StealthGas, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Stealth Gas First Quarter 2020 conference call. During the call, all participants will be on a listen-only mode. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I must advise you that the call is being recorded today, on Tuesday 26th May 2020. And I shall now hand over to your host, Michael Jolliffe. Please go ahead.

Good morning everyone and welcome to our first quarter 2020 earnings conference call and webcast This is Michael Jolliffe the board chairman of Stealthgas and with me on the call is our chief executive officer Harry Vafias and our finance officer Fenia Sakellaris who will later on discuss our financial performance Before we commence our presentation I would like to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking statements which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. At this stage, if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on slide 2 of this presentation. Risks are further disclosed in stealth gas filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to point out that all amounts quoted, unless otherwise clarified, are implicitly slated in US dollars. Slide 3 summarizes the key highlights of our first quarter 2020 that we released today. It is widely acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have disrupted economic activity and demand. This has had a major impact on global shipping markets. Indeed, we are experiencing unprecedented times and great uncertainty as to when global demand will be restored, thus returning shipping activity to normality. Since the beginning of the year, when the COVID-19 started spreading across China and to its neighbours, our market's positive momentum was significantly altered. We began to face weaker demand, port restrictions and safety regulations that resulted in a slowdown of Shipping Trade. Nevertheless, our good quarterly results are our testimony that Stealth Gas Defensive Positions is weathering well this unprecedentedly bad storm. Our period coverage allowed us to commit less than 10% of our voyage days in the spot market. Hence, we minimized the rippling effects that poor spot activity and prolonged waiting times may have had on our fleet performance. We managed to achieve an impressive, given market conditions, operational utilization of close to 98%. Going forward, we have about 69% of fleet days secured on period charters for the remainder of 2020, with total fleet employment days for all subsequent periods generating approximately $126 million in contracted revenues. undoubtedly providing us with a good shield against these uncertain times. Focusing on our financial performance highlights, our voyage revenues came in at $34.4 million, a decrease of $4.1 million compared to the same period of last year, solely attributed to our strategic fleet contraction. Our daily time charter equivalent continues to rise. compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, our daily time charter equivalent increased by about $400 even though our daily spot revenues marked about 15% decline. With an EBITDA of about $16.5 million, we generated a net income of $3 million, corresponding to an earnings per share of $0.08, thus marking one of our best performances in the past couple of years. We do need to note that this quarter we also faced substantial technical damages on one of our small LPGs, consequently burdening our operating costs by almost a million dollars. The positive aspect is that this damage is liable for insurance reimbursement. Last but not least, we created value for our shareholders by purchasing, during April 2020, through a tender offer, almost 1.4 million GasShares for a total consideration of nearly $3 million. Please move to slide number four, which provides an analysis of our fleet employment. In terms of charter types, out of a fleet of 41 operating vessels, excluding our eight joint venture vessels, we have 11 of these on bare boat, 25 on time charters, and five in the spot market. Given market uncertainty and volatility, driven by demand variations, we strive to minimize our spot exposure to the extent that our market permits us to do so. During the past three months, we concluded four new charters and charter extensions, isolating, as most important, the time charters concluded for two of our tankers. Indeed, our Afromax tanker, the Stealth Barana, is now under a one-year time charter, whilst one of our product tankers will commence a two-year time charter at a quite competitive rate. Overall, we have a solid fleet employment. Our period coverage for the remainder of 2020 is in the order of nearly 70%. More specifically, our average fleet coverage for the third quarter is 79%, while for the fourth it is in the order of 72%. Our contracted revenues are in the order of $126 million, with about $67 million secured up to the end of 2020, corresponding to an average daily time charter equivalent of about $9,700. One of our main risks or opportunities, depending on how you view the market, is the fact that we have 17 vessels concluding their period contracts, thus opening up until the end of this year. In slide five, I would like to provide a summary update as to our two joint venture performances. With regard to our first established joint venture, that compromised in its... Sorry.

that comprise in its majority of small LPG vessels.