CMB.TECH Q1 2026 Earnings Report

CMB.TECH EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.27
• Consensus EPS: $0.27
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.00
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

CMB.TECH Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $519.63 million
• Expected Revenue: $422.43 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$97.20 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

CMB.TECH Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/19/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Euronav NV, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the transportation and storage of crude oil worldwide. The company offers floating, storage, and offloading (FSO) services. It also owns and operates a fleet of vessels. The company was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium. As of March 15, 2024, Euronav NV operates as subsidiary of CMB NV.

CMB.TECH Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Q1 net profit reached $368.8 million, helped by higher revenue, lower finance costs, and continued deleveraging. Net finance expenses fell to $81 million from $113 million last quarter, while liquidity ended above $500 million.
• Positive Sentiment: The board approved a $0.64 per share distribution, structured to include $0.44 from share premium and $0.20 as an interim dividend. Management said this structure reduces withholding tax for many shareholders and reflects a continued focus on shareholder returns.
• Positive Sentiment: The company said it has reduced leverage and funded much of its remaining capex, with only $184 million of the $1.2 billion remaining capex unfunded. Management also highlighted a stronger contract backlog and said 2026 is the last heavy newbuild delivery year.
• Positive Sentiment: Dry bulk and tanker markets remain strong, with very healthy spot coverage for Q2 already fixed at higher rates across Newcastlemax, Capesize, Panamax, VLCC and Suezmax fleets. Management said disruption in the Middle East and rising coal demand could further support ton-mile growth and freight rates.
• Neutral Sentiment: The company said container and chemical markets remain cautious, while offshore energy is improving, with Windcat’s CSOVs and CTVs achieving solid utilization and rates. Management also said some vessels remain in the Persian Gulf, but did not disclose details for safety reasons.

Presentation

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the CMB.TECH Q1 2026 earnings call. My name's Alexander Saverys, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Ludovic Saverys, Enya Derkinderen, and Joris Daman. We will present to you the highlights of our first quarter and the title of this call is Firing on All Cylinders. We had a very interesting quarter, a very good quarter, and then we would like to start with some financials and highlights, and I will hand it over to Ludovic.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Thanks, Alex. As usual, we will start with a high-level overview of our company. We're active in five different segments from dry bulk, crude tankers, containers, chemicals to offshore energy. We had an interesting quarter, as Alex mentioned. Compared to last quarter, our total fair market value has increased, our market cap has increased. We re-reduced our leverage. We've reduced our CapEx commitments and increased our contracts backlog. Next slide, please. If we zoom in on the Q1 financials, we've ended the quarter with a net profit of $368.8 million. Notable in these figures are obviously our increased revenue, but we have been able to, while the quarter passed, de-lever quite a bit and reduced our margins with the banks.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Our interest, our net finance expenses decreased from $113 million from last quarter to $81 million this quarter, delivering a very nice profit. The liquidity of the company end of Q1 stands a little bit above $500 million. Our equity on total assets value adjusted is below 50%, which is our through the cycle target. Further zooming in, we have de-levered. We are paying dividends and we're strengthening the balance sheet while we are optimizing our fleet through well-timed S&P. Notable on the contract backlog, we have signed a five-year time charter on the Suezmax charter, a Suezmax vessel, and extended two nine-year time charters by another year. The board of directors has decided they would like to distribute $0.64 per share as a distribution.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

This will be managed by $0.20 interim dividends and $0.44 distribution out of share premium. That's quite interesting because there is no withholding tax on that part, so 70% of our dividends will be exempt from withholding tax. We took delivery of seven newbuild vessels, which Alex will discuss a little later on, and we have sold quite a few ships that were announced already on two Capesizes and a VLCC. One additional vessel, the Suezmax Sienna, has been sold and will be delivered in Q2. The capital gains of the first quarter were $267 million, and in Q2, we're expecting a capital gain of $127 million. We are a diversified platform.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

However, we have a large spot exposure on two of our promising markets, which is dry bulk on one hand and tankers. If you look at a full 2026, we have roughly 53,000 shipping days from which 80% is spot. From those spot days, we have 36,000 open dry bulk days, which is roughly 10,000 on the Kamsarmaxes and 26,000 on Capes and Newcastlemax. These are increasing markets, and hence we are favorably positioned to enjoy those in the coming quarters. On this slide, we have shown hypothetical free cash flow for our company in 2026.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

This is including a free cash flow from the first quarter, but putting some rate assumptions on the right bottom side, where you could see that actually, if we take the market today, we are in the +20% case compared to our market assumptions, and we would have a operational free cash flow of over $1 billion. This is excluding vessel sales, but it is also excluding the remaining CapEx, which we will discuss a little bit more. On the CapEx, we've come a long way. We have a remaining CapEx end of April of $1.2 billion, from which roughly $184 million is unfunded. If you have followed our story, you know that with the vessel sales, this is more than double covered for the unfunded CapEx.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

This slide shows that 2026 will be the last heavy new building delivery a year, with the remaining $740 million to be paid to the shipyards in the coming three quarters. Whereafter, obviously, our free cash flow could be used on other topics than the CapEx. Contract backlog. We've increased our contract backlog roughly by $200 million. As mentioned, there is a gradual repayment. The contract backlog reduces by roughly $100 million per quarter, but we've added $200 million of fresh charters. Of these long-term contracts, still $1.9 billion is on dual-fuel related vessels. We have a quite strong counterparts, most of them investment grades, as you can see on the right side.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

I'll hand over the discussion topics to Alex to talk about the markets.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Thank you, Ludovic. I'll start with our normal slide overview slide in all the segments. We are, as you can see, still positive on the dry bulk market, the tanker market, and the offshore energy market. We are and have been over the last two quarters, cautious on the container and the chemical market. High-level dynamics, we see in dry bulk, ton-mile growth for major commodities that we are transporting in our Capes and Newcastlemaxes like iron ore and bauxite. Also on other commodities in dry, we see some growth. Looking at the supply side, we will see a growth of 1.7% of the fleet in Capes today, a tick under 5% on Panamax.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We still believe that in balance, and we'll dig in in the following slides more in detail, that the supply-demand is actually positive for freight and positive for our market. The same can be said on tankers. Of course, tankers is a more complex story with what is happening right now in the Middle East. In terms of ton-mile, it's very difficult to predict, but as it stands, analysts are expecting a small reduction in ton-mile for crude oil this year, some growth next year.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

What is interesting on the tanker market is that the supply side, even though in the short term the fleet is not growing that much, as from 2027 and particularly in 2028, we will see a big growth in the fleet. The order book to fleet in VLCCs and Suezmaxes is coming closer to 30%. This being said, in the short term, the tanker market dynamics are positive. We'll definitely zoom in on that a bit later. On the container side, not a lot has changed. I would say that in kind of the more negative story that we have been seeing over the last quarters, the Middle East turmoil has given some support to the market.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

With a large order book and an expected contraction in TEU-mile demand, we are cautious on the container side. As you know, all our ships are fixed, so we are not really exposed on the spot market. On the chemical side, it all feels a little bit softer. Chemical market is less volatile, but there we see there are some new vessels being delivered to the fleet. There is a little bit softer growth in demand for chemical tankers. In, on balance, we are a bit more cautious. Last but not least, we remain positive on the offshore energy markets. After two slow years of wind installation, we're expecting an increase this year and next in, for instance, the important North Sea market.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Also on oil and gas, we are seeing a lot of demand for offshore energy supply vessels like our ships. All in all, we're expecting good markets going forward in that segment. I want to zoom in on the largest segment and the market that is most important to us right now, which is dry bulk. On the left side of the slide, you can see our fleet. We have 36 Newcastlemaxes on the water. We're adding this year another 10, maybe one or two will deliver beginning of next year. In the next six months, we will have 46 Newcastlemaxes, big armada of Newcastlemaxes, on the water. We have performed very well during the first quarter, which is traditionally a slower quarter.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

You can see that we reached levels of $28,000 a day. What is even better is that, looking forward for the second quarter, we have fixed most of our days, 80%, already at $44,000, which is very good for that segment. Capesizes is a big fleet as well. We have 37 Capesizes on the water. We achieved rates of $26,000 in the first quarter. Have already fixed roughly three-quarters of our days at $37,000 for the second quarter. With the amount of ships, the amount of days, this is all very supportive for our results going forward. Last but not least, our Kamsarmax Panamax fleet of 30 ships. The first quarter was satisfactory.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We reached kind of a break-even level of $14,500. We have seen in recent weeks a market uptick, and we have already been able to fix very good levels close to $20,000 for three-quarters of our days in the second quarter. When you look at the main drivers in dry bulk, it's a mixed picture. Some very positive signals, some not so positive. We will dig into some of the elements in the next slide and slides. Let's first start on the supply of the vessels, which is the new buildings, the order book, and then the age of the fleet.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

When you look at the new buildings, the order book to fleet has increased over the last three to six months. There have been more orders for dry bulk tonnage, and specifically on Capesizes and Panamaxes. You can see that we are now reaching a level of 14%-15% of the fleet. If you put that against the age of the vessels, and you can see that we've reached kind of an all-time high average age of the fleet, there is a lot of potential for scrapping. There is a lot of potential for all these new buildings to replace the aging fleet.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Actually, as it stands, there should normally be more ships leaving the fleet than being added to the fleet in the next two years at least, and even going forward in 2019, 2029, and 2030. On the supply side, we are still believing that this is supportive for our market going forward. If we look at the demand side, we are zooming in on important commodities for the Capes and important commodities for the Panamaxes. On Capes it's of course iron ore, bauxite, and a little bit of coal. You can see that the numbers are adding up very nicely, definitely compared to last year. We are in all segments above. Coal is a little bit below.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

But all in all, it's a supportive picture in the first quarter and in the month of April. The similar story can be said on the Panamaxes. The typical cargoes that Panamax transport, coal and grain, have been growing. We are seeing this being translated in, of course, better freight rates. I would say that Q1 has surprises to the upside, has been less slow than usually, and has underpinned the freight market. If we look at the total year, what to expect for the next couple of months, the picture remains supported for our Capes with the iron ore trade. The bauxite trade is a bit of a question mark.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

If we see some export caps out of Guinea, then this could be a negative for our market. In the numbers we don't see it yet, but it is of course something to watch. Interestingly, something that could underpin our market is the coal trade. I'd like to zoom in on that on the next slide. We have added on this slide as well the rate forecasts for a regular 180,000 Capesize for this year, including the first quarter. We are now at $31,500, which is actually a very good rate and definitely in a profit-making territory. Operation Epic Fury and the gas to coal switching.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We've tried to analyze, based on the information that is available, what the impact would be if certain countries that are powering their countries and are making electricity with oil and gas would shift more to coal. This gas to coal switching is basically sketched out on this slide. Initially on the coal side, all the analysts and including ourselves were expecting a relatively soft market for seaborne coal, definitely going into the second half of the year. We were looking at our base case scenario of coal power generation in Europe and in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to go down.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Now obviously, the war in Iran and the turmoil in the Middle East, which have led to an increase in gas and oil prices, have changed the situation. What we are now taking as a base scenario is that over the course of this year, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will increase their imports of seaborne coal by 27 million tons. Increase the utilization of their existing coal infrastructure. On Europe, as it stands, expecting 12 million tons of coal to be added to the trade, an increasing utilization from 40% to 55%. There is further upside to that if Europe would import in a high case another 60 million tons of coal.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We've tried to map this out on the right side of the slide, where you can see in green the supply of ships and in blue, gray and light blue, the different scenarios on the demand. You can see on Capes we were looking at 1.7% increase in the fleet and a 3% base case increase in ton mile demand. We have revised that to 3.5% ton mile demand. Now, if you get this extra kicker on coal to Europe in the high case, this could go all the way up to 5.2% increase in demand. The same goes for Panamax, and I think that's very interesting because obviously that's coal is a very important commodity for Panamax. We have a pretty high delivery schedule this year of close to 5% increase in the fleet.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

The base case we were looking at, a bit under 4% demand growth for Panamax. In the current new base case, we're looking at 5% growth, but in the high case this could even go to 7.5%. This Epic Fury, the war in the Middle East, could have a significant positive impact on the dry bulk markets and we're seeing some of it already now. Basically to conclude, what we've mapped here is the new base case, so not the high case, in numbers of volumes from Q1 to Q4. What we wanted to highlight here, for those who are not very familiar with the dry bulk market, is that the first quarter is always the lowest quarter in terms of volume.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Usually volumes then ramp up in the second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter, which again, we think bodes very well for our dry bulk market going forward. Of course, CMB.TECH is very well-positioned with our large fleet of Capesizes, Newcastlemaxes and Panamax. I want to talk about Euronav and the crude oil markets and probably where most of you have a lot of questions on what our view is on what is happening in the world. Let me first start with a quick overview of what our fleet has done. After the sales of our VLCCs, we are down to six VLCCs. Four are on the water, two will be delivered during the course of this year and in January of 2027.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We achieved very good rates in the first quarter, and even better rates for the bookings that we have done in the second quarter. You can see we're at $180,000 of rates booked for 80% of our days. Of course, we only have six VLCCs left, but nevertheless, this will of course contribute very positively to our profits going forward. The sale of the eight ships, we have communicated on that already. We did a very nice capital gain of, in total, $360 million on the sale of these six older VLCCs, which have been reflected in our first quarter results and will partly be reflected in the second quarter results. We have 18 Suezmaxes on the water. We recently took delivery of the Cap Grace and Cap Joseph.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We have 18 ships in our fleet. We achieved rates on the spot market of $91,000 in the first quarter, $122,000 for most of our days in the second quarter. Again, excellent rates in the current circumstances. We have sold one of our older Suezmaxes, the Sienna. She's a 19-year-old Suezmax, which we'll deliver in the second quarter, and this will give us a capital gain of $30 million. You can see on the right side, all the indicators. Again, these need to be taken with a big pinch of salt because the real impact of these numbers is, of course, influenced a lot on the seagoing side with what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

First, before we talk about that, I wanted to show you the slide on the order book and the supply of ships and the age of the vessels. The order book has really shot up. We are now looking at a combined 500 VLCCs and Suezmaxes on order, which we believe is a lot of ships, obviously very much skewed towards the second half of 2027 and 2028. You can see the numbers there. In 2028, already more than 200 VLCCs and Suezmaxes are on order. Even though theoretically the age profile of the fleet would be able to absorb these vessels, i.e., older vessels should be scrapped and the new buildings could replace them, we are, you know, a little bit concerned going forward looking at the order book.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

In the short-term, of course, not that many vessels are coming on stream, and this is, of course, translated in good freight markets. Average age of the fleet, you can see there, is getting to historical highs. We're at 13.5 years. Again, this is a positive, as and when and if, we would need to scrap some vessels. Wanna talk about the Strait of Hormuz situation, Operation Epic Fury, and the impact on shipping in general and on the oil supply. On the left side, you can basically see the number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. We are talking anywhere between 110, 150 ships a day. We are down now between five and 20 transits a day.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

In terms of tankers, we see that 115 VLCCs and 24 Suezmaxes are still trapped in the Persian Gulf. Of that fleet, 40% are dark fleet vessels, so not really vessels that we would compete with. It's still a significant amount of ships that are trapped there. On the supply side of oil, my colleague, Joris Daman has made a very interesting analysis on the right side of the slide. Because it's his analysis, I wanna hand it over to him so that he can explain to you what he is seeing in the numbers.

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

Yes, happy to run through it. The right-hand side graph really starts by showing the baseline. The baseline was 15 MMbpd of crude oil. This is only crude oil traversing the Strait of Hormuz, so being exported out of the Persian Gulf. Now, that's closed. The strait is de facto closed, so we made the assumption that's lost. We are going to look, okay, what is the actual impact on crude tanker flows? We have a selective passage of 1.2 MMbpd. That's the actual passage over the last two months divided by 60 days. That's 1.2 MMbpd, so it's actually one Suezmax a day or every second day, one VLCC. We have some pipeline capacity which came upstream and is today roughly around 5.5 MMbpd. It's Yanbu, Fujairah, and then the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

We had a temporary effect of floating storage release, so reversal of floating storage, and also some Russian sanctions being lifted and actually being able to be added to the tanker markets. The real interesting part comes, and that's on one hand, the export growth out of the U.S., which is a combination of additional volumes, but also SPR, Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, roughly 1.4 MMbpd, and then also other countries stepping up the game. For example, Brazil, Guyana, Canada, Angola, and they are additionally bringing 1 MMbpd capacity to the market. If you go from the 15 MMbpd, we take all those steps, we end up with a loss of 5.3 MMbpd capacity lost to be transported on board of crude oils.

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

It's really important to see here that we are actually increasing longer mile transportation, so we get a ton-mile kicker because of the exports out of the U.S., but also Brazil, Guyana are actually further away than a typical Middle Eastern-China transportation, and it's 2x-2.5x more. If we take the 2.4x and we multiply that by 2.5x, and we compare it to the 5.3x, we are actually quite balanced from a ton-mile perspective, and that's really the reason why the utilization of the tankers are still healthy and that the remains for U.S. Gulf China transportation are actually still quite healthy.

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

If you go one step further and really, really look, okay, what could be the potential impact on the barrel price, there it's really important to understand that we started the Operation Epic Fury in a global situation where there was a large oversupply. There was a bigger supply of crude oil to the market than a demand. We had actually an oversupply of 2.6 MMbpd, meaning that in the end, today's market is only undersupplied by approximately 2.7 MMbpd of crude, which will have an impact on demand structure or any other means to have the balance again in the market.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Thank you very much, Joris.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

After that analysis, what we just wanted to add is basically the consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is that we see a lot more ballasters going towards the Atlantic to pick up the oil where it is still available. This obviously also has an impact on rates. You can see the rate from the Middle East to China, which we think is much of a theoretical rate. Not that many ships are being fixed at these kind of levels.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

The more interesting one is, of course, is the TD22 route at the bottom in green, where you can see that rates were very high, then gradually started going down as more ballasters, more VLCCs, were coming towards the U.S. Gulf to pick up the oil there. When I say gradually going down, we are still at a level around $100,000 a day, which is very, very healthy for our market. It shows you the disruption that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz also has on the positioning of the vessels. I'd like to finish with our three slightly smaller divisions, Delphis, Bochem, and Windcat. On Delphis, we can be relatively short. You know, all our ships are fixed on long-term time charters.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We still have one new building coming this year, delivering in October, which has been fixed on a 15-year contract. The bottom line on the container market is that the order book is very high. We still see a huge TEU-mile disturbance with the de facto closure of the Red Sea. If no container ships pass by there, it's basically 12% of demand kicker. If that falls away, including the big tsunami of new container vessels that will come on stream in the next couple of years, the market should continue to go down. Very short term, we have seen a little uptick because of the disturbance around the Strait of Hormuz.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Rates both on the spot market and also on time charter rates have gone up a little bit in recent days and weeks. We believe fundamentally, this should normally go down again as soon as certain things resolve themselves and as the order book starts delivering to the market. Chemical tankers, I was mentioning a slightly softer market that is reflected in what we are earning in the spot pool. Now, most of our vessels are fixed on time charters, so we're not really affected by that. It has to be said also, chemical tanker markets are much less volatile than other markets.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

When we say softening and you look at the numbers that we are achieving on the spot market of $21,500, that is compared to around $25,000 last year, we still believe these rates are very healthy. Finishing off with Windcat. Exciting times for our division, Windcat, because we have taken delivery now of our third CSOV, which is our large offshore energy supply vessels. We still have three that will be delivered, plus one larger CSOV, an MPASV, as we call it. Still four ships on order. We have seen very healthy rates for our CSOVs. You can see an average of $65,000 a day in the first quarter. Second quarter already fully fixed at $62,000 a day.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We have further vessels delivering and are in talks with customers for both short-term and longer-term employment. Our CTVs are doing well as well. After the traditionally slow winter period, we are now coming into the peak period of spring and summer, and you can see that our utilization is above 90%, and we are earning good rates of an average of $3,400 a day. We're expecting, as I said before, this offshore wind market, offshore oil and gas market, to remain supported in the following months. This wraps up the market update, and I will now hand it over to Enya for the Q&A.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Yes. Thank you, Alexander. We will now continue with Q&A. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Make sure to introduce yourself and unmute before asking your question. For telephone participants, if you want to raise your hand, you can type star five and star six to unmute. If in any case you can't ask your question live, you can also use the Q&A section, or you can send an email to Joris Daman. His contact details are also in the presentation. We will now start with the first question coming from Frode Mørkedal. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Yes. Thank you. This is Frode at Clarksons. My first question is on capital allocation. You basically reached the 50% of net loan-to-value target. Yeah. You've been de-leveraging the balance sheet. You have plenty of liquidity, and the new-build program looks fully funded. Basically, how should we think about capital allocation from here? Specifically on the dividend, you raised it from $0.16 to $0.20 on the interim dividend.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Is this a level that you would like to maintain, or should we think about dividends as variable quarter-to-quarter?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Yeah, Frode, let me take this one. Indeed, we are, I think, working on all sites. The deleveraging the balance sheet, especially, with the bridge loan that we had, which was quite expensive. You know, we were able to repay that fully, but we also reduced our margins on close to all our financings, with our banks. I think that was visible on the net finance expenses. The CapEx program is coming to an end. I think on a dividend, which is as every quarter, the Board decides what to do, whether it's paying, accelerating down payments on debt, capital, potential M&A, or distributes to shareholders.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

I think, we have made clear that once the leverage targets are more into play like we are today, then we can start allocating more of the free dollars to shareholders. Yet we do have a full discretion in dividend policy, so we'll continue to keep that. Historically, as I mentioned, on the previous earnings calls, we've always paid between 50% and 60% of the net profits distributed to the shareholders. After announcing the 50% distribution on the vessel sales, which was in December, we announced it, the board decided that we would actually rather pay 50% on the whole profit of Q1.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Now, going forwards, I think there's, there's definitely every quarter analysis is going to happen, the less leverage we have, the less CapEx that we have, less opportunities that could arise. Like, we mentioned on new builds, there's nothing really interesting in the core markets, dry bulk and tankers today. I think distribution to shareholders will definitely continue to be a full focus on our side. To your question, we didn't go from $0.16 to $0.20. We actually went from $0.16 to $0.64. I think the parts, the $0.44 on share issue premium, it's a different way to a more fiscal optimized way of reducing the withholding tax for mostly the retail shareholders, and then the foreign shareholders to do that.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

I think going forward, we will see how the market continues. We'll definitely analyze the distribution to shareholders with a full focus.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Okay, that's interesting. 50% looks reasonable. That's what I heard from you.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

That's what we also, historically, we paid to the shareholders, yes.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Okay. Next question I had was, just started thinking, I mean, the Golden Ocean acquisition, that looks quite well timed now. You know, clearly, dry bulk asset values have moved higher. Just had like a quick question. Do you have any sense of how much you're up on that investment, so far?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Frode, can you not do the calculation for us? Let's say that, you know, based on the acquisition price, obviously we've done, but you have to take the full costs because we did a semi-leveraged buyout. Yes, we paid 50% with shares, we did pay 50% with full financing. It is true that the returns on paper today look good, but as always, I think we need to ride the cycle fully before we can claim victory on that. The market has picked up somewhat faster than we were expecting on the medium term. I think the spot strategy that we've entailed is definitely setting us up to reap the benefits on the short term.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Yeah. No, I did actually do the calculation. I think you're up at least 20%. Yeah.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Only 20% Frode? Boy, you're selling it short.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Maybe I'm wrong. Could be, could be. As a follow-up, I mean, given where asset values are today, do you still see value in further investments? Or is this becoming a more market to sell, you know, further assets?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Well, it's a good question, Frode. I can repeat what I told you last time, I think, or I told someone else. Everything's pricey today. Let's not, you know, let's not lie about the facts. New buildings, second-hand, everything has gone up. There will always be opportunities, I'm sure. We will analyze these opportunities. Right now, having sold most of our older vessels, we still might sell some ships, of older vintage or sell some ships, if we see a very good price. What we wanna do now is really, ride the cycle definitely on dry bulk, and see what comes, you know, after this high cycle. Obviously, for us, the story doesn't end when the cycle turns. That's when the story begins.

[Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons]

Good answer. That's it for me. Thank you.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Thanks.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

The next question is coming from Clement. Can you please unmute and ask your question?

[Analyst]

Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by following up on your finance expenses, which declined significantly as you reduced debt and refinanced some facilities. Did the $82 million expenses for the quarter include any one-offs due to refinancings? Secondly, is the G&A for Q1 a good proxy for the remainder of the year?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Yeah. No, it's two great questions, Clement. On the net finance expenses, I think, in the 82 there were maybe $3 million one-offs. It's insignificant, I would say. It is definitely on the current optimized debt situation, but not yet taking into account some of the margin reductions we're actually executing on roughly $2 billion of financing, which will only come into play end of Q2. There's more room to reduce the net finance expenses. On the SG&A, with the $51 million we had in Q4 compared to the $27 million in Q1, I think Q4 was definitely exceptional. I think we mentioned that also the last earnings call.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Q1 is definitely better, but we are as management, we're keeping optimizing and looking at that. Integrating companies is often harder than we think. We're well on our way to reach our targets on the SG&A.

[Analyst]

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Could you talk a bit about whether you've had any impact on the operations on of the two FSOs contracted with QatarEnergy on the back of the conflict?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Yes, Clement. We have had some operational disturbances, we are trying to get everything back on track. As you know, the safety of our people on board is the most important one. We are in a very close collaboration with NOC, who is our customer, to make sure that we can restart the operations in a safe way.

[Analyst]

Makes sense. Final question from me. You've got a $12 million profit from equity accounted investees. To what does that refer specifically?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

That's a good question. It's reflecting the proportional profits that we made. At least that's the companies where in which we have small participations made. This is, I would say, half of it is one-offs from these companies. It's a very diverse slew of small participations, from ammonia logistics to basically Japanese joint ventures. There is, I think, a good smaller companies that deliver profits quarter-on-quarter. There's definitely some of that to stay in the coming quarters.

[Analyst]

Great. Good to hear. That's everything from me. I'll turn it over. Thank you.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Thanks.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

The next one is Petter Haugen. You can now unmute and ask your question, please.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Good afternoon. This is then Petter Haugen from ABG Sundal Collier in Oslo. First, well, I would like to put some emphasis on the Joris work on slide 25. That, the slide showing the shortfall and the partial refillment of what was lost is a very, I think, instructive way to think about this. One question in this context. Would it be positive or sort of if adjusted for distances, the same slide just on ton-mile, so to speak. Would that be still in a negative territory, or is it in positive territory?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Joris can take that question?

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

It's fairly balanced and that's, that was the main message here, that if you not only look at tons, but at ton-miles, the situation is actually up until today a balanced situation whereby that the lost volumes are being balanced out by the additional distance. Of course, that only holds as long as U.S. exports keep the same levels and the other countries like Brazil, Guyana, Angola keep on the, let's say, the higher volumes than what we saw in the first two, three months of the year. That's the big assumption of this slide.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Okay. very balanced on, ton-mile wise. Thank you.

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

Yeah.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Just one further question. In Q3, you ordered one CSOV, the large version, and also had options for five more. Is there any progress on those options in terms of, well, either striking them or lapsing them?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Yeah. We still have time to lift the next option. Right now if you ask me, it looks very interesting. There's good demand for these assets. As long as we don't need to lift the option, we will still wait. The market can still change. It is definitely one of the segments that we are watching closely for potential new buildings, because we still see value and the value at which we hold the options is interesting.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Okay. Could you elaborate a bit on then what sort of employment you would potentially do on a newbuild order?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Yeah

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Also the delivery schedule for those options.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Would be in 2028, and we would lift the option most probably without any employment attached. We have decided on the CSOVs that we would operate on the spot market, and if we see long-term business, we would go for the long-term business. That's exactly what we've done with the first two ships. What we're doing with the next vessels, always be a mix of spot employment and longer term employment, if it makes sense. You know that in this offshore wind market, if you order some of these CSOVs with a charter attached, usually the returns are very, very low. If we lift the options, we will most probably I mean, never say never.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

We might find some customers before we're lifting the option, but it will most probably be without any employment, then we will work on the employment as we go.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Just to add to Alex, as a spot market today, both in international winds but also regional and international oil and gas is actually very good. For us to do long-term charters, it really has to be great rates, otherwise we just stay in the spot market and enjoy the rates we've shown on the slides.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Understood. Thank you. Just then, finally, the options, all five of them, could you elaborate on when those lapses?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

I think the first one is in a couple of months from now, end of the summer.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Okay.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

The first one, and then we still have time for the following ones, which is always with a couple of months interval.

[Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier]

Okay. Understood. Thank you. That was all for me.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Thanks.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Thanks.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

We received some questions in the Q&A. I will go to those questions. The first question, the premium of Newcastlemaxes to Capes in Q1 seemed quite low. Any particular reason for this? What premium would you expect over time?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

I think I'll take it from a financial point of view. Alex, you can take it from operational. It was, as we are delivering quite a bit out of the yards, there's a lot of repositioning on the ships, ballasting to Brazil, for instance. It's a more IFRS load-to-discharge. I think the Newcastlemaxes on a discharge-to-discharge basis would have been higher. Since we had a relatively much higher repositioning, so ballasters, that impacted it, the results.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Yeah. I would say, in a premium, it always depends, of course, on the height of the market, but you would be anywhere between 15%-30%, depending on the market and of course, depending also on the fuel prices.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Okay. Moving on to the next question. Do you have any plans for the 25 million treasury shares you hold? Reissue to outside holders as dividends, use for acquisitions, retire? I assume they do not receive the dividends.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

No. The treasury shares, to be clear, do not get dividends. They cannot vote neither. Our company has 290.2 million shares. That's what you really have to look at. Retiring them, for us, there's part of the authorized capital. That set the board discretion to use them to dividend to shareholders or for M&A acquisitions or other instruments. Today, we don't have any plans. We bought them quite inexpensively, if you see, over the last years. I think this was a good investment from a long-term investor, but we have no plans right now.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Okay. The next one. With the cost per ship massively increased, when the cycle turns, the recently purchased ships will have a much higher break-even level. That could indicate what? If rates do come down, there'll be a lot of for sale signs at much lower prices.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Is that a statement or a question?

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

It's a question.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Yes. If the market comes down, if owners are under duress, they will have to sell their ships at a lower price. It is clear that the break-even of the whole fleet has gone up, not only because of the high new building prices, but also because of the higher secondhand prices. It will be indeed interesting to see when the cycle turns, how the market will react and then how distressed sales could potentially come to the market.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Okay. The next one. Could you please clarify whether any CMB.TECH vessels are currently blocked in the Persian Gulf? If so, how many and what type of vessels are involved?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

There's a couple of ships that are indeed in the Persian Gulf right now. We don't communicate about the details of the vessels, the vessels' names, out of safety concerns for our crew, which is on board.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

The next one. What is the ambition with respect to your green ammonia terminal project in Namibia? What is the latest status? What are the timelines and CapEx requirements?

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Right now, no, FID has been taken on that project. We are assembling all necessary information for the investment, and we hope to be able to say something more in the next quarterly call when we have a better view on that file. Have a little bit of patience with us, but we will definitely mention that in the next quarterly call.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Moving on to the last question. This one is referring to slide 25. It's a slide that Joris explained from Euronav. How much crude oil, if any, is coming onto the world market from Venezuela?

[Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations at CMB.TECH]

Venezuela crude oil for April was roughly 1.2 MMbpd. It increased with 150,000 bbl compared to March because of, let's say, the political changes in the country. Exports are being increased. It's not the increase which is interesting, it's rather that those barrels are now being transported on compliant vessels and no longer on any, let's say, dark or gray fleet vessels. It's a net positive for crude tankers.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

Okay. We have one last question. Can you explain what the $20 million in other operating income booked in Q1 is?

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Yes, sure. It's a series of, it's an amalgamation of all smaller profits we took. This goes from claims we won, from lawsuits or, vessel claims we have over the last couple of years. It's liquidated damages, that way we deliver ships, and then they deliver earlier or later, with shipyards as well. It's a whole slew of, I would say smaller one-offs. There's half of it, or roughly, is a revaluation of some investments we hold in smaller companies. Nothing meaningful, mostly one-offs, but always nice to have when you can book that on your balance sheet.

[Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator at CMB.TECH]

I think that, concludes the questions.

[Alexander Saverys, CEO at CMB.TECH]

Thank you very much, Enya. Thank you, all of you for joining in this, quarterly call, and I am looking forward to talking to you either at our general assembly on Thursday or on the next call we organize, during the summer. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[Ludovic Saverys, CFO at CMB.TECH]

Bye-bye.

Participants

Executives

• Alexander Saverys, CEO
• Enya Derkinderen, Communications Coordinator
• Joris Daman, Head of Investor Relations
• Ludovic Saverys, CFO

Analysts

• Frode Mørkedal, Analyst at Clarksons
• Petter Haugen, Analyst at ABG Sundal Collier
• Analyst