DeepValue | The New Way Investors Work

International Seaways (NYSE: INSW) is not your typical “buy it and forget it” compounder. It’s a classic cyclical value story: a large tanker owner with a de-risked balance sheet, high spot exposure, and a management team that has shown it knows how to turn strong markets into cash and then hand a big chunk of that cash back to shareholders.

From 2022 through 2024, INSW rode one of the strongest tanker upcycles in recent history. Tanker earnings were juiced by geopolitical shocks, rerouted trade flows, and a constrained global orderbook. According to the company’s 2024 10-K, 2024 was its second-best year since becoming independent in 2016, with robust TCE (time charter equivalent) earnings and EBITDA.

The cycle has softened, but not collapsed. By the first nine months of 2025, TCE revenue was down about 25% year over year to $560 million and income from vessel operations fell by $203 million to $207 million, as disclosed in the Q3 2025 10-Q. Yet INSW remained solidly profitable, generating $71 million of net income in Q3 2025 alone and maintaining a very conservative balance sheet.

This is the tension we see in the stock today. At around $48.8 per share, INSW trades at roughly 11.1x trailing EPS and 4.6x EV/EBITDA with about 21.6% ROE, based on data from FMP. Our DCF work suggests a value near $72 per share, implying decent upside. But the market is clearly pricing in a meaningful risk that tanker rates and earnings step down again as the cycle matures, especially with a big wave of new product tankers hitting the water between 2025 and 2027.

For investors who understand tanker cyclicality and can size positions thoughtfully, we think INSW deserves a spot on the watchlist as a potential buy.

If you want to see how this kind of deep, citation-backed analysis scales across dozens of names in minutes rather than hours of 10-K reading, you can use DeepValue to automate the heavy lifting.

Build a full, institution-grade view of INSW’s cycle, cash flows, and risks in minutes instead of days by letting our AI agent parse the latest 10-K, 10-Q, and industry sources for you.

Run Deep Research on INSW →

Let’s unpack the thesis, the risks, and where we think the risk/reward tips for INSW over the next couple of years.

What does International Seaways actually do?

International Seaways is a New York–based crude and product tanker owner that emerged from Overseas Shipholding Group’s 2016 spin-off and was scaled up by the 2021 all-stock merger with Diamond S Shipping. That deal created a roughly 100-ship platform and positioned INSW as one of the largest US-listed tanker owners, as highlighted by Maritime Executive’s coverage of the merger and the Overseas Shipholding Group Wikipedia entry.

According to the Q3 2025 10-Q, INSW currently operates 71 vessels totaling about 8.2 million deadweight tons (dwt), with five dual-fuel-ready LR1 newbuilds scheduled to deliver by Q3 2026. The fleet is broadly split between:

Crude tankers: VLCCs, Suezmaxes, Aframaxes, plus a lightering business
Product carriers: LR2, LR1, and MR tankers

The core business model is straightforward but volatile. INSW earns revenue primarily from voyage charters and time charters, often through participation in commercial pools across VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, LR1, and MR classes. As described in the 2024 10-K, about 86% of 2024 TCE was exposed to spot markets. That gives the company significant torque to freight-rate moves in both directions.

We view INSW as a leveraged play on global crude and refined product trade flows, with moderate diversification across segments but no structural moat. The edge here is balance sheet discipline, scale in pools, and a track record of using strong cycles to delever and return capital.

Industry setup: tanker tailwinds vs product-tanker headwinds

Before we talk valuation, we need to understand the backdrop.

The tanker industry is intensely cyclical and fragmented. Rates are driven by a messy mix of oil demand, refinery capacity, trade routes, fleet supply, scrapping, and geopolitics. According to the 2024 10-K, INSW competes with many other owners across all its segments, and its lightering business also faces competition from shore-based and offshore loading facilities.

On the tailwind side:

The global crude tanker orderbook had been historically low (about 4.5% of fleet in 2023), while the fleet continues to age. Hellenic Shipping News / Xclusiv’s March 2023 report highlighted this tightness on the crude side, which has helped support utilization and TCEs.
Geopolitical disruptions have meaningfully boosted tonne-miles. Xclusiv’s September 2024 analysis pointed to Russia-Ukraine sanctions, Red Sea disruptions, and rerouting that added more than 10% product tonne-miles in 2022–23 and another roughly 5% in 2024.

On the headwind side:

The product-tanker orderbook has surged. Intermodal’s January 2025 report, cited in our research, flags a significant build-out of MR/LR capacity scheduled for 2025–27. Athenian’s December 2024 tanker report similarly notes the rebuilding of the orderbook after years of under-investment.
Environmental and decarbonization rules (CII, emissions limits) are raising the cost of compliance and driving fleet renewal decisions. INSW discusses these pressures in its 2024 10-K and has started retrofit programs to reduce fuel consumption. For example, a Maritime Executive article from June 2024 highlights retrofit projects targeting roughly 5% fuel savings on MR tankers.

Our view is that the crude side of the market still looks relatively healthy on a mid-cycle basis, thanks to an aging fleet and modest orderbook, but the product side is more precarious over the next few years. That matters because INSW is not just a crude story; it has meaningful product exposure and is adding LR1 capacity into this potentially more crowded segment.

How is INSW performing today?

According to the 2024 10-K, INSW generated approximately:

$952 million of shipping revenue
About $933 million of TCE revenues
Adjusted EBITDA of $583 million

This made 2024 the second-best year since independence, even though average rates were lower than in 2023. Management used the strong earnings to keep deleveraging, renew parts of the fleet, and pay out significant capital to shareholders.

The downshift became visible in 2025. As detailed in the Q3 2025 10-Q:

TCE for the first nine months of 2025 declined about 25% year over year to $560 million.
Income from vessel operations dropped by $203 million, to $207 million.
Q3 2025 net income was $71 million, or $1.42 per share, with adjusted EBITDA of $108 million, according to the Q3 2025 8-K earnings release and associated filings.

Despite this normalization, INSW’s balance sheet actually strengthened:

Liquidity reached around $985 million by September 30, 2025.
Net debt-to-capital was a low 16.4%.
About 27 vessels were unencumbered, providing a significant cushion and optionality.

On the cash-flow side, the company has put up solid free cash flow over multiple quarters. Our 5-year FCF/EPS trend analysis (from FMP data embedded in our report) shows recurring triple-digit million quarterly FCF figures across 2022–2025, even as EPS has stepped down from peak levels.

For us, this is a key part of the story: INSW is already off the top of the cycle, but it is still printing cash and sits on a balance sheet that can absorb a decent downturn without immediately putting equity at risk.

Is INSW stock a buy in 2025?

We frame INSW as a potential buy rather than a slam-dunk buy today, because the investment case is explicitly cyclical.

On the valuation side, using FMP data:

Price: about $48.8 per share
P/E: roughly 11.1x trailing EPS of about $8.46
EV/EBITDA: about 4.6x
P/B: roughly 1.25x
ROE: about 21.6%

Our DCF work (10% discount rate, 2.5% long-term growth, 5-year explicit period) points to a fair value around $72 per share. That’s about 32% upside from recent levels. So why isn’t this a straightforward BUY?

Because the numbers embed a set of assumptions about mid-cycle tanker earnings that could prove either conservative or optimistic, depending on how the 2025–27 product-tanker wave and geopolitical tailwinds evolve.

Our key questions as prospective buyers are:

1. Are we already late-cycle on products, just as INSW adds LR1 capacity?

The company has six dual-fuel-ready LR1 newbuilds delivering through Q3 2026, largely financed by a 12-year ECA-backed facility of about $240 million plus commercial debt, per the Q3 2025 10-Q. If product rates hold near mid-cycle levels, this modern fleet should earn decent returns. But if the MR/LR orderbook leads to oversupply, returns on these assets could disappoint.

2. How much of the 2022–24 earnings power is structural versus temporary?

Management has been explicit in the 2024 10-K that recent years benefited from exceptional geopolitical and weather factors. The 25% TCE decline in 2025 is already evidence of normalization. Any valuation that assumes sustained high-double-digit ROE should be reconciled with the tanker industry’s long history of boom–bust cycles.

3. Does the current valuation properly compensate us for the next downturn?

INSW’s low leverage and liquidity provide real downside protection, but in a severe multi-year slump, asset values and cash flows can still fall enough to trigger impairments and covenant pressure. The 2024 10-K and Q3 2025 10-Q both flag these risks.

Our bottom line: at current levels, risk-tolerant investors who understand shipping cycles and can handle volatility may find the stock attractive, especially if they believe mid-cycle earnings will remain structurally higher than in the 2010s. But position sizing and entry timing relative to freight-rate trends are crucial.

If you want to sanity-check INSW against other tanker names or cyclicals simultaneously, DeepValue can run parallel deep research on 10+ tickers at once.

Compare INSW’s cycle, leverage, and valuation to a basket of tanker and shipping stocks by running standardized, citation-backed reports side by side in under 5 minutes.

Research INSW in Minutes →

Will International Seaways deliver long-term shareholder returns?

We think the answer depends less on a permanent competitive moat and more on how management behaves through the cycle.

Capital allocation: using the upcycle wisely

INSW’s management, led by CEO Lois Zabrocky since 2016, has a reasonable track record of turning strong markets into balance sheet strength and capital returns. Zabrocky’s recognition by the International Maritime Hall of Fame, noted in a Maritime Executive profile from January 2020, underscores her long experience in the sector.

According to the 2024 10-K:

2024 operating cash flow was about $547 million.
Liquidity increased to $632 million.
Net debt-to-capital ended the year at 22.2%.
The company paid approximately $284 million in dividends and repurchased about $25 million of stock.
About $339 million was invested into fleet and drydock capex.

Through Q3 2025, per the Q3 2025 10-Q, INSW has continued paying sizable regular and supplemental dividends and extended a $50 million share repurchase authorization through 2026.

We view this as a fairly shareholder-friendly playbook: use peak and near-peak earnings to:

Delever and expand liquidity.
Selectively renew the fleet with modern, more efficient tonnage.
Return meaningful cash via dividends and buybacks, rather than blindly ordering ships at the top of the cycle.

The main watch item is whether this discipline persists as the product orderbook fills and earnings normalize.

Strategy and fleet positioning

INSW’s advantages are scale, diversification, and balance sheet flexibility, not a structural monopoly.

It operates a diversified crude and product fleet and participates in major commercial pools. This helps optimize utilization and access cargo opportunities, as described in the 2024 10-K.
It has a time-charter backlog of about $310 million at the end of 2024, providing partial cash-flow visibility while keeping a large spot exposure for upside, per the same filing.
Net loan-to-value stood near 13% with rising liquidity and a growing number of unencumbered vessels, according to the Q3 2025 10-Q.

On the environmental front, INSW is gradually upgrading its fleet to comply with tightening rules and improve fuel efficiency. The Maritime Executive article from June 2024 notes retrofit projects expected to deliver around 5% fuel savings on certain vessels. The company’s 10-K references a board-level sustainability committee and SASB/TCFD-aligned disclosures, which we view as table stakes but still positive signals for long-run governance.

We don’t see a durable “moat” here; this is a commodity industry. But we do see execution advantages that could allow INSW to earn above-average returns versus the broader tanker universe over a full cycle, if management stays disciplined.

Key risks and what we’re watching

The biggest source of edge for value investors in shipping is usually risk assessment, not spotting hidden growth stories. For INSW, we focus on four major risk buckets.

1. Freight-rate and earnings cyclicality

This is the core risk. With about 86% of 2024 TCE exposure in spot markets, per the 2024 10-K, INSW’s earnings will move almost one-for-one with freight-rate trends.

Our monitoring list includes:

Quarterly TCE by segment (VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, LR, MR) versus operating expenses.
Spot and time-charter trends versus peer groups, using disclosures in the Q3 2025 10-Q and industry sources like Athenian’s December 2024 report.

If we see:

Sustained mid-cycle or improving rates across crude and products, we’d be more comfortable upgrading our stance from “potential buy” toward “buy”.
A sharp, multi-quarter drop of TCE toward opex levels, especially if the product-tanker orderbook is not yet fully absorbed, we’d tilt toward “wait” or even “potential sell”.

2. Product-tanker oversupply risk (2025–27)

The product orderbook is the elephant in the room. According to Intermodal’s January 2025 report, there is a large wave of LR and MR deliveries slated for 2025–27. At the same time, INSW will be taking delivery of six dual-fuel-ready LR1 newbuilds through Q3 2026, financed largely via an ECA-backed facility (about $240 million) plus commercial bank debt, as disclosed in the Q3 2025 10-Q.

This creates a scenario where INSW is adding new product capacity just as:

Tonne-mile tailwinds from Russia-Ukraine and Red Sea routes potentially ease.
New capacity hits the market across competitors.

We don’t think this is thesis-breaking on its own, but it raises the bar for underwriting sustained high TCEs in the product segment.

3. Balance sheet and covenant risk

Today, the balance sheet looks robust:

Net debt/EBITDA around 0.9x.
Net debt-to-capital of 16.4%.
Substantial liquidity (~$985 million).
A large number of unencumbered vessels.

All of this is laid out in the Q3 2025 10-Q.

But in a deep and extended downcycle, risk could emerge from:

Falling vessel values and potential impairments.
Weaker coverage ratios, especially if refinancing conditions tighten.
Difficulty in funding LR1 newbuild payments or VLCC lease buyouts without resorting to dilutive equity.

The company has attempted to mitigate some of this by issuing $250 million of 7.125% 2030 bonds to exercise options on six VLCCs and unencumber those assets, as outlined in the Q3 2025 10-Q. We view this as a rational move that extends maturity, but in a downturn, the fixed coupon cost will still need to be serviced from lower cash flows.

4. Regulation, tax, and operational risks

INSW faces all the usual maritime risks plus some company-specific wrinkles:

Environmental rules (CII, emissions) requiring ongoing capex for retrofits or newbuilds.
OECD Pillar Two and redomiciling of key subsidiaries to Bermuda, which could affect effective tax rates and complexity, as discussed in the Q3 2025 10-Q.
Sanctions compliance and trade restrictions impacting route economics.
Operational, safety, cyber, and counterparty risks given reliance on third-party managers, per the risk factors in the 2024 10-K.

None of these are unique to INSW, but they are part of the reason we require a valuation discount to mid-cycle DCF estimates when entering cyclical shipping names.

For investors trying to track all these moving parts across a portfolio of cyclicals, Read our AI-powered value investing guide to see how tools like DeepValue can automate the parsing of SEC filings and industry reports, letting you scale this kind of process beyond a single stock.

What would change our thesis on INSW?

We think about thesis “upgrades” and “downgrades” in terms of a simple dashboard:

Upgrade toward Buy if:

TCE and freight rates across crude and product segments hold at or above mid-cycle levels for multiple quarters.
Net debt/EBITDA stays around or below 1x, and liquidity remains high.
Management continues returning capital via dividends and buybacks, funded from operating cash flow rather than incremental leverage, and remains disciplined on new ordering.

Downgrade toward Wait / Potential Sell if:

We see a multi-year collapse in TCE that pushes earnings toward breakeven or negative territory, with persistent under-coverage of interest and amortization.
The company struggles to finance LR1 newbuilds or VLCC buyouts without tapping equity markets under duress.
There are large, repeated vessel impairments or signs that management is adding capacity aggressively into a softening cycle.
Regulatory or tax changes materially erode after-tax returns or restrict key trade routes.

These conditions are largely spelled out in the “risks and monitoring” sections of the 2024 10-K and Q3 2025 10-Q. We view them not as theoretical boilerplate but as practical triggers we’d monitor quarter by quarter.

How we’d approach INSW as investors

Putting this together, here’s how we, as the DeepValue team, would frame INSW in a portfolio:

Type of idea: cyclical value, levered to tanker rates, suitable for investors comfortable with volatility.
Current stance: potential buy with a meaningful margin of safety relative to our DCF, but with notable cyclical and product-orderbook risk.
Sizing: modest position size within a diversified portfolio, especially if bought without a clear macro or rate-view hedge.
Time horizon: 2–5 years, aligned with the next freight-rate cycle and delivery schedule for LR1s and other strategic moves.

We would pair a position in INSW with:

Ongoing tracking of TCE trends by segment and industry orderbook/scrapping data.
Careful reading of each quarterly 10-Q and annual 10-K to spot any shifts in leverage, charter mix, and capex commitments.
Scenario analysis around downside TCE cases to ensure that even in a severe slump, solvency is not at realistic risk.

For investors who want to adopt a similar process-driven approach but don’t have hours to read every filing, DeepValue is built exactly for this use case.

Turn INSW’s 10-K, 10-Q, and industry reports into a structured, citation-backed investment memo you can actually act on, complete with downside scenarios and risk flags.

Run Deep Research for INSW →

International Seaways (INSW) Research Report: A Cyclical Value Opportunity For 2025–2027 Investors?