LONDON (Bloomberg) Bermuda-based Frontline Ltd., the world’s largest operator of supertankers, posted a bigger-than-expected fourth-quarter loss and declared a dividend that missed estimates after charter costs plunged on a glut of vessels.The net loss was $11.8 million, or 15 cents a share, compared with profit of $3.92 million, or five cents, a year earlier, the company said yesterday in a statement. Frontline was expected to post a 13.4-cent loss, based on the mean estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The 10-cent dividend missed an anticipated payout of 23.5 cents.“The surprising thing for me is the low dividend and what it means for future dividends, since we expect loss-making quarters through 2011 and 2012,” said Erik Nikolai Stavseth, an analyst at Arctic Securities ASA in Oslo. The company “will not be appealing to yield-based investors”.Frontline rose 3.8 kroner, or 2.6 percent, to 149.5 kroner at the 5.30pm close in Oslo trading, giving the company a market value of 11.6 billion kroner ($2 billion).Charter costs for supertankers fell to a 13-month low in October as vessels from the biggest building programme in history left yards.“This weakness might continue until the current large gap between supply and demand in the tanker market narrows,” Frontline said in the statement. The company’s very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, each earned $24,700 a day in the quarter. Frontline said it needs $30,100 a day this year to break even.The company may return to profit this quarter, according to the mean of six analyst estimates, after returns for tanker owners surged more than sixfold in less than a month from January 27 as oil buyers booked the most vessels since at least 2005.The surplus of VLCCs in the Persian Gulf has averaged 15 percent so far this year, according to Bloomberg surveys comparing 30-day supply with expected cargoes. That’s the same as the 2010 average, according to the owners and brokers surveyed.Returns from the industry’s benchmark Saudi Arabia-to-Japan shipping route today declined 31 percent to $29,400 a day, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London.That was the biggest drop since the first trading day of the year.