United Maritime Corporation

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the United Maritime Corporation conference call on the first quarter ended March 34th, 2023 financial results. We have with us Mr. Stamatis Stantianis, Chairman and CEO, and Mr. Stavros Giftakis, Chief Financial Officer of United Maritime Corporation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a question and answer session, at which time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. Please be advised that this conference call is being recorded today, Thursday, May 18th, 2023. The archived webcast of the conference call will soon be made available on the United Maritime website www.unitedmaritime.gr. 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 statement is contained in the first quarter ended March 31, 2023 earnings release, which is available on the United Maritime website, again, www.unitedmaritime.gr. I would now like to turn the conference over to one of your speakers today, the chairman and CEO of the company, Mr. Stamatis Santanis. Please go ahead.

Good morning or good afternoon.

I would like to welcome everyone to United Maritime's earnings conference call where we are going to discuss our financial performance for the first quarter of 2023 as well as our main corporate and commercial developments. As a general reminder, United Maritime was established less than a year ago with a main focus to take advantage of market opportunities in the mainstream shipping sectors. We have been very successful in our actions delivering $37 million in profits in 2022 in less than six months of operations. Following the highly profitable sale of three of our tankers by the end of last year, our average fleet size in Q1 2023 was reduced to less than three ships, including our remaining tanker vessel, which underwent its special survey dry dock for most of the first quarter. During this transitional period for our company, our average daily time chart equivalent rate was $10,300, we generated net revenues of $2.8 million and adjusted EBITDA of minus $1.5 million and adjusted net loss of $3.7 million. However, since the beginning of the current quarter, our tanker has resumed its time charter of $40,000 a day, while capesize rates have recovered sharply since March. Despite the temporary weak performance, we are declaring another dividend for the first quarter in continuation of our exceptional shareholder returns since our inception. This will bring the total cash dividends that have been declared in the last six months to $1.15 per share, which represents a cash yield of about 40% compared to the recent closing price of our stock. The total cash dividends amount so far to $8.7 million, which, combined with the $6 million of buybacks of common shares, aggregate to $14.7 million in shareholder rewards, or 62% of our market cap as of May 16, 2023. We have also swiftly executed transactions to regrow our fleet through the acquisition of six drive-out vessels for approximately $126 million. we have fully funded these transactions without diluting our shareholders. On a fully delivered basis, our fleet's market value is estimated at about 185 million versus debt and leasing liabilities of about 90 million, leading to a fleet net asset value of approximately 95 million. Based on our current market capitalization of 25 million, we believe that our shares are significantly undervalued. Moving on, let's share some highlights on corporate developments that have taken place since our last quarterly update, before our CFO Stavros Giftakis discusses our financial results in more details. Firstly, during the first quarter, we took delivery of four newly acquired dry bulk vessels. In February, the goods ship and tradership, both Cape size vessels built in Japan, entered our fleet and continued their employment under their existing floating rate time centers. As a reminder, the vessels were acquired for an aggregate price of $36.25 million and were financed by a $15.2 million loan facility and cash on hand. In March and April, we took delivery of two Kamsar Max vessels, previously agreed to be acquired for a total of $39.2 million. The OAC, a Kamsar Max vessel built in 2010, entered our fleet in March, while the delivery of the 2009-built Cretan Sea was completed in April. Both vessels have entered employment under index-linked time charters for about 12 months. The purchase price was funded using cash on hand and a $24.5 million sale and leaseback structure. Furthermore, in February, we took delivery of the Chris C, a 78,000 deadweight Panamax vessel built in Japan in 2013. We have agreed to charter the vessel under a bare boat agreement for 18 months with a purchase option at the end of the charter period, which brings the total acquisition cost at approximately $23.4 million. Lastly, in April, we agreed to charter in for 12 months one more Panamax bulk carrier built in 2015 under a similar arrangement. The total cost consideration, including the purchase option, is expected to reach approximately $27 million. We expect to take delivery of this Panamax that will be renamed Synthesi during the third quarter of 2023. Finally, on our commercial and fleet updates, our remaining tanker, the Epanastasi, underwent its dry dock survey for most of Q1 and has resumed employment under its time charter at a fixed rate of $40,000 a day. Moving on to our dry bulk fleet, we exercise certain options to convert the floating index-linked rates to fixed-time charters on two vessels. On the Panamax vessel Cree C, we fixed the second quarter of 2023 at a charter rate of $15,500, and on the Cape-sized vessel Glory Ship, we fixed the charter rate until the end of 2023 at a level of daily rate of $17,600. We intend to make use of these options more opportunistically to achieve higher returns on our capital. More specifically, for the second quarter of the year, so far, we have achieved 71% cover of our ownership days at an average TCE of $18,860 per day, so we estimate our daily time charter equivalent to average over $17,900. To put it into perspective, we are talking about a 75% higher average time shutter equivalent rate over a double size of fleet. On that note, I would like to pass the call to Stavros to discuss the financials and it will be transferred back to me for the concluding remarks. So Stavros, please go ahead.