Hugo De Stoop: Well, the supply is the new buildings, but also the recycling. And in order to turn it green, we would see a lot more recycling because when you look at the age profile, we should have seen a lot more recycling. Now we all know why that is — that did not happen. First of all, the rate environment has improved. So obviously, now maybe less than last year. Should we expect it? Secondly, and that was a reason pointed out earlier in this call, if everybody watch the order book and see that very few orders will be placed for the reasons that we already explained. And it’s likely that the ship will stay longer in operation. Otherwise, you’re really going to have a squeeze — and last but not least, there was for a pretty — well, a long period of time, there was a little bit of a cash squeeze into the cash buyers who are the recyclers of those vessels.
And obviously, when you have a VLCC, I mean, it’s a lot of money that you need to pay sort of in advance of recycling it and selling the scrap metal. So there was an additional barrier that we have seen. But the traffic line will continue to be green amber as long as we don’t see more recycling.
Chris Tsung: Understood. Thank you for the color. That’s it for me. I’ll turn it over. Take care.
Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Horan from Citigroup.
Chris Wetherbee: It’s Chris Wetherbee. Hugo, I think you’ve been really helpful kind of laying out your view here. I guess maybe what I don’t know that we’ve heard this morning, though, is sort of earnouts management’s view on what the future of the business should be. I understand we have the ruling coming up next week about damages and how things might ultimately play out. I don’t know that that necessarily — I guess maybe the question is, what do you guys want to do with the business sort of thinking bigger picture, maybe taking a step back from this potential ruling and thinking about the direction of Euronav from an M&A perspective. Is that still something that is attractive to you, understanding that maybe the deal that we’ve been talking about maybe can’t get done.
I just want to get a better sense of sort of where the heads are from management as opposed to some of the technicalities about rulings and various things about this past transaction, our pending transaction.
Hugo De Stoop: That question is extremely refreshing, Chris. Thank you very much for asking. At Euronav, we — well, first of all, we continue to operate the business. I’m very, very thankful for the remark that was done in the first question that when you look at the performance, we didn’t forget to manage the business. And as a matter of fact, we have split a little bit the management team and some people are entirely focused on the business because that’s what matters. And we want to continue to deliver as good results as we can. So yes, continue to be focused on the current operation. Do we believe in consolidation Absolutely. We believe in growth Absolutely. We do believe that going forward, the market deserves to be consolidated, can be consolidated.
