Ardmore Shipping Corporation

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Ardmore Shipping 2024 Investor Day, during which we will also be covering the company's results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2023. I'm Brian Degnan with the IGB Group. Just a few administrative points before we get underway today. This 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. I'll turn to slide two here. Later in the event, following the 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 igbir.com. That's ardmore at indiagolfbravoindiaromeo.com. Throughout the event, and for the benefit of those joining remotely, we'd ask that all those with questions utilize the provided microphones. Turning to slide three, 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 is contained in the fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release. Moving to slide four, I'd like to introduce you to the members of the Ardmore leadership team, whom we will 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, the chair of Ardmore Shipping Corporation, to please join us on stage to provide today's opening remarks.

Good morning, or good afternoon now, excuse me. On behalf of the Ardmore Board and its senior management team, let me welcome you to our annual now investor conference. To say that we live in interesting times would be an understatement. Wars in Europe and the Middle East and congestion caused by the deteriorating climate, drought-related conditions in the Panama Canal have resulted in profound changes to trade flows for our product tankers. Over the course of the next hour, you will hear how Ardmore's strict commitment to three guiding principles, those being one, performance and progress. We believe these are not mutually exclusive endeavors, but in the long run support Ardmore's ability to excel in both arenas. Two, our well-articulated capital allocation policy. And three, our ongoing efforts to ensure that we have best-in-class governance. We believe that these continue to position the company well to drive our financial performance both in the short term as well, and more importantly, in the long term. With that being said, I want to again thank you for your continued interest in Ardmore and your support of our company. We remain solidly committed to being good stewards of your investment. And with that, I'll ask Tony, our CEO, to come and begin his remarks. Thank you, Curtis.

What happened to your foot? Okay, good. Great. Okay, so firstly, I'd like to thank you, Curtis, for those kind remarks. I would like to outline the format for today's meeting. Bart and I are going to start off by presenting our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2023, and then we're then going to pivot to the Investor Day segment, which Bart and Gernot are going to lead. focusing on our strategy and how we're converting these strong markets into earnings. And then at the end, I'll offer some closing thoughts before opening up the meeting to questions, either from here at the floor or remotely. And again, for remote questions, please send them to ardmore at igbir.com. So turning first to slide six for highlights. We're pleased to report another successful year for Ardmore with earnings of $113 million or $2.71 a share, continuing what is now a multi-year trend. Our fourth quarter performance reflects robust product and chemical tanker market conditions with adjusted earnings of $26 million or $0.63 a share and with further strength building into the first quarter. Our MRs earned $32,500 per day for the fourth quarter and $35,400 per day so far in the first quarter with 60% booked. And our chemical tankers on a capital adjusted basis earned 29,300 per day for the fourth quarter and 30,100 per day so far for the first quarter with 70% booked. Our markets are clearly experiencing significant strength as a result of geopolitical and climate related trading restrictions. bolstering already tight supply-demand fundamentals, all of which are going to be the themes and focus of our presentation today. So meanwhile, we continue to execute on our longstanding capital allocation policy. Today we're declaring another quarterly cash dividend of 21 cents per share, consistent with our policy of paying out one-third of adjusted earnings. And as a part of a gradual fleet upgrade and modernization plan, we've acquired a 2017 built MR tanker while also simultaneously selling our 2010 built Ardmore Seafarer. In addition, we've opportunistically chartered out one of our chartered NMRs to realize a $7,500 a day spread and a profit of $2.7 million over the remaining one year period. And overall, we believe that Ardmore is in an excellent position to benefit from these ongoing strong market conditions. So turning to slide seven, near-term product and chemical tanker market outlook. I want to take the opportunity now to briefly introduce the geopolitical and climate-related trading restrictions that have been affecting our market. The disruptions in the Red Sea and the consequent rerouting of vessels around Africa are adding significantly to voyage lengths and therefore to ton-mile demand. But before we go further, we need to remember that numbers aside, we're dealing with real people with real world issues. And I'd like to acknowledge the key role of our seafarers in this increasingly dangerous world and to emphasize that their security is our top priority. But from a pure economic standpoint, as you can see from the graph on the upper right, refined product ton mile demand is up 11% year on year, with the Red Sea disruptions playing a substantial role. At the same time, the impact of the EU refined product embargo persists, further exacerbated by European diesel inventories approaching historical lows. And in addition, restrictions in the Panama Canal have reduced traffic by up to 30 percent overall and quite a bit more for MRs. This bottleneck is resulting in prolonged voyages and a reduced effective supply of all ships, including product tankers. The aggregate impact of all these disruptions are illustrated on the graph in the lower right. Meanwhile, demand fundamentals remain compelling. And not just the demand side, but on the supply side, we see very low levels of scheduled new building deliveries for at least the next two, three years, which should really limit fleet growth. And with that, I'm happy to hand the call back to Bart. The meeting, not the call.