Diana Shipping inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Diana Shipping 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Ed Nebb of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Donna, and thanks to all of you for joining us for the Diana Shipping, Inc. 2021 Second Quarter Conference Call. The members of the management team who are with us today are Ms. Samira Paliu, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Anastasios Margaronis, President, Mr. Yanis Zafirakis, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Treasurer and Secretary, Mr. Eleftherios Papachufon, Chief Operating Officer, and Ms. Maria Dede, Chief Accounting Officer. Before management begins their remarks, let me just remind you of the Safe Harbor Notice, which you can see on today's news release. Certain statements made during the conference call which are not historical fact are forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, expectations, projections, or beliefs as to future events that may or may not prove to be accurate. For a description of the risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause future results to differ from the forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And now, without further delay, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ms. Samira Mispaliu, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Diana Shipping Inc.' 's second quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is, as Ed mentioned, Semide Amispalou, the company's CEO, and it is an honor and a privilege to be presenting to you today. Let's turn to slide number four. I will briefly update you on the company's snapshot as of today. We currently have 36 vessels in the water with a carrying capacity of approximately six 4.6 million deadweight tons. This is one vessel less from last quarter due to delivery of the motor vessel Nyas to her buyers late last week. We expect our fleet to grow again by one vessel, though, after we take delivery of our recent acquisition, the motor vessel Manolia, a Japanese-built 2011 Kamsar Max vessel. Our fleet utilization has remained at very high levels. coming in at 99.6% for the second quarter of 2021, as against 98.6% for the first quarter of the year. 31 vessels of our fleet continue to be managed in-house by Diana Shipping Services, and five vessels are managed by our 50-50 joint venture with Williamson Ship Management. At the end of the second quarter, we employed 876 people at sea and ashore. Let's move on to slide number five. I will go over the highlights of the second quarter and recent developments. Market conditions have remained robust during the last quarter and continue being positive to this date. While we have seen some volatility, especially in the FFA rates during this period, spot rates remain firm and are close to 10-year highs for every dry bulk segment. Stacey will expand further on the market dynamics and the market expectations for the near to medium term further on in this call. Specifically for our company, in April, we put in place an ATM program which we view as a good tool to have and to use should specific market conditions exist. As of today, we have not utilized the ATM program. In June of this year, we successfully issued a five-year contract 125 million US dollars senior secured bonds on the Oslo Stock Exchange with a coupon of 8.375%, approximately 74 million US dollars of the proceeds were utilized for the repurchase of the majority of our existing 9.5% senior unsecured bonds and the remainder of the new bond proceeds will be used for the repurchase of the remaining old bonds in September and for general working purposes. Within July, we agreed to acquire the motor vessel Manolia, a 2011 Japanese-built Campamax vessel for 22 million US dollars. We anticipate taking delivery of our new acquisition by the end of February of next year. Also last week, the motor vessel Nyass was delivered to the new owners. The combination of the two sale and purchase transactions has allowed us to maintain our fleet size intact while at the same time improving somewhat the average age of our fleet. In July, a tender offer was initiated to repurchase approximately 3.33 million common shares at the price of 4.5 US dollars per share. As we have done in the past, we are ready to put the use of our liquidity when we feel that our shares are trading at levels that we consider attractive, given the prevailing market fundamentals. Also within July, we concluded a supplemental agreement with Nordea to extend the existing loan maturity until 2024, while at the same time, upsizing the facility by $460,000. As we stand, we are very comfortable with our debt maturity profile, and Yanis will go over this in more detail further on in our call. Lastly, our consistent chartering strategy has allowed us to have currently secured approximately $167 million of contracted revenues for full year 2021. Turning to the financial highlights on the second quarter of 2021 on slide six, we find ourselves as of June 30th, 2021, with a cash and cash equivalents position of $155 million US dollars, including restricted cash, as against 82.9 million US dollars as of December 31, 2020. Our debt, net of deferred financing costs, stood at 461.5 million US dollars at the end of the second quarter of 2021, as against 420.3 million US dollars at the end of 2020. Our time charter revenues for the second quarter of 2021 amounted to $47 million, as against $41 million for the second quarter of 2020. Last but not least, the company this quarter returned to profitability, boasting a profit of $0.02 per share for the second quarter of 2021 versus a loss of $0.14 per share for the same period of 2020. Again, Yanis will go over these as well as the six-month numbers in more detail further on in this course. Moving on to slide seven, we find a summary of all of our recent chartering activities. Once again, consistent with our conservative and disciplined chartering strategy, we have taken advantage of the improving chartering market and have secured attractive time charters for eight vessels of our fleet. More specifically, we charted six Panamax to post-Panamax vessels at a weighted average daily rate of $25,693, and for a remaining average period of 116 days per vessel. This can be compared to the $16,571 weighted average daily rate we achieved for the fixtures presented during our last earnings call, a clear indication of the market improvement. We have also chartered two Cape-sized vessels at a weighted average rate of $25,957 per day for a remaining average period of 234 days. Again, this is a significant improvement from the $18,896 we achieved as an average weighted daily rate for last quarter's pictures. We will continue chartering our vessels that will be re-delivered to us in a similar way, by staggering maturities, locking in cash flows, and positioning us in a manner that will allow us to continue to participate in a continuously improved market in a balanced way, as evidenced by the recent pictures just presented. I will now turn the call over to Yannis to go over our second quarter 2021 financials in more detail.