CMB.TECH NV Ordinary Shares

Good morning and welcome to the Euronav first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialist for pressing the start key followed by zero on your telephone keypad. There will be an opportunity later for questions. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Gallagher, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and afternoon to everyone and thanks for joining Euronav's Q1 2021 earnings call. Before I start, I would like to say a few words. The information discussed on this call is based on information as of today, Thursday, the 6th of May 2021, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance, and may include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events, performance, underlying assumptions, and other statements which are not statements of historical facts. All forward-looking statements attributable to the company or to persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by reference to the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in the company's filings with the SEC, which are available free of charge on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and on our own company's website at www.uranav.com. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of the particular statement and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to read our safe harbor statement on page two of the slide presentation. I will now pass on to Chief Executive Hugo de Stoep to start with the agenda slide on slide three. Hugo.

Thank you, Brian. Welcome to our call today. As usual, I will firstly run through the Q1 highlights and some comments on our active capital allocation during the cycle before passing on to Liv or CFO, who will provide a review of the financial statements. Brian, our head of investor relations, will then look at the current themes in the market before I return again to discuss our outlook and traffic lives before we take questions. So turning to slide four and the highlights page. Q1 was admittedly one of the toughest freight markets we have had in recent years. Market recovery has yet to gain traction as either barrels were repeatedly kept out of the market or demand rises failed to materialize as COVID-related restrictions were applied again. As we say in our press release today, available tonnage is abundant. There are simply too many ships and not enough cargoes. There are, however, encouraging signs with the tapering of OPEC plus production, which we hope will translate into more export barons. This is encouraging, but our visibility on this recovery remains low. Our sector is cyclical, and when it is bad times to be an operator, you need to think about the future, Hence, we have taken the opportunity to invest counter-cyclically at what we believe is a low point in terms of value and have invested in the latest VLCC and Sirius Max vessels and are closely cooperating with the shipyards to ensure they can maximize their potential role in the energy transition and emissions reductions. I will now pass over to our CFO, Lever, to walk through the financial highlights. Lever, over to you.