AS Tallink Grupp (TAL1T) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

February 22, 2024

Nasdaq Tallinn EE Industrials Marine Transportation earnings 49 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Anneli Simm

executive
#1

Good afternoon, all of those who have joined us today. Welcome to Tallink Grupp Investor Webinar introducing the financial results for the fourth quarter and 12 months of 2023. My name is Anneli Simm. I am the Investor Relations Manager at Tallink. I will be moderating today's webinar. And today, we will have four presenters instead of the usual three. We have here, the CEO of Tallink Grupp, Paavo Nogene; two members of Management Board, Mr. Harri Hanschmidt and Mr. Margus Schults; and Tallink Grupp's Head of Communication and ESG, Mrs. Katri Link. We'll start this webinar by giving an overview of the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. After the review, we will continue with the Q&A session with Mr. Paavo Nogene. We have already received a number of questions prior to this webinar, but if you have a question or questions and haven't sent it to us yet, then please write your question to the chat function of the webinar. But let's start with the introduction of the results, and I will hand the microphone over to Mr. Harri Hanschmidt.

Harri Hanschmidt

executive
#2

Thank you very much, Anneli. Hello, everybody, from my side. Thank you for listening in to the fourth quarter results of the 2024 financial year and also the 12 month unaudited the results of the '23 financial year. We will first go over the key facts about Tallink Grupp. So Tallink Grupp is the leading European provider of leisure and business travel and sea transportation services in the Baltic Sea region. We offer short cruises for business and leisure travels. And sorry about that. So I will say again because the microphone had technical difficulties. So thank you for listening in. My name is Harri Hanschmidt. We will go over the fourth quarter results of the 2023 financial year. First, a little reminder about the key facts about Tallink Grupp. Tallink Grupp is leading the European provider of leisure and business travel and sea transportation services in the Baltic Sea region. We offer leisure and business travel and RoRo cargo transportation on various routes in the northern area of the Baltic Sea. The Grupp owns and operates 15 vessels. 13 of these are passenger vessels and 2 are dedicated cargo vessels. Our operations are on 5 regular sea routes in the Baltic Sea. We have -- in the end of the year, we had 5 vessels in charter, both long term and short term. We have 3.1 million loyal club members to the Club One program. Tallink operates 4 hotels, 3 in Tallinn and 1 in Riga. We also have 21 Burger King restaurants throughout Baltics. And 2 stand-alone restaurants in Tallinn City. We had over 4,900 employees from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Latvia, and Lithuania. And we offer shopping on-board the vessels, on on-shore stores and also online. We have very strong brands, The Tallink brand, The Silja Line brand, and our Club One loyalty program brand. The overview for the year of 2023. We had a revenue of EUR 835 million, with EBITDA of EUR 214.5 million. And I believe this is the record for Tallink Grupp in Tallink history for a 12-month financial year result. Also, a net profit of EUR 78.9 million. We served 5.7 million passengers and also transported 324,000 cargo units. We are operating a EUR 1.6 billion asset base. This is mainly the vessels, and we had 4,912 employees at the end of the financial year. We have today about 39,000 shareholders on the Tallinn and the Helsinki Stock Exchanges. And the key takeaways from the fourth quarter are, we made a positive EBITDA of EUR 36.8 million. Our net debt to EBITDA has dropped to 2.8x, and this is a very healthy number. We have considerably reduced debt in the past year. There has been an impact to the results from the low fuel market price, but this has partly been set off by higher logistics component and because of interest and inflation. We have, after the COVID period in a more flexible business model, been chartering out vessels to support a stable cash flow throughout the years as we are quite seasonal business. In the end of the year, we had 5 vessels chartered out, 3 of these in a long-term charter and 2 short-term charter, and we plan to keep vessels chartered out continuously to support this business model. We have also now refinanced our loans in the amount of EUR 298 million, and we do not currently have any government debt or any aid or so forth. So we have regular commercial loans. We have extended the charter contract for Silja Europa until the end of 2024. That happened in the fourth quarter. Also, the cruise ferry Victoria I was added to the Tallinn-Helsinki route from October 2023. And after the reporting date, so effectively in the first quarter, we sold the cruise vessel, Isabelle. More information regarding this will be available in the first quarter report that will be published in April. As in the previous years, there have been changes because of charters and how we operate the vessels and routes. We have also added a slide where everybody can see where currently our vessels are operating and which vessels are on long-term charter, short-term charter. Very briefly, I will go through these routes. Our shuttle vessels, Megastar and MyStar are operating on Tallinn-Helsinki route. Both vessels have 6 departures a day. So it's altogether 12 departures. And also Victoria I is on the route as cruise ferry. And we have also announced that Victoria will have 8 special charters to Visby this year and will join Baltic Queen on the Tallinn-Stockholm route in the summertime, high season. On the Tallinn-Stockholm, we have currently 1 vessel operating to Baltic Queen, Turku - Stockholm we have the Baltic Princess. Helsinki-Stockholm we have the usual ships, Silja Symphony and Silja Serenade. And Paldiski-Kapellskär is a dedicated cargo route where we have Regal Star and Sailor. We have 3 vessels in the long-term chartered, are Atlantic Vision, Oscar Wilde, and Isabelle. And short-term charter, we had Galaxy I, Silja Europa. And Romantika right now is in lay-up position, and we are looking for help Romantika or we will decide what we do with it soon. If you look at the fourth quarter revenues, then we saw a slight drop in revenue by 4.9% versus last year at the same time. And we saw decreased revenue as we had less charters than the year before. We saw strong results in accommodation and ticket sale segment. And the global fuel prices were lower. So we saw a minus EUR 5.2 million fuel will -- would help also the results. The net finance costs increased by EUR 3.1 million year-on-year, mainly because of higher Euribor level and also the transaction costs related to refinancing of our debt. Then EBITDA in fourth quarter was EUR 13.6 million lower, and net profit was also EUR 14.6 million lower, but it was positive EUR 2.2 million, bolstering last year's results. We had maintenance CapEx of EUR 5.9 million. And if you look at the results by geographical segment, we can see that the positive effect came from the Estonia-Finland route in EUR 9.3 million. And the other routes were either did not have a big effect. And Finland-Sweden had a larger negative effect, also the Other segment's charters, as there were fewer charters. Same thing for the results. Estonia-Finland has a positive EUR 1.8 million effect. Estonia-Sweden was flat and Finland-Sweden had a negative effect and also Others had a negative effect. The sales by operational segments, we can see that the restaurants and ticket sales contributed a positive effect. Cargo had EUR 2.4 million negative effect, accommodation sales positive and income from charters dropped by EUR 12.3 million. The full year revenues were, altogether, EUR 835 million or 8.3% higher versus last year. We had 53.7% increase in chartering revenues in total and strong results in accommodation and ticket segment. The fuel cost was 32.6% lower than in the last year. The net finance costs were about EUR 11 million higher because of higher interest rates. EBITDA and net profit we already talked about and CapEx was, for the whole year, EUR 28.2 million. Our seasonality is we have a seasonal business model. We can see that in the first and fourth quarter, the passenger numbers are lower, in the second and third quarter passenger numbers are higher. Cargo is very stable throughout the year, but because of the less capacity and the economic downturn that we have felt, cargo numbers, overall, are lower. The revenues, we can see first quarter EUR 171 million; second quarter already stronger, EUR 230 million; third quarter, EUR 241 million; and the fourth quarter, EUR 194 million. But in the EBITDA number or let's say, the bottom line, we can see a much bigger difference first quarter, EUR 27 million EBITDA; second quarter EUR 69 million; third quarter EUR 82 million. This is the summer high season. So we are still a very seasonal business even with the added charterings of the vessels. And we ended up with a very nice EUR 79 million profit for the 2023 financial year. And this has allowed us to make a proposal to also pay a EUR 0.06 dividend and this proposal will be made on the Annual General Meeting this year. Thank you from my side. I will give word to Margus Schults, and he will continue with the presentation.

Margus Schults

executive
#3

Good afternoon also from my side. I will provide some further details about full financial year 2023. And if we start by geographical segments, and you can see that we have improved in terms of sales our result by EUR 82 million and 2/3 of that growth came from segment Other, which basically means chartering of vessels. But also Estonia-Finland made a good result on the -- because we have now more capacity like Victoria and in the beginning of year, we had also Star operating on that route. And Estonia-Sweden with 1 vessel on cruise side and 2 vessels on cargo side made improvement of the sales. On Finland-Sweden, the challenges with a number of passengers are more higher, and that will relatively will lead to other routes, less passengers. But also in the beginning of the year, we had two Helsinki-Stockholm vessels in long docking. So therefore, the sales dropped somehow. But as a result, bottom line improved basically by EUR 87 million. So everything from growth of sales went down to bottom line. And you can see that all the geographical segments improved results. If you look revenue structure by operational segments, same growth, EUR 82 million. And you can see that most of that is coming from charter, like Harri already mentioned, EUR 35 million, but also ticket revenue was very strong throughout the year. So there was improvement of EUR 26 million. And restaurants and shop sales was more stable per passengers and since the passenger number grew a little bit for full year, 3%, then also we saw a small improvement of this segment by EUR 13 million. If you look to the income statement at EUR 835 million of sales, like mentioned already, out of that EUR 194 million is from the last quarter of 2023. And then we had, of course, cost of sales, so basically all operational costs, which is related to sales and marketing, administrative cost onshore and some other costs, and we ended up with EBITDA to EUR 215 million comparing the growth from 2022 is quite significant and mostly explained by a longer period of charters comparing 2022 of the total number of months where vessels were chartered. In Q4, the Q4 was 2022, very strong. EBITDA was EUR 50 million and this year, slightly less because we had 2 vessels not chartered during last Q4. But in 2022, we had 7 vessels chartered out. And the margin improvement for full year was quite significant. So from basically 18% of EBITDA margin we increased almost 24% level. Cost breakdown is quite traditional. We have cost of goods, is the largest item, representing almost 1/4 of total cost. And this cost item increased 6%. Of course, we had more volumes, but also we can see clearly that there is a inflational pressure for procurement of different items. So this is also reflecting the increased cost of goods. Second largest item is our staff on vessels and onshore have totally almost 5,000 people. And this represents around 17% of our cost structure and the cost increased by 10%, partly also because of the crew. For instance, we had to hire a bigger additional crew to operate Victoria, starting from October last year, but also, of course, inflation of salary in all countries is quite big. And the third biggest largest cost item is fuel cost, representing [ 13% ] of the cost effect. The cost of fuel decreased quite significantly by over 30%, reflecting the decrease of cost of fuel per tonne, but also reflecting that we operated in '23, relatively less charter -- vessels ourselves and chartered them out. So therefore, tonnes which would consume in '23 was also lower than in 2022. And if we go to cash flow, then you can see that we had positive operating cash flow of EUR 200 million for the full year. Capital expenditure is now normal, so to say, on a normal level. We usually spend EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million per year CapEx for improving of our vessels, technical maintenance, and also different IT-related development. In 2022, in December, we got delivered our new vessel, MyStar, and therefore, of course, capital expenditure was exceptionally high. And we also paid quite significant amount of debt. So net effect for full year was over EUR 210 million. Out of that, EUR 40 million we paid in the fourth quarter of last year. And in total year, we had a change of cash minus EUR 73 million, but this is normal because we have stated several times that during COVID years and during crisis, we had to keep very high liquidity to keep our company in a safe side financially, but now we have reduced our loans and reduced also overdrafts, and liquidity is more normal level. Our balance sheet structure is very much the same and unchanged. And we have -- in assets, it's our vessels, EUR 1.5 billion. And on liability side, we have loans and shareholders' equity. And as you can see that the shareholders' equity ratio has now reached a level above 50%. At the end of last year, it was 51%. So we are standing on a very healthy level. And also net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which was 5.4x just a year ago, it's now on very, very healthy 2.8x. And total liquidity, like I mentioned already, was reduced comparing 2022 and now it's on EUR 117 million level. And our loan portfolio consists now of three loan agreements: two vessel building loans and one is syndicated loans, which we rearranged during December last year. And the maturity of these loans is between 5 and 11 years now. These are all euro-denominated and have -- some of them have fixed rate and some of them EURIBOR floating rate. And as you can see from this chart from pre-COVID times to COVID years now back to normal operations, then we have from very high 84x higher net debt-to-EBITDA in 2020. We are now on healthy 2.8x net debt-to-EBITDA and our total long-term bank loaning portfolio is EUR 555 million. And on top of that, we have overdraft in amount of EUR 75 million, which is the same as pre-COVID years. And as we have stated also in COVID years, we got extra overdraft, but now this overdraft is removed. But thank you from my side and last but not least, Katri. Oh, sorry, one more slide. And yes, like it was already mentioned by Harri on shareholders' meeting, we proposed a dividend of EUR 0.06 per share for approving on general meeting. Thank you.

Katri Link

executive
#4

All right. Good afternoon also from my side. Because Tallink Grupp has recently started to receive more and more questions also about our sustainability activities and how we are getting prepared for tighter regulation and new reporting requirements, then we will also give you a quick overview of where we are with this today. So from -- at the moment in 2023 and also in 2024, our key focus from an ESG point of view will be on achieving compliance with the CSRD, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requirements and the new reporting standards, ESRS. So many steps were already taken in 2023 to prepare for this, and we will continue taking more steps in 2024. The first CSRD compliant sustainability report from Tallink Grupp will be published in 2025 with limited audit assurance as well. And our current activities in this area and to meet this regulatory requirement are to complete the Double Materiality assessment, which we started in 2023, and we are making good progress with this. Moving on from finalizing the Double Materiality assessment, we will move on to clearer and more detailed ESG target setting and also policy and data review. And these activities are planned for quarter 1 and quarter 2 in 2024. So from the Double Materiality assessment point of view, we have already got to a point where we have identified some of these key impact areas. And these, of course, from Tallink's point of view, being transport company, operating ships are climate change and tackling climate change, reducing emissions, customer safety and security, topics related to our own workforce, and being a huge company with a large supply chain, also supply chain management topics and issues, plus data protection. So the next couple of months and quarters will be very busy preparing for the new reporting, but like I said, we have made good progress and some of the progress you will already be able to read in the 2023 financial overview and report, which will be published in spring this year. And we will also publish a slightly more detailed sustainability report before the AGM in spring. And as you can see from the slide, probably as well, Tallink Grupp has already made quite great progress with, for example, one of the core impact areas for us, the CO2 emissions. The baseline year 2008, and when we look at where we are in 2023 and 2024, then a significant reduction has already been achieved, which, of course, today when the shipping is also part of the ETS and CO2 emissions buying scheme is a good result and also means that it has an impact on our bottom line. So these are some of the core areas that we are focusing on at the moment. And Tallink is always happy to answer your questions on ESG and any questions you have on sustainability. Thank you.

Anneli Simm

executive
#5

Thank you, Harri, Margus, Katri, and we will now start with the Q&A session. The process is so that I will read out the questions, questions we have received so far. And Mr. Paavo Nogene will be the one who will give the answers to those questions. And I will start with the first one. Please elaborate on the strategic and market position of the Grupp?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#6

Yes. Good afternoon also from my side. And firstly, thank you for all the investors to having this time for us today. Tallink has had after 4 years, different crisis, very successful year, and I'm grateful for all the 5,000 Tallink employees to helping company to come through from different crisis and also thankful for our customers and all our other partners who trust Tallink. Regarding the question, we put our effort to customers satisfaction, profitability, market position, quality of services, optimizing the fleet as well as a cost efficiency and optimal debt level. We continue to balance the most optimum number of vessels on the company's core routes and the number of vessels chartered out where possible. This model has been working well, and we want to keep it like this. It helped us manage risks significantly over the last 4 years, while the passenger numbers have slowly recovered. We will continue to focus on the technical improvements, innovative solutions to drive greater efficiency and more sustainable operations and even greater customer care and comfort.

Anneli Simm

executive
#7

Thank you. Please elaborate on the current financial position and the future outlook of the Grupp?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#8

Yes, actually, you just got a very detailed overview about our financial situation. We had successful year. EBITDA more than EUR 214 million, net debt-to-EBITDA level, 2.8x. We were lower, though our interest-bearing loans close to EUR 100 million during just 1 year. So the financial situation is strong, and it supports the Grupp dividend policy of paying a minimum EUR 0.05 per share. So therefore, as Margus Schults already mentioned, we proposed to pay out EUR 0.06 per share for the financial year of 2023.

Anneli Simm

executive
#9

Please elaborate on the Grupp's risk management and related challenges?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#10

The challenges are always there. It doesn't matter, there are pandemic or there are war in the Europe, every year, there are some challenges. At the moment, current low consumer and business confidence levels as well as geopolitical tensions continue to impact the coming tourists in our core markets. But however, we see also stable demand in our home markets. And additionally, as Katri Link already also mentioned, we carried out an extensive risk and opportunity review as part of its Double Materiality assessment, analyzing both short-term and long-term risks and opportunities for the business and involving a wide range of stakeholders in process. So Tallink Grupp is tackling each of the key risks and opportunities are as through even create an analysis and target action policies I think throughout 2024.

Anneli Simm

executive
#11

Please elaborate on the Grupp's approach to innovation and new technologies?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#12

As 97% from our CO2 emission coming from our vessels then the cost of the monitoring technological and innovation advantages and gradually introducing them through a process of pilots and trial runs into the business where we see real benefits. Example, in 2023 in September, Baltic Queen were in dock and we changed the propeller plates for Baltic Queen aim to increase energy efficiency of the vessel. And actually, the outcome is that we reduced the fuel consumption more than 10%. So such innovations -- innovation is constantly sold by our teams in all business areas. And also 2024, an example, we are focusing on artificial intelligence and opportunities offered across our businesses and services by the various artificial intelligence solutions.

Anneli Simm

executive
#13

Even though it was shortly covered by Katri, but still please elaborate on the Grupp's goals and approach and sustainability?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#14

Yes. I think I'm not going to tell it again, just Katri Link gave a very good overview and if you did not listen, then you can do it afterwards from recordings of the webinar.

Anneli Simm

executive
#15

Please elaborate on how the market and macroeconomic challenges impact the Grupp?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#16

Of course, macroeconomic factor saw an impact on our business, of course, but we work to manage the different risks. We have had different risks during the last 4 years. We have been adapting our business model firstly for the COVID, then to the war. What we expect is to see the moderate passenger number growth, but with less vessels on the core routes than 4 years ago. We analyzing the demand, and we don't want to put -- we don't want to increase the capacity if there are no demand on our core routes. So optimal capacity to all the routes is the key to have the good financial results as well. And of course, it means that, at the same time, we need to have alternative work for the vessels which are not operating in our core routes.

Anneli Simm

executive
#17

There is a question about Cruise Romantika, which has been back from Netherlands since September. And the question is, is there a plan to just are you consider bringing Romantika to Tallinn-Helsinki route for summer?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#18

We are looking charter opportunities for Romantika because, as I just mentioned, we can add the vessels to the routes only if there are demand. Currently, we have enough vessels on our core routes.

Anneli Simm

executive
#19

Still another questions about Galaxy I as well and whether there are any plans to bring it to Turku-Stockholm route, for example?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#20

The Galaxy is chartered out for the government of Netherlands, and we are not planning to bring vessel back before end of the charter agreement. How long it's able to keep Galaxy and also Silja Europa in the charter route. It depends of the -- also the need. At the moment, they have covered the chartered agreements, and we don't have a plan to change it.

Anneli Simm

executive
#21

Question about Turku-Stockholm routes and how do you see the future of the route?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#22

I hope that route having successful future. Due to the competition situation, we don't want to tell what are our plans on that route.

Anneli Simm

executive
#23

Tallink has not operated from Riga Latvia for a few years now. The question is why is that so? And does Tallink plan to return to Riga with it's vessel?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#24

Yes. Currently, we don't have a plan to open the Riga route again. It's we don't see that it's possible to operate that route profitable basis. And therefore, we don't want to take this risk to the company.

Anneli Simm

executive
#25

A few questions regarding the sale value of Isabelle. Can you comment on that?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#26

No, I can't. It happened during the first quarter, and all the sale agreements are confidential. But definitely, when we report our first quarter results, there are some information coming up in April, when we disclose it to the stock exchange.

Anneli Simm

executive
#27

Does the company plan to build any new vessels in the future?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#28

Yes. The question is when. So definitely, Tallink Grupp aim is to have the most modern fleet. But when we are going to build the new vessels, it's hard to predict, but the answer to the question is, yes.

Anneli Simm

executive
#29

Another question about the number of vessels, how many ships do you see in operation in 2024 and 2025 and where?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#30

Currently, we operating our core routes, Tallinn-Helsinki, and Tallinn-Stockholm, Turku-Stockholm, Helsinki-Stockholm, Paldiski-Kapellskär. We don't have, at the moment, any other plans. So we keep the schedule, which is available. Everyone can buy the ticket and welcome on board.

Anneli Simm

executive
#31

Since you have so many ships on lease, what are the limits regarding staff, goodwill, fuel efficiency, and the conditions of the ships to restart operations?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#32

Definitely to bring vessel back to the core route having some extra costs, one-offs, but it's not so significant. It more depends how long ahead we can make the decision that vessel is coming back and we need to or we want to reopen or add the capacity. So if you can -- if you know it long ahead, the costs are not significant. But of course, if you're doing some quick changes, then there can be one-off costs which are higher.

Anneli Simm

executive
#33

How big do you estimate the cost of emission tradings will before 2024 and 2025? Are they lower or higher than expected?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#34

We don't know how the price of the quota will change in the stock market. So if someone knows you will be rich, but we don't -- we estimate is that it will be between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million, depends on what price -- with what price we can buy the quotas from the stock exchange.

Anneli Simm

executive
#35

And then there is a quick specific question about the vessels and their dockings in 2024 and 2025.

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#36

Yes, actually, we have just two dockings needed. And it's next year. Baltic Princess is going to dock, and Regal Star is going to dock. If they're coming up with some changes in the charter agreements, then there can be some extra needs to make the dockings. But actually, currently, there are no more need then for Baltic Princess and the Regal Star.

Anneli Simm

executive
#37

And now the questions that have been posted on the webinar site. What can you say about the charters market so far? Do you still see similar interest from potential customers for vessel chartering? Or has this been reduced on economic downturn backdrop? How much have the rates changed?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#38

Actually, the market for the charters is good. It's always a question that how good rates we can get and with what kind of rate we are -- we wish to charter out the vessels. But as the COVID is over and people travel again, the goods need to be transported and there are not many ferry type vessels in condition Tallink have the vessels available, then actually, our situation in the charter market is rather good. But of course, we are also sometimes very picky, and we're not going to charter out vessels without profit. So sometimes it takes more time to find good opportunity, but market actually hasn't changed and we see that there are opportunities to charter out the vessels.

Anneli Simm

executive
#39

Another question about chartering. Please give more color on the nature of chartering business. Do you charter vessels only on fixed term and special situation basis, like governments hire ships for refugee housing or for larger summits events? Could there be -- sorry, could there be any possibility for a new permanent business line for Tallink that you permanently station your older vessels to global coastal cities as permanent housing stock to cities such as New York, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, Melbourne, Turkey, et cetera? Affordable housing is the most foreseeing socioeconomic challenge in global cities. If you could park your vessels in higher rent there is, then you can book larger rental income permanently and over a long time, therefore, significantly extending and increasing total lifetime value of your ships. Is there any obvious obstacles, such as local regulations, explicitly prohibiting it against parking vessels permanently in ports of marinas, abroad and turning vessels dock into housings dock?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#40

Yes, it sounds like one of our investors have kind of like business plans. So give a call to us, charter the vessel from us, and you can make the business there where you wish. But seriously speaking, we need partner who want to have the vessel. Is it government, is it the private enterprise, it doesn't matter. It matters of current is trustful partners, enough financial, but we are not going to build up kind of like hotel business based on board of the vessels in some other countries. So yes, for housing the people, are they refugees or are they construction workers or someone else there, we need a partner who take the risk. We can offer a good quality level vessel with technical crew or without, it depends also the negotiations.

Anneli Simm

executive
#41

Regarding dividend policy, what do you think is EUR 0.06 dividend per share a new normal or just onetime event? And there are two more questions in the same question, do you have plans to pay out EUR 0.06 per share as well in the future? And what is your future dividend policy?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#42

So a dividend policy placed in 2018 hasn't changed. If our financial results are low, we like to pay out a minimum EUR 0.05 per share. How much we are able to pay out next year, it depends. But dividend policy hasn't changed during the crisis years.

Anneli Simm

executive
#43

Question about debt maturities. What is your debt maturity wall, both in bank loans and bonds, if you have any, okay? Where on time-wise, are largest payback dates and how well do you think Tallink is positioned to climb over maturity walls in the current fairly high interest rate environment? What is your rollover redemption policy?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#44

Yes. If you take that during the last year, we paid back almost EUR 190 million loan. So our net debt-to-EBITDA is 2.8x. This is made in purpose to have the also lower interest costs. So normally our debt mature -- our loans -- for 7 years loans and some of them shorter and we don't see at the moment, currently any program to serve our loans.

Anneli Simm

executive
#45

What needs to happen to get back to passenger levels of 2019? What is in Tallink's controls?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#46

Firstly, we need to see the demand. As soon we see there are demand, we have enough vessels to bring them to the routes very quickly. We are a very flexible company, and we can really act quickly if there are need and demand. But as long as market is recovering, as long as geopolitical situation is challenging, and passengers from other continents coming back slowly and also export markets between the people and goods transported in kind of challenging situations, then currently, we don't actually need to have 9.7 million passengers. Tallink need to be a profitable company, sustainable, profitable and able to pay the dividends to our investors.

Anneli Simm

executive
#47

And the last question, how do you plan to use the proceeds from the sale of Isabelle? Is capital returned to shareholders among the options considered?

Paavo Nõgene

executive
#48

We just today announced EUR 0.06 dividend for our investors. All future plans will be launched some day in the future.

Anneli Simm

executive
#49

Thank you, Paavo, for taking all those questions as that was the last one today. I think we can thank everybody for attending and for the questions. We will hold our first quarter results webinar on April 25. And from my side, I enjoyed all of you the best of the rest of the day and happy upcoming Estonia Independence Day as well. Thank you.

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