TANKER owner Tsakos Energy Navigation is expecting further windfall profits under its time charter contracting policy amid soaring crude oil tanker rates as a result of the US and Israeli attack on Iran.

Asked in a fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, chief executive Nikolas Tsakos said earnings under profit-sharing agreements would likely be “off the chart” for the current quarter.

TEN posted fourth-quarter net income of $58m, tripling its bottom line of the same quarter in 2024.

Of that, $27m came from profit-sharing arrangements on top of the base rate in period charter agreements.

“The way things are today, I think the profit sharing has gone off the chart,” he said.

It has long been a policy of TEN’s to cover a large part of its fleet with longer-term charters but include profit-sharing arrangements that provide it with exposure to any increase in the market.

Currently 13 vessels in the fleet are on profit shares but of these seven are suezmaxes and two are VLCCs, the segments that are benefiting most from the spike in rates.

According to TEN, break-even rates for their VLCCs and suezmaxes, everything included, were about $28,000 and $25,000 per day.

Today, including profit-sharing, the VLCCs were averaging more than $100,000 and the suezmaxes “closer to $80,000”, said Tsakos.

At the same time, the owner had seen war risk insurance increase by as much as 500% in a week because of the war.

Although the increase was “huge… from $0.15 per dwt ton to close to $1 now” this was paid directly by charterers.

“It is a pass-through cost for us but it shows how the market rates this risk,” he said.

Responding to a question on higher fuel costs, Tsakos said that 25% of its requirements for the next two years were already covered “at very competitive rates”.

Again, as most of the fleet is operating under time charters, exposure to fuel price fluctuations was mainly a matter for the charterers.

Good sale

In January, it sold a 10 year-old VLCC, Ulysses (IMO: 9723112), in a deal that it expects to generate about $82m of free cash.

The disposal, which is expected to be completed by the end of May, comes after TEN inked “timely” newbuilding orders in the last quarter for three new scrubber-fitted VLCCs.

Tsakos said that the Ulysses’ sale price implied a newbuilding value “in excess of $170m” whereas the three new VLCCs were contracted last November at a price of $128m apiece.

“It's always good to take advantage of these possibilities and the good thing is that we are going to be using the ship up to almost the middle of the year,” he said of the Ulysses sale.

Although Tsakos did not confirm the identity of the buyer, he made reference to the recent VLCC-buying spree of Sinokor in league with Swiss-based shipping tycoon Gianluigi Aponte, saying “there have been people who have been buying these assets at prices that make huge sense”.

Fourth-quarter revenues increased by 18% compared with the year-ago quarter, reaching $222.1m.

For the full year, TEN posted net income of $161m on revenues of close to $800m.

The New York Stock Exchange-listed owner currently owns a fleet of 83 vessels including 18 tankers and one LNG carrier under construction.