Diana Shipping inc.

Greetings. Welcome to Diana Shipping's 2022 Second Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Ed Nebb with Investor Relations. Mr. Nebb, you may now begin.

Thank you, Rob, and thanks to everyone who is joining us today for the Diana Shipping, Inc. 2022 Second Quarter Conference Call. Leading the call today will be Samira Mizpalu, Chief Executive Officer, along with other members of the management team. And so without further ado, I will turn the call over to Mizpalu, again, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Diana Shipping Inc's second quarter 2022 earnings call. My name, as Ed said, is Demira Misaliou, the company's CEO, and it is an honor to have the opportunity to present to you today. Joining me on this call this morning, we have Mr. Stacey Margaronis, President of Diana Shipping, Mr. Ioannis Zafirakis, CFO and Chief Strategy Officer, Mr. Leftenso Patrifon, Chief Operating Officer, and Ms. Maria Dede, Accompanying Chief Accounting Officer. Before I begin, I kindly ask everyone to review the forward-looking statements applicable to today's presentation, which can be found on page four of the accompanying second quarter's presentation. The second quarter of 2022 has been another great quarter for our company and continues the trend of robust profitability since mid last year. Market conditions remained positive during the second quarter and in tandem with our chartering strategy allowed us to continue generating attractive free cash flows. As a result, we have announced and even higher quarterly dividends for this quarter, reflecting our confidence in the market. Turning to slide 5, I will review with you the company's snapshots as of today. Not much has changed since our last quarter, and we find ourselves owning and operating 35 vessels in the water, with a carrying capacity of approximately 4.5 million deadweight tons. Five vessels in our fleet are unmortgaged. It should be noted that, as already announced, the motor vessel Baltimore has been sold and is expected to be delivered to her new owners during the third quarter of this year. Our fleet utilization has remained at very high levels, coming in at 99.1% for the first half of 2022. 33 vessels in our fleet are managed in-house by Diana Shipping Services and two vessels are managed by our 50-50 joint venture, Diana Williamson Management Limited. At the end of the second quarter, we employed 156 people at sea and ashore. Moving on to slide six, I will go over the highlights of the second quarter and recent developments. More specifically, in May of this year, we declared a dividend of 25 cents per common share or approximately 21.6 million US dollars in aggregate for the first quarter of 2022. In June, we signed a memorandum of agreement for the sale of motor vessel Baltimore to Ocean Power, Inc. for an aggregate price of 22 million 20% of the purchase price was paid in cash upon signing and the remaining 80% will be paid upon the delivery of the vessel in the form of newly issued preferred shares of Oceanfile Inc. In anticipation of the motor vessel Baltimore's delivery, earlier this month we made a prepayment of 4.8 million on the relevant debt facility and successfully released the vessel's mortgage. As previously highlighted, the robust current market conditions have allowed us to be able to declare an even higher dividend for the second quarter of 27.5 cents per common share or 23.7 million US dollars in aggregate. Our Board will continue evaluating the market conditions for the declaration of dividends for future quarters. Our disciplined chartering strategy has allowed us to secure approximately $114.1 million of contracted revenues for the remainder of the year with 84% contract coverage and $93 million of contracted revenues for 2023 with 30% contract coverage. Yanis will provide later on a more detailed analysis of our cash flow generation potential based on the current market environment. Turning now to page seven, the financial highlights of the second quarter of 2022, we find ourselves as of June 30th, 2022 with a cash and cash equivalence position of 130.3 million US dollars including restricted cash as against 126.8 million US dollars as of December 31st, 2021. Our debt, net of deferred financing costs stood at the 451.7 million US dollars at the end of the second quarter of 2022 as against 423.7 million US dollars at the end of 2021. Our time charter revenues for the second quarter of 2022 amounted to 74.5 million US dollars as against 47 million US dollars for the second quarter of 2021. Lastly, our earnings per share for the second quarter of 2022 came in at 42 cents versus two cents per share for the same period of 2021. Yanis will go over these numbers in more detail further on in the presentation. Moving on to slide eight. we find a summary of our recent chartering activity. Consistent with our disciplined chartering strategy, we have continued to take advantage of the favorable chartering market and have secured attractive time charters for five vessels of our fleet during the second quarter. More specifically, We charted three Panamax post-Panamax vessels at a weighted average daily rate of $19,881, and for a remaining average period of 188 days per vessel. We have also charted two Cape-sized vessels at a weighted average rate of $21,922 per day for a remaining average period of 288 days. We intend to keep chartering our vessels in a similar way by staggering maturities, locking in cash flows, and positioning the company in a manner that allows us to participate in the market in a balanced way. I now turn it over to Yanis to go over the financials in more detail.