Capital Clean Energy Carriers Corp. (CCEC) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Capital Clean Energy Carrier Corp. Second quarter, 2026 financial results. Please note that this event is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will open the line for questions following the prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to today's host, Brian Gallagher, Head of Investor Relations.

Brian, please go ahead. thank you and a warm welcome to our call today with us we have the management team myself brian gallagher mr nikos kalapatarakos our chief financial officer jack neiland our commercial head of lpg along with nikos tributakis our chief commercial officer for the call and later on we'll have our chief executive jerry kalajaratas joining us for the q a session before that i'd like to make a following statement i must advise you that this conference is being recorded as of today wednesday 29th of july 2026. the statements in today's conference call are not historical facts including our expectations regarding sale or acquisition transactions and our expected effects on us cash generation equity returns and future debt levels our ability to pursue future growth opportunities our expectations or objectives regarding future distribution amounts or shared buyback amounts dividend coverage future earnings future leverage capital allocation as well as our expectations regarding market fundamentals and the employment of our vessels including delivery dates re-delivery dates and charge rates may be forward-looking statements as defined in section 21e of the securities act 1934 as amended these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the stated or forecasted returns and results to be materially different from those anticipated unless required by law we express to disclaim any obligation to update or revise any future of these forward-looking statements whether because of future events new information or change or in our views or expectations to conform to actual results or otherwise we made no prediction or statement about the performance on our common shares with that i'll now move on to the presentation on the screen in front of you and you can see starting on our highlights page on q2 for 2026 on slide four it was a very busy and productive quarter on every front operationally we took delivery of four vessels in total in a single quarter two energy carriers a handy lpg stroke lco2 carrier and one dual fuel medium gas carrier with a further MGC delivered this month. We also announced a joint venture on an LNG bunkering vessel and we also initiated a 20 million dollar buyback programme during the quarter. On the financials net income came in on continuing operations for the second quarter at 29 million dollars and we declared a dividend of 15 cents per share. Strategically CECC is now the largest US listed LNG company by tonnage and with a diversified customer base and a total of 2.9 billion dollars in firm contracted revenues. Full charter options are exercised across the fleet, contracted revenue backlog exceeds 4.3 billion dollars. So another strong delivery of quarter, no sorry, another strong quarter of delivery for the company. I'm now handed over to our CFO Nikos to take us through the functional highlights.

Thank you Brian and good morning or afternoon room to everyone on the call. Now before turning to the financials, I would like to touch upon the dividend payout, which remains a core component of the company's value proposition to our shareholders. The $0.15 dividend we have declared will be paid on August 13th to shareholders of record on August 4th. Please note that this is the 77th consecutive quarter that the company is paying a cash dividend since its IPO in 2007. Now going back to the company's financials and more specifically the statement of income. Our net income from continuing operations was 29 million for the second quarter of 2026 compared to 29.7 million during the same period in the previous year. Revenues for the three-month period ended June 30th rose to $104.9 million, up from $96.7 million during the same period in 2025. The increase was mainly attributed to the increase in the average number of vessels in our fleet following the deliveries of our two handy gas carriers, the Active and Damadeus, the delivery of our first fuel fuel medium gas carrier, Aristogenes, and the deliveries of the two LNG carriers, Archimedes and Agamem. Now, there are two cost line movements worth highlighting this quarter. First, vessel operating expenses, which increased during the quarter compared to the same period last year, mainly due to approximately 3.5 million of additional costs incurred by certain of our vessels passing their special survey this year, coupled with the increase in the average size of our fleet. Second, depreciation and amortization rows also reflecting the increase in the average size of our fleet following the delivery of five new vessels during the first half of this year. Now moving on to the next slide where we provide a brief update on our special survey schedule. We currently have two remaining LNG carriers, Atalos and Asclepios, which are expected to pass their special survey this August. After that, no vessels are scheduled for special survey until 2028. Our guidance remains changed at the cost of approximately 5 million per dry dock and around 20 to 25 of our days, although the dry docks completed so far have come ahead of budget and with fewer of five days. Moving on to our balance sheet where total assets grew to 4.7 billion from 4.1 billion at year end, mainly driven by fixed assets which rose to 4.3 billion as our new building program progressed and we took delivery of new vessels. Total shareholders' equity currently stands at 1.5 billion. We maintain a solid cash position of 269 million and a net leverage ratio of approximately 54%. During the quarter, we fully repaid our 150 million euro bond issued back in 2021, funded from the proceeds of the 250 million euro bond we issued during the first quarter of this year which pays a coupon of 3.75 per annum and thus achieving to extend the maturity profile of our debt at relatively low cost. So let me now turn to our CAPEX program where the funding of our liability program is well ahead. We have already paid a significant portion of the required capex, drawing mainly on internally generated cash flows, asset monetization, and attractive debt financing, including the recent bond issuance. As we progress through 2026 to 2027, we expect capex to be weighted mostly towards the LNG carriers. As you can see, Assuming 70% debt financing for the vessels that do not yet have debt arrangements in place, and without taking internally generated gas flows into account, we expect the company to be fully funded for the remaining capex, with a significant amount of gas to be released back to the company. Now turning to the next slide, and our interest rate risk management. With rates staying higher for longer uncertainty about the path of monetary policy from here, we have decided to take some of that uncertainty or variability off the table. During May and July, we executed two zero-cost callers on compounded software, one for $60 million and the second for $200 million in notional, both with three-year tenors, bringing making our total protected national to 800 million. The colors sit between a weighted average floor of roughly 3.7% and a cap of 4.3%. Consequently, if so for stays elevated or moves higher, our exposure is capped while we still retain the benefit if rates decline. As a result, approximately 50% of our total debt is currently either fixed rate based or protected against rising interest rates. Now, with that, I will now pass this on to our head of commercial, Nikos Tripodakis, to go through the LNG industry update.

Thank you, Nikos, and good morning or afternoon, everyone. I will run through a brief update on the LNG markets over the past quarter and thoughts on market development starting on slide 12 with a new bench for us. As we can see in slide 12, our LNG charter book gives us exceptional forward revenue visibility. The contracted revenue backlog stands at approximately $2.8 billion, with an average remaining firm charter duration of six and a half years. If you include all of the charter's extension options, that backlog increases to $4.1 billion and the average duration extends to 9.4 years. As you can see from the chart, these charters run deep into the 2030s. firm coverage extends as far as 2037 and with options that are not visible in the chart as far out as 2043. This is the long-dated contracted cash flow that underpins our dividend and investment program. During the second quarter of 2026, we secured employment for three of our new building vessels that were delivered in June and July. This leaves only the Amore Mio 1 open for 2026. This vessel has already secured long-term employment commencing in the first quarter of 2027 and we remain confident that we will be able to capitalize on the seasonal strength of the winter market by securing an attractive bridging charter before she begins her 10-year employment. Looking further ahead, we expect the delivery of three additional vessels during the first quarter of 2027, one of which has already secured long-term employment with a super major commencing in 2028 we believe it is still relatively early to execute on the remaining positions however as we move closer to delivery we expect to see growing commercial interest and begin more attractive discussions with potential charter ads moving up to slide 13 and a recap of how the alien zoo market reacted to the supply disruptions over the past few months the headline for the alien zoo market during the second quarter has been the rebalancing of volumes following the Qatari outage. Even though the impact of the loss of Qatari volumes has been and is still evident in the elevated gas prices in Europe and Asia, the ramping up of production, mainly from the United States, has acted as a buffer. At the same time, strong demand from Egypt, India and Bangladesh have helped to counter the drop in purchasing from traditional buyers like China, Japan and Korea. If you look at the balance change from March to June 2026, the single largest move came from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, where supply available to the market tightened by around 292 million cubic meters per day. However, the increase in production by 132 MCM per day from the U.S. led to a net supply loss of 96 MCM, and it is more than clear than ever that the role of the United States as a dominant and reliable LNG producer is increasing, and we continue to believe that the importance of the U.S. will only increase in the future. Moving now on to slides 14 and 15, please allow me to summarize our view on the current LNG market dynamics. Two clear trends have been reshaping the LNG trade flows since the war started. First, more U.S. LNG cargos are heading to Asia, significantly increasing freight ton-mile demand. U.S. LNG exports to Asia have been climbing throughout 2026, reaching roughly 4.1 million tons in may the highest monthly level across three years shown on the chart the second trend is that european gas inventories are sitting well below their five-year seasonal average european storage in 2026 has been consistently in the low to mid 30 percent of capacity materially below where it was in the prior two years and consistently at the lower end or even lower than the five-year average this combination of asia purchasing more us lng cargos while europe runs down its buffers, has kept gas prices elevated and supported freight rates throughout the year. At the same time, the market is set for a volatile winter where the main importing regions would compete against each other for the scarce flexible availability of US cargos. This tug of war between Europe and Asia for the few flexible cargos creates volatility around arbitrage opportunities and leads to fewer relapse vessels being offered as shipping length becomes the means to capture the option value on the European and Asian gas price spreads. Let's turn now to slide 16 and examine the breakdown of the supply growth towards the end of the decade. Looking further out, the supply growth story extends well into the early 2030s and it is heavily weighted towards the United States. As mentioned earlier, the US is now expected to have more than 255 million tons per annum of glycophile capacity by the end of 2031. When you add the recovery of the Middle East volumes, the delayed Northfield expansion, and the continued U.S. growth, global liquefaction capacity pushes towards roughly around 900 million tons per annum by the early 2030s. It's worth noting that there's a near-term wrinkle here, 2026 actually sees the loss of 12.8 million tons per annum and the idling of some capacity, around 4% annualized loss this year, even as new U.S. and Asia-Pacific volumes can come online. But the medium-term trajectory is clearly one of sustained U.S.-led supply growth. Moving to slide 17, where we look at our shipping supply and demand outlook, and we can see that the inflection point when demand outpaces new building deliveries is in early 2028. On the supply side, net fleet deliveries build to a peak of around 292 vessels in 2029, and then decline as scrapping accelerates. We expect cumulative scrapping of over 160 vessels by 2031, based on the dry kit docking schedule and time charted redeliverties. On the demand side, the vessels required to serve FID and committed LNG capacity climb sharply to roughly 706 vessels by 2031 on the FID and committed basis, far outstripping the net fleet additions of around 255 ships. This concludes the energy market update. Please allow me to hand the presentation over to Jack Milan, the head of our LPG business, to introduce the dynamics of this market. Thank you Nikos.

Good morning, good afternoon everyone. What we want to achieve over the next few slides is to provide a succinct but hopefully interesting insight into a medium gas carrier fleet within CCEC. The market dynamics, our positioning and strategy. So kicking off on slide 19 with a summary of our fleet. This slide lays out our LPG fleet delivery schedule. The key message at that this is a focused investment program built around two market pillars, medium gas carriers and handicide liquid CO2 carriers, presented here as one unified investment case. The program totals 348,000 cubic meters of capacity across 10 vessels, with delivery staged from January 2026 through July 2027 arriving steadily each quarter. On the LCO2 side, Active and Amadeus have already delivered and currently employed an LPG. On the MGC side we have Aristo Yenis as delivered into a 12 months LPG employment and the Aradeus was delivered on the 24th of July and is currently ballasting towards the US Gulf. By July 2027 the program is complete. On the commercial side, our chartering strategy reflects the nature of each market. The MGC segment is dominated by shorter time charter durations of 6 to 12 months, so our approach there is built around a deliberate balance between spot and short-term charter exposure, while also reviewing longer-term opportunities as they arise. This gives us the flexibility to capture upside as the freight market strengthens, while still securing a base layer of contracted cash flow and earnings visibility appropriate to this segment as this how this segment typically trades it allows us to respond to near-term rate volatility such as we've seen recently in the Atlantic basin without sacrificing the predictability our investors expect from a program of this scale looking a bit deeper at our positioning on slide 20 this is really the heart of our gas investment thesis and I'd like to sum up as airing on lpg today built for the energy transition of tomorrow on the co2 side we have four 22 000 cubic meter liquid co2 carriers the largest such vessels in the world with global co2 capture expected to reach around 210 million tons by per annum by 2030. there are 12 lco2 carriers already in operation or in order and the fleet set to scale potentially to 55 vessels by 2030 according to DNV. We are a genuine first mover in an entirely new shipping segment. Our MGHCs are liquid-fied geofuel ammonia ready new builds giving them the flexibility to trade LPG and ammonia including low carbon ammonia as that market scales. Our liquid CO2 carriers go a step further. Built with the same LPG and ammonia trading flexibility as the MGCs but with the added capability to shift into LCO2 as that market develops but and this is the elegant part of the structure both vessel types earn cash flow from the LPG and ammonia market today in practice that means that every vessel in this program earns on today's established LPG economics entering a market with record U.S. export volumes and structurally typed on mild demand. So across the fleet we get paid on established LPG economics now while holding a layered set of free options for the energy transition ahead. Let me spend a moment on why we're confident in the LPG markets in the short to medium term. Global LPG demand is being pulled by three structural forces. The first and largest is residential and commercial use, cooking, water and space heating, which accounts for around 58% of global LPG demand across more than 280 million households, with strong rural to urban switching away from biomass and coal in emerging economies like India, Africa and Southeast Asia. The second is petrochemical feedstock at around 30% of demand, where propane and butane are cracked for ethylene and propylene. There are currently more than 22 new PDH plants commissioning, with China leading the propane import growth and the third is cleaner fuel switching as lpg displaces higher emission coal wood and diesel to frame the size of the prize the global lpg market was worth 149.6 billion dollars in 2025 and is forecast to grow at a rate of three to four point five percent compound annual through 2034. on the shipping side the lpg map is being redrawn by three forces first a us supply unlock US seaborn LPG exports have climbed from around 1.45 million barrels per day in 2020 to an estimated 2.7 million by 2026, an 86% increase with Enterprises 300,000 barrel per day Houston ship channel expansion coming online in 2026 and the Natchez River Terminal Phase 2 to follow. Second, an Asia pull. India is targeting 10% of its LPG from the US, with its national oil companies already locked into 2.2 million tonnes of term barrels for 2026. And third, this is the crucial one for the tonnage, a tonne mile lift. Every US Gulf cargo to Asia represents roughly a 70-day round voyage. Vertis are 25 days for an AG to India cargo. those long-haul voyages absorb capacity and tighten effective tonnage LPG freight is fundamentally the price that clears the US to Asia arbitrage so this dynamic drives both the volatility and the earnings in the segment so how is CCEC positioned within this MGC market we have six dual fuel MGC carriers on order four 45,000 cubic meters and two 40,000 cubic meters for delivery across 2026 and 2027. All vessels are capable of carrying LPG, ammonia, and petrochemical gases. The competitive advantages of these vessels are free-fought. Greater cargo intake, enhanced design, and dual fuel capability, together delivering a much lower cost base than currently on the water. The enhanced designs include shaft generators, reducing daily fuel consumption from the auxiliary engines, along with two deck tanks that enable both dual fuel bunker flexibility and the ability to store cargo for great change. With this we are seeing a meaningful shift in Charter's preference towards dual fuel technology as conventional units face rising regulatory compliance costs and a widening premium to dual fuel tonnage. These vessels are built at Hyundai Meepo and Nanton CINC. Lastly I'd like to draw your attention to the very recent trading picture. The LPG market since the onset of the US-Iran conflict has shown how resilient it can be with a large proportion of LPG and ammonia exports blocked in the Strait of Hormuz buyers have to look further afield to meet the requirements a switch in trading patterns that overall increased tonne miles across both the handy and ngc markets the charts in this slide illustrate the recent firmness in rates this again justifies the point made earlier that LPG freight is the clearing price for the arbitrage and the product volatility of this kind generally works in the direction of stronger earnings for well-positioned tonnage. I'll now pass you back to Brian to provide a summary before we open to questions.

Thank you Jack. On the conclusion slide I'll just bring all those different facets together. You can see on this slide we have a pictorial view of our fleet both on the water and the deliveries that we anticipate. This slide captures the full picture of what we've built and what we intend to build. An ultra-modern diversified gas fleet designed to make the challenges and opportunities ahead. On the water we have LNG carriers all latest generation dual fuel 174 000 cubic meter vessels supported by MGC gas carriers that just went through with LPG and ammonia capability and also four liquid CO2 multi-gas carriers capable of transporting CO2 LPG and ammonia. At the bottom of this summary slide we show we have a new LNG bunkering vessel alongside our single legacy one container vessel which remains on a long-term charter with optionality associated with it. For those focused on the equity story, a few reference points. We trade under the ticker CCEC as a US equity listed on NASDAQ and domiciled in the Marshall Islands with the headquarters in Athens, Greece. We have 60.3 million shares an issue and our market capitalization is approximately $1.4 billion today. So this is a modern, contracted, diversified fleets attached to a clean and clearly defined equity story. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you very much for your attention. I now open it to my colleagues for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Alexander Bidwell from Webber Research and Advisory.

Alexander, please go ahead. good afternoon how are you guys doing good thanks good thanks alexander how are you doing good thanks um so while we don't know for sure when the conflict in the middle east will end um the jkm and ttf forward curve seem to have priced in a degree of continued impact into early 2027. how does this compare to the sentiment you're seeing amongst charters as well as uh shipping appetite over the next 12 months i think the charter the sport charter rates um speak for themselves um to answer this alex because this situation has been consistent

throughout this conflict uh higher flood prices the jackie mptf spread being wide all the way to now as you mentioned um 2.1 and this has led into significantly higher spot charter is compared to let's say pre-conflict. To put these things in perspective the average spot charter rate so far this year has been 93 000 whereas last year it was 39. Now this whole situation is very much prompt and the curve is backward aided it all comes down to as you mentioned how long this conflict will last for as long as it lasts the volatility and the uncertainty will lead to freight being the means, as we mentioned in the presentation, to capture the option value of a wider spread.

Thank you. Appreciate the color. So switching gears over to LNG bunkering, following the announcement of the JV, how are you thinking about LNG bunkering with respect to the overall business, and how might you go about growing your footprint beyond the first vessel?

Thank you, Alex. It is a new segment for us, the investment in LNG bankering, the LNG bankering business with LNG bankering parts. It is quite a different business, of course, to the transportation of the commodity per se. It is a market that has quite a growth trajectory in view of the dual fuel LMG fleet that is either in the water or under construction with quite robust growth. But at the same time, the end users, the charters for this type of vessels is only a handful of companies, either super majors or certain specialized companies active in the bankoring business. So I think we would be overall cautious and typically invest in in assets where we have visibility in terms of the employment as we contract the vessel. Here we went forward with contracting the Luminote together with CMA on a 50-50 basis with the expectation that this vessel will service the CMA LNG DF fleet down the line. that makes sense.

Appreciate the color.

I'll turn it back over. Thank you. The next question comes from Liam Burke from E-Reilly.

Liam, go ahead.

Thank you. Jerry, Nikos, Brian, how are you today?

Hi, Liam. All good. How are you? Hey, Liam. Thanks for asking.

Well, I'm very well. Thank you. On the Alasios one, you had secured an 18-month charter. I know you had an index link, a charter rate on that, but what was the logic of taking a shorter duration? Was the charter rate that attractive where you would sacrifice duration for payment?

Logic behind the duration is that we do not have any deliveries of our new building vessels in the first half of 2028 that was one of the reasons why we chose this deal so it's nice to diversify a redelivery profile and keep options open throughout basically every single quarter all the way to q2 2029 we always want to have options to explore every potential long-term charter possibility and we feel that the weakness in the front will have dissipated by the time this vessel redelivers. And at the same time, we get a floating rate which combined with a very strong view on this winter fits into a trade that we're very happy to have done.

Great, thank you. And on the LPG front, obviously the nature of that service is a shorter duration. So in the prepared comments. There was some discussion about exploring longer-term charters. How realistic is that, or is this mainly going to stay a shorter-term duration business?

Yeah, it's mostly traded, as mentioned, on the MGCs on much shorter term. There are some traders that look towards longer term to bring down their unit value. They do come about from The vessel that we've got balancing towards the U.S. Gulf, we had assessed some opportunities, but we felt that the strength in the West at the moment, it made the decision easy for us that we should play shorter term and in that spot market at the moment.

So we look to cover for the next six to 12 months before looking towards any longer term commitments that may come along. great thank you very much the next question comes from omar nokta from clarkson omar go ahead thank you hey guys thanks for the update i just have a a couple of quick questions maybe just on the yeah you had mentioned last quarter looking to take advantage of you know the stronger spot market in lng and you were fast tracking some of the new building deliveries um and you as you were just talking about you put the one vessel the lkos away for 18 months on that index link charter Are you able to give just some detail on that? Is that a contract where there's a base rate with profit share, or is it just simply a variable moving rate based off of the spot market?

So just a comment on this fast tracking of the new buildings. This was a decision that we took early into the conflict with significant risk that has played out very well, given the fact that we managed to secure a nine month charter at what has been basically the average of the spot market this year. So a very healthy rate, that played out well. And when it comes to the Alkaos and the 18 month floating, can you repeat the later part of your question just to make sure I answered it accurately?

Yeah, I was just asking if that's the index length portion of the contract, is it a base rate with a profit share or is it just simply a variable based off of spot market averages?

So it's based on the Atlantic spot charter rate for modern two-stroke vessels. There is no floor, no ceiling. It's just what the market is trading in the Atlantic.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks for that. And then just a follow-up on the next new building. I think it's called the Enteos. I think that comes either later this year or early next year. What are your thoughts on that vessel? Any chance to quote unquote fast track that one also if there's an opportunity? And then how are you thinking about chartering that ship?

That's a good question. So no, we are not discussing about fast tracking those Q1 position and those being the first one as you accurately pointed out. For those, we're exploring long term charters starting in 2027. we believe that it's still very early in the LNG market to capitalize on that on the tenure that we're looking and we will have more visibility as we come closer to the delivery we expect by September or October we have a very clear view on what the best option for us is for those vessels okay great very good thank you that's it for me thank you Mark just as a reminder if you want to ask a question, you can press pound key five on your telephone keypads.

The next question comes from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Stephanie, go ahead.

Great. Good morning. Thank you. I guess maybe looking at just some of the supply side of the market here, given the elevated order both across some of the industry, how are you thinking about the relative opportunities and risks across LNG carriers versus maybe mid-sized gas carriers over the next several years. I guess thinking about it for you guys, what underpins your confidence in the current seismics of your fleet? And then are there any other areas you would look to increase or reduce exposure to as this new build cycle unfolds?

Hi, Stephanie. No, that's a fair question. We have currently remaining five positions in terms of the LNG carriers that do not have long-term employment in place. That's two ships in Q1-27 and one end of 28, two in Q1-29. I think we would want to see more visibility with regard to the employment of these vessels. It doesn't have to be all of these uncommitted new builds, but at least some of these positions change to be fixed away before we look at contracting new LNG carriers. Having said that, we do remain quite constructive as Nikos described during his prepared remarks on the LNG market. The current turmoil has created short-term opportunities, might have delayed slightly the expected recovery but the one thing is for certain that these additional LNG volumes will be coming and if anything given where these volumes are coming predominantly in the US and the Americas and where the demand is going to be and if you add a bit of geopolitics there there will be additional effort to source LNG away from the Gulf. I think both the demand as well as the ton miles will be there in the long term to support LNG shipping and see good markets ahead. So I think this is a market that will be keeping that close track of and be very open to opportunities. We will of course always look for back-to-back opportunities that could be accretive to our bottom line and then on the other gas segments the let's say the LPG segment from all sizes from these down to handies Jack described our current strategy we are quite constructive on the long-term fundamentals of the market we do think that given the direction the market has taken it can absorb the order book and will be especially the ships that have dual fuel capabilities or high specification will have it would be very much in demand so I think that's also a market that we would be following So, in a nutshell, I think we have quite enough on our plate, a large order book, a lot of it has been de-risk and we have also the cash flows and the capital as also Nikos Talabatharagos described, and we need to see some more visibility with regard to employment where we're definitely open into new opportunities.

Thank you. very clear. And then maybe just one quick follow-up, that did pick up, I guess, sequentially here during the quarter. Maybe just talk a little bit about what your target leverage range is today, and then maybe as you think about balancing growth investments, returning cash to shareholders, and the like, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, so in terms of leverage, we continue to be in the very low 50s in terms of our net leverage, against the fair market value of our assets. So I think we are very visible levels. We are of course at the growth phase as we take delivery of certain assets over the next a few quarters you might see that the leverage increase somewhat and but that should be only temporary as we take delivery of the vessels and with the amortization that we have that amortization that we have in place leverage should peak over the next two three quarters and then start coming off. In terms of the dividend I think we have communicated in previous calls that once we are at the end or close to the end of our original new building program we will reconsider our dividend policy. I think the board will stick to that guidance So I think by the end of this year, if not early next year, and after we have more visibility also on the employment of the LNG carriers due in Q1 27, we can be more constructive on the dividend and see how we can revise it. so the guidance remains and that's irrespective of any additional new builds like our 2029 new builds that have been subsequent to that guidance or any other acquisitions thank you that's all for

me thank you as a reminder if you want to ask a question please press pound key five on your telephone keypad ladies and gentlemen this concludes today's presentation thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line. Have a great day.