seen some profit warnings from one of the big OEMs, in particular in auto. And this is due to a couple of factors. One, the growth in the sale around the world has been less than we expected, but still, we expect a higher amount of sales of autos in 2024 than in 2023. The big change is that, through 2023 and partly '22, we saw an overproduction of cars, a buildup in inventories that has now really been sold off. And when we come towards the end of the year, we expect this inventory to normalize, and we will get back to a time where production and sales are more in tune as of 2025.

Double-clicking on the global sales, we still see strong growth in the global sales of cars. We expect this to be around 2% annual growth going forward. The key here for us is not the global sales of cars, but how many of these cars are moved on the deep oceans. And for the deep sea trade, we see that the annual growth is double that, and we expect that to be 4% a year going forward. And this is very much driven by the entrance of China into the auto market. We think this will continue. It's been a strong development over time, and it's into all markets. There is a lot of attention right now on Europe and EU tariffs or possible tariffs or likely tariffs on Chinese cars. We do not know how that will end. But what we do know is that, we already see that the Chinese growth in exports are continuing and less than 30% of their exports are into Europe. And even though the uncertainty of the EVs, these exports continue. But they are growing into all markets, and we expect this to continue, and that is why we are optimistic on the growth of the deep sea trade for Shipping also in the time to come.

Then coming into Shipping and some more details on Shipping. We saw a stable volume quarter-over-quarter, and this is also what we expected. We have -- we saw effects of the Red Sea in the first quarter. We normalized operations in the second quarter and the third quarter volume-wise, trade-wise was comparable to the second quarter. What we saw was a somewhat slowdown in the high & heavy volumes, and we now have a trade -- cargo mix of 23%, meaning that we are now, relatively speaking, transporting less high & heavy than we historically have. This is helped by significantly increased rates on the auto volumes. So the spread in earnings between high & heavy and auto has narrowed. And that has resulted in the numbers on the other side of the slide. We see our highest net rate recorded ever now coming up to $61 per cubic meter. And we also see the highest net earnings or time charter equivalent in our fleet, averaging now $57,000 a day. This is driven by new contracts coming in, also by customer mix, meaning that we are, relatively speaking, transporting more of the well-paying cargo and other factors. But in general, we see an underlying positive trend in the earnings in Shipping.

We are in the midst of a very important contracting season. This year, we expect to renew at least 45% of our volumes as measured by 2023. This is progressing well. We have already reported some contracts. All other key negotiations are continuing as we expect, and we will announce more contracts by the end of this year or early next year. And we are confident that we come into 2025, at least 70% of our book of business in Shipping will be written in '23 and '24 and reflect the current market. And we believe that based on these contracts being typically 3 and now recently also 5 years, we are building a very strong forward book that will make sure that we continue to have very close to 100% contract coverage in our Shipping segment. We are also negotiating with our customers, not only on rates, but on terms, and we have really worked hard to get balanced terms with our customers, meaning that there are some customers we have walked away from because we don't think that the terms are balanced.

And then last but not least, the contract we announced is a key contract for us into most of our trades, one of the biggest producers of high & heavy equipment around the world. And this is a 5-year contract, also including all elements around sustainability and decarbonization and represents what we believe is the typical long-term partnership we have with customers of this nature.

High & heavy volumes are, as I mentioned, down. These are the numbers from our own loading data. And this shows that we are actually down now all the way to the levels of COVID in Q2 2022. This is historical low levels on high & heavy. This is not really worrying for us. We are filling up our vessels with well-paying cars, but we believe there is a significant upside in these numbers. And when we talk to our customers, they expect 2025 to be more stable compared to '24. But through '25 and into '26, they expect growth in volumes. And in particular, we see now that into the North American market and the U.S. market, there is a little bit of a pause in exports awaiting the presidential election. And what we get told from our customers is that, whatever President get elected, they expect strong demand, but probably from different type of industries. In general, we see that construction industry around the world is going very slow. Agriculture is also very slow, while the mining activity still holds up well.

Ordering of new vessels has been a big issue over the last quarters, and we have now a significant order book of around 40% of the fleet on water. This seems to have tapered off. And in Q3, we are only aware of 1 order made for RoRo or PCTC vessels. We see a lot of other orders coming in and the yards are filling up their books with other segments like container, tankers and bulkers. Altogether, year-to-date up to September, the written newbuilding book is 40% higher in '24 than '23. So our expectation is that, the newbuilding market will maintain strong for long and that we are now seeing that the books are filled with new vessel types and pretty much full up until 2028.

On Logistics, we see a bit more of a mixed picture, but still underlying strong performance and high activity. Due to some seasonality and also no doubt, a little bit in a slowdown in sales in the U.S., we saw that the auto segment had somewhat lower volumes and saw lower revenues in the quarter. We're really pleased to see that we're able to maintain our margins, meaning that we are increasingly making more value-added work to our customers and can charge a higher margin on what we do on processing and supply chain management for auto OEMs. We also see that inventories has been high and for some of the OEMs is still increasing. But in general, in the U.S., inventories are coming down.

In the high & heavy segment, there's no doubt that the sales around the world is slowing and has been slow. And we see that, that we see increased dwell times in our terminals and EPCs. That means we have equipment standing on the ground for a longer time. The good news for us is that, we get paid for this storage, and that fully compensates for the slower throughput through the facility. So we still see strong revenues and even increasing margins in our high & heavy segment.

In the Terminals segment, still high activity, still high demand. But in the Terminals segment, we see seasonality somewhat in volumes, but even more in the biosecurity measures done towards Australia. And Q3 typically is a seasonal slow in that. The inland, which is basically more of an orchestrator, freight forwarder and agent business, we see that we are -- have lower revenues, largely thanks to lower volumes moving in terms of both high & heavy and partly cars. All in all, in Logistics, we think that the underlying demand is strong and that Q3 is a seasonal low level due to several factors that we, I think, are temporary. And, of course, the main thing we watch now is the reduction in the inventories in the U.S. and the increased sales of new cars that will be the main driver for our Auto segment.

Coming into sustainability. Safety is our #1 priority. And this quarter, our safety statistics on Shipping can look really bad. The real issue here is that, there is a bit of a periodization effect of reporting. So if you look across the 2 quarters and year-to-date, we are still well below our targets, although we were not happy with having a higher lost time incident frequency in this quarter.

On Logistics, we are performing as we were expecting. And year-over-year, we are improving our safety records and safety is something we take very seriously, and we are now launching new programs on working on safety culture, particularly focusing on Shipping and the Shipping-related themes. Very happy to see that we are continuing our efforts and our results in reducing our emissions, and that is primarily through improving energy efficiency. We are investing in operational, technological and physical investments in our vessels and see that we steady and slowly reduce our emissions, and we are well ahead of our targets for 2024. And that means that we're also well ahead of our plan to reduce by -- close to 50% by 2030 and get to net 0 by 2040.

So with that, I'll hand over to Torbjorn, who will give you some more of the financial updates.

[Torbjørn Wist, executive]

Great. Thank you, Lasse, and good morning, everybody. Very happy to be here to present the financial highlights for the quarter.

If we start with the financial highlights, sort of 3 key takeaways from my perspective: Strong underlying performance in terms of adjusted EBITDA; strong cash flow; and strong delivery on our financial targets. So a very good quarter indeed. The adjusted EBITDA came in at USD 503 million with the decline somewhat due to some additional SG&A within our Shipping business, which I will come back to later. In the absence of this increase in SG&A, the underlying results or adjusted EBITDA would have been an all-time high. The cash flow for the quarter was very, very strong, and we ended the quarter with $1.8 billion of cash, and this is despite investments and despite the debt reduction that was done in the quarter. Please note, however, that 10 days following the end of this quarter, we paid $452 million in dividends to our shareholders. The net debt is now down to USD 1.5 billion. As I mentioned, we have a strong performance on our financial targets, a little bit soft on the equity ratio, and this is just mainly due to the large dividends that were paid during the quarter, and this is a situation that will be rectified over the next couple of quarters.

If we turn to the segment performance, Lasse touched on this a little bit. If we start with the Shipping, we saw that it was a flat revenue, stable volume and improvement in rates quarter-on-quarter. The adjusted EBITDA came in at $416 million, which is a record high. In Q3, in Shipping, there were an increase of $9 million year-over-year related to donations in Korea. And this is donations that are linked to the tonnage tax regime in Korea. And this $9 million increase year-over-year, of course, hit the SG&A. So if you were to adjust for that, the underlying EBITDA of Shipping would have been $425 million.

We also have adjustments in the Shipping segment linked to an internal sales gain of USD 20 million due to the sale of a vessel from Shipping to ARC. This gain is, of course, eliminated at group level. And we also had a recognition of a $30 million provision. The provision owes to recent developments in ongoing class action litigation proceedings as disclosed in our previous financial reports. And this is a binary situation. If you think it is more likely than not that there will be an unfavorable outcome, you have to provide for the full amount, and we have made this provision in this quarter. And this provision very much reflects our best estimate of working with our advisers of the claims. And we cannot, unfortunately, comment in more detail given ongoing legal proceedings. And I would refer you to Note 12 for further information.

On the Logistics side, the Logistics revenue came in at USD 294 million, down 7% quarter-over-quarter due to the seasonality and reduced volumes hitting the results. The higher storage revenues, for example, in our terminals, partly offset the decline on the auto side. And the EBITDA in Logistics ended at USD 47 million with margins in line with last year.

Finally, our Government segment continues to perform very strongly. We -- essentially, it is the U.S. flag cargo that continues to deliver very strong results on our government services side. And as mentioned, ARC acquired 1 vessel from WWO during Q3.

If you look at the revenue and EBITDA bridge, revenues more or less flat quarter-on-quarter. As we said, Shipping saw positive effects from rates and fuel surcharges. Logistics pulled down due to the aforementioned factors, and Government contributing to the top line growth. On the adjusted EBITDA side, flat quarter-over-quarter. But keep in mind, if you were to adjust for the $9 million increase in SG&A in Korea, then it would have actually had growth in the adjusted EBITDA.

In terms of the cash flow, cash on hand increased by USD 189 million on very solid operating cash flow ahead of the October dividend payment. In the quarter, we had a cash conversion ratio, which is operating cash flow divided by adjusted EBITDA of 110%, which is very strong. When we look at the investing cash flow, this includes USD 44 million in relation to yard payments for the newbuilds, $6 million project cost for newbuilds and some dry docking during the quarter. Net debt includes scheduled repayments on loans. We also basically repaid the outstanding USD 138 million bond that matured in September. We also had some new debt. There was a new loan in ARC in relation to the purchase of a vessel from WWO. And then we had early repayment of 2 vessel loans in Ocean.

Other financing items includes $9 million release of cash collateral, which we have in relation to the dollar-NOK swaps on our bond debt. As the Norwegian kroner strengthened, that collateral was released. And we also had $18 million of dividend payments to the minority shareholders in EUKOR. The asset held for sale reflects the Q3 increase in cash in MIRRAT, which is classified as an asset held for sale. If we look at the remaining commitments now on our newbuilds, we have USD 1.2 billion of remaining commitments. And this was increased by $40 million during Q3 in relation to the upsize of 4 vessels as we disclosed on our Capital Markets Day.

And then as you can see at the right of the chart, we have shown, call it, the effect of the dividend payment that was made on the 10th of October, where we paid the second tranche of the '23 dividend, along with the dividend for the first half of 2024, which combined came to $452 million. And that means that during 2024, we have paid almost USD 740 million to our shareholders.

The group retains a very robust balance sheet and a strong liquidity position. I touched on the equity ratio previously. Net debt declined $316 million due to the strong operating cash flow, debt service and the $138 million bond repayment. After the September bond maturity that we repaid, the group is now at what we call our sort of target debt level in terms of the bonds with 3 outstanding bonds in the market forming a nice curve. We have 20 -- we have 22 unencumbered vessels, up 1 during the quarter as we repaid debt on 1 vessel. The book value of these 22 unencumbered vessels is $443 million, and the market value is $1.25 billion, which, of course, could be used if we wanted to raise debt on those.

As I mentioned in the Capital Markets Day, EUKOR signed during the quarter, $450 million of post-delivery financing for the first -- for the 6 newbuilds that will be placed in EUKOR. We consider this to be a very attractive financing. It has a tenor of 7 years from delivery of the vessels. So even though we lock it in now, maybe a couple of years ahead of time, the 7-year count doesn't start until the vessel is actually delivered. And the pricing of that is term SOFR plus 155 basis points, which is going to be -- which is sustainability-linked pricing. And the other 6 vessels that will be placed in WWO will be financed closer to delivery.

Final slide. We included this in the Capital Markets Day presentation. As we have said, the key priority within the group is to free up cash to lift up to the mothership in order to pay dividends, as well as invest in our business in accordance with our dividend policy. And this figure illustrates the cash and debt position in each of the, call it, parts of our group structure at the end of Q3. And you can see at ASA level at the top there, most of the cash that was in there was, of course, paid out at -- is paid out on the 10th of October.

So with that, I conclude my part of the presentation, which will be the last presentation I do as CFO because the next quarterly presentation in February, there will be someone else. So thank you for listening in today. And with that, I'll hand over to Lasse for the prospects.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Thank you, Torbjorn. And a final slide then on how does it look going forward? We see a very strong market. We see strong demand in deep sea transport, and we see very good demand also for our Logistics services. So despite somewhat weakening signals on new car sales and high & heavy, we see that our services are in high demand right now, and also we expect that to continue into 2025. And that also is reflected into how we are now writing new business and the atmosphere in which our customers are coming to us still early to secure capacity for next year and the years to come.

So we will have an EBITDA in 2024 that will be somewhat better than 2023, and we will have another strong year in 2025. We will come back in December with a more precise outlook on 2025, but it will be another strong year for Wallenius Wilhelmsen. And we see a strong market and good prospects into the fourth quarter and into 2025.

So with those words, Anders, maybe we are ready for Q&A.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Yes. For good order sake, please post your questions in the chat side on the webcast. But starting off, Lasse, Q3 marginally down quarter-over-quarter. Is this the end of the good times?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

No. Q3 was a very strong quarter and taking away some onetime effects, it's another very strong quarter. 2024 will be a somewhat better year than 2023. And we believe that 2025 will be another strong year for Wallenius Wilhelmsen. And based on the book of business we write now, we are confident that this is not the end of the good times.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Okay. Then there is a question on MIRRAT. Is there any new information on MIRRAT? And what do you intend to use the proceeds for?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

There is updated information on MIRRAT. This is an ongoing process. There is a government body called ACCC that needs to accept the transaction. They are, according to formalities and normal procedure, asking questions to the buyer. They are now responding. And I can only speak on behalf of our view and also the view of the possible and likely buyer that we believe these are formalities and that we will proceed with this transaction. We expect it to close late this year or early next year.

What we will do with the proceeds? We will come back to when the deal is closed and likely after Q4, where we also have our second half dividend announcement.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Okay. There are several questions on contract negotiations. First of all, what do we mean by balanced terms? And secondly, of course, what are prevailing contract rates and how much are they compared to earlier?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Yes. The -- well, first of all, on terms, balanced terms means that there is a balanced distribution of risk that our customers' commitments equal our commitments and vice versa. Historically, these have been unbalanced, where the OEMs have had the upper hand, meaning that we have had less predictability on volumes than what we have in the current contracts. For instance, before, it was more use, we normally had percentage of volumes. Now we have fixed volumes, not in all contracts and in most contracts. We had different distribution of risks and exposures. Those are more balanced now. So in general, we have a balanced picture in our contracts.

On rates, this is really hard to say one number. We have said earlier 20% to 100% still applies. And we are now seeing contracts renewed in the lower part of that range because they are rather new contracts or different contracts. And we are seeing contracts renewed in the high part of that range. So I would say that the renewal rates are pretty much in the same range as what we have seen over the last year.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Yes. Then there is one on the adjustment or the provision we made and dividends. So will the second part of our 2024 dividends be adjusted for that? Or how will that be basically?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Of course, it's difficult at this stage to say what the dividend will be after the second half of this year. But in general, when we propose a dividend and the Board ultimately decide on the dividend, we look at the underlying performance of the business and the cash situation and the financial situation of the business. And we are confident that we will have another strong year in 2024, and that will also result in another strong dividend.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Okay. Then there is one on politics. Maybe that's for Torbjorn. If Trump is being elected as President and implement 20% tariffs on all goods, how do you expect this to -- assuming potential for retaliatory tariffs will impact the market?

[Torbjørn Wist, executive]

Look, I think it's difficult to give a sort of a clear answer on how things will pan out politically. As Lasse touched on in the presentation in terms of the high & heavy, depending on who wins, both can contribute to growth in high & heavy. On the auto side, if you look at, say, China, of course, they don't export any real cars to the United States anyway. So in the sense of tariffs will not have a big effect. How increased tariffs on European cars will play out? Difficult to say. But keep in mind that it is ex Asia, which is really the engine now in terms of the results within our business and, of course, affecting the whole market balance, which I think is a net positive.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

And I think just adding to that, as Torbjorn said, the Chinese volumes into the U.S. are negligible. I think you said, they sell 60 million, 70 million cars a year, and I think 30,000 were Chinese, none of which were EVs in this year. Second is that, on the contrary, we see that our key markets, I mean, we have a very strong position in Korea. Korea has a very strong position in the U.S. Kia is the fastest-growing brand in the U.S. and we expect these exports, if anything, to continue and grow. We see the Japanese are coming back. I was out in Tokyo a week or 2 back, and they are -- both the Toyotas and the Nissans and others are very optimistic on their positions in the U.S. market.

And then, of course, tariffs, we don't like tariffs as a global trade organization. But what we see is that, these trades are quite resilient to these tariffs, except for Chinese EVs that has never really landed in the U.S.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Okay. There's one on 2025 or several on 2025.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

We are also asking ourselves. Yes.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

The question is, do you expect average rates to be above 2024 rates for 2025?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

We will come back with an outlook, and I fully understand the question. We are renewing our book of business in a better market. We will write rates in new contracts, which are better than the current contracts. So provided that we are concluding the contracts we are working on now, the basis rates in the contracts will be higher for '25 than for '24. But it's too early to give any clear indications of '25 yet.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then a little bit to -- I guess, it's alluding to the profit warnings we've seen from the OEMs and whether we've seen lower -- any weakness from our core clients that they have lower volumes than what they previously had.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

I think then it's important to remember that the driver of capacity in our market is ex Asia. It's ex China, Korea and Japan, largely speaking. These players have not issued profit warnings. If anything, they are releasing positive profit warnings. What we have seen are more European, primarily European-based OEMs that are issuing profit warnings. And we do see slower volumes ex Europe, both into Asia and into the U.S. And they are struggling with their competitiveness. The main effect in the reports of the OEMs is not really lower volumes, but lower margins, meaning that we live out of volumes, not our OEMs' margins. So in general, we still see a strong picture, but there's no doubt that the European OEMs are struggling, facing, in particular, the competition from China.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then a little bit on -- back to volumes and our capacity really. The question is, could we have lifted more if we had more capacity?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Yes.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then on the options, we have 12 newbuildings. What can we expect in terms of the last 4 options?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Yes, we have 4 options outstanding. As soon as we have anything to announce, we will do that, and we have not come to a final conclusion yet.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Yes. See, then on the EUKOR option, is that part of the negotiations with HMG? And do you expect any resolve [ in relation to that ]?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

No, I mean, very relevant question. This is not raised by HMG at all. And as we have said before, for them, Wallenius Wilhelmsen in general, EUKOR in particular, is a long-term partner to make sure that they have access to their markets. This is not a financial investment. This is an industrial investment for them. And in the contract negotiations, this has not been raised. And if anything, I would say that we are strengthening our relations and our cooperation with HMG in these negotiations. So we are not seeing any sign of any discussion on the HMG side of this purchase option.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Okay. Then on our 2024 guidance, somewhat better. We're well into Q4 now or we are at least some part into Q4. Can we give some better guidance on that?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Unfortunately, we are just maintaining our guidance. It will be somewhat better. And then, of course, the question is, what is somewhat? Well, that's up to the reader to decide. What we have said is that, a couple of quarters back, we expected. Now we're saying that it will be somewhat stronger. And we will come back likely also in December with a more narrow guide on what we expect for 2024.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Yes. Then there is one on rates. We're talking about going market rates. Our competitor, Hoegh is talking about above $100. Can we make any interval here in terms of...

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

No. I think, of course, they can talk about more than $100 or less than $100 completely depends on the trade. I mean, if you have a front-haul trade out of Asia with a car manufacturer, I'm sure you could see numbers like that. If you have a backhaul trade from Europe going back or an interatlantic or you have a high & heavy trade from Japan to North America, rates are much different. We have rates varying from -- in our book of business below $50 to above $200. It depends on trade, product, customer, many different factors. So talking about $100 or not, that's not really meaningful.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then on our purchase options, if we have any comments on the vintage of those ships?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

I should have known by firsthand. But in general, these are long-term leasing deals that we do, 10 and 15 years leasing deals that we are purchasing the vessel at the end of the leasing deal. And thanks to the structure of these deals, these vessels are well in the money today, and that's why we also see a lot of value in buying the vessels when these leases are coming to an end. Either we have purchase obligations or purchase options.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then there is one on dividend and extra dividend. So I guess that's for you, Torbjorn. Can we expect any extra dividends for 2024?

[Torbjørn Wist, executive]

Look, as Lasse said, we paid a lot of dividends this year. The next decision gate now is the dividend for H2. That is, of course, a dialogue that we will have with the Board, and we will report back to the market once potential dividend for H2 has been decided. More than that is difficult to comment on at this point.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

And for those who hold the stock, the Wallenius Wilhelmsen stock through 2024, they had extraordinary dividend, all of 2023 dividend and also the dividend for 2024. This is an extraordinary strong dividend year on our company. And we expect strong dividends also going forward.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Then there's one on involvement in the global OEM industry with the rise of China. How do you expect the industry to develop over the next 3 to 5 years?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

How will the world develop? I mean, we don't know even how U.S. will develop before -- with elections coming up. Really, really hard to say. I think there are some fundamental elements here. The Chinese growth is not just because they want to, it's because they have a structural competitive advantage, in particular, in EVs. They spent 20 years on building a full value chain from the raw materials, processing of that, batteries, different equipment. And I think it's fair to say that they have a huge advantage on EV technology itself and also impressive technology when it comes to digital. And cars are becoming more and more computers and becoming more and more electric. And China has a big advantage in both. And if you really want to see how the Western OEMs think about that, and as I've said before, you should read the interview with the Ford CEO in Wall Street Journal a month back after his visit to China. And he said that this is a complete game changer in our industry, and we need to go back to the drawing board. It's not only EV, it's also everything else to put into these cars, which is amazing.

So from our perspective, the Chinese competitive advantage is here to stay. The Koreans have shown a tremendous ability to renew themselves and win market shares. And now we also see that the Japanese, in particular, Toyota, are coming back right now with strong sales on hybrids, but also launching a lot of EV models going forward. So the strong growth of exports out of Asia, despite what happens in the U.S. will continue. It's more a question of which markets will it go to.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

Yes. There are a few more questions, but some of them we have replied to. Others are more technical. I will get back to those replying to it. But ending back to 2025, you touched upon it. But with a lot of the volume on a much higher rate and what grade or better do you see for 2025?

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Yes. We will not give a grade or better yet. What I will say is that, we expect a strong 2025. I will just remind ourselves that this time last year, we did not know anything about the Red Sea. In December, the Red Sea situation hit us, and that resulted probably in a reduction of $100 million on our bottom line this year. So it's just the fact that we're a global business. Whatever happens in the world and where it happens, it has an effect on us. And that's why we are cautious on talking forward. What we do now is that, we are writing a very strong book of business. That book of business have stronger rates and stronger terms. What we do not know is, what the world looks like mid and late 2025. But based on what we know today, we will have a strong year in 2025.

[Anders-Redigh Karlsen, executive]

On that note, I think we end our Q3 presentation. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us. We'll be happy to answer. Thank you.

[Lasse Kristoffersen, executive]

Thank you.

[Torbjørn Wist, executive]

Thank you.