That’s primarily due to 1 rig being out of service with costs being incurred and paid and that rig is now back working and then we get the new builds. But we kind of guide you specifically on what the dividend might be next quarter and after, nor will we communicate specifically how much – how many shares we will buy back. We have bought back just over 1 million shares, so around 1% of the shareholding, and we have an authorization to buy more than that from the Board and that will be communicated every quarter as we report our quarterly numbers going forward.
Climent Molins: Makes sense. That’s all for me. Thank you for taking my questions.
Ole Hjertaker: Thank you.
Aksel Olesen: Thank you.
Marius Furuly: Thank you, Climent. Our next question comes from Arif Hamid. Please unmute.
Unidentified Analyst: Yes. Hello. First, I’d like to compliment the management team on continuing to do a good job. I have two questions and requests. Okay, the first question is you’ve reduced some inventory and certainly have cash to reinvest. What areas appear attractive now, both for new builds and for used assets?
Ole Hjertaker: Yes. We are looking – I mean, we are – you can call it segment agnostics. So we focus across the board in the maritime space and which is also reflected in our vessel mix. We look at transaction opportunities in all these segments in parallel. And just as an example, last year, we screened and modeled out transactions with an aggregate value of around $23 billion, and we ended up doing only a small fraction of that. That’s a coincidence. And so there are many reasons for why you don’t do a deal. It’s got to be the right counterparty, with the right asset. We are very mindful of sort of the – of new fuel and, what we say, where that is driving and what kind of assets we want to own long term, the financing, we think is available for the specific asset, with the specific charter, et cetera.
So that – and of course, we are agreed and we want proper returns as we do deals. If we hadn’t been – if we haven’t – if we would accept really low returns, we could have done, of course, a lot, lot more. So all this comes together, and it’s all about trying to deliver long-term value for shareholders. And we don’t guide on specific allocation of capital between segments. So over time, you have seen that, and sometimes, we were investing more in the energy space and other times over the history of the company, we have invested more on the liner side, specifically container ships and now also car carriers. So we hope to build the business. And – but exactly which segment we will be, we cannot say. I would say maybe to round out that is that some of the segments, there are relatively fewer long-term chartering opportunities, for instance, on the tanker side and the dry bulk side, they are not that frequent to see long-term orders, which we prefer because that’s the cash flow visibility.
But we find deals there as well, as you can see from our portfolio. So we looked across the board.
Unidentified Analyst: So there’s no specific area that looks like a good trend right now?
Ole Hjertaker: No. I think that if we talk to shipping analysts, they’re typically focus on just the near-term, call it, market cycle. And there, of course, you have like the tanker market right now, near term, which has sort of a record low order book, which is on many – in many people’s sort of attention right now. But of course, when we do a deal and say we look for 10-year charters, you have to look through the near-term cycles. So it goes 10 years, you can, in theory, build as many ships as you want in any specific segment. So that it’s more important to look for the right technology, the right counterparty and the right structure where we end up with a, call it, a residual, call it, asset exposure or value that we think makes sense at the end of the charter in addition to taking in the counterparty risk, et cetera, in the charter.
And I would say, the way we have, call it, redone or our business model going from a more financial-oriented company where we did a lot of bareboat and bareboat-like structures, that is typically done with intermediaries, who then give service to the end users. So changing that to a more integrated maritime logistics cycle type set up means that we deal more directly with end users. And we think that also gives us better risk/reward operationally and over time.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Well, that selectivity in your acquisitions, that’s part of the reason for my complement at the beginning. Okay. My next question is you talk about income, cash flow increasing substantially in the next couple of quarters. Can you make an estimate of how big a jump you see in the operating income?
