Global Ship Lease Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Global Ship Lease (NYSE:GSL) reported third-quarter financial results on Monday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Global Ship Lease reported strong financial performance with a cash position of $636 million and contracted revenue backlog totaling $3.4 billion over 3.5 years.

The company has placed orders for 17 newbuildings, with 15 of them already secured with multi-year charters, expected to generate over $1 billion in adjusted EBITDA.

A $1 billion syndicated loan facility has been established to support the newbuild program, structured to be drawn down in tranches upon delivery of each vessel.

Global Ship Lease increased its annualized dividend to $2.75 per common share, reflecting confidence in its financial stability and revenue visibility.

Management emphasized strategic fleet renewal and opportunistic asset sales, with a focus on maintaining a flexible and agile fleet to navigate macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Global Ship Lease third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I’d like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue.

If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Thomas Lister, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Please go ahead.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome to the Global Ship Lease third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. You can find the slides that accompany today’s presentation on our website at www.globalshiplease.com. As usual, slides 2 and 3 remind you that today’s call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions and are by their nature inherently uncertain and outside of the company’s control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the Safe Harbor section of the slide presentation.

We would also like to direct your attention to the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on our 2025 Form 20-F, which was filed in March of 2026. You can find the form on our website or on the SEC. All of our statements are qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. The reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to which we will refer during this call to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP, please refer to the earnings release that we issued this morning, which is also available on our website.

I’m joined as usual today by our Executive Chairman, George Irukos, and by our Chief Financial Officer, Tassos Saropoulos. George will begin the call with high-level commentary on GSL and our industry, and then Tassos and I will take you through our recent activity, quarterly results and financials, and the current market environment. After that we will be pleased to answer your questions. So, turning now to slide four, I’ll pass the call over to George.

George Irukos (Executive Chairman)

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, afternoon, or evening to all of you joining today. As has been the case for some time now, uncertainty, disruption, and volatility continue to be the overriding trends in the container shipping industry, keeping trading patterns in flux even as underlying freight flows and vessel demand continue to surprise to the upside. The security situation around the Red Sea and Suez remains dynamic, although momentum appears to be growing towards a cautious resumption of transits.

Global tariff policies have likewise remained live issues, with the potential for the stroke of a pen to bring about large-scale supply chain reorientations. Overall, containerized supply chains have continued to become more fragmented and decentralized at an increasingly structural level. Facing the need to continue delivering containers on a reliable basis while reacting to macro events and disruptions in real time, liner operators are building slack into a system that was previously oriented towards leanness, efficiency, and capacity optimization, and this has heightened their reliance upon mid-sized and smaller container ships that give them the agility to quickly respond to changing circumstances and diverse needs.

Against this backdrop, we have found opportunities to selectively execute fleet renewal on attractive de-risked terms. Namely, we have placed orders for 17 newbuildings at attractive prices, 15 of which have been de-risked with multi-year charters and with debt financing already secured. More than $1 billion of aggregate adjusted EBITDA is expected to be generated from these initial charters, which have a weighted average term equivalent to around 25% of the ships’ useful lives.

This means that three-quarters of the newbuilding contract price for these 15 ships will be covered by the adjusted EBITDA generated within the first quarter of their economic lives. Furthermore, the seven-year $1 billion syndicated loan facility priced at SOFR plus 1.5% that we announced in October is well structured to support the newbuild program. It is structured to be drawn down in tranches upon delivery of each newbuilding, which is scheduled to take place from late 2028 through early 2030, when the ships begin generating cash flow from their initial charters. We have also exercised two in-the-money newbuild options for delivery in 2029 in a market in which newbuilding prices continue to rise and delivery slots for quality yards are pushing increasingly into 2030 and beyond.

With the wind in our sails, we have continued to add charter coverage and forward cash flow visibility, with over $1.8 billion of contracted revenue, including the charters for 15 of our newbuilds, in the first nine months of 2026. All told, as at the end of September we have forward cover of $3.4 billion of contracted revenues spread over three and a half years. Our fortress balance sheet both enabled our new $1 billion facility and benefits from it, demonstrating the virtuous cycle that is underway, as evidenced by our strong credit ratings.

As a result of all of the above, we are very pleased to announce today yet another increase in our quarterly supplemental dividend, which we’re upsizing by 25%, bringing our overall annualized dividend to $2.75 per common share. We remain committed to resilience, optionality, discipline, and the healthy return of capital to our shareholders—principles that have served us well over the years. Now, with that, I will turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, George. Hello again, everyone. Please turn now to slide 5, which shows our track record of disciplined and opportunistic fleet renewal to build long-term value through the cycle. The most significant recent developments on this front are, of course, our orders of 17 mid-size, ultra-high-reefer, wide-beam, latest-generation container ships, highlighted in the blue boxes on the chart. These newbuild orders are consistent with our well-established prudent and selective fleet renewal and capital allocation strategy—in other words, high-specification vessels with high upside potential acquired at attractive prices and de-risked out of the gate, with multi-year charters and finance already in place for 15 of them. These vessels will be joining and gradually replacing a segment of the global containership fleet that is aging out and which has been underinvested for a number of years, and we expect them to be powerful generators of value for years to come—a new generation of cash cows, in other words.

We’re always looking for value-accretive opportunities, and as you’ll see on the chart, those opportunities for nearly a decade were to be found, at least in our view, in the market for second-hand vessels. Only in the past few years have the indexed values of second-hand vessels, in other words the dark blue line on the chart, surged well beyond those of newbuilds, which are shown in the pale blue line and, although inflationary, tend to be less affected by market cyclicality and volatility.

With this in mind, we waited patiently and worked to develop the right opportunities. When those opportunities crystallized, we were able to move quickly thanks to our robust balance sheet and our long-standing industry relationships. Moving now on to slide six. Here we dive further into our progress with strategic fleet renewal with our order of 17 newbuildings. The 15 vessels we ordered in the second quarter come with multi-year charters averaging 7.1 years in duration and are collectively expected to generate over $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA from those charters.

As George already observed, that is over 75% of the $1.33 billion we have agreed to pay for them, meaning that they are effectively de-risked right out of the gate, covering three-quarters of their aggregate cost in just the first quarter of their useful economic lives, with a further 20-plus years of earnings upside potential thereafter. Tassos and his team further de-risked these newbuilds with the $1 billion syndicated loan facility we announced in October.

This oversubscribed facility has a seven-year term, bears interest at a rate of SOFR plus 1.5%, is comprised of eight top-tier, highly diversified international banks, and is accessible in tranches corresponding to the respective deliveries of our 15 newbuildings, delivering from late 2028 through early 2030. This new facility underlines the progress we’ve made in strengthening our balance sheet and financial position over the past several years, as well as the breadth of banking relationships that we maintain across global geographies, and it represents a major strategic milestone that will benefit us for years to come.

In the third quarter, and as you saw on the chart on the previous slide, we also exercised in-the-money options for a further two ultra-high-reefer, wide-beam, mid-sized container ships, which are designed and specified to ensure a superior fit for existing and anticipated future market needs. These ships are scheduled to deliver in the fourth quarter of 2029, and their aggregate contract price of 163 million and other contract terms, in fact, are meaningfully better than those now available in the market for comparably specified ships, especially for the vanishingly rare slots with quality yards remaining for 2029 deliveries.

Rounding out this slide is the observation that we also opportunistically monetize aging non-core assets, and to date this year we have agreed to sell four ships at the end of their existing charters for an anticipated aggregate gain on sale of around $33 million. Slide 7 shows our charter portfolio as of September 30th, and including the charters from our 15 newbuilds, we have $3.4 billion in contracted revenues over an average of 3.5 years, spread across high-quality and diversified charterers. We have 100% revenue days covered in 2026, 98% covered in 2027, and we even have 74% already covered in 2028, which is valuable in an unpredictable world. On slide 8 we reiterate our dynamic capital allocation policy, which continues to guide us through the natural cyclicality and volatility of the industry, which has been compounded by macro disruptions and geopolitical, economic, and regulatory uncertainty.

Over the past several years we have delevered to strengthen our balance sheet, build equity value, and increase our resilience in an unpredictable environment while positioning GSL to seize opportunities as they arise. This progress has been borne out by our orders for the 17 newbuilds, our affirmed credit ratings and outlook, and our robust quarterly dividend, which, as George mentioned at the outset, we have just upsized once again, bringing it to an annualized $2.75 per common share.

And with that, I’ll pass the call to Tassos to discuss our financials.

Tassos (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Tom. Slide 9 shows our financial highlights through the first nine months of 2026. I would like to highlight a few key takeaways. Our financial performance and cash flow have remained very strong. Our cash position at quarter end was $636 million, of which $141 million is restricted. The remainder ensures that we can fully cover our covenants and working capital needs and manage the potential financial implications of geopolitical disruptions and other macro events in an unpredictable world.

Among other things, it also covers the net future remaining contractual commitments for our 17 new buildings. In gross terms, these remaining commitments amount to a little over $1.3 billion as of September 30, 2026. One billion of this is expected to be financed upon delivery of the vessels. With our recently announced syndicated loan facility—oversimplifying things somewhat—that leaves a net amount of around $300 million, much of which will fall due before the vessels deliver.

Furthermore, it improves dry powder both for CapEx to optimize the commercial value and market of our existing fleet and for disciplined, value-accretive investment in fleet renewal when the right opportunities arise. And of course, we continue to pay out a robust dividend, which we are increasing once again. Introduced in the second quarter of 2024, we have increased our supplemental dividend three times now, with this latest increase bringing the supplemental up to $1.25 per common share annualized and our overall dividend to $2.75.

On slide 10 we saw our success in strengthening our optionality via delevering and de-risking. On the left, you can see that we had $950 million of outstanding debt at the end of 2022, which we have progressively reduced and now are on track to have just under $600 million by year end, which has put us in the position to re-lever with our $1 billion newbuilding facility as the CEIBs and the cash flows they generate come online. Also, I want to highlight that by way of this new $1 billion syndicate loan facility, our portfolio of lender relationships has been further expanded to include top-tier financial institutions spanning three continents, demonstrating the widespread bankability of Global Ship Lease on the basis of our prudent business model, capital allocation discipline, and balance sheet strength. The graph on the right shows the same progress, but to an even more emphatic degree thanks to the significant expansion of our cash flows over time on an adjusted net debt to adjusted EBITDA basis.

Since the 2018 merger of Global Ship Lease and Poseidon, we have reduced our financial leverage from 8.4 times to 0.3 times as of the end of Q3 this year. Slide 11 further shows our focus on strengthening Global Ship Lease’s financial position. Our cost of debt is shown on the left-hand graph, which we have lowered from over 7.56% at the end of 2018 to 4.86% at September 30, 2026 thanks to our improving credit profile, balance sheet optimization, and progressive refinancing on increasingly favorable terms. And all of this is against the backdrop in which market rates have been increasing over the last five-plus years.

Even more strikingly—and returning to the growing bankability of Global Ship Lease—our average margin over SOFR has continuously reduced over that period from 6.28% in 2018 to 2.26% now, a reduction of over 400 basis points. The right-hand chart shows our ongoing efforts to lower our average daily breakeven cost from over $12,000 per ship eight years ago to just over $9,500 per ship today. Despite the inflationary environment, we have navigated that time frame in both interest rates and operating expenses, notably including costs.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Tom to discuss the market and the fleet.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Dasos. Let’s turn now to slide 12, and here we re-emphasize our focus on mid-size and smaller container ships ranging from 2,200 TEU to a little over 11,000 TEU. Our fleet segments service around 75% of global containerized trade volumes, which are concentrated in the non-mainland, intermediate, and intra-regional trades. These ships are the workhorses of the global fleet, with the flexibility to service a wide and diverse range of ports and container trades.

This stands in contrast to the largest container ships, which tend to be constrained to deep-water ports with well-developed shoreside infrastructure and are only economically competitive in trades with cargo volumes sufficient to fill them. And as supply chains have become fragmented and decentralized amid disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty, liner operators have increasingly opted for the flexibility, reliability, and wide operating scope of mid-sized and smaller container ships like ours.

On slide 13 we take a look at two major choke points for shipping in the Middle East. While it is impossible to predict how events will ultimately unfold, we can shed light on the effects we have seen so far in our sector. So, over 20% of global containerized trade volumes passed through the Red Sea and Suez Canal before severe transit disruptions began back in the tail end of 2023. Since then, vessels have largely been rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, a longer and costlier journey and one that at its peak was estimated to absorb around 10% of effective global container ship capacity.

There is now growing momentum among liner operators to resume transits, but the security situation remains such that risks are reviewed on a per-vessel, per-transit basis. Strikingly, despite capacity being released into the market as a result of this tentative return to the Red Sea and Suez, we have yet to see downward pressure on market charter rates—and I’ll come back to this point later. Turning to the Strait of Hormuz, roughly 3% to 4% of containerized trade volumes passed through the Strait before the Iran conflict. Major ports in the Persian Gulf have experienced large-scale impacts on their operations, and shipping into and out of the Gulf remains severely constrained. As has been the case for some time now, the situation remains unsettled, highly dynamic, and with clear implications for the long term. For the time being, these developments add uncertainty and introduce inefficiencies into the containerized supply chain, requiring continuous adaptation and advantaging those with the ability to be flexible and dynamic.

Meanwhile, our top priority, of course, remains seafarer safety. On slide 14 we show the supply side and scrapping trends, where the story remains essentially the same. Both idle capacity and scrapping activity are near zero. Disruptions to the containerized supply chain caused by extreme weather events, port congestion, and geopolitical instability have generated the need for additional container ship capacity, eliminating slack in the system and making it profitable to keep older ships on the water for longer than might be the case in more normal conditions.

Slide 15 highlights the order book, which in recent years has grown meaningfully. However, as you can see, the extent of growth is far greater for the very large segments than is the case for the mid-size and smaller segments in which we operate, for which the order book-to-fleet ratio is around 27% to 28%. This figure stands in stark contrast to the 62% ratio for the larger container ships over 10,000 TEU, which pulls the average ratio for the overall order book up to 44%.

Another key factor to consider in this discussion is the aging out of the vessels in the mid-size and smaller global container ship segments. Deliveries from the order book are significantly offset by existing ships hitting 25 years or older over the course of the next three to four years. In fact, if we were to assume that all these ships of 25 years or older were scrapped through 2030, net growth in the sub-10,000 TEU fleet would only be around 3%.

So while the market remains strong and demand remains robust, we will continue to lock in charters at attractive rates for our existing fleet. On the flip side, if there were to be a downturn in the market, then global scrapping would likely increase materially, providing a useful supply-side safety valve. And as we have said many times in the past, in shipping, up cycles are a great opportunity to make money, but down cycles are where the most compelling value-accretive opportunities are typically to be had—as long as you are well-capitalized and agile, which we are and have every intention to remain.

On slide 16 we return to the continued strength of the charter market, which I touched upon earlier. Indicative market rates for term charters off prompt positions are shown on the right-hand side of the slide, and these look even more attractive alongside our daily breakeven rates, which we’ve worked hard to lower to just over $9,500 per day despite an inflationary environment. And with that I will turn the call back to George on slide 17.

George Irukos (Executive Chairman)

Thank you, Tom. To summarize, maximizing optionality and resilience remains our key focus as we and our customers navigate a world fraught with macroeconomic, geopolitical, and regulatory uncertainty and risk. The fragmentation and decentralization of the global supply chains have increased the need for flexible and reliable ships that can easily be deployed throughout liner operators’ networks. A trade pattern shift and the mid-size and smaller container ships that Global Ship Lease provides fit that requirement perfectly.

In this supporting environment, we have built up extensive multi-year charter coverage, now standing at $3.4 billion contracted revenues spread over three and a half years. Renewal of our cash cows is progressing well with the addition of a total of 17 newbuild orders, including our recent exercise of two in-the-money options. This goes hand in hand with our opportunistic monetization of selected aging, non-core ships earlier in the year. In addition to the multi-year charters, we feathered the risk of the new builds by securing a $1 billion syndicated loan facility with eight top-tier international banks priced at SOFR + 1.5%, to be drawn down in tranches as 15 of our 17 new builds come online and start generating cash between late 2028 and early 2030. And last, we are very pleased to once again increase the return of capital to our shareholders by upsizing our supplemental quarterly dividend by 25%, bringing our overall annualized dividend to $2.75 per common share now.

With that, we’ll be happy to take your questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening by a loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question.

And your first question comes from the line of Liam Burke with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

Liam Burke (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Yeah, thank you. George, Tom, Tassos, how are you doing today?

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

We’re doing well, Liam. Thanks very much.

Liam Burke (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Sure. Thank you. I’ve got a macro question for you. We’re talking about congestion a lot now, and there are many things feeding into that. But what’s surfacing now seems to be an underinvestment in port infrastructure, primarily on the ports that the sub-10,000 TEU would visit. Are you seeing that in the macro effects of the business now?

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

I’ll kick this off. Liam and George will no doubt weigh in. Short answer yes. And it’s cropping up increasingly on earnings calls from the liner operators where they observe that growth in demand for containerized transport has far outstripped investment in shoreside infrastructure, both in the ports themselves and in the infrastructure serving those ports, by which I mean railheads, trucking infrastructure, etc. So you’re absolutely right. That’s an important structural consideration that is making the containerized supply chain less efficient and as a result is once again increasing demand for containerized shipping capacity because an awful lot of capacity is effectively stuck in port congestion due to the limitation in those ports. George, do you want to add to that?

George Irukos (Executive Chairman)

Yes, if I just say that it’s much easier to grow the fleet, but it’s much harder to grow the ports, especially given the fact that container ports usually, if not always, are situated next to cities or inside cities, where the expansion of the land is almost impossible or very hard. But then even if you expand the land so you can unload the ships, you need to expand the roads, which is again so hard for the trucks or the rails to take the ships out of the port or back into the port for loading.

So these things take decades to be done. Therefore, it seems that the liner companies have a lot of ships to create slack today because they need that slack, given the fact that a lot of ships at all times are being stuck in ports with congestion.

Liam Burke (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Great, thanks, George. And just quickly, on the new builds, you don’t have charter agreements in place, but it does sound like the appetite by the liners for tonnage is still there. And I’m presuming you’re anticipating favorable terms on those two new vessels.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, that’s right, Liam. We have charter commitments in place for 15 of the 17 new builds. And you know, for those 15 they’re going to generate, we expect, roughly a billion dollars of adjusted EBITDA over the course of an average of seven years. For the remaining two ships, the in-the-money options that we exercised, prices for new buildings have continued to climb. Availability of delivery slots in 2029 are, as I said on the call, vanishingly rare.

And demand and appetite from liner companies is clearly still there. And you’ll hear that, as I’m sure you have when listening in to the earnings calls of the liner companies. They’re all providing very constructive forward guidance. So all of this means that we’re feeling confident, let’s say, about fixing those vessels in due course and we’re in no particular hurry to do so.

Liam Burke (Analyst at B. Riley Securities)

Great. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, George.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Pleasure. Thanks, Liam.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Omar Nocta with Clarksons Securities. Your line is now open.

Omar Nocta (Analyst at Clarksons Securities)

Thank you. Hi, George, Tom and Tassos. Good afternoon. You know, things are obviously, you know, humming along quite nicely. You got the contracted revenue backlog just keeps getting extended, giving you plenty of visibility and a good stream of visible free cash flow. With backlog opportunities really just seemingly quarter and quarter out, you’re just able to provide some forward fixing. It looks like you did at least a dozen ships this time or at least over the past three months.

In the past you haven’t been afraid to buy older vessels, just given the lucrative earnings potential that can be there, especially say on an ROE basis given a late-in-life age of those vessels. But you’ve also really kind of shifted and you’ve got these new buildings, the 17, 15 of which are contracted. How do you think about opportunities to deploy capital now in the market for vessels on the water? You mentioned liners. The appetite is there for them to secure contracts for existing ships.

Do you think there’s opportunities to go and buy vessels on the water, whether they’re modern or older, or do you feel like your market footprint is fine in that you’re happy with what you have and you’ve got the new buildings as your real kind of growth profile going forward?

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Omar. A lot in there. I’ll kick things off and I have no doubt that Tassos will add to it. I think, backing into it a little bit, we’re not empire builders, so we’re not shooting for a particular fleet size or anything of that nature. Hopefully our track record demonstrates that. We purely focus upon deals in a very disciplined manner where we like the mix of low risk and high returns. Now, whether those deals are new buildings or older ships on the water, we’re agnostic.

It’s simply a question of getting comfortable with the return profiles. And if we like a deal, we’ll move forward with it and if we don’t, we won’t. But we’re not pivoting specifically towards new buildings. We continue with the sort of broad church approach we’ve had from the outset and everything is driven by our assessment of risk and return. George, do you want to add to that?

George Irukos (Executive Chairman)

Yeah, if I just can say in a very simple expression, the type of ship we love is the ship that makes money. So whether that is a very old one, 20, 25-year-old, or a brand new one, it doesn’t matter to us. For us growth for the sake of growth is something we would never do. We’ll only do deals when they make sense and they make real sense. Like I said many times, running a public company, running a private company should make no difference. You know, it’s all about whether you have one shareholder or 1,000 shareholders.

It’s the same. You have to make money for the shareholders, whether it’s yourself or another 999 people. It’s the same principle, nothing else than that. So under this understanding, of course we will be looking at second-hand ships if the price is right. Today we have not seen any deals that make sense. We did get the opportunity with the new builds. I mean the new build market softened a bit. That’s the time we chose to enter. We chose to go for a new type of ship that wasn’t there. So we found an opportunity that was unique and a future type of ship that will replace all the Panamax, anything between three and a half to 7,000.

So it’s a ship that is a multi, multi-purpose ship, you know, goes to every type of sizes. So that’s really, in a nutshell, our investment thesis, you know, a good deal, if I can say that.

Omar Nocta (Analyst at Clarksons Securities)

Yeah, thanks George and Tom also. Yeah. So I guess maybe just on that last point, George, you mentioned the new buildings. They’re going to look like they’re high-powered or at least high-spec ships that will replace some of the existing older vessels, I guess in the market. But I guess as you think of your portfolio, I can’t remember if it was last quarter or the quarter before where you had agreed on a forward basis to sell those four ships and, sort of an interesting opportunity at the time, you were able to continue to generate cash flow from the ships, but then lock in a sales price at today’s perhaps elevated levels, but not have to actually deliver them for another year or so outward. How do you think about that in today’s market?

Are there opportunities to do that again with some of the older vessels that you potentially would be replaced by your new buildings? Can you sell them in today’s market and also perhaps have your cake and eat it too in terms of generating the cash from them, but then not having to deliver them until down the line?

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Omar, this is Tom again. You’ve put it beautifully. If we can have our cake and eat it too, we will, but that’s not an easy recipe. So we were delighted with the structure of the sale for those four vessels that you mentioned where we pre-sold them with charters still attached and continue to milk those charters until the end of them, at which point we’re selling the vessels, as you observed, at very good prices. But it’s super tricky. We’ll look at everything basically and if we can, we will structure such deals, but it’s not straightforward.

Omar Nocta (Analyst at Clarksons Securities)

Yeah, understood. Thanks, Tom. Appreciate that. Thanks, George.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Stephanie Moore (Analyst at Jefferies)

Hi. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate the time. Maybe talking a bit on a more of a global question here. How are you thinking about the Red Sea and the potential return to the Suez from here? Maybe just can you give us any color from your conversations with liner customers? Has their willingness to transit the region changed at all, or do you think a broad return is still some way off? Thank you.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Hi Stephanie, this is Tom. So I mean, making any sort of prognosis about what will happen in the Middle East more broadly is tricky. However, we are seeing at least some increase in momentum of lines looking to transit the Red Sea and Suez. I think Maersk, for example, have been quite vocal on that front. It has yet to be, let’s say, a wholesale return. It remains somewhat tentative in nature and will remain sensitive to security developments in the region.

But I think one thing that is worth observing is that despite the return of at least selected services by the liner companies to transit the Red Sea and Suez, we’ve seen charter rates holding up really quite well, which is significant because I think, you know, people had been very cautious about what the reopening of the Red Sea and Suez could do in terms of the appetite for liner operators for chartered tonnage. But at least for the time being, that appetite has held up.

Charter rates have held up and so it has not been, so far at least, the transformative event that was anticipated. But I think broadly speaking it’s going to be a bit of a watch-this-space situation.

Stephanie Moore (Analyst at Jefferies)

Understood. Really helpful. Last one for me, I think your 2028 coverage now is over 74% but I do think you have roughly 20 ships that have their earliest redelivery in 2028. So obviously there’s a lot of charter options for you guys, but we’d love to get your thoughts here as you try to lock in rates now just given where rates have been for the last six to 12 months and then also as you kind of balance duration over rate here. So I would love to hear your thoughts there.

Thank you.

Thomas Lister (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure. I’ll kick this off and then George will probably weigh in. Our business model, Stephanie, is unchanged. So we will tend to focus, as long as rates and economics are supportive, on longer-term cover if we can get it. So rather than focusing upon potentially short-lived high upside spikes in the charter market, we will tend to stick to our risk-averse approach of locking in charters and thus cash flow visibility for as long as possible, as long as it makes economic sense to do so.

In terms of fixing forward of 2028 positions, that’s theoretically possible for the right ships, by which I mean ships towards the upper end of the size in our fleet which are very high specifications. So it is theoretically possible. It’s not straightforward, but it is theoretically possible. Just as it is in the case of new builds with the right specification to fix forward off delivery dates that are somewhere in the future. So we will stick to our knitting essentially and retain the same sense of discipline that we have always.

George, do you want to add to that?

George Irukos (Executive Chairman)

Yes, today the market is quite hot and quite in demand. Ships that are open in 27 are considered prompt and they would go for three years depending on the size of the ships. Smaller ships, three years; larger ships, maybe four, maybe five. It very much depends how early on 27 they’re opening. 28 ships can also be fixed. The further away we get from today, the larger the ship needs to be to be forward fixed as a general rule, I would say. But other than that I think the market is, right now, quite good.

OPERATOR

Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Thomas Lister for closing remarks. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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