Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp.

thank you for standing by ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the synergy maritime holdings corporation conference call on the first quarter ended may 31st 2023 financial results we have with us mr stomatis santanis chairman and ceo and mr stavros kiftakis chief financial officer of synergy maritime holdings call at this time all participants are in listen-only mode There will be a question and answer session at which time if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that this conference call is being recorded today, Thursday, May 25th, 2023. The archived webcast of the conference call will soon be made available on the Synergy website, www.synergymaritime.com. Many of the remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ materially from the results projected from those forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that can cause the actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the first quarter ended May 31, May 31st, 2020 free earnings release, which is available on the Synergy website again, www.synergymaritime.com. I would now like to turn the conference over to one of your speakers today, the chairman and CEO of the company, Mr. Stamatis Antonis.

Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator.

Hello, I would like to welcome everyone to our conference call. Today we are presenting the financial results of the first quarter of 2023, while we are also pleased to announce the distribution of another cash dividend. As we discussed in our previous earnings call, during the first quarter of 2023, we went through adverse seasonality in the Cape size market. The Baltic Cape size index average approximately $9,100 per day, and obviously this affected our financial performance considerably. We attribute this market weakness mainly to the tail end of the COVID restrictions in China. However, following China's official reopening in March, we have seen a strong rebound in industrial activity, as well as vessel charter rates for Cape sizes. The overall fundamentals are quite encouraging for the remainder of the year. Notwithstanding the weak Q1, our Board of Directors has declared another regular cash dividend of 2.5 cents per share, which brings our total dividend distributions since the beginning of 2022 to $1.30 per share or approximately $1.55 per share when including the shares of United Maritime at the current trading price. I will now provide some financial highlights and our CFO, Stavros Giftakis, will provide further analysis later in this call.