CMB.TECH (CMBT) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Transcript Q4 2025 earnings call February 26, 2026, 1:00PM

Alexander Saverys, CEO of CMB.TECH: Welcome to the CMB.TECH Earnings Conference Call for the fourth quarter of 2025. My name is Alexander Saverys, and I'm joined here by my colleagues Joris, Enya and Ludovic. We will touch upon our classic topics. We'll start with our financial highlights. We will then give you a market update and finish with a conclusion and a Q&A. And for the financial highlights, I'd like to hand it over to Ludovic.

Ludovic Saverys, CFO of CMB.TECH: Thank you Alex and good afternoon everybody. As usual, we start with a snapshot of our company, where here we show you the key metrics of the fleet: roughly 240 with about a $10.7 billion fair market value. This is excluding the vessels we have sold already. Our market cap sits today at 4.2 billion after a nice run up on the share. We have 1.5 billion CAPEX remaining as from end of January and operate a modern fleet of 5.9 years. Dry bulk today is predominantly 60% of our total fair market value with the other divisions showing the rest of the value of the fleet. Zooming in on the highlights of Q4, we had a net profit of $90,000,000 bringing the full year profits to 140 million usd. The EBITDA of this quarter was 322 million usd, to end the year on a 943,000,000 usd EBITDA. Our liquidity sits at a pretty strong 560 million usd and our covenants for the bonds on the equity on total assets sit at 31%. The rest of our loan agreements sit at 44%. We've had a pretty, remarkable Q4 where we were able to delever the company, at the same time we paid dividends again, which we'll discuss later,

and we’ve strengthened the balance sheet with a couple of actions that we've performed in the company. Running through it, the result I mentioned - 90,000,000 usd - we had some nonrecurring one-off and sometimes even non-cash impact on the results which are mostly related to the finalisation of the integration of the merger with Golden Ocean. There are IT costs, but there were also, I would say, refinancing costs that we had to take as a one-off on arrangement fees and success fees in Q4. On top of that, we had roughly 15,000,000 usd, one five, of non-recurrent costs on the SG&A, which are tax reversals and other, again, integration fees from the Golden Ocean merger. The liquidity stands at 560 million which is quite strong. With the good markets, with the sale of assets (we'll discuss later), this gives us a lot of capabilities to further strengthen the balance sheet in 2026. The acquisition, if you recall, the 1st 40% - 50% of Golden Ocean we bought through a bridge facility. Happy to inform that it was fully paid back by the end of January. There was also some cost related to the acceleration of arrangement fee. But this will give an interest saving of roughly $42 million for 2026. So quite happy to say that we were able to do this, but also we were able to repay it out of own cash, but also some leveraging on other dry bulk ships. The contract backlog sits at 3.05 billion. Alex will go in further detail, but we added in Q4 roughly $304 million primarily on Capesizes and on one CSOV. Happy to tell that there was an interim dividend declared of $0.16/s. This is roughly 45 million usd of dividend being paid later in April. We feel that the balance sheet has strengthened good enough to increase from the $0.05/s we previously paid in the quarters to a somewhat higher dividend. This dividend is not yet the dividend that we announced in the press release on the sale of the six VLCCs of 50%. The capital gain on those ships will be taken in Q1 and Q2 and the Board will decide on the dividends at that moment. We've had a very active delivery schedule in Q4: 6 Newbuildings, but Alex will talk about it later. But more importantly for our balance sheet, we were able to, in Q4, Q1 and Q2, already secure more than $420 million in capital gains.

That's profit that’s locked in. 50 million was booked in Q4, but in Q2 and in Q1, we have already a guaranteed $370 million profit, which gives us a lot of opportunities for the rest of the year. We have a large spot exposure. Still, on tankers but predominantly on dry bulk. If you look at 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 44,000 are spot. And if we zoom in into dry bulk where we have a pretty strong feeling, there will be a good market in 2026. We have 36,000 days from which 27,000 on Capesizes and Newcastlemaxes. This means $10,000 up on our break-evens brings in $270 million in cash flow. When we look on the right side, we always like to position on the segment we are active in, compared to the order book to fleet ratio. The bottom segments are compared to some of the other shipping segments on the relatively low side on the order book. When we look at Capesize and Panamax, I think we're well positioned to look for better markets in 2026. Looking at the CAPEX program, it's a recurring slide we like to show. As of the end of January, we have roughly 1.5 billion usd remaining CAPEX from which 216 million usd will come from our own cash. You can see in this slide, which is quite interesting, that the next 12 months will have a heavy delivery schedule. Roughly $1.2 billion will be paid to the yards. All the financing has been secured and if we look at the cash from the sale of the VLCCs and Capesizes we've already done, the whole CAPEX has been taken care of. This also shows that within 12 months every sale, every cash flow generation we’ll have, will give us the opportunity again to look at dividends, and deliver further in an even more accelerated way. The free cash flow, we've given an estimation based on the hypothetical rates that you see on the bottom right. I think we're still pretty conservative if you look at today's markets, but should we have the estimated rates even with 20% where we're already in today, this would create a $700 million free cash flow on top of the normal debt repayments. This gives ample capability to pay back the Nordic bonds which

we anticipate, just to pay out of own cash, continue to fund the CAPEX and deliver the company in an accelerated way. This were the financial highlights, we move on to the market update and I give the floor to Alex.

Alexander Saverys Thank you, Ludovic. I want to update you on the various markets where CMB.TECH is active. You see our overview sheet where we put all our markets and zoom in on the demand side, supply side and where we see the balance. This slide has fundamentally not really changed compared to three months ago. We are still positive on dry bulk, tankers and offshore. We are cautious on the container side and on the chemical side. If you look at dry bulk specifically, you see that we see very nice ton mile growth for iron ore and bauxite in 2026 which is positive. On the supply side, the orderbook- to - fleet ratio has grown a bit. There's been some more orders for Capesizes and Newcastlemaxes for delivery in 2028 and 2029, but we still believe it's a manageable 12.4%. The fleet growth this year, in Capes specifically, will only be 2.3%, and we see that trade growing by more than that. So all in all, the balance is positive. On our dry bulk side in Bocimar, we have 87 spot vessels. There's another 9 vessels that will be delivered to us that will also be trade spot, unless we have fixed the Charter and with the addition of the recent charges that we concluded, we have now 16 ships on charter and that's another three new buildings on charter as well coming later this year, beginning 2027. On the tanker side, the figure in pure supply demand is a little bit more muted. There is more fleet growth than demand growth, at least on paper. But there is

a big element of sentiment, and I'll zoom into that when we speak about Euronav that has propelled the markets to very, very high levels. All in all, the sentiment is good. Earnings are good. The tanker market is still very positive. Our tanker fleet with the sales of the 8 vessels recently has reduced a bit. We still have 12 vessels on the spot, another three newbuildings coming and then we have 10 vessels on time charter with another two newbuildings that will also be on charter, but I'll talk about that when we talk about Euronav. Containers and chemicals, I'll handle a bit later. And then just on the offshore energy, which is both on the offshore wind and the offshore oil and gas. Specifically on the wind, we are seeing a slight acceleration again of the installation of capacity, which should support our CTV and CSOV markets and on the supply side, we have seen basically a slowing down of ordering new vessels. The orderbook-to-fleet for CTV stands at 13%, which we think is very manageable Orderbook-to-fleet for the CSOVS is much higher, but again there is also a lot more demand for that type of vessels specifically from the offshore oil and gas markets. I want to run you through a couple of slides for Bocimar and dry bulk, starting with the overview of what Bocimar has done in Q4 and Q1. We have 36 Newcastlemaxes on the water. We have another 10 newbuilding Newcastlemaxes that will all be delivered by the first quarter of 2027. In Q4, we achieved actuals of close to $35,000. Q1 quarter-to-date, we are at slightly more than USD 30,000 a day. We have 37 capes on the water. There the results in Q4 were USD 30,000 and Q1 to date, we are at USD 26,000. These are strong rates. Definitely for the first quarter of the year, we are seeing rates that have not been as strong over the last 15 years. So we are seeing a very strong Q1. We have sold the Golden Magnum and the Belgravia and we'll record a capital gain of USD 8 million in the first quarter.

Our 30 kamsarmaxes and panamaxes are all on the water. We achieved rates of USD 70,300 in Q4 and USD 13,200 so far in this quarter. You can see the break-even levels and what we have achieved on the right side. Just a couple of important indicators on the right side. We see that there's a lot of green indicators, so a lot of support for dry bulk demand. Just the inventories on iron ore in China are up. The coal imports in China are down. These are slightly more negative indicators, but all-in-all we see more positive signs than negatives for dry bulk. Here on this slide, we look at the orderbook-to-fleet-ratio for capesizes and why we believe that vessel values could well be supported for the next two or three years. We basically have put on the right side of the slide the recent number of vessels that have been delivered, including the newbuilding prices that are being quoted by brokers and compare that to the last time we were in a dry bulk boom. Here basically, we want to say that as long as the orderbook is around the levels that we see that this market still will be supported on asset values. We don't see an oversupply coming. The fleet profile for capes and for panamaxes again is a recurring theme. There's very little scrapping going on. We see that vessels are ageing, ageing rapidly. We are now at close to 150 capes that are over 20 years of age, close to 600 capes over 15 years of age, and the numbers on panamaxes are even more important. So if the market one day would correct and scrapping would start, this would definitely be something that can balance the market. When we look at Q4 and Q1, the two big themes for us, definitely for our capes and nukes have been iron ore and bauxite. You can see on these graphs the rainfall and then the volume of iron ore and bauxite that's being loaded in the Atlantic in West Africa and in the Pacific. What we have seen specifically with West Africa on the bauxite side, but now also the iron ore will start playing a very important role, is that it is a bit counter seasonal compared to the weaker seasons that we

have used to be seeing in the Pacific for Australia predominantly and the Atlantic for Brazil. So it is helping our markets, it is balancing the market. There are more opportunities for large bulkers to load cargo even in the first quarter of the year, and as you can see, the rates have reacted very positively to these volumes.

Capesize market fundamentals this year are positive. I mentioned it when we spoke about the overview. We see a ton mile increase in demand of 2.7% and a fleet growth of 2.3% so we expect the utilisation to creep up. We are already around the 90% utilisation mark. This could go to 91-92% in the coming months. The big market moves in dry bulk and then specifically for iron ore is, well you can see them on this slide: all the volumes coming out of West Africa, Brazil, Australia, we see that iron ore according to the forecasts will continue to grow, so sea borne iron ore will continue to grow. It will come from areas that are far away from the main customer for these goods, which is China, which is good for tonne-mile demand and you can see that the same story can go for bauxite. We have been very surprised by volumes of bauxite in January, so the number of 184 million tons could well go higher if this trend continues this year. So very supportive these two commodities, both in volume and in tonne-mile for 2026. I want to say a few words about Euronav and the crude oil tanker market. Starting with our fleet of VLCCs. So the fleet has been reduced, we have sold eight of our older vessels as we have announced last month. We are left with three VLCCs on the water. That's one 2016 built ship and two new buildings and then we have another three eco VLCCs coming in the next couple of months. So hopefully the VLCCs is 6 ships in total. You can see what we have achieved in terms of rates. Around USD 75,000 both in Q4 and in Q1 quarter-to-date. We have 17 Suezmaxes on the water. We have another two vessels delivering very soon. These two newbuildings have been fixed on the long-term time charters. But for the spot fleet, we achieved rates around USD 60 to 65,000 both in Q4 and in Q1. The markets there are very very supported, watch the space because the numbers that we have been seeing over the last couple of weeks are way higher than the numbers that we are reporting here. If you look at the key indicators, a lot of green indicators, the market is supported, we are seeing the

tanker fleet growing a bit. But all-in-all, both in sentiment and in fundamentals, we see that the tanker market right now is very supported and that's probably the understatement. It is more than supported, it’s actually very high. Sustainability of the expanding crew tanker order book will depend a lot on the durability and the potential of tanker scrapping. The order book has risen. We are seeing more orders for VLCCs and Suezmaxes. These orders will not come through this year or next year, but that's from 2028, this is something to watch because the market balance will depend a lot on how many vessels we can scrap to make sure that the amount of new buildings that are coming to the market will not distort the market to the downside. The demand durability of crew tankers, all the different agencies have different numbers. It's not always easy to follow. It looks like we are producing more oil in the world today than we are actually using, and so the only big explanation for that can be that someone, and particularly the Chinese are probably stockpiling oil in great numbers. That, as long as this continues, it is of course very supportive for the oil tanker markets. Depending on what will happen in the next 6 months, both with the oil price and on geopolitics, of course, all these scenarios can be rewritten. But for the time being, what we're seeing is an oversupplied oil market whereby the oversupply is absorbed in stockpiling. Sanctions remain a very important theme in the Russia -Ukraine conflict. What's happening or what will happen in Iran? And of course, Venezuela. We just wanted to highlight one interesting graph on the right side whereas we see that the Indian crude imports from Russia have gone down after the sanctions that the US imposed in December, we see actually that probably China has picked up some of that slack, as you can see on the graphs to the right. A few words about Delphis and our container vessels. As you know, our four container vessels on the water have been fixed on long-term charters for 10 years. We have one more new building delivering this year, which will be under a 15-year time charter contract, so we are not really exposed to the spot market. If you look at the spot freight market, it's a downhill slope. We see that the SCFI is trending downwards, so spot freight rates are down. Interestingly, the charter market is still quite supported, so not a lot of charter vessels available. Some liner companies still fighting for market share and chartering vessels. We expect this actually to go down going forward because there is still a very

significant orderbook to be delivered both this year, in 2027 and in 2028. Bochem and our chemical tankers. We have 8 ships on the water. You can see the performance in Q4 on the right side. So there's a mix of time charters mostly, but we also have two vessels operating in a spot pool. Bochem still has an order book of eight vessels. We have two product tankers coming this year. We then have another six chemical tankers in 2028 and 2029. All these vessels have been fixed on long-term time charter, so our spot exposure is relatively limited. And what we see on the spot market is a slightly declining market. Nothing dramatic, but definitely the rates are not what they were in 2024. So still seeing OK rates, but definitely things are going down a little bit. And then I want to end with a very good performing business unit recently, that's Windcat. We have taken delivery of two of our CSOVs last year. One CSOV has been trading for the last four to six months on the spot market, but earning very good rates as you can see on the right side: the equivalent in Q4 of USD 108,000 a day. The other one has been fixed on a three-year agreement for work in the North Sea. We still have another four CSOVs coming and one larger CSOV: a CSOV XL this year and next. But the market is very supported and it's supported because the oil and gas market requires good modern offshore supply vessels and these good modern offshore supply vessels in some instances were earmarked for the wind business, but actually can now earn better rates in oil and gas, and that is where they are going. On the wind market we're actually seeing some positive evolutions as well. Last year was a bit slow in terms of delivery of new projects. But in North Sea, in Europe, we are seeing new projects coming on stream this year and next, which will necessitate demand for CSOVs and CTVs. We have a large fleet of close to 60 CTVs on the water. You can see the rates that we achieved. We definitely are satisfied with the rates that we achieved and are looking forward for probably a better 2026 than 2025. This ends our market updates. I'd now like to hand it over to Enya for the Q&A. Enya Derkinderen Thank you, Alexander. We will now start taking the questions.

So if you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Make sure to introduce yourself and unmute before asking your question. If you can't unmute, we have the Q&A section available and you can also always send an e-mail to Joris. And for telephone participants, please type *5 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute. So we will now start taking the first question. Frode Mørkedal, you can now unmute and ask your question please. Frode Mørkedal Yes, can you hear me? Alexander Saverys Yes perfect. Frode Mørkedal OK, perfect. On this Golden Ocean bridge repayment: is it fair to assume that the strong tanker market helped you with this and specifically obviously the sale of the eight VLCCs must have been instrumental in being able to repay this way ahead of her schedule, right? So that's and also could just remind us, you know the numbers we're talking about, how large was the bridge facility? Alexander Saverys Yep. Frode Mørkedal And what's the net proceeds of these 8 + 2 Capes I guess you sold? Ludovic Saverys If it's OK, Alex, I'll take that one. So for just a reminder, we had a 1.4 billion acquisition facility given by the banks. We only drew upon 1.3. So that was the actual exposure we had fully drawn for buying the 1st 40% and then another 9% on the markets. Of that 1.3, quite quickly after the merger in August, we relevered the ships of Golden Ocean with the 2 billion facility and we use 750,000,000 of cash of the releveraging to pay down to 550 million. And that 550 was what we carried, since I would say September until two weeks ago. 550 which half of it has been

paid with operational cash flow and cash from sale of vessels and with a little bit of the Q3 vessels we saw delivered in Q4 but also some of the tankers, as you mentioned. And then there is a roughly half of it was 270 million, which we shifted from the “expensive” 2 billion facility with Golden Ocean with some Chinese leasing that we did execute last December. And that was roughly $260 million that we did. So own cash, only about $260 - $270 million on that. And I think that the sale of the tankers, especially the 6 + 2 capes and then the remaining 2 has even further strengthened I think the belief in the board to pay more dividends, delever more and then also get a comfort on the Nordic bonds for the remaining of the year. That the cash out of the 8 tankers was roughly 420 million cash. So that obviously gives good opportunities to do all of the above that we mentioned. Frode Mørkedal Right. So uh, is it still that the target is to bring down the LTV and net LTV to around 50% and at that point you could uh… Ludovic Saverys Yep. Well, at that point Frode, I think the long-term target is to have a 50% LTV. The LTV today and end of December was roughly 55%. Now, with the increase in tanker rates, in tanker value, sorry - as everybody has seen in the market we're probably already at those levels, but that is the target. Frode Mørkedal Yeah. Ludovic Saverys I think it's more important to say: what are the opportunities? With every dollar that comes in from sale, operational cash and then we stick to the points that it can be dividends, it can be further deleveraging, it can be accelerating the payments you know on some of the revolvers that we have to reduce the interest costs. Because one thing you know, when you do M&A, there is a cost of it. Especially when you do leverage buyouts and we have seen that in 2025, the SG&A was higher because of lawyer success fees, refinancing and hopefully going forwards our interest costs in ‘26 should go much lower.

That is because there's no more bridge because we are changing expensive or more expensive bank debt, sometimes with Chinese leasing and other cheaper I would say instruments. Frode Mørkedal Right. So it's, is it fair to assume that, uh, you would probably wait for the bond maturity or some type of refinancing before you step up the dividend payments, uh, even if you are probably approaching 50% earlier than this, right? Ludovic Saverys But I think the decision of the board of the 16 cent that we pay today is testimony that I think we can do, both paying dividends, both delevering and both continuing to delivering all our new builds. Frode Mørkedal Great. Final question is on any what do you see about investment opportunities, you know specifically newbuilds I guess. For example in tankers, I mean I'm hearing it's starting to get tempting to start ordering VLCCs, right, because you can, you know, order at 120 something million and the prompt resale is 40 to 50 million higher. So that type of let's say ARB is opening up and maybe that is interesting. What's your view? Alexander Saverys Our view is that the ship you order today at 120 million deliveries in 2029. So today it might look cheap, in 2029 it might look very expensive. Right now for the we are not actively pursuing tanker new building plans. We are of course opportunistic. We will look at any possibility that comes across. But right now, right now, we'd rather enjoy the spot market. And not order any tankers. Frode Mørkedal Great. Thank you for that. Enya Derkinderen Thanks.

The next one is Petter Haugen. You may now unmute and ask your question please. Petter Haugen Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. In terms of, well, I suppose I'm turning through this question upside down. You still have tankers, although now it's predominantly Suezmax tankers, obviously. Would you consider to sell some of those in order to, well, do the combination of further paying down debts and dividends? Alexander Saverys Well, yes, Petter, look. The first thing we wanted to do over the last year and a half is to sell our older vessels. I think we've done a good job at that so far. So obviously we still maybe have one or two older vessels that could be up for sale. The second thing is, if we see an exceptionally high price for any asset, we'll always look at it. Look. Trading ships, buying and selling ships is part of our business. And where we like to keep our younger vessels, we will never say no to a very high price. Do we need it to deliver? No, that I would say. I think the heavy lifting on delevering has been done. I think operational cash flows can bring us to a very comfortable leverage over the next nine months. But we will always be ship traders. If someone comes with a very high price on any asset, we will look at it. Petter Haugen Understood. And in terms of your dry bulk fleets, sort of the same question there. I suppose we've seen how the market has appreciated your sales and the communicated increase in dividends. So on the Capesize fleet there are I suppose more opportunities still to sell older ships, but is that done now or is that still on the table? Yeah, I know that you say that you sell at the right price. That's true to all of us, I would say, but in light of the very strong tanker markets and increasingly strong dry bulk markets, I would well, in interpretation of your earlier statements, I would think that you were contemplating to sell more rather than the opposite.

Alexander Saverys I think you know that that is not really correct. I think on the on the dry bulk side, we believe we are not yet where the tanker market is right now. We think this market has a lot more in it. And we would like to let it run. So stay spot exposed unless we find some good charter parties. And as you've seen, we fixed five of our capes for five years at what we believe are very good rates or unless again an exceptional price comes along. But I don't think we're there yet. So we're very happy with the dry bulk fleet we have now. We have sold some of our older vessels and now we really want to just enjoy the market for the next couple of quarters. Petter Haugen OK. Thank you for taking my questions. Enya Derkinderen Thanks. Now Kristof Samoy, you can now unmute and ask your question please. Kristof Samoy Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, one on long-term charters. You've concluded these 5 five-year charters for your Capesizes. Could you disclose the counterparty? And then secondly, we've also seen in the market that Vale has been ordering quite some newbuild VLCCs. Would your Newcastlemaxes have been competitive for that trade or were they particularly looking for 400,000 dead weight ton plus vessels for the transportation? That's the first part of my question. And then secondly on the US Maritime Action Plan proposal, I recall when we discussed USDR and the impact or the potential impact of USDR in previous calls, that you indicated that the impact would be fairly limited because you have little port calls in the US. Does this logic still apply to, you know, the now proposed US Maritime Action Plan or are there like substantial differences there that you see for CMB.TECH? Thank you.

Alexander Saverys OK. Thanks Kristof. So first, the counterpart of the charters: that's confidential. So we are not disclosing that, but it's a very good counterpart. On Vale and their larger Guaibamaxes. Typically what they like is to do very, very long-term deal at very, very low returns. That's not something we like. Could our Newcastlemaxes have competed, of course. But then we would have accepted a very, very low return. That's usually these large projects and we leave that to some of the specialists in Asia and our relationship with Vale on the spot market is still there. We do business with them, with our Newcastlemaxes. On what is happening in the US, Kristof, you will agree with me that the only thing we know is that we don't know. Things are changing by the day. When you say that we don't have a lot of port calls in the US, that's actually not true on the tanker side. And don't forget, we do quite a lot of business with our tankers in the United States. But under the USTR and all the other regulations, we would have been exempt anyway because energy was going to be exempt. The new package that is there, it's too early to assess what the impact would be on our business. Kristof Samoy Okay, thank you. Enya Derkinderen Thank you, Kristof. Climent Molins: you can now unmute and ask your question. Climent Molins Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to follow up on Kristof's question on the Capesize charters. Could you disclose the rate on the contracts or is it confidential as well? And secondly, what's your current stance on potentially adding more coverage based on your forward outlook on the dry bulk side? Alexander Saverys Yes, thank you, Climent. So no, again, we can't disclose the rate, but I think if you look into broker

reports how they quote a 5 year Cape rate and add a little bit to that because our vessels are more modern and better than what brokers are quoting; then you're probably in the ballpark. So unfortunately, we cannot disclose the rate. Would we look at taking more coverage? Yes, answer is yes. We have said this in this call many times. We think that ultimately we want to create stable cash flows in our company. We will not do it at any price, but when markets move in the kind of zones we are now, we will actively engage with our customers to see whether we can take more long-term coverage. Climent Molins Makes sense. Thank you. And I also wanted to ask about the dividends on the gains on sales. I joined a few minutes late and you may have already touched upon this, but is it fair to assume you'll declare a dividend on that front on both Q1 and Q2 based on the reported gains? Ludovic Saverys The answer is definitely on Q1. And again, if you regain full discretion in dividend policy, I think every quarter we look at it. We had a very good Q4 quarter. We were able to achieve a lot of the internal ‘check the boxes’ to reinstate a higher dividend than before. So the $0.16 was purely on Q4. Q1 we have already $270 million profit, which we announce our intention to pay a dividend on. So that will be decided and confirmed on that part in the May earnings release for Q1, and as the market continues, as we continue to shift from sales to operational cash flow and take out the remaining parts of the newbuild program and the bonds, it freezes up a lot more capacity for dividends, but again we're not going to commit to a fixed percentage. I think it will be quarterto-quarter that we look at it, but it's fair to say that it all looks pretty good. Climent Molins Thanks for that answer. That's helpful. I'll turn it over. Alexander Saverys Thank you, Climent.

Enya Derkinderen We have two more questions in the Q&A. So the first one is: “do you expect the Sinokor behaviour to trigger a regulatory reaction? Alexander Saverys I don't know. You should ask Sinokor. Enya Derkinderen And then the second one is: “What are your expectations on framework changes after the European Industry Summit? Alexander Saverys I think the theme of that summit was more the industry based on land and not specifically on the maritime side, but I do think it's great that our politicians are aware that if we want to make sure that prosperity continues in Europe, we need to change certain things and that can only help our vibrant maritime industry, which, as you know, is very strong here in Europe. Enya Derkinderen We have one more question live. Victor Chavany, you may now unmute and ask your question. Victor Chavany Thank you. Hi, everyone. I had a quick question regarding your leverage. Do you intend to lower it back to pre 2025, or do you have a figure in mind on the leverage you're looking for? Also on the equity ratio, you haven't moved a lot on this part and just wondering how far you are within your covenants? And the last question, can you give us more flavour on the recent cooperation you signed with China for your new project there? Thanks. Ludovic Saverys Victor, thanks for the questions. On the leverage, you know we have a target of 50% loan to value. I think we're not far off, if you will take two days value, especially with the increase in tankers, we’re there or thereabouts. I think it’s about making sure that's combined with the long-term cash flows that you have, but also the opportunities you see. I just recall, we did increase our

leverage quite dramatically with the Golden Ocean opportunity. But I think as shareholder, we're pretty happy that we did it. That leverage has reduced and we're now positioned with another 90 dry bulk ships in what is seemingly a strong market. So we do justify that increase in leverage tactically. The equity ratio, just to remind you, we have a pretty low book value, I would say victim of our own success, because we buy or order quite cheaply and we don't rerate our assets in book values. If you look more towards the value adjusted equity which we showed on the overview slides. That has equity ratio increased quite dramatically with the adjustment on fair market value. The bond government of 31% in Q4, you don't have to be a mathematician to see that if you add another $370 million of profit in Q1-Q2 on fixed sales, I think that covenant is high and dry, definitely until the maturity of the bonds in September. And so we mentioned that we will probably not issue a new bond to just pay back at maturity. We're good on all covenants by the way, and you'll see that in the audited financials end of March. Alexander Saverys Victor, to answer your question on our investments in our joint venture in China. You know that we are building ammonia-powered vessels that will deliver this year. We have secured an offtake of green ammonia in China and we have also invested in a company that provides the logistics for that ammonia, bringing the ammonia from the factory where it's produced to the tank and from the tank with a bunker barge to our ship. So that is the nature of our investment there. Ludovic Saverys And for everybody, we mentioned this, this is quite a small investment. We took a stake to better understand, to better control that logistics and to see how it is developing. But we were talking a couple of 10,000,000, but definitely not a huge investment. Victor Chavany Thanks a lot. And last question, if you allow me this, do you have a target on the EU ETS price?

Alexander Saverys That I want to pay or that I want to market to go to? Victor Chavany That you want the market to go to for your investments, to be more interesting for our customers. Alexander Saverys It's a very good question, Victor. Of course, the higher the better, because then there will be more incentive for people to use our assets in European waters. OK. Thank you, Victor. Enya Derkinderen Quirijn wants to ask a question. You can now unmute. Mulder, Q.G. (Quirijn) Hi everyone, Quirijn Muller from ING. You sound quite optimistic about the offshore wind markets. Can you maybe give some idea about the utilisation and the future prospects, is it more what you see from your order book or is it more what you see in the markets happening? Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that. Alexander Saverys I think the optimism comes from two sides. The first side is purely related to the wind and the new parks that will be developed in the next three to four years. As you know, a lot of projects over the last 2-3 years have been either halted or delayed. What we do see is that certain projects are still coming through in the North Sea, which will create additional demand for offshore wind supply vessels. But we're also optimistic, Quirijn, because our assets that we are deploying for wind parks can also be deployed in offshore oil and gas markets. There, the fleet has been aging has not been renewed sufficient. The quality and the comfort of the assets in the oil and gas markets is much less than the ones in the wind markets, so our assets that are suited for wind are actually in very high demand to serve the oil and gas markets. And what we're trying to do over the last six to nine months, is basically to make sure that our ships can

earn good money in oil and gas, and then once they've done their job, they transition to better wind markets. Mulder, Q.G. (Quirijn) OK. But the contract size is very different in wind compared to oil and gas as you might know. So wind in general takes longer time especially, and oil and gas take short time contracts, etc. So is that? Alexander Saverys That's not really true. You see, you see long term contracts in oil and gas and you see spot contracts in wind. Our CSOVs have been ordered to operate on the spot market first. And as and when we see longer term contract then we go for it. Mulder, Q.G. (Quirijn) OK. Alexander Saverys What we have not done, unlike some of our competitors, is order these vessels with a charter contract because there the charters were very low paying. Ludovic Saverys It’s a similar analogy with the Vale contracts. There are certain peers that accept not the IRR's we would accept, and hence with the balance sheet that we have, the strength we have, but knowledge in the market, we order speculatively spots based on long-term fundamentals, and then wait a little bit, until as Alex mentioned, we see good long-term contracts as we've done on the second CSOV, which has actually quite profitable contracts over three years. Mulder, Q.G. (Quirijn) OK. Thank you. Enya Derkinderen I think this concludes the questions. Alexander Saverys OK. I'd like to thank everyone for dialling in today. Thank you for your questions, for your attention.

You know that if you have any other questions, we are here to answer them. Do reach out to us if you have any further questions, and I look forward to speaking to you on our next call. Thank you very much. Bye bye.