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spk01: Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Eurodry conference call on the second quarter 2021 financial results. We have with us today Mr. Aristidis Pitas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer of the company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session, at which time, if you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. and wait for your name to be announced. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. Please be reminded that the company announced its results with a press release that has been publicly distributed. Before passing the floor to Mr. Pittas, I would like to remind everyone that in today's presentation and conference call, Eurodry will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Matters discussed may be forward-looking statements which are based on current management expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that may result in such expectations not being realised. I kindly draw your attention to slide two of the webcast presentation, which has the full forward-looking statement and the same statement was also included in the press release. Please take a moment to go through the whole statement and read it. I would now like to pass the floor over to Mr Pittas. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us today for our scheduled conference call. Together with me is Tasos Aslidis, our Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our financial results for the six-month period and quarter ended June 30th, 2021. Please turn to slide three. Our income statement highlights are shown here. For the second quarter of 2021, we reported total net revenues of 14.1 million and a net income of 2.2 million. Adjusted net income attributable to the common shareholders was 6.6 million, or $2.76 per share diluted. The main difference between net income and adjusted net income was the paper loss of about $3 million, on our FFAs, covering one vessel for Q3 and Q4 at $12,550 per day. Having taken this loss in Q2, our net income for Q3 and Q4 will not be affected by the low rate of that FFA. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter stood at $9.2 million. Our CFO, Tasos Sassilidis, will go over our financial highlights in more detail. later on in the presentation. Please turn to slide four for our operational highlights. Motor vessel Pantelis was fixed for a trip of about 90 to 130 days at $23,000 per day. And if the trip extends further, the vessel will earn 95% of the BPI. The blessed luck was fixed for 11 to 13 months at $19,500 per day. And lastly, the Alexandros P was fixed for a trip of about 65 days at $25,250 per day. During the second quarter, the company settled 90 days of previously sold forward freight agreements, the equivalent of one Panamax vessel, which was originally sold at a rate of $12,500 per day, with a loss of $590,000. Simultaneously, we had also sold FSAs for 90 days per quarter for Q3 and Q4 of 2021, the equivalent of one Panamax vessel at $12,550 per day. The valuation of Q3 and Q4 outstanding FSA contracts as of the end of June 2021 was negative $4.26 million, as mentioned previously, $3.1 million of the loss incurred in this quarter. As previously announced, in May 2021, the company acquired motor vessel Blessed Luck, a 76,000 deadweight dry bulk vessel built in 2004 in Japan, for $12.12 million. As of the time, company cash in hand was limited, The acquisition was initially partly financed by a short-term seller's credit of $5 million and a one-year bridge loan of $6 million provided by an entity affiliated with my family and approved by the independent members of our board. Both the seller's credit and the short-term loan earned an annual interest rate of 8%. In July 2021, the company repaid the seller's credit and signed a term sheet with the bank to draw a loan of $8 million with motor vessel Blessed Luck as collateral, which is expected to be drawn in August. In addition, as disclosed in June 2021, an amount of $3.3 million of the bridge loan was converted into common stock as per the terms of the loan, leaving just $2.7 million outstanding. There were no dry dockings or major repairs during the second quarter of 2021. Please turn to slide five for a summary of Eurodry's current fleet. As you can see, the acquisition of the blessed luck increased our fleet to eight units and further complemented our cluster of medium-aged Japanese-built Panamax-sized vessels alongside our cluster of new buildings. Our current fleet has an average age of 13 years and the cargo carrying capacity of about 600,000 deadweight tons. Slide 6 shows the current vessel employment schedule. As you can see, the effective coverage for the remainder of 2021, including the blessed luck, stands at about 27% in terms of minimum fixed rate contracts. If we include the vessel that is hatched through FFA, our coverage increases to 40%. This figure, of course, excludes ships on index charters that have secured employment but are open to market movements. We are pleased with our current positioning of forward coverages as we remain optimistic about the development of the market. TASOS will present our EBITDA calculator later on, showing how strongly current SFA market predictions can boost our EBITDA, and consequently earnings as well. This calculator will enable each one of you to easily use your own charter rate assumptions to determine our approximate expected EBITDA. and draw your own conclusions as to what levels our stocks will be trading at. Now let's turn to slide 7, where we'll go over the market highlights for the quarter ended in June 30th, 2021. During the second quarter, dry bulk index continued its strong performance as rates remained firm, supported by demand growth, sharp rise in dry bulk commodity prices, and operational bottlenecks. Similarly, one-year DC rates remain robust. As seen here, the spot rates for Panamaxes averaged $23,200 a day in the second quarter, and by July 30th they had increased to around $27,200 per day, after peaking at the end of June at around $30,400. Meanwhile, one-year time charter rates for Panamaxes averaged at close to $21,700 per day in Q2, reaching $26,900 by the last day of the quarter. Last week, one-year time shutter rates were at around $24,000 per day. As the dry bulk freight market has been trading strongly and reaching the high levels not seen in the past decade, vessel prices have also trended upwards. According to Clarkson, secondhand bulk carriers ship prices have had a sharp increase of 45%, while new building prices increased around 20% to more than $32.5 million and $30 million, respectively, for camsermax and ultramax vessels. During the first half of the year, the fleet has grown by 2%. Hello again and sorry for the interruption. The line dropped off, but I'll continue. We are at slide 9. So the global recovery continues at a solid pace, but now variants of COVID-19 may extend that uncertainty. The latest forecast indicates a downward revision in the Asian developing economies and an increase for advanced economies. reflecting the diverse economic prospects across countries. On the one hand, we have the developed countries with improved health metrics and additional fiscal support that have access to vaccines and can look forward to more normalized economic activities, while developing countries are still lagging behind with a version of pandemic dynamic and tighter financial conditions that may set back their recovery. According to the IMF, the global economy is projected to grow 6% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022. The 2021 global forecast is unchanged from the April forecast, but without setting revisions. Prospects for emerging markets and developing economies have been marked down for 2021, especially for emerging Asia. By contrast, the forecast for advanced economies is revised up. The revisions reflect pandemic developments and changes in policy support. Looking ahead, global growth for 2022 was upgraded by 0.5%, deriving largely from the forecast upgrade for advanced economies, particularly the United States, which is expected to grow by 4.9%. China and India are expected to grow at a still very reasonable 5.7% and 8.5% respectively. For 2023, global growth is expected to be around 3.5%, a healthy level too. Looking at the drive-back trade growth and based on Clarkson's projections for 2021, we see that the demand growth expectations continue the rapid trajectory to 4.3% for this year. For 2022 and 2023, the expected rival trade to grow at the moderate pace of 2.2% and 2.5% respectively. which I personally think is very conservative if global growth, as expected by the IMF and other major institutions, remains at elevated levels. Please turn to slide 10. The order book as a percentage of total fleet up until July 2021 stands at 6.1%. This is still around the lowest levels we've seen in the last 25 plus years. With the current order book and continuing demand trends for the coming years, we expect a fundamentally supported and continuous rebound in the dry bulk market for the next couple of years at least. Please turn to slide 11 for our dry bulk fleet overview. According to Clarkson's, fleet growth in 2021 will be around 3.8%. Taking into account scrapping and other fleet changes, we come to this 3.8%. This is less than the demand growth and supporting the case for a spill strengthening market, which is further enhanced due to the logistical bottlenecks we are experiencing. The order book is currently around 6.1%, which could imply that through scrapping and slippers, we could see a minimum fleet growth in 2022 and 2023. For 2024, new vessels will have to be ordered at some point, as otherwise we could see rates and prices surpassing even the previous super-cycle rates if demand holds up. Please turn to slide 12, where we summarize our outlook on the dry bulk market. Global recovery continues at a solid pace. Despite the new variants of COVID-19 emerging, which may delay but will likely not stop economic growth. Furthermore, several infrastructure projects have been announced but haven't yet been implemented. The dry bulk market has a strong trajectory on the back of highly supportive conditions in the commodity markets, having reached 11-year highs in mid-June 2021. While earnings could hold firm or ease back from current heights because of the logistical issues, the short- and medium-term outlook look positive, especially as the order book remains the lowest ever. Moreover, deliveries of new ships in 2022 and 2023 are expected to be minimal due to lack of available slots in shipyards. In addition, the lack of clarity for the fuel of the future, as not knowing the optimal ship for even five years out, makes the placing of any new order an uncertain proposition. Overall, a steady recovery in dry bulk volumes alongside limited supply growth and positive global economic sentiment should translate to further improvements into 2022 and likely beyond. However, market conditions could remain volatile as a number of risks remain around the eventual cost of the COVID pandemic and also about the cold rate. Let's turn to slide 13. The left side of the slide shows the evolution of one-year time charter rates of Panamax dry bulk vessels since 2000. As of July 30th, The one-year time charter rate for Panamax with capacity of $75,000 deadweight tons stood at around $24,000 per day, the highest it has been during the last years and approaching the levels last seen in 2010. The dry bulk market has been on a firm footing since the beginning of the year and we expect this trend to extend in the upcoming quarters. which are cyclically stronger than the first half of the year. As you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, the current price of a 10-year-old Panamax vessel is around $22 million. Over the past year, dry pulse prices have gradually been increasing, exceeding the historical median and average levels, but still significantly lower than prices seen in 2010. With a continuous strengthening freight rate environment, we would expect to see asset values increase even further. In this environment, we are of course capitalizing on the strong market by hosting significant earnings, refilling our cash coffers, and generally strengthening our balances. As free liquidity increases significantly from next quarter onwards, We are evaluating how best to use it for the benefit of our shareholders. This can be in the form of debt and preferred equity reduction, further vessel purchases, share buybacks, reinstitution of dividends. Almost probably a combination of some of the above. We also continue to evaluate opportunities for possible combinations with other fleets. focusing especially on using our status as a public company, which can provide significant advantages of value. Let me now pass the floor over to our CFO, Tasos Aslidis, to go over our various financial highlights in more detail.
spk02: Thank you very much, Aristides. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. I will now take you through our financial highlights for the second quarter and first half of 2021, and compared to the same periods of last year. For that, let's turn to slide 15. For the second quarter of 2021, the company reported total net revenues of 14.1 million, representing a 251% increase over total net revenues of 4 million during the second quarter of 2020, And this was the result of the higher time charter rates our vessels earned during the period and the additional vessel we acquired in the middle of the second quarter of this year. The company also reported net income for the period of 2.2 million and net income attributable common shareholders of 1.9 million as compared to a net loss attributable to common shareholders of 3.8 million and 4.2 million respectively for the same period of 2020. Interest and other financing costs for the second quarter of 2021 amounted to half a million compared to about 6 million for the same period of last year. Depreciation expenses for the second quarter of 2021 amounted to 1.8 million as compared to 1.6 million for the second quarter of last year. And again, this increase is due to the higher number of assets we owned during the second quarter of 2021. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2021 was 9.2 million compared to a negative EBITDA level of minus 1.3 million reported during the same period of last year. Basic and diluted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the second quarter of 2021 was 83 cents basic and 81 cents diluted compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $1.86 for the second quarter of 2020. Excluding the effect on the income attributable to common shareholders for the quarter of the unrealized loss on derivatives and the loss on debt extinguishment, the adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders was 6.6 million compared to a loss of 3.9 million for the second quarter of last year, and the adjusted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, were $2.81 basic and $2.76 diluted for this year compared to an adjusted loss per share of $1.73, basically diluted for the same period of 2020. Usually, security analysts do not include the above items in their published estimates of earnings per share. Now, if we look at the numbers for the first half of 2021, for that period, the company reported total net revenues of 22.7 million, representing an 150% increase over total net revenues of 9.1 million during the first half of last year, which again was the result of both the higher time charter rates our vessels earned and the additional vessel we acquired and operated for part of the period. The company reported net income for the period of 3.1 million, a net income attributable to common shareholders of 2.4 million as compared to a net loss of 6.1 million, a net loss attributable to common shareholders of 6.9 million for the first half of 2020. Interest and other financing costs for the first half of 2021 amounted to 1.1 million compared to 1.2 million for the same period of last year. Depreciation expenses for the first half of 2021 were 3.4 million compared to 3.3 million for 2020. Again, a bit higher due to the additional vessel we owned. Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2021 was 13.2 million compared to a negative 1 million reported during the first half of 2020. Basic and diluted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the first half of 2021 were $1.03 and $1.01, respectively, compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $3.03 for the first half of 2020. Excluding the effect on the earnings attributable to common shareholders for the first half of this year of the unrealized loss of derivatives and the loss on debt extinguishment. The adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders was 7.9 million compared to a loss of 6.2 million during the first half of last year. And the adjusted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the first half of this year were $3.40 basic and $3.33 diluted compared to a loss of $2.76 per share, basically diluted for the same period, the first half of 2020. As I mentioned earlier, security analysts typically do not include these adjustments in their published estimates of fairness per share. Let's now turn to slide 16 to review our fleet performance. We will start our review by looking first at our fleet utilization rates for the second quarter of 2021 and compare it to the same period of last year. As usual, our utilization rate is broken down into commercial and operational. During the second quarter of both 2021 and 2020, our commercial utilization rate was 100%. Our operational utilization rate for the second quarter of this year was 99.4%, compared to 99.9% for the same period of 2020. On average, we operated 7.37 vessels during the second quarter of 2021, earning an average time charter equivalent rate of $22,614 per day, a daily earnings rate that is three times higher when compared to the average earnings of $7,297 per day our seven vessels earned during the second quarter of last year. Our total daily vessel operating expenses, including management fees, generally in administrative expenses, but excluding dry docking costs, averaged about $6,467 per vessel per day during the second quarter of 2021, compared to $6,131 per vessel per day for the second quarter of 2020. If we move further down in this table, we can see the cash flow break-even rate that we had during the second quarter of this year, which takes into account dry docking expenses, cash interest expense, loan repayments, and our preferred dividend payments if paid in cash. Thus, for the second quarter of 2021, our daily cash flow break-even rate was about $10,313 per vessel per day compared to $11,800 per vessel per day for the same period of 2020, mainly because of lower dry docking expenses incurred. Let's now review our utilization rate and the remaining of the figures for the first half of this year. During the first half of 2021, our commercial utilization rate was 100%, and the operational utilization rate was 99.7% compared to 100% commercial and operational utilization rate for the same period of last year. On average, in 2021, the first half of the year, we operated 7.18 vessels, earning an average time chart equivalent rate of $18,879 per day compared to seven vessels that we operated last year, earning $7,390 per day as an average. Our total daily operating expenses, again, including management fees, GNA, but excluding dry yorking costs, for the six-month period of this year, the first six months of this year, amounted to $6,518 per vessel per day, compared to $6,000 and $93 per vessel per day for the first half of 2020. We look again at the bottom of this table to see our cash flow break-even level, which for the first six months of this year amounted to $10,688 per vessel per day, compared to $11,489 for the same period the first half of last year. Let's now move to slide 17. This is a relatively new slide. We started using it in the previous earnings presentation and we included it here to provide our shareholders and investors a tool to assess the earning potential of our fleet for the rest of 2021. The table shown in this slide has two components. The first refers to our fixed trade contracts. It is not worthy that except for the charter of our vessel Blessed Luck, Our vessels, having fixed-rate contracts, are totaling about 114 days during the third quarter and about eight days in the fourth quarter, over and above the Charter of Blessed Luck. We consider this fortuitous as the market is performing very well and producing and being expected to produce significant earnings for us. are employed in contracts linked to the relevant to their size Baltic Dry Index. Our calculator here indicatively shows the Supramax and Panamax Baltic forward rates as of August 3rd, 2021, and also shows how these index levels get translated to rates for our ships. We actually display the final blended rate for the open days of our fleet which you can see right below the Supermax and Panama forward rates in the table, and which, as you can see, turns out to be very similar to the index levels. Based on these assumptions, and by further assuming for simplicity 6,500 per vessel per day operating expenses and GNA costs, and a 5% commission rate, one can estimate the EBITDA contribution from our fleet. The final result is additionally adjusted for the FFA contract of 90 days per quarter for the rest of the year that we have entered. This reflects a Panamax vessel equivalent. This overall presentation is meant to provide, as I mentioned, a tool to calculate our EBITDA for the remaining quarter of 2021. Obviously, one can enter his or her own assumptions about the rates to do that. However, it is hard not to observe that if the market trades for the rest of the year, as they are currently indicated by the FFA contracts materialized, our quarterly EBITDA will exceed what we reported in the second quarter by about 50%, and the result in the EBITDA contribution from the second half of 2021 to be about double of that of the first half. Let's now move to slide 18 to review our debt repayment profile. On the top part of the slide, we see our loan repayments as well as our balloon payments of our bank debt as of June 30th, 2021. The graph on the top does not include the seller's credit and the bridge loan for their position of blessed luck that Aristeas mentioned, but does include a bank loan we agreed to and plan to draw this month to finance the vessel. All in all, as of June 30th, 2021, we had an outstanding debt of about 62 million, and that figure includes the seller's credit and the remaining bridge loan. As you can see from the graph, we're going to make about $4.2 million of debt repayments during the remainder of 2021, and we have an $8 million balloon payment at the end of the year, which is collateralized by three of our Panamax vessels. This balloon payment in 2021 is well below the scrap price of the vessels collateralizing it, and we anticipate that we'll have no issues refinancing it. In fact, we're in the process of doing so. Again, from this chart, we can see that we have a declining level of loan repayments over the next four years, of course, assuming that the balloon payments are made as shown, with another balloon payment coming due in 2023 of about 11.3 million, which is collateralized by 2018 Kamsar Max Vessel. Of course, when these balloon payments are financed, the revised loan profile will reflect that. I would like to make also a quick note here on the cost of funding. The average margin of our debt, as you can see from the comment on the right part of the slide, is about 3.3%. Assuming a libel rate of about 0.3% on the top of it, the cost of our senior debt is estimated to be around 3.6%. If we include in this figure the cost of the preferred equity, the average blended cost of Our non-equity funding would be around 4.4% as of the end of the last quarter. Regarding our preferred equity, I would like to highlight that following the 3 million net redemption that we made in the first quarter of this year, we have agreed to reduce the dividend rate on the preferred equity to 8% per annum if paid in cash until January 2023. At the bottom of this slide, we can see also a projection of our cash flow break-even level over the following 12 months and the breakdown of it, which is expected to be around $11,231 per vessel per day. Let me now move to the next slide, slide 19, where we can see some highlights from our balance sheet. This slide gives you a snapshot of our assets and liabilities in a simplified way. On our asset side, First, we can see that we have cash and other assets as of June 30th, 2021 of about 19.9 million. Of course, on our asset side, we also have our vessels, the book value of which amounts to about 108 million, making our total book value of about 127.9 million. On the liability side, Our debt as of the end of the last quarter stood, as I mentioned, at 62 million, which approximately represents 48% of the book value of our assets. Our preferred equities stood at about 13.6 million, which represents another 10.7% of our assets. And we have remaining liabilities of about 8.4 million, or 6.6% of our book assets. That leaves us with a net book value of $44.6 million, which translates to $16.9 per share. However, the market value of our fleet is significantly higher than its book value, and we need to make such an adjustment to get a better estimate of the value of the company. We estimate that as of the end of June 2021, the market value of the eight vessels we currently own to be in the range of 140 to 145 million, that is 30 to 35% higher than the book value, resulting in an estimate for our net asset value per share of about $29 at least. And although our share price has recently increased, our stock currently trades below that level And we believe investing in our company presents an opportunity with significant appreciation potential. And with that, I would like to turn the floor back to Aristides.
spk07: Thank you, Tasso. Let me now open up the floor for any questions you may have.
spk01: Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Our first question for today is from Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, thank you. First from me, reviewing one of your comments on the new build market, Aristides, I think it was on slide 11 that you were, what did you say about 2023? I think you mentioned that an urgent need to start building new vessels by 2023 based on that chart, but then those new vessels want to enter the market for at least a couple years? Or can you review the timing of that comment, please?
spk03: Yes, sure, Tate. I think that because the current order book for 22 and 23 is very low, if demand stays strong, remains quite strong, we will have a shortage of ships. So at some point we have to start ordering new vessels that will come in in 2024 onwards because we will have a lack of ships. So I think this we will see more vessels being ordered during the next 18 months.
spk05: Okay, but not as But the impact on the near-term rates has not appeared yet, or at least has that started to appear in what you're seeing in FFA's available for 2022.
spk03: Yeah, that is gradually increasing, not fast enough. I think it will probably increase faster, but of course it will depend on other things as well, the pandemic and the the logistical issues that we may be facing because of that, and the global growth rate. So it's very difficult to project the future. What is relatively easy to see is that the order book for 2022 and 2023 deliveries is extremely low.
spk05: Yes. And then thank you for putting in the EBITDA calculator slide again with about 40 million of EBITDA in 2021. I was just interested in rolling forward to 2022. I mean, is the FFA market liquid enough for you to start locking in rates besides the ships you have on fixed contracts going in 2022 or still early to talk about the rates that you could start fixing for 2020?
spk03: Sure. The FFA is liquid enough for somebody who wants to play the FFA markets for 2022. You can find the coverage there, but there is two things. One, we feel that that is still lower than what we will see later on in the year, so we are not inclined to take any protection at those levels today. Plus, the FFAs have the significant issue that you have to post a lot of collateral in order to do an FFA trade. And if it moves against you, you have to be increasing that collateral. So it takes up a lot of cash. An easier way to roll forward perhaps is to fix, you know, one-year time charter rates, which does not consume this extra liquidity.
spk05: Great. Thank you. And one more from me, Tassos, for the use of cash in the current quarter. And maybe I missed it. Maybe it was some netting out amounts. But the blessed luck was a $12 million acquisition but then the cost and the acquisition amount in terms of the cash outflow is $7 million. Will there be another outflow in the 3Q based on the seller credit timing, or how does that usually work?
spk02: The difference exactly in the seller's credit date that we had the seller's loan, essentially, which I think we paid in July this year. So the remaining $5 million will be seen in our cash flow statements next quarter.
spk05: Okay, thank you very much.
spk07: Thank you, Dave.
spk01: Thank you, Mr. Sullivan. The next question is from Pofrat from Noble Capital Market. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning, Aristides. Good morning, Tassos. Aristides, could you talk about what's happened recently In the context of it, you know, Panamaxes have been a little weaker than ultras and just sort of what's going on there. And then also, could you give us your view on sort of the next six months, you know, in the context of whether we're going to see the typical seasonality in the market or sort of what you're anticipating in the fourth and first quarters, you know, coming up?
spk03: Tough questions, tough questions, Paul. It's more easy to talk about what has happened than what will happen in the next six months. Panamaxes have been very strong during the first parts of the year due to the extra grain shipments that we had seen up to June. And this has quietened up a little bit in this last month. And I think that probably explains a little bit of the softening of the Panamax market as compared to the Ultramax market, which we haven't seen any softening yet. So going forward, of course, Q3 and Q4 are historically, as I said and you repeated, seasonally stronger periods than the first half. It remains to be seen exactly what will happen. We have the huge bottlenecks that are created because of the pandemic and the logistic issues and the time it takes for boats to discharge vessels and all that on one side. We have the improving demand from the Western economies on the other hand. It's very difficult to say exactly how the next few months will pan out. But I would think that we would expect strong rates to continue. If they will be much higher or much lower or same, it's very difficult. A little bit higher or a little bit lower or the same, it's a little bit difficult to tell.
spk04: Great. Thanks. And can you talk about the decision or what happened with the Alex P as far as exiting the Gmax pool and how you're viewing that? I mean, potentially, are you going to continue to let it work in the spot market or is there a view that you potentially would put that on a time charter?
spk03: I think we decided to take it out after, what was it, three and a half years because we feel that we can employ ourselves a little bit better in the spot market at these high levels. So that protection was not needed there. If at some point we decide to fix it again, for a year or something like that, that remains to be seen. We haven't decided on such thing yet. We are trading in spot. We fixed it for a first cargo into Brazil for the next two months, which is usually an area where you can get high charter rates. We'll see how it goes, but there is no intention right now to fix longer periods. We may, though, if we see Q3 strengthening, get a little bit more cover on maybe fixing one or two more seats of our fleet for yearly periods.
spk04: Okay, great. And then, Tassos, I know you're in discussions on a new loan of $12 million to refinance the balloon and add some extra... you know, it looks like liquidity of $4 million. Can you talk about that decision and then also, you know, the context of the extra liquidity? And then also, would you happen to have the terms yet as far as, you know, the amortization and balloon payment that might be associated with the new $12 million loan?
spk02: It's actually, of course, I can talk. It's relatively straightforward, I think, with the increase in values. We can actually refinance the $8 million using only two rather than three vessels as collateral and drawing a loan of about $9 million. So we would be able to repay if we wanted the whole loan and have a free ship unencumbered. What I end up doing is repaying the portion that is covered by those two ships and extending the loan for the third one. You are right indicating that we might have a four million additional liquidity, which would be very useful as we are looking at possible investment opportunities and other uses of funds. I think the loan we're looking at is a four year term loan with normal amortization going down to about the scrap value.
spk04: Okay, great. Aristides, if you could just talk about, you know, the comment about potentially, you know, with public security that you potentially would be, you know, looking for acquisition or opportunities to merge or acquire, you know, for companies that are looking to exit, you know, that might be private now. Can you talk about, you know, the strategy? Would it be more oriented towards renewing the fleet or Or would it be, you know, adding, you know, sort of looking at your current fleet and saying, you know, we're looking for a like fleet? I mean, can you just help me understand sort of what your strategically how the fleet might change over time?
spk03: Yes, it's difficult to say. What I can say, because we don't have any projects that we are looking at right now, so it's difficult to say. and of course we are there to look at every opportunity that you know could make sense for our shareholders but practically we are focusing on the size of the ships that we currently own from supermax up to cancer max that is the the area we feel comfortable with so we're looking at projects there we are open to look at all the vessels and newer vessels. We would like the idea if there is somebody who wants to contribute their vessel into Eurodry in exchange for sales and some cash to go ahead and add that vessel as long as it fits this broad criteria that I just told you. And of course it makes financial sense. We are open to such deals. We have discussed things in the past. We are not currently in any discussion, though, with anybody about the contribution of one or a group of vessels into the company.
spk04: Great. That's very helpful. Thank you so much. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back for closing comments.
spk03: Okay, thank you, everybody, for this discussion today, and we will be back with you in three months' time to discuss the Q3 results. Thank you, and enjoy the summer.
spk02: Thanks, everybody. Bye.
spk01: Thank you, sirs. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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