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Full Year 2008 A/S Dampskibsselskabet Torm Earnings Conference Call - Final.

Article Excerpt
OPERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Torm Annual Report 2008 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode until we conduct the question answering session, and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions). Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn it over to your chairperson, Mr. Mikael Skov. Please begin your meeting and I will be standing by.

MIKAEL SKOV, PRESIDENT AND CEO, A/S DAMPSKIBSSELSKABET TORM: Thank you very much. Welcome to our conference call regarding Torm's annual report for 2008. I am Mikael Skov, the CEO of Torm. With me here today are CFO Roland Andersen and Thomas Andersen, Vice President, Investor Relations. Today's presentation will start by providing you with an overview of the full year of 2008 and, as usual, we will open up for questions at the end of this short presentation.

Page two. First, let me give you a quick overview of what has happened in 2008. The pretax profit for 2008 [was] $392 million, excluding negative adjustments for mark-to-market effects of $32 million. The full year profit before tax was $360 million, which is in line with our latest guidance of $355 million to $370 million.

The Company proposes an ordinary dividend of DKK4 per share. At the end of 2008, the equity amounted to [$1.279 million], corresponding to DKK97.5 per share. The market value of the fleet exceeded the book value by $367 million, corresponding to DKK28 per share.

The tanker division was positively affected by a number of factors. Here under increased transport businesses, strong after demand, increased port days, et cetera. At the end of the year, the global recession reduced the freight rates from a very high level to a more normal level. The boat division experienced an all-time high rate driven especially by the Chinese demand, but in...

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