Profits for — so far this year were the highest this company has ever seen. Moving on at our balance sheet in the next slide, 8, our liquidity including restricted cash and short-term investments was at the end of the quarter $80 million, reduced from $95.7 million at the end of last year, mainly due to debt repayments. Vessels held for sale were $38.7 million as of September 30, and it refers to the two vessels under agreement to sell with deliveries in the beginning of next year. These vessels are debt free, so all of the proceeds on delivery will improve further our liquidity position. Advances of $23.4 million remain unchanged and relate to the advance payments made on the medium gas carrier vessels under construction. A circa similar amount of equity outlay will be needed on the delivery of these vessels.
Vessels net book value decreased from $628.5 million to $510 million, mostly due to the sale of vessels. The value of our investments in our JVs was $38.7 million covering five vessels while a sixth vessel was added in October, for which we did not invest more money in the JV. Moving on to the liability side, the company has significantly reduced all liabilities and particularly the outstanding debt component. So, total liabilities have been reduced since the beginning of the year by $156 million, from $303.6 million down to $147.5 million. As a result of the solid results being reported, shareholders’ equity has increased by $33 million to $550 million. Concluding our financial commentary with Slide 9, we will briefly have a look at the debt profile.
Over a nine-months period, the company has more than halved its outstanding debt with over $150 million of debt repayments, down to $127.7 million as of September 30, and continues to maintain a very low leverage. During the third quarter, $13 million was repaid. The company has 15 vessels out of the 27 in its current fleet mortgage-free. About 35% of the remaining debt is hedged with the interest rate swaps at an average of 2.1% that mitigate the effect of the interest rate rises. The refinancing risk is very low as the first balloon payment is in two years’ time. And overall, all balloon payments on the remaining debt have become much more manageable, as you can see on the right-hand picture. While debt reduction is a strategic move and we expect it to continue, there is still the financing for the delivery of the two newbuilding vessels in the first quarter of 2024.
For this, the company has signed a facility agreement with the lender to provide up to $70 million in finance proceeds for the delivery of these vessels, subject, of course, to customer closings. I will now hand you over to our CEO Harry Vafias, who will discuss market and company outlook.
Harry Vafias: Moving on Slide 10, a brief insight on the LPG market. So far, the first nine months of the year have been very positive as far as LPG supply is concerned, with global exports estimated to have risen by 3.1%. The U.S., the world’s largest exporter, continued to export record amounts, with 13% increases year-on-year, exporting 44 million tons of LPG in the first nine months of this year. In order to continue on that record streak, U.S. exporters like Energy Transfer continue to invest in future export capacity expansion projects. On the other hand, the OPEC-related oil production cuts by Saudi Arabia led to reduced volumes coming out of the Middle East, while other Middle Eastern countries have ramped up production to try and fill the gap.
As far as imports, we continue to have anemic demand from petrochemical plants in Europe that operate at lower margins in general, although the onset of winter, when household demand increases, have been supportive in terms of regional trade. Import growth has been from places like India, where import rose to 1.8 million tons in October, compared to an average of 1.5 million tons this year, and particularly China, where imports have increased by 30% in the nine-months period. China’s economy, despite all the problems, seems to be resilient so far and even registered a healthy 5.2% growth in the first nine months of this year. New Chinese PDH plants continue to come on stream as China wants to control its propylene production. Hence, major investments have been made for increasing the capacity.
PDH capacity has increased over 4 million tons this year alone, and while not all planned projects have come on stream and half have been pushed back to next year, the macro picture points to a continuously increasing demand. Utilization rates for these plants hit a high of 85% in August, but has since fallen as production margins have become less profitable. The other latest development is obviously the delays in the Panama Canal due to drought. The first impact is that these delays are leading some shippers to use alternative routes and tie up vessel availability, leading to increased ton-mile demand. These primarily affect the VLGCs where rates have increased rapidly, but it also has a trickle-down effect all the way to the handysize vessels that have seen their rates rising as well.
The longer term effects, if this issue persists, remain to be seen as rising costs could have an impact on demand. On Slide 11, we present some of the key fundamentals in our shipping market, commencing with time charter rates for our market. We continue to see a — year-over-year basis, see significant increases in rates up to 19%, particularly in the larger sizes like the 7,500 cubic meters and handysizes listed there. Compared to the previous quarter, overall rates remain flat as there is less activity in the summer months. On the small LPG trade West of Suez, the spot market was soft through Q3, but at the time of writing, we are starting to see more activity and rates are moving upwards. There are a number of time charter vessels coming up for renewal and strength of the spot market will likely decide if time charter levels remain stable or improve further.
