LONDON (Bloomberg) — Bermuda-based Frontline Ltd., the world’s second-biggest oil-tanker company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 0.6 percent after it sold two vessels for gains of $73.2 million.

Net income was $134.6 million, or $1.80 a share, compared with $133.8 million, or $1.79, a year earlier, the company said yesterday in a statement. Stripping out the tanker sales, profit declined 54 percent to $61.4 million. Sales slumped 19 percent to $350 million.

“There’s a larger gain on the sale of assets than some people were expecting,” said Anders Rosenlund, an analyst for ABG Sundal Collier ASA in Oslo. “If you adjust for that, the result is slightly weaker.”

Oil shipping suffered a “weakening in the market” in the final quarter that has extended into 2007, Frontline said today, after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut supplies by 800,000 barrels a day. Daily ship-hire rates for all of the company’s tankers fell in the fourth quarter.

“Shipping stocks are down along with all other stocks,” said Robin Byde, an analyst for HSBC Securities in London who rates the stock “underweight.” The stock also may be lower today after a “good run” this year.

OPEC members cut exports to reverse a decline in the oil price. Brent crude oil fell 12 percent in the second half of 2006 to end the year at $60.13 a barrel. It reversed four days of increases yesterday, dipping 88 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $59.07 a barrel.

Frontline’s profit excluding asset sales was expected to fall 58 percent to $56.7 million, or 76 cents a share, according to the median estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News by telephone and e-mail last week. The company was forecast to earn $120 million including tanker-sale gains worth about $62 million, according to the median estimate of eight analysts surveyed by SME Direkt.

Warmer-than-usual temperatures kept US heating demand 17 percent below average in the last two months of 2006, according to Missouri-based forecaster Weather Derivatives, further crimping demand for crude. US imports fell to a 14-month low of 8.9 million barrels a day in the week ended December 15, Energy Department data showed.

Earnings from Frontline’s Very Large Crude Carriers, or VLCCs, the biggest class of tankers with a capacity of 2 million barrels, were $48,000 a day during the quarter, the company said. They were $59,800 in the previous quarter.

Frontline’s biggest competitor in VLCCS is closely held Tankers International LLC, which operates a pool of 43 of the vessels on behalf of a group of owners. Frontline left the pool in 2002.