Operator
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the TORM Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Jacob Meldgaard, CEO. You may begin.
TORM plc (TRMD)
Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 26, 2026
$32.09
+2.62%
Same-Day
+3.26%
1 Week
-0.65%
1 Month
-6.17%
vs S&P
+2.15%
Operator
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the TORM Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Jacob Meldgaard, CEO. You may begin.
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Thank you, and welcome to everyone joining us here today. This morning, we released our annual report for 2025, and we are satisfied with the results, which, once again, reflect our strong execution across the business. However, before I now turn to the results, I want to spend a little time talking about TORM and the foundation that enables these results and consistently differentiates TORM in the market. I want to talk about the key pillars of our business that have placed us in a strong position to date and that we believe will continue to do so in the future. We are immensely proud of what we have achieved here at TORM. Our ownership model and culture provides us with a clarity of purpose that streamlines our actions across the business. We are focused each and every day on staying one step ahead of other fleets to make the most of every opportunity. We believe our ability to deliver on this ambition for our shareholders is a distinct competitive advantage. Underpinning our strategic focus is the platform you will know as One TORM. We believe this is a point of difference that sets us apart. The model was originally built around a spot-oriented strategy to unite the business and accelerate decision-making and response time. It enables us to use real-time data and insights to share our deep expertise at the core of the business at a moment's notice. We are not complacent. Since its inception, we have continuously refined this model using the latest technology, advanced analytics and proprietary data at our disposal to ensure we remain as alert and responsive as we possibly can be. In short, we can identify and capture attractive trading opportunities even in the most challenging markets, and perhaps I should say, especially in…
Kim Balle
Analyst
Thank you, Jacob. Now please turn to Slide 14, and let me walk you through some of the drivers behind our performance this quarter and for the full year. Starting with the market backdrop. The product tanker market stayed strong throughout the fourth quarter, and that supported another solid result for us. For Q4, we delivered TCE of USD 251 million, which translated into EBITDA of USD 156 million and net profit of USD 87 million. Across the fleet, our average TCE came in at USD 30,658 per day. Breaking that down, our LR2 earned above USD 35,000, LR1s were above $31,000 and MRs were just under USD 29,000 per day. For the long-range vessels, these numbers were actually a bit better than we indicated in our Q3 coverage, reflecting continued strong markets, helped in part by very firm crude tanker rates. For the full year, we delivered TCE of USD 910 million, EBITDA of USD 571 million and net profit of USD 286 million. These are solid numbers. As expected, earnings moderated from the exceptional levels of last year, but they remain robust and importantly, very much in line with the guidance we shared in November. And turning to shareholder returns. With a strong Q4, earnings per share reached $0.88, and the Board has declared a dividend of $0.70 per share, bringing total dividends for the year to USD 2.12 per share. We continue to believe that our capital return framework strikes the right balance, clear, disciplined and supported by robust cash earnings generation. And with that overview in place, let us move to Slide 15, where we break down the earnings in more details and talk through the underlying drivers. Slide 15 shows our quarterly revenue progression since Q4 2024. With this quarter's results, we see a meaningful…
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Frode Morkedal with Clarksons Securities.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
First question I have is on the EBITDA guidance or the revenue guidance. If you could, I'm curious about what type of spot rate assumption you made there? Of course, I understand there's a lot of moving parts in this type of guidance, but let's say, LR2, MR rates in the high end, what are -- what's the implied rate, if you can share that?
Kim Balle
Analyst
Frode, I can tell you about our methodology that we use when calculating our guidance for the year. So we take the coverage, the fixed days we have already made for Q1, and then we apply the unfixed days for the rest of the year with the forward curve that we see in the market for the remainder of that period. And then you get to a midpoint. And from that midpoint of TCE, you then deduct our normal cost and get to an EBITDA. And depending on where the freight rates are, we stress that with an interval. And as they are higher right now, you will see, compared to last year, that the interval is slightly higher than we had a year ago. That is due to both what I just said, the higher rates, freight rates, but also more earning days, of course. So that's the methodology behind. So we are basically building it on what we have achieved already and then the markets.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
Right. So is it just FFA market or time charter rates that you're looking at or...
Kim Balle
Analyst
It's forward freight rates.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
And can you just say like the midpoint, is that -- roughly is that curve today when you made the guidance?
Kim Balle
Analyst
It's around $30,400 across the fleet.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
Right. Okay. That's a good reference point. So yes, but just I wanted to discuss how you see the strength in the crude market impacting the products? Clearly, you talked about the switching. I'm curious to know if you think there's more to go there? I have noticed that crude Aframaxes are still trading with quite a significant differential to LR2 spot rates. So yes, curious to hear your views.
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Yes. Obviously, time will tell. But I think clearly, the strength that we are seeing across the crude segments is first and foremost, having a direct one-to-one impact on the behavior of the LR2 fleet and LR2 owners. So the incentive currently to switch from being participating as an LR2 in the CPP market and potentially moving into the crude market is a little depend on whether you are in the Western hemisphere or the Eastern hemisphere. But just as an example, as you point to in the Western hemisphere, there's a clear financial incentive to switch over. I think we will see more of that as we showed in the graph. There is basically fewer vessels that are available due to the sanctions regime imposed, especially by the U.K. and EU, but also by OFAC. So that means that the compliant requirements for our customers, whether it's in CPP or in dirty trade, is serviced by fewer vessels, fewer assets. And that is pushing rates higher as we speak. We see term rates rising, and they are not to the extreme volatility that we see in the VLCC segment, but still significantly higher for a 1-year charter today than what it was at the beginning of the year. And I think this trend, let's see how it plays out, but I think it is here to stay. So we're quite optimistic in the earning power in the segments, to be honest.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
I agree. I guess the acquisition you made, I think it was 8 ships, right, in Q4. That was a pretty good timing. I think we discussed it last time, but maybe you could just discuss how you thought about the investment case at the time. Clearly, it's been a -- was a good idea to buy these ships. And secondly, what's your view now at this point in time of further opportunities to acquire ships?
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Yes. So I think it's like this, that we did -- when we had the conversation, I think also on this call in Q4, I think we illustrated that we are looking at it quite methodically and just saying what is the sweet spot in terms of our expectation of the free cash flow that we can generate from an asset and where is the asset [indiscernible]. And what we identified was these pockets of that we could buy some LR2s and we did some here actually towards sort of mid-December bought a couple of ships. And clearly, today, the price of these assets and one of them is actually only delivering tomorrow is already up by 20%. So if you isolate it out and just say, yes, that's good timing. But the backdrop of that is, of course, also that now when we had to sort of do our own thinking around potential other acquisitions, clearly, with assets rising like this, it gets harder to make the next acquisition. So I think we were fortunate about the timing on these 8 ships. We actually had hoped, to be very honest, to have upped the end a little on that in terms of number of assets, but they were simply not available at that point in time at attractive prices. So I think we just had to regroup a little. Asset prices are moving quite fast, and we just have to regroup and make sure we still follow our methodology and not get carried away. But I'm optimistic that we can maybe identify a few, let's say, some other deals that sort of fits the bill on our return requirements.
Kim Balle
Analyst
Frode, may I just -- I need to answer your question. You started a bit more precise than what we did, just so it's clear how we do it on the guidance. I just didn't have them in my head, but I have the numbers here. So if you take Q1, we had covered 8,177 days with $34,208. Then we take the uncovered days, that's 25,691 at $30,371. And then you do the math from there. Then you come to a total number of days, operating days and average TCE. And then you get to a TCE and you stress that.
Frode Morkedal
Analyst
Right. That's good. So on the stress test, do you have like a percentage plus/minus or...
Kim Balle
Analyst
That's -- we derived it a few years ago, but the way we use it is plus/minus TCE, and it depends on how much the stress depends on what the actual TCE level is. The lower it is, the lower the stress is, the higher it is, the higher the stress is. So it depends on where you are on the actual TCE levels.
Operator
Operator
Your next question comes from [ Clement Mullins ] with Value Investors Edge.
Clement Mullin
Analyst
I wanted to start by following up on Frode's question on Afras and LR2s. Could you talk a bit about the portion of your LR2 fleet that traded dirty throughout the quarter? And secondly, on the LR1 side, have you seen an increase in the proportion of vessels trading dirty over the past few months?
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Yes. Thanks for those very precise ones. So I'll start from the back end of this. So we have not really seen that the dirty market has affected the LR1s in our fleet and in our case. And when we look at our vessels and on the spot, we basically have 10% to 20% of our LR2s trading spot dirty. And then we've got another 10% that is on term charter dirty.
Clement Mullin
Analyst
That's helpful. And you continue to outperform peers on the MR side with your chartering team doing an excellent job. Could you talk a bit about what portion of your administrative expenses is attributable to the chartering team versus kind of the corporate side? Any color you could provide would be really helpful.
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Yes. So we actually don't account like that. We -- as I tried to illustrate also in the beginning, on the One TORM platform, we believe that it's not actually the chartering team that is the secret sauce. It is actually the power of -- that you have in an organization ranging from the employees who bought a ship to the people doing the accounting and operations, technical. And of course, also, as you point to, the chartering team, but their success is not an isolated thing that has to do with their ability, it's the whole structure. So we don't -- I don't have an answer. I don't know the number. It's not the way we think about...
Operator
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call to Jacob Meldgaard for closing remarks.
Jacob Meldgaard
Analyst
Yes. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening in on the annual report 2021 for -- 2025, obviously, for TORM. Thank you very much for listening in, and have a great day.
Operator
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.