But it's definitely part of a positioning of I would say majority of the fleet in order to benefit from rates that are higher in some part of the geographies than others.
But what we can control is our own balance sheet and our positioning which is what we will continue to do on a proactive basis. Have you been drawing from it or maybe taking advantage of the weak VLSFO market, and restocking that inventory? Then, Brian, our Head of Investor Relations, Market Research, and Communication, will look at the current themes in the tanker market and Euronav's outlook before we take questions.
So I guess what I'm wondering is kind of what drove this downgrade?
Indeed, Euronav remains committed to returning capital and create value for our stakeholders. And we look at the Chinese who have been very incentivized by their own government from the private sector to buy below $40 per oil in terms of price per barrel.
That's maybe the last point, which we have said already in the remarks earlier, we're not buying to improve the share price.
That is not something that we can control, but at the moment we are very pleased to see the rate at which it's taking place.
And I think the AGM gave you the ability to kind of purchase 10% of the stock every year, if I understand that correctly. So look, it is a headwind. The benefits I would say that we may have is because of our large fleet, if we were to order two vessels with a specific technology, we're not betting the farm doing that, whereas in older fleet again we'll bet more of the farm if they order two ships on the fleet of less than 10 feet, let's say.
On to Slide 11. So I will only repeat what I said in the past. There's obviously some float and liquidity concerns, and I think the AGM gave you the ability to purchase 10% of the stock every year, if I understand that correctly.
The good performance, combined with the cash focus, allows Euronav to keep 20% of the net income to further deleverage, with high cash returns to the shareholders. And then because they are in very good conditions, we're able to sell them, and you've seen what we've done this year, at a premium.
In the interest of time, we do ask that you please limit yourselves to one question and a single follow-up. There's a ton of uncertainty.
I think that currently we have seen the rates running off.
We keep those people onboard because they have nowhere else to go and then they continue to work because that's a very good way to earn a living and send that money to their families, wherever the families are. There was a lot of, about 50 VLCCs contracted for storage, and that was for six months, so one should believe that those vessels are going to come back in October or November of this year. OK, that's very clear.
We want to see how it develops.