Good morning, and welcome to the Euronav second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Gallagher, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone, and thanks for joining Euronav's Q2 2021 earnings call. Before I start, I would like to say a few words. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today, Thursday the 12th of August 2021, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance and may include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events, performance, underlying assumptions and other statements which are not statements of historical facts. All forward-looking statements attributable to the company or to persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by reference to the risks, uncertainties and other factors company filings with the SEC, which are available free of charge on SEC's website at www.sec.gov and our own company's website at www.euronav.com. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of a particular statement. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to read our safe harbor statements on page 2 of the Slide presentation. I will now pass over to Chief Executive Hugo De Stoop to start with the agenda Slide on Slide 3. Hugo. Thank you, Brian Gallagher. Welcome to our call today. As usual, I will firstly run through the Q2 highlights and some comments on our current capital allocation strategy. This is to simultaneously rejuvenate our fleet and earnings potential, but also investing in the latest technology to enable Euronav to be at the forefront of decarbonization of the tanker sector. Lieve Logghe, our Chief Financial Officer, will then run through a snapshot of our financing before Brian Gallagher, our Head of Investor Relations, will then look at the current themes in the tanker market before I return again to discuss in more details our investment strategy and outlook for the tanker sector. Turning to Slide 4 and the highlight page. We said in early May that the first quarter was the toughest freight market we have had in recent years. I'm afraid to admit that factually, Q2 has proven equally, if not more challenging. As anticipated, recovery in freight rates did not materialize. Put simply, during Q2, there was too much tonnage chasing too few available cargoes. The members of OPEC+ have increased crude production to meet a growing crude demand recovery. This has not been enough to gain traction in terms of reducing the oversupply of tonnage in the VLCC, but also in the Suezmax spot market. The result has seen a Q2 delivering freight rates to levels not seen in the last decade. Euronav will nevertheless distribute a $0.03 dividend per share to reward patient shareholders. Despite these current headwinds, there are some positive signals. Both onshore inventory and offshore levels have been drawn back to pre-COVID levels. OPEC+ has signaled output rises of 2 million barrels per day between now and the end of the year. Finally, the high scrap steel prices have translated into some recycling in the last three months, especially in the VLCC segment where five VLCCs were demolished and recycled, but also in the Suezmax segment, where three Suezmaxes exited the world fleet. With that, I will pass over to our CFO, Lieve Logghe, to walk through the financial highlights. Lieve, over to you. Thank you, Hugo. It has been a challenging quarter as your comments highlighted. Euronav's focus is to maintain our capital strength, which we illustrate on Slide 5. Looking back over the previous cycle on Slide 5, our leverage has remained below our stated objective of 50%, with our liquidity building during stronger freight markets in 2020. Our investment in new technology, which Hugo will cover later, has increased leverage and reduced liquidity, but well within our self-imposed limits. Liquidity is now just over $900 million, with our dry docking program 60% complete at the halfway point of the year. I will now pass on to Brian, our Head of Investor Relations, to run through some market slides. Thank you, Lieve. We spent some time on the last call, going through the impact of illicit trade that we identified, in particular from Iran. Exports, as you can see from Slide 6, look to have continued to rise throughout Q2. These are cargoes, remember, which are not available to the global commercial fleet. This continues to be a drag on the wider recovery and the tanker market in our view. Moving on to Slide 7, we look more detailed look at recycling. What is pleasing to report that the VLCC recycling has actually begun to start in earnest, and we've seen 12 VLCCs exiting fleets over 12 months to the end of July, but only four Suezmaxes have also exited over the same period. This is behind where the analyst forecasts were expecting this number to be. This is surprising given the very high steel prices we've had throughout 2020 to 2021. What is very clear in seeing older tonnage, which is it being resold into the secondhand market rather than being recycled. With some encouraging data points in our market, why has the freight pricing background remained so challenging? We try to give some more insight on this in Slide 8. Slide 8 selects three key markets for the VLCC and Suezmax sector. Firstly, the core 5 OPEC nations based in the Middle East. Secondly, the U.S. shale sector. Lastly, Russia. If we look at these individually, we can see that production on the left-hand side of the slide you see on Slide 8, has looked pretty good, and we've seen sustained rises in production since February. If we look to the right-hand side of the slide, on Slide 8, the picture is far more mixed. Exports as a percentage of production have continued to fall, with exports in a range of between 18 million and 19 million barrels per day. Traction in freight rates can only really gain, once we see exports follow the same trajectory as production growth. This helps explain the short-term picture, but there are robust grounds for optimism beyond that, in that we would expect the export pattern to eventually follow from that of the production increases that we've seen. On this encouraging theme, we look further in more detail on Slide 9. After some initial wrangling, OPEC+ in early July outlined plans to steadily increase production by 2 million barrels per day overall between August of this year and the end of 2021. As the previous slide indicated, production rises do not always translate into barrel-for-barrel increases in exports. With global onshore inventory levels back at below five-year level averages, this production should start to translate into higher levels of cargoes available. Indeed, the ratio of available VLCC to available cargoes peaked in early June, according to Bloomberg data, and has fallen since. Looking further out, beyond the end of this year and into the medium term, 6 million barrels per day of additional barrels, we do believe will be required from the 4 key production areas to get back to pre-COVID levels of output. Remember, 1 million barrels per day roughly translates on an annualized basis to demand for 30 VLCCs. Overall, this medium-term picture provides plenty of scope for improvement and support for the tanker market over the coming quarters. Looking beyond that on Slide 10, we look at ton-mile growth, which is forecast by Clarksons and most agencies to rebound further in 2021. Again in 2022, as emerging market nations take up the baton of demand and consumption recovery as Slide 10 shows. The tanker market has already adjusted itself by reducing capacity, by slowing the speeds that vessels are transporting cargoes at, partly as bunker costs have also risen, but also due to the lack of cargoes. Should this discipline be maintained and ton-mile growth materialize along this pattern in Slide 10, then perhaps consumption growth of 100 million barrels per day that we last saw in Q4 of 2019 will not be required to return the tanker market to equilibrium. Tanker speeds and freight rates have a very strong correlation of 62% since 2016. If we were to see the fleet speed up and increase capacity, it would be in response to a higher level of cargoes. With that, I will now pass it back to Chief Executive Hugo De Stoop to highlight our recent investments for the future and our look for the outlook for the coming few quarters. Hugo, back over to you. Thanks, Brian. Tanker shipping markets are volatile, cyclical, and normally seasonal. 2020 was an extraordinary year from many different angles, and 2021 has so far, and unfortunately, met our expectations in terms of poor rate environment. The Euronav platform has been designed to cope with all kinds of markets, and our capital allocation approach is dynamic and moves in tune with the cyclicality of our markets. We believe that we need to have a strong balance sheet and a decent amount of liquidity that provide both strength, but also, and maybe more importantly, optionality during the difficult times of the cycle. Such balance sheet is often built during the good times, but looking back over the past 18 months, we've been active in all facets of our capital allocation, as Slide 9 illustrates. Cash dividends have been strong during the upper part of the cycle, with nearly $350 million returned to our shareholders and nearly $120 million returned via share buybacks. This is the most progressive return amongst our peer group on a comparable per capita basis. Yet over the same period of time, the balance sheet has retained its strength with leverage below target thresholds and a third of our funding now sustainability-linked. The past two quarters, we've been active in securing future investments to ensure the age of our fleet is reduced with more modern, less-consuming assets, which will therefore improve the earning potential. In addition, those assets provide a degree of flexibility when it comes to future propulsion and fuel technologies. You may wonder why now and why ammonia and/or LNG. Let's move to Slide 12. We are first and foremost a service provider, and we will always look at what our clients want. Without any addition, those ships are already the most economical tankers produced or ever produced. They are also ready to be converted into either LNG or soon into ammonia-fueled vessels. LNG reduces already a lot of CO2 emissions and is a technology that's available now, but it's still expensive, so we need customer support to justify this investment. Ammonia is not ready, but yards, engine manufacturers, classification societies are working hard to develop this technology, which should be ready by 2025 for both new buildings and retrofits. Slide 11 shows that ammonia from tank to propeller will reduce emissions between 93% and 100% compared to today's bunker fuel, and therefore, this is technology we believe will be one of the winning fuels in the future. Being involved in the development of those technologies, which is unusual for a ship owner, should provide Euronav with a competitive technical but also strategic advantage, and we're not putting all of our eggs into one fuel basket. We don't believe there will be one outright winner, but we will remain flexible going forward, and these ships allow us to remain flexible. Turning to Slide 13. Why invest now at this stage of the cycle? Historically, Euronav invested on a counter-cyclical basis, most obviously in 2014, 2017, when we undertook transactions to expand our platform by 50% in terms of vessel count. Both times when freight rates were at loss-making levels and consensus outlook was very challenging for the upcoming quarters. Over the past year or so, we have taken delivery of four new eco VLCCs and taken over contracts or filled abandoned slots or even order a further three Eco VLCCs and five Suezmax due to delivery now over the next two and a half years. With the latest technology and the capability to add either LNG dual-fuel or ammonia, provided all piece of the ammonia puzzle fall into the right place. This is why we've signed a joint development program. This JDP, as we call it, has been signed with our technical partners in Hyundai for the next three years, and this should assist the development of the technology itself, ammonia dual-fuel vessels, and all should be achieved within the capacity of our balance sheet. Leverage remaining below our threshold target of 50% and supported by the actual all-forward sale of over 10 older ships in the past 18 months, recycling $150 million capital back into the latest technology. Why now? The slide on screen attempts to show the crowded landscape we face as operators. Yard capacity to construct large tankers such as VLCCs or Suezmax is now largely constrained until around late 2024, beginning 2025, given the surge in container and dry bulk orders over the past six months, but also LNG carriers. Operational regulation will start to bite from 2023, with the EEXI and carbon intensity regulations making all the tonnage obsolete or far less preferred as they will hit the bottom 20% of emission league tables. The recent EU carbon trading scheme will add further pressure to reduce emissions and reward those with lower-emitting fleets. Lastly, commercial pressure, we believe, are already starting to grow as banks, investors, and other stakeholders are increasingly vocal and determined to see decarbonization and emission reduction strategy reflected in affirmative action being taken by ship owners. Euronav is comfortable in the position we have taken so far, I'm sure there will be additional questioning in the Q&A shortly. Let's now move onto Slide 14, which is the final Slide. This is the usual traffic light system that we have had for a number of years. As we said in our press release today, Q2 has been a static quarter following a depressed Q1. The immediate part of the cycle remains challenging and likely to stay so until we either see a crude oil demand recovery or a sharper reduction of the fleet, which would require a decent amount of ships to be recycled. Nevertheless, the demand for oil should improve seasonally. On average, demand increases by 1.7 million barrels between the summer and the winter of the Northern Hemisphere. As Brian said, the seasonal raise of demand, coupled with reduced speed of the world, could already move the rates up by the end of the year or beginning of next. On the supply side, you will have noticed that we have downgraded the vessel supply column as recycling has simply not occurred on a level we would have expected, given other supporting factors. The other factors remain unchanged. That concludes our remarks. Thank you for your attention, and I'm now pleased to pass it back to the operator for a Q&A session. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. The first question is from Jon Chappell of Evercore. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, Jon. Hugo, first question for you. I think the timing of the next evolution that you laid out makes a ton of sense. As it relates to a source of funds, it feels like there's been a disconnect between secondhand asset values. The leases are quoted, maybe there's just not a lot of activity, and underlying rates and share prices. I know you've recycled sold, disposed of, a fair amount of your older fleet, but you still have a handful that are over 10 years old. Are there any more plans to use this kind of recycling, so to speak, of selling older ships into a strong underlying S&P market to fund some more of your next stage of evolution fleet growth? Let me first say that we don't need to do that, so it's not an obligation. You're absolutely right that when we see the evolution of the values compared to the freight market or compared to our share price, there is clearly a disconnect, and one should definitely take the opportunity if those opportunities exist, because the market is very thin. The volume of vessels that are being exchanged, certainly in the category that you mentioned, which is 10 years old, is very thin. There's been a lot of exchange vessels in the very old categories, i.e., 18, 19, 20 years. Unfortunately, we know why and where those vessels have gone, and mostly that is for the illicit trade, which is at the heart of the problem that we have. Then, on the new building or resale of contract front, there has been also a fair amount of exchange. In the sort of middle age, 10 years, the volume is rather thin. Nevertheless, we are looking at every opportunity that we can find in the market. On the Suezmax side, we do have some ladies that are hitting sweet spots where there could be interest being developed by other ship owners. Okay, great. Thank you. Brian, my follow-up for you, page 8 is really interesting. I'm just wondering, those three regions you've highlighted here, the U.S. inventories are not going up. I'm assuming that a lot of the Middle Eastern countries, Saudi especially, are using some of their increased output for direct cooling generation during their summer months, and I guess Russia's probably not maybe as transparent as some of the other Western countries. Do you feel like as this output continues to rise, either there's going to be a seasonal component of the Middle East exit to summer, or something related to U.S. exports, where there's going to be this relief valve, where the production automatically turns into export and tanker demand, and even with potential catch-up after lagging a little bit through the last few months? Yes, I think that's a very good point, Jonathan, and I certainly would echo those commentary. I think that's what we're seeing with the Middle East, and we deliberately picked those five Middle East exporters as the core drivers, and they've definitely been using that increased production for their own, as you say, domestic uses. I think there's definitely some little pent-up or snap within the system which we would anticipate coming through at some point. Obviously, with the data today from the IEA suggesting that July has sort of moved backwards in terms of demand, that is going to maybe be pushed a little bit further out. Yes, that's definitely the theme we wanted to get across, because I think there has been a disconnect from investors engagement we've had, that we've all seen the production numbers, but it's not been translated into increased cargoes. I think you're absolutely right, that there will be a snapback at some point. Of course, when that will happen, we would like to think it will be second half of this year into maybe into Q4. Yeah, I think you've explained it better than I can with the charts, just to illustrate that background, what we think will change at some point. Of course, it is encouraging to have OPEC+ at least committing to have regular increases in those production numbers between now and the year-end. Okay. Thank you, Brian. Thanks, Hugo. Thanks, Jon. The next question is from Chris Wetherbee of Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, and thanks for taking the question. I guess I wanted to talk about sort of the new emissions and propulsion systems and fuels as you think forward here. Where do yards stand in terms of preferences, if they have one, and if you could talk a little bit about what you think the return profiles of these vessels might look like relative to traditional fuel vessels? That's a very good question. It's probably too early to tell. The vessels that we have booked right now have the capability of being converted into vessels that can burn LNG and ammonia. Until we decide that they should be converted, and that could be before their specific deliveries, they will be deemed as conventional vessels, and so the return should be fairly the same. The amount of money that you have to invest in order to have that flexibility is relatively conservative. We're talking about $1 million, $1.5 million. Which, anyway, compared to what we dare to call Euronav specs, part of it would have been spent anyway. What do we do exactly there? First and foremost, we're talking about reinforcement of the deck, where the potential tankers that will hold either the LNG or the ammonia, and its different weight for those specific tanks, will be located. The second part that we're looking at is the piping system, so that whenever we would decide to put those tanks on the deck, the piping system would already be there, so that we don't have to open the ship like a can, leading to the engine room. Then, of course, in parallel, there is quite a lot of development on the engine themselves. You may have noticed on my introductory remarks that in fact, the yards, but more specifically the engine manufacturers, be it MAN or be it Wärtsilä, are looking at development of new engines, as well as retrofits, and both technologies should be ready at approximately the same time. If you have an engine today, and it has the minimum features to be converted, the conversion will be possible at a later stage. The amount of capital that you will need to spend in order to do those conversions is still unknown. Of course, we know what it costs to do that on an LNG vessel, and there are a lot of similarities. It should be between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million at the beginning. I think that we would only do that if we had a contract. The reason why we believe that being an early adopter will provide a competitive advantage is because we have a feeling that there will be a race at some point, but certainly as of 2023, to reduce the emissions for our clients. As I mentioned earlier in the call, we are customer-driven. Whatever the customer wants, we should be able to produce, and that's exactly what we anticipate will happen on those vessels or the next generation. Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate that color. Then just a follow-up. I wanted to come back to scrapping for a moment. I know that Slide, that's the downgrade on the red light, green light, yellow light Slide that you have here. I guess I'm curious, what's embedded in your expectations for the back half of the year in terms of scrapping? Then, do you think what do you need to see potentially change to either hit those numbers or maybe see an acceleration in scrapping, looking to get people off the bench and do it? Well, I wish I had a crystal ball, or I wish someone would listen to my prayers. I think that we are all surprised that more than 50 ships, basically, which should have been scrapped, are still trading. We have explained the last call, so I'm not going to repeat what we said in the last call, that pretty much all of them have been identified in those illicit trades. The way they circumvent the rules is quite astonishing, but it is what it is, and I don't think that at Euronav we can do anything about it. The way we look at the second half is the following. We believe that there is a certain capacity that can do these trades, and we are probably at the limit. We don't see another 50 ships of that same age profile going into those trades because they won't be necessary to transport the Iranian and Venezuelan crude oil. We think that we are almost at the end of that capacity, and therefore, any ship that is facing a dry dock, any ship that is not earning simply because they are put at the back of the queue, and the owner decides, well, she decide what to do with their ship, it's likely to go to the scrapyard. The second half will be a mix of a natural scrap profile that we had predicted and should have happened already. We're not talking about the same ships. We are talking about new ships arriving to the same age profile. Of course, if there is a change in the Iranian sanctions imposed by the U.S., that should open the floodgate for ships to be recycled. There, we would be surprised if we wouldn't see a number of the ships that are today trading, not rushing into those recycling yards because the capacity there is constrained. We believe that owners would be very quick to snap the opportunity at the current scrap price, which are the highest that we have seen in more than 15 years. Okay. That's great color. I appreciate it. Thanks for the time. Thank you. The next question is from Magnus Fyhr of H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon. Just had a question on the fleet and how you feel about the fleet going forward as far as being fuel compliant. You mentioned that you need support to develop fuel compliant vessels. You have taken steps now to invest in the new generation vessels. How do you balance being too early and holding onto some of these older vessels that are likely to be big cash generators if we get an upcycle year in the next two, three years? I think we're probably likely to have another down cycle before 2030. Just curious, how do you balance that investment in the new ships to meet these goals and also not giving up the cash generation capability of the older ships? When you look at what we have sold, I think that this was not a surprise to the market. We're talking about forward sale in the form of sale and lease back with no purchase obligation on some vessels. They will be redelivered to their owners when they reach 15 years of age. When you look at the way Euronav positions itself as a quality operator, the ships are more than 15 years of age, regardless of their emissions, have always been trading in a different segment with different clients. That's not where we are positioning ourselves. Generally speaking, between 15 and 17.5, which is between two surveys, we are looking at selling the vessels. As I said at the beginning, from time to time, we forward sale vessels because we believe there is a good opportunity to do that. As far as the new buildings are concerned, it was a mixed bag of opportunistic acquisition. You know that we have taken contracts that were abandoned by some owners who couldn't fulfill their obligations. The same for some slots. Then as we were busy contemplating the landscape, we thought that the fact that there are very, very few slots available until end of 2024, beginning of 2025, and that we are more likely to see a continuous demand from containers, LNG, dry bulkers, meant that it was a little bit more opportunistic. Then we add this layer of flexibility on the new technology so that we could convert them. I guess what you have to look at is, regardless of the emissions, what we have done should not be a surprise to many people. Maybe with the exception that Euronav did not build a reputation for being busy at the yard. We also need to be realistic and flexible in that approach. When you look only or purely at the emissions, we are recycling older tonnage against newer tonnage, which is anyway outperforming from an emission and therefore consumption perspective. Earning potential on a normal market or on a market that is influenced by emissions is secured with the capability of doing even more on the emission front. Okay. Thank you. We will continue to do that. When you speak about another dip before 2030, yes, the market is cyclical. I guess that we have always had to balance what do we get rid when the values are very high versus what we retain. I don't think that this philosophy should change, and it will be the same going forward. All right, thank you. My follow-up is, you've invested quite a bit here in the last two years in new vessels. Do you feel like over the next two, three years, you need more support from the charterers or the oil companies to build new vessels that comply with the new regulations? Will you continue to do opportunistic purchases? I think that everything we do need to be either strategic or opportunistic. I think that we have done what I would say is strategic in the sense that it's fleet rejuvenation for the reason I just explained. It just makes a lot of sense, especially from a value perspective, but also, as we said, a modern vessel would consume 30% or 35% less than an 11, 12 years old vessel. If we do have support from our customers, we will always be there to render the service. We have mentioned that in previous calls. We are not at all against LNG. We just believe that it's a technology that might be a little bit more risky given the amount of money that you have to invest upfront without having a contract. We participate to various tenders organized by Shell and TotalEnergies. We felt that the return were not big enough for us to cover this premium that we had to pay for the technology. There was also a lot of technical details that maybe you guys are not aware of. The vessels ordered by TotalEnergies compared to the ones ordered by Shell, it's a different LNG technology. It's low pressure versus high pressure. It has its pros and cons. Now the market has stabilized. The price of the new building is going up. The price of the premium on the technology is going down. Let's see what the customers need. From what I read in the press or even in the specialized press, it seems that a lot of the oil majors, a lot of our customers are busy scratching their head on how to meet those lower emission requirements. They can always come to us or come to the market, and we will always be there to analyze whether it's worth building specific ships for what they want or whether we prefer to pass and continue being independent. Great. Thank you, Hugo. Thank you, Magnus. The next question is from Randy Giveans of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Howdy, everyone. How's it going? Hey, Randy. How are you? Good. I guess looking at your fleet and chartering strategy, you have a handful of vessels on relatively medium to long-term charters, but pretty small amount, right, relative to the size of your fleet. What are your thoughts or plans for chartering out tonnage? If the rates are still too low, any appetite to charter in tonnage today? Yeah. It's a question that we must ask ourselves on a daily basis. Let me start with the beginning. When you are in a high rate environment, like we were in 2020, you have the choice of enjoying, say, $100,000 a day versus chartering out at $60,000 a day. You must make the decision of do I forgo earnings today in order to protect. You will remember that you can only protect six months or maximum one year going forward. Do I indeed remain on the stock market? You know that it's going to be cyclical, and you know that it's going to be super rich at the high point and quite painful in the low point. I guess that we have looked at many opportunities. We have taken a handful of charter. You're absolutely correct. Most of them have been redelivered. They were between six and nine months contract. Today, we are left with only one VLCC TC out, and then five or six Suezmaxes TC out. Right now, the rates for TC are just too low, so they just guarantee you to make a loss. Most of the time, the charters will ask for one or two years option. You are at a level that is better than the spot rate. That's not difficult. It's still not profitable. On top of that, you're giving away a lot of optionality. We don't feel it is the right time now to do more on the TC front. As far as time charter in is concerned, we have taken two Suezmaxes. I believe it was what, four or five months ago? We are looking into the market, but it's true that what people ask is different than what we want. For some reason, we're not like the big traders who can insist on optionality. It seems that when an owner TC-out his vessels to another owner, the conditions that he can accept are very different than when he charters out to a real client or to a real end user. That's maybe because there is a relationship behind it, or maybe because there are multiple TC-in the portfolio that they are negotiating. At the moment, quite frankly, there is not many opportunities on one side or the other, TC-ins or TC-outs. We continue to watch the market very carefully. Got it. All right. Fair. I guess the last question for me, is it fair to assume the dividends will remain at around $0.03 a share, even with negative earnings for sure in Q3 and possibly Q4? Or will the primary return of capital be share repurchases eventually? Well, we have dedicated a slide on that, obviously, we've done dividends, we've done share buyback, we've done further capital investments, and that's capital allocation. I think that it's part of the strategy, I explained that in the preliminary remark that every part of the cycle, also every thought that management has on the future will have an influence on what we do. We have a track record of what we've been listing 2005, 17 years. As far as Euronext is concerned, six years as far as New York is concerned. I think people can see for themselves what we've done with the capital. I prefer to, for instance, buy back my shares, $118 million worth of shares last year than just doing that right now. Why? Because once you have bought back the shares, there's more dividends for the remaining shares. I think that the order in which we did it was good. If you ask us, maybe we should have done a little bit more share buyback last year and a little bit less dividends, because then it would have been even better for the current shareholders. I guess that capital allocation is what it is, and I think that you have to entrust management to do the best they can with the capital. Got it. Understood. The $0.03 dividend, is that a new minimum, or how do you think about that? Is that a quarterly go quarter by quarter? It's not a new minimum. We always have one. For six or seven years, we've had $0.12 per year. Yeah. We were able to distribute dividends, and now we are able to distribute the full dividends. It's the same policy, and going forward, we believe that it's very small amount of money, and we will try to maintain for as long as we can. Got it. Yeah. $0.06 semi-annual for a while there. You went quarterly. All right. Well, thanks so much. You're welcome. The next question is from Omar Nokta of Clarksons. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hi, Hugo. Just wanted to follow up on Randy's question about the capital returns and whatnot. Obviously, there have been real signs of a recovery, but as you mentioned, the near term is a bit iffy and cloudy. I know last year you were a bit more aggressive with the share buybacks, taking advantage of a discounted stock price relative to NAV. Now here, you've actually got NAV that's probably a little bit more solidified just based off of market activity. I just wanted to think, as you think about this market here over the next, say, three to six months, do you see yourself being more active, more aggressive on the buybacks? Or maybe just taking a step back and focusing on either liquidity, bringing those dry docks forward, or thinking about the future? Any updated thoughts there? I want to say I don't really have further comments. I think we are opportunistic. Obviously, as I just mentioned, I prefer to do buyback last year versus this year, simply because everybody benefits already last year, but also this year on that, and in the future. We don't really look at discount to NAV, even though we continue to be frustrated about where the share price is trading. I don't believe that buyback is a good way to close the gap. In the long term, it usually doesn't close the gap, and we've seen that. Even spending EUR 120 million, yes, we had a much lower discount to NAV when we were doing the program. The minute we stopped it, we found ourselves getting a same discount or even bigger discount. I think that you're buying back your shares for the long term, not for a discount to a NAV, which is fluctuating according to the values of the vessels, et cetera. The long term means that there are more dividends, more earnings per share for shareholders that continue to be shareholders of the company. Going forward, I cannot tell you anything else than what I just mentioned. We will continue to watch what we can do with the capital we are generating. It's true that we've been very busy. We've been very busy distributing dividends, buying back, now investing, and quite a decent amount of money. We're almost talking about $1 billion. Of course, a lot of that will be levered, but nevertheless, almost a $1 billion investment for the next two and half years, so it's not insignificant. We are happy about the three ways we have spent the capital for shareholders, as we believe they will create a lot of shareholder value at the time of doing that or in the future. Thanks, Hugo. That's clear. I just wanted to get maybe just a little bit more emphasis on that. Maybe just as a follow-up, either for you, Hugo, or for Brian. As you mentioned, the spot market has really settled into a bit of a malaise here recently. You mentioned the Middle East having some higher cargo counts that have since kind of eased. Just wanted to get a sense on export cargoes from what you're seeing on the Atlantic side, whether it's from the U.S. or West Africa. Any color you can give in relation to how that VLCC market has developed here over the past three months in comparison to the Middle East? Brian, do you want to go ahead with that one? No, absolutely. Yeah. Omar, it's a good question. We're seeing a little bit more increase than we've seen in terms of U.S. imports, which is offset, as Jon Chappell said earlier, with regard to some of the volatility we've seen in some of the U.S. exports that tended to sort of net off against each other. I did mention in the remarks that the excess level of ships in the Middle East, which is still 40%, 45% of the marketplace of VLCCs, has actually very, very slightly improved in terms of that excess capacity. It's still very much on a fitful basis. I think what we've seen from the IEA today is very reflective of the market over the last three months. In that, as they say, June had a nice surge in demand, an increase in the amount of available supply, and therefore cargoes, July has reversed that with obviously some of the variants, Delta variant we've seen, and the restrictions that have come through there. I think in a nutshell, yes, we're seeing pockets of this growth, but it's not being followed through and sustained. Unfortunately, that's been the holding pattern we've been in now for a while. We're going to have to, I think, continue to adjust to that. Like you say, it is a malaise, and it looks like it's going to probably persist for at least the rest of this quarter. Yeah, pockets of growth. I think U.S. imports has shown some encouraging signs, both from Middle East and from West Africa. Again, it's been offset elsewhere. We do need the, as we said earlier, we need the, A, to be sustainable, and also to be more uniform across the various trading patterns. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, it seems fit and starts. Okay, appreciate the color. I'll turn it over. Thanks. The next question is from Chris Tsung of Webber Research & Advisory. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, Hugo. How are you? Very well. You? Good, thanks. I just wanted to ask about the optional third VLCC that you guys exercised back in July. How much was that for? It was the same price, as a matter of fact. Lieve, do you know- 93.4 93.4 million. Okay. That coupled with the three Suezmaxes, five total. Lieve, about the new building program of almost $600 million with $900 million of current liquidity, just wanted to get a sense of timing around the cash flow. When will you guys have to pay for the vessels upon delivery? It sounded like earlier that they were all going to be financed by your balance sheet, but is there any consideration of taking on additional debt? Indeed. First of all, your first question, Chris, on the payment schedule. Indeed, most of the amounts are due to be paid at delivery. 50%-60% is due to be paid on delivery. In terms of financing, indeed, we are looking there to finance and find a good momentum in the market. For the first ones now coming on the water Q1 2022, this is currently work in progress, and then the next will follow in 2022 to be delivered in 2023 and 2024. Usually, the financing ratio is 65%. 60% 60%, 65%. When you're talking about new building, it's easier to get 65%. We're also looking at ECA type of financing, which one more time are available for new buildings and not necessarily for secondhand purchase in market. That's maybe another advantage. Great. Maybe just for my follow-up, just turning back to Slide 10 that Brian covered with regards to slow steaming and its impact on ton-mile. I guess I wanted to understand, presumably there's or I guess at what speeds would it make sense for the fleet to move off its spot slow steaming? Can it go down to half of this or are we near that level? Just trying to get a sense of how ton-mile can demand somewhere. Well, Chris, the speeds have only been measured by Clarksons, I think, since 2010 on a monthly basis, and these are the lowest speeds that we've seen since those records were begun. It's just to illustrate that we have seen a capacity response, but it's also just to shine a light on the fact that we do expect ton-mile growth, as most observers and Clarksons do, for 2021. Then we expect, again, all the agencies are suggesting that ton-mile growth will then have another leg up during 2022, which will be, as I said before, the baton being passed really with 2021 and the early 2022 recovery being more of an OECD situation where those countries with high vaccination rates, then hopefully giving way to longer ton-miles as the emerging markets come through. Just to try and draw a picture for investors that our crystal ball is as fuzzy as anyone else's at the moment. I think there's a very big belief amongst investors that we need to get back to Q4 levels of consumption, of Q4 2019 that is, before we can see any traction. We're just trying to point out the fact that there are a lot of multiple factors impacting our marketplace, and these are two variables which will be very important when we start to see some traction coming in freight rates. That's the reason for putting that there, that we do see a bit of a two-stage recovery in terms of the ton-mile story. Also, not to be too concerned if capacity is going to come back a little bit because the fleet will speed up. As I said before, since 2016, if you strip out some of the volatility of 2020, there is about a 62% correlation between speeds and freight rate. That makes perfect sense if you think about it, that we see the fleet speeding up in response to better freight rate. It is just trying to paint that picture, that to be aware that it is not just a simple calculation that we need to get consumption up to a certain level. There are multiple factors involved in the tanker market as always. Okay, great. Thanks, Brian, for the color. Thanks for the time. That's it for me. I'll turn it over. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Hugo De Stoop for closing remarks. Just to say thank you very much, everybody, to listen in our second quarter earnings call, and look forward to talk to you next time with hopefully a little bit more positive news. Thank you. Bye-bye. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.