Ardmore Shipping Corporation

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Ardmore Shipping's 2023 Investor Day, during which we will also be covering the company's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2022. I'm Brian Degnan with the IGB Group. Just a few administrative points before we get underway today. The event is being recorded and broadly distributed via live webcast, which along with today's slides is accessible at www.ardmoreshipping.com. An audio replay of the event will be available on the website from later today. The standard earnings press release was issued pre-market this morning and is also available on the website. So later in the event, following prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session, at which point we will take questions from the people with us in the room today. For those joining remotely, please feel free to submit any questions that you might have at any time to ardmore at I-G as in girl, B as in boy, IR.com. So ardmore at I-G-B-I-R.com. Throughout the event, and for the benefit of those joining remotely, we would ask that all speakers and questioners utilize the provided microphone. Slide three for the disclaimer here. Please allow me to remind you that our discussion today contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. contained in the fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings release. Moving to slide four, I would just like to briefly introduce you to the members of the Ardmore leadership team, whom we have the pleasure of hearing from today. We have with us Curtis McWilliams, Ardmore's chairman, Anthony Gurney, founder and chief executive officer, Bart Kelleher, chief financial officer, and Gernot Ruppelt, chief commercial officer. And with that, I would ask Curtis McWilliams, Ardmore's chairman, to come up for some brief Opening remarks.

I promise they'll be brief. On behalf of the Board of Ardmore Shipping, I'd like to welcome you to this, our annual Investor Day presentation. Now been 10 years since Ardmore became a publicly listed company on the New York Exchange. Over this time, Ardmore has always been committed to the highest standards of both governance and transparency. Today's presentation is just one element of this commitment, and I hope you will find it both interesting and informative. As you saw in our earnings release this morning, as chair, I'm enormously pleased with our 2022 performance, not only our strong earnings performance, but as well our continued commitment to our allocation, capital allocation policy, resulting in a very, very strong balance sheet. and our reintroduction of our dividend as we return capital to our shareholders. As you'll hear from the team today, we continue to believe that the prospects for our sector and more especially for Ardmore remain very bright as 2023 unfolds. In closing, I want to thank you, our shareholders, for your continued support of our company. Our focus as a board is to ensure that Ardmore remains solely focused on the creation of sustainable long-term value for its shareholders. I truly hope that you will continue, that we will continue to earn your trust as a steward of your investment. And with that, I'm happy to turn over the presentation to Tony Gurney, our CEO.

That was really good. I think we can just stop right there. Thanks, Curtis, and welcome, everyone. First, I'd like to outline the format of today's call. So Bart and I are going to start off by presenting the results of the fourth quarter and full year. We're then going to pivot to the Investor Day part of the presentation. I'll begin with an overview of Ardmore's strategy, and then Gernot will give his insights on the commercial side of the business before going into some details on the market outlook. And then we'll conclude the presentation and open up the call for questions from the floor as well as remotely. And again, for remote questions, please send them to ardmore at igbir.com. Turning to slide six. So for highlights, we're pleased to report profitable year thus far, with adjusted earnings of $144 million, or $3.74 a share. Fourth quarter performance continues to reflect the strength in the product and chemical tanker markets, with adjusted earnings of $54 million, or $1.30 per share, equating to an annualized book return on equity of 46%. Highlighted in the chart on the upper right of this slide, our full year results were driven by the strong second half, which has made it into the first quarter. On a TCE basis, our MRs earned $43,175 per day for the fourth quarter, and so far we're running at $39,500 for the first quarter of 2023 with 55% booked. Chemical tankers, on a capital-adjusted basis, earned $33,000 a day for the fourth quarter and are running just slightly lower at $31,300 for the first quarter with 70% booked. These rates emphasize the ongoing robustness of the market, and in fact, if the first quarter to date were to continue for the full year, although they're a little bit off the highs of last year, the resulting earnings would be about $4.60 a share. As a result of the strong performance and consistent with the capital allocation policy, we're pleased to declare a quarterly cash dividend of $0.45 a share, representing one-third of adjusted earnings. Further benefit of this performance, Ardmore continues to de-lever and strengthen its balance sheet, resulting in lower breakeven rates, higher quality earnings, and much greater substance behind our net asset value. Overall, we feel that between our operating performance and the solid financial profile, Ardmore is exceptionally well-positioned to continue benefiting from this market. One final important note on this slide, especially for those that are not fully familiar with our industry, is the operating leverage we have to charter rates where every $10,000 a day increase in rates results in an incremental $2.40 in earnings per share. So turning to slide seven, the market outlook remains very compelling, benefiting in particular from the current oil market volatility, which of course has a lot to do with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In fact, the conflict continues to drive a further pronounced and likely to be persistent reordering of global refined product trade, resulting in increased ton-mile demand and supporting very high rates. Our first quarter-to-date performance is marginally off the peak of last year, due in part to the impact of extreme weather and early refinery maintenance in the U.S. Gulf. We believe this is now behind us, with the Atlantic Basin recovering rapidly to the levels east of Suez over the past week. So arguably, the market's back to around $40,000 to $50,000 a day on a global basis. We're also seeing China reopening and set to strengthen global economic activity, and thus adding a further layer to product tanker demand, for example, for jet fuel. Meanwhile, chemical tanker demand is also forecast to expand in 2023, supported by global growth. Added to all these near-term factors are the robust underlying supply-demand fundamentals, which Gurnath will discuss in more detail later on. So turning to slide eight, We'll speak more about capital allocation later, but I wanted to highlight the dividend for the fourth quarter at 45 cents a share. The calculation is shown on the table to the right side of the slide. I'm equating to a current yield of 11%. The dividend will be paid on March 15th to all shareholders of record as of February 28th. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Bart.