Diana Shipping inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and please remain on the line. Today's Diana Shipping Conference will be starting shortly. Again, we do thank you for your patience and ask that you please remain connected. Today's conference will be beginning shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and please remain on the line. Today's Diana Shipping Conference will be starting shortly. Again we do thank you for your patience and ask that you please remain on the line. Today's Diana Shipping Conference will be starting shortly. Thank you. Thank you. Greetings and welcome to the Diana Shipping, Inc. 2022 Third Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. 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, IR Advisor. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Donna. And thanks to everyone for joining us for the Diana Shipping Inc. 2022 third quarter conference call. With us today from management are Samir Rameez Palu, Chief Executive Officer, Anastasios Margaronis, President, Yanis Zafiropoulos, CFO, and Chief Strategy Officer, Treasurer and Secretary, Eleftherios Papatrifon, Chief Operating Officer, and Maria Dede, Chief Accounting Officer. Without further ado, I will turn it over to Ms. Pagliu.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Diana Shipping, Inc.' 's third quarter 2022 earnings call. My name, as Ed mentioned, is Samira Mishpagliu, the company's CEO, and it is an honor to have the opportunity to present to you today. 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 third quarter presentation. The third quarter of 2022 has been another very profitable quarter for our company, but also has been a very busy and productive one with the acquisition of the nine vessel Ultramax fleet in August. While market conditions have become less robust, especially towards the end of the third quarter, our disciplined chartering strategy has allowed us to continue generating attractive free cash flows. As a result, we have announced another attractive dividend for this quarter, continuing to reward our shareholders. Turning to slide five, I will review with you the company snapshot as of today. This time round, we do have changes since last quarter and we find ourselves owning and operating an expanded fleet of 40 vessels in the water with a carrying capacity of approximately 4.7 million deadweight tons. As already announced, we expect our fleet to increase to 43 vessels by the end of the year as we take delivery of the remaining three Ultramaxes within December. Our fleet utilization has remained at very high levels, coming in at 99.1% for the nine months of 2022. 36 vessels in our fleet are managed in-house by Diana Shipping Services, and four vessels are managed by our 50-50 joint venture, Diana Williamson Management Limited. At the end of the third quarter, we employed 860 people at sea and ashore. Moving on to slide six and seven, I will go over the highlights of the third quarter and recent developments. More specifically, in July of this year, we declared a dividend of 27.5 cents per common share or approximately 23.7 million US dollars in aggregate for the second quarter of 2022. Also in July, we made a prepayment of 4.8 million US dollars for the release of the mortgage on the motor vessel Baltimore, a vessel that we had agreed to sell earlier in the year. In August, we were particularly pleased to have agreed to acquire nine modern Ultramax dry bulk vessels built between 2015 and 2018, with an average vessel age of approximately 5.4 years from Sea Trade Holdings Inc. The aggregate purchase price of the fleet is $330 million, of which $220 million will be paid in cash, and $110 million is to be paid in the form of $18,487,395 in aggregate newly issued common shares of the company at the price of $5.95 per share. So far, we have taken delivery of six out of the nine vessels, and as mentioned before, we expect to take delivery of the remaining three within December. We view this transaction to be fully supportive of our strategy of expanding and modernizing our fleet, while at the same time maintaining a strong balance sheet with low cash flow break-even points. Also in August, in anticipation of the motor vessel New Orleans and Santa Barbara's sale and lease-back transactions, we made a prepayment of US$30.8 million on the relevant debt facilities and successfully released the vessel's mortgages. In September, we proceeded with the sale of the two vessels to unaffiliated Japanese third parties for an aggregate amount of 66.4 million US dollars and bare boat chartered in the vessels for a period of eight years. In September, we delivered the motor vessel Baltimore to her buyers, OceanPal Inc., and received 25,000 series deconvertible preferred shares issued by the buyers as part of the sale consideration. Also in September, we signed an up to 200 million US dollars credit facility for the partial financing of the nine Ultramax vessels. As announced, we have declared a dividend for the third quarter, which is part cash and part in stock. The cash dividend is 17.5 cents per common share, or 17.3 million in aggregate. With the payment of this quarter's dividend, the total amount of cash dividends paid since we reinitiated our dividends in last November is one dollar. In addition, this quarter we also declared a stock dividend of all OceanPal Series D convertible preferred shares that our company has received as partial consideration for the disposal of motor vessel Baltimore on a pro-rata basis to all our shareholders. This stock dividend will either be in the form of OceanPal common shares or Series D convertible preferred shares. at the election of each Diana shareholder. The distribution of the stock dividend will be made after the registration statement filed by OceanPal with the SEC has been declared effective. We are very pleased that we are continuing to reward our shareholders with these outputs. Our board will continue evaluating the market conditions for the declaration of dividends for further quarters. Lastly, as of November 14th, We have secured approximately $35 million of contracted revenues for the remainder of the year with 80% contract coverage and $123.7 million of contracted revenues for 2023 with 36% contract coverage. Yanis will provide later on a more detailed analysis of our cash flow generation potential based on the current market environment. Turning to the financial highlights of this quarter of 2022 on slide 8, we find ourselves as of September 30th, 2022, with a cash and cash equivalence position of $129.7 million, including restricted cash, as against $126.8 million as of December 31st, 2021. Our debt, net of deferred financing costs, at $471.8 million at the end of the third quarter of 2022, as against $423.7 million at the end of 2021. Our time charter revenues for the third quarter of 2022 amounted to $73.8 million, as against $57.3 million for the third quarter of 2021. Lastly, Our earnings per share for the third quarter of 2022 came in at 37 cents versus 16 cents per share for the same period in 2021. Yanis will go over these numbers in more detail further on in the presentation. Moving on to slide nine, we find a summary of our recent chartering activity. Consistent with our disciplined chartering strategy, we have continued chartering our vessels in a staggered manner and have secured profitable time charters for seven vessels of our fleet since our last quarterly earnings presentation. More specifically, we have charted one CancerMax, one Panamax, one Post Panamax, and four Ultramax vessels at a weighted average daily rate of 14,862 US dollars, and for a remaining average period of 374 days per vessel. We intend to keep chartering our vessels in a similar way by staggering maturities, locking in cash flows and positioning us in a manner that allows us to participate in the market in a balanced way. I now turn it over to Yannis to go over the financials in more detail.