In prior years, I know that while spot fixing of vessels across the shipping sector continued, there was less reporting as shipping broker entities usually had fewer staff. This meant, less data was available.
Found some data from at least one entity - Affinity, that has a report on the shipping sector of most interest to me - tankers.
Three general comments
- Rates are much lower than what is typically a stronger season for owners.
- Excluding fuel, operating costs are usually under $10K daily per VLCC (lower it some as one works down the vessel size spectrum). That means all routes are covering operating costs.
- Dirty: Afra > VLCC > Suezmax Clean: Top and bottom outliers, but otherwise bunched in a band $13K - $22K daily
If MR2s were averaging ~$24K midway thru Q4 2024, I think the avg will be lower for the full qtr. Not great news for the clean tanker players, including Torm and Hafnia (less so for STNG with more LR2s to offset the lower MR2 avg). All three companies have low leverage, so primary effect will be the size of the dividend payout.
[Edit: HAFN will definitely have a lower div. The excess cash flow, or at least, up to $100M of it, will be redirected from div payout to share buyback. Thru the end-of-2024, at least $49M had already been spent on share buybacks]