So towards the end of 2024, we should see an increase in our lease liability on balance sheet before it starts to trend back downwards in the years thereafter. Our objective today is indeed to return the vessels that are up for redelivery, and we have 30 vessels up for redelivery between now and the end of the year to make room for the 22 newbuild tonnage that we are expecting to receive also between now and the rest of the year. So I think back to your last question, in terms of charter assumptions, we don’t intend to recharter vessels between now and the end of the year, rather we will redeliver vessels that are coming up for renewal in order to make room for our newbuild and cost-efficient vessels.
Alexia Dogani: Thank you. And can I just check a little bit of a follow-up on the volume growth assumptions? I mean, should we be thinking high-single digits or do you think you might go to double-digits because of your comments on new services on those routes? Thank you.
Eli Glickman: Look, we are, like I said, quite ambitious here. We will grow our operated tonnage double-digit. Hence we will aim at growing our carried quantities also double-digit.
Alexia Dogani: Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Sathish Sivakumar with Citi. Your line is open.
Sathish Sivakumar: Yeah. Thanks, Xavier. I got three questions here. Maybe let’s start off with car carriers, right? What’s happening there in terms of demand, given that a lot of new slows on slowdown of like auto vehicles as such, if you could share some color on that, that will be helpful. And then just going back to the contract season negotiation, obviously, it is still too early to comment on where I end up. But if I had to compare this year versus last year, what is the like, say where you are today versus last year? Are you signing more volumes or you signing less volumes? Any color, like, say year-on-year, how does it trending? That will be really helpful. And then the third one is more around the — just your point around the operator tonnage like you’re likely to grow around double-digit.
So what does it mean? Would it come more on — based on contracted volumes or would you go into the spot market, and you’d likely to prioritize what volume of market share to make sure that you utilize the coming capacity? And then, can I add one more actually? In terms of East Coast versus West Coast, there has been growing commentary that shippers are likely to switch some volumes into the West Coast because of the labor negotiations coming up in the East Coast. And you are actually a bigger player in the East Coast, given that you’re going to likely almost — your double-digit capacity. What does it mean in terms of volumes?
Xavier Destriau: Okay. Thank you, Sathish for your question.
Sathish Sivakumar: Yeah. Thank you.
Xavier Destriau: So, starting with your first question on the car carriers, so we operate today as 16 ships, and we did indeed grow our operated tonnage in this activity over the past few years. We always say that we saw an opportunity, a window of opportunity, and we entered that window of opportunity quite aggressively over the past few years as we saw an imbalance in a way opposite to what’s happening today on the container liner. But we saw an imbalance between the surge in demand of moving cars from Asia, mostly to the Western countries and limited available tonnage. So we today see and expect to see, as we have seen in 2023, a continuation of those favorable dynamics in 2024 before more vessels are being indeed delivered.
And we know that a significant number of new tonnage will come into the trades in 2025 and beyond. And this is why we will continue to monitor quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year, what is happening in this sector, and potentially limit our involvement if the market conditions were to change. But when it comes to 2024, for the coming year, we are quite optimistic that it should be a good place to be in, just like it was in 2023. Going to your second question, the contract season, yes, I mean, today is still very early days for us to opine as to where we will conclude in terms of committed capacity and rates. We used to try to seek 50%-50%, in a way, 50% exposure on spot, and 50% of our intended volume secured via a contractual commitment.
We don’t know, not at any price. So we will clearly need to make the arbitrage and between the expectations of some of our customers and what are our own expectations. We need to find the right balance between the various parties here. So we’ll see, and again, hopefully, we’ll be able to give a little bit more color into that once we finalize the discussions and we talk again during our Q1 earnings call. But objective of the company remains to secure a significant percentage, around 50% of contract cargo. And like I said, very promising discussions already started with our customer base during the TPM conference a week ago. I think the — what was the third question? Now, I can’t remember the third question, so I’ll go into the fourth. Sorry.
Sathish Sivakumar: We’ll come back on the third one. Now the third one is around the OPEC tonnage, you’re likely to grow double-digit. What does it mean, like on contracted volumes, do you prioritize growing those capacities in the spot market i.e., more about volume than pricing?
