Emanuele Lauro, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, commented, “We are pleased to provide the market with an update on our Q3 bookings and capital management in the Company presentation that we have released today and is available on our website (www.scorpiotankers.com/investors/reports-presentations/).
“Despite both customary seasonal weakness and drawdowns of the extraordinary inventory builds during Q1 and Q2, the Company’s TCE rates in Q3-20 outperformed those in Q3-19. This trend of higher quarterly Company TCE rates year-over-year has continued since Q4-18 and suggests that the underlying supply and demand drivers in our market have continued to tighten. Demand recovery and curtailed refinery throughput have resulted in a significant reduction of refined product floating storage inventories from 104.1 million barrels in May to 33.9 million barrels today. The economic rebound from COVID-19, limited fleet supply growth, and ton-mile expansion from refinery closures and additions leave us optimistic as we look to the remainder of the year and 2021.
“We continue to manage our liquidity in a way we believe will create value for our shareholders. The recent discount in our share price does not reflect the underlying performance of our business nor our outlook for the near and medium term. This has led to selective share repurchases at highly accretive levels. That said, our focus will remain on reducing our leverage as well as managing the cost and duration of our liabilities. We have retired a significant portion of our May 2022 convertible bond at attractive levels.”