East of Suez, the Asian market has for the most part of Q3 been quiet and freight levels were poor. Significant idle time was experienced by several vessels. From the start of Q4, we have seen a slightly more spot activity and expectations are, as in the West, for a busier winter period. On the period side, things were relatively quiet through Q3 and have not picked up as much as was expected. The exception is on the 7,500 cubic meter vessels where there is a very tight supply demand balance and TC rates have continued to increase. There remains a gap to TC rates in the West, but for larger the vessel the smaller the gap. On the handysize and the MGC vessels, the spot market was rather dull and uneventful. On the period side, we saw relatively little activity through Q3, but even though the spot side struggled through the quarter, period expectations and one-year rates kept reasonably steady.
The start of Q4 and the strength of the MGC market, coupled with the expected spillover effects from the Panama Canal drought, has given a boost to the owners’ expectations, and rates are currently on an upward trajectory. Spot rates for MGCs were reasonably strong for the first two months of Q3, but have since experienced a boom and are, at the time of writing, historically strong. The effect of Panama Canal is expected to cause a significant tightening of an already tight VLGC market for quite some time, and this also has and will continue to have a significant spillover effect on the smaller ships. On the period front, for MGCs, we saw a lot of activity. Existing time charter vessels were extended, and more importantly, the newbuilding list for second half ’23, first half ’24, which at the start of the third quarter was fairly, has, at the time of writing, been reduced to only one vessel.
I’d like to reiterate that the fundamentals for a core fleet of small pressurized ships continue to look promising with an aging fleet, as almost one-third of the fleet is over 20 years of age. And although scrapping activity is limited due to the firm markets, we continue to see only a handful of vessels being ordered, not enough to keep the supply-demand balance. Similar picture in the handysize fleet where there are only three vessels to be delivered over the next two years. Only in the MGC market, there is indeed a high order book, but demand for these vessels has so far proved resilient and freight rates are near record levels. On Slide 12, we’re showing the evolution of our LPG fleet. In this slide, for comparison purposes, we have excluded the tanker vessels that we held up to 2021 and focused the pure LPG fleet in terms of cubic capacity, including our JV vessels.
In a rising market, we have sold and delivered so far this year eight vessels and two more expected to be delivered around January. Though, through such sales of mostly older vessels, we have maintained the average year of our fleet to 10 years, which is quite moderate for industry standards. Concurrently, we have been investing in modern newbuilding MGC vessels, significantly larger than those in our core fleet. We’re cautiously expanding in a segment that is hot right now, with freight rates close to all-time highs, albeit much more volatile. One of these vessels were delivered in October and two more we have fixed delivery in January. Our intention is to keep a diversified fleet.
Michael Jolliffe: Please look at Slide 13 where we are outlining some of the key variables that may affect our performance in the quarters ahead. We remain optimistic in the longer term for the reasons we analyzed earlier. This is a fast-changing environment with many uncertainties, mostly relating to the macroeconomic factors, while some related to China’s economy and others to unseen influences like the Panama Canal delays or geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. On the other hand, what is certain in the short term is that we are entering the winter for the Northern Hemisphere and period when demand normally strengthens and we are seeing this in the market. To sum up, so far, 2023 has turned out to be a tremendous year for gas shipping overall and especially for StealthGas.
So far, for the first nine months of 2023, we have reported our strongest performance on record with a basic EPS of $1.12. For the third quarter, normally would be a seasonably weak quarter, we reported net income of $15.7 million, the second best quarter on record, only surpassed by the first quarter of this year. As the market is firming, we took advantage of the momentum and entered into a number of long-period charters, some with durations as long as three years, thus securing part of our future revenues. We have thus extended the duration of our contract coverage to over 50% for 2024. Also, part of our strategy is deleveraging, and so far during this year, we have more than half the outstanding debt, repaying $151 million and greatly reducing our interest rate expenses in the process, while at the same time keeping 15 out of the 27 vessels debt-free.
At the same time, we sought to expand the repurchase of shares with an additional $10 million, making it $25 million in total. We believe we are well positioned to benefit from strong markets and to continue to generate shareholder value. And even though our share price has climbed significantly over the past six months, we believe we continue to be astound, still very undervalued investment for anyone wishing to invest in our company at this time. We have now reached the end of our presentation, and we would like to thank you for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest and trust in our company. We look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for our fourth quarter results in February. Thank you very much.
Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
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