Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Genco Shipping and Trading Limited First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Presentation. Before we begin, please note that there will be a slide presentation accompanying today's conference call. That presentation can be obtained from Genco's website at www.gencoshipping.com. To inform everyone, today's conference is being recorded and is now being webcast at the company's website, www.gencoshipping.com. We will conduct a question and answer session after the opening remarks. Instructions will follow at that time. A replay of the conference will be accessible at any time during the next two weeks by dialing 888-203-1112. or 719-457-0820 and entering the passcode 1292605. At this time, I'll turn the comments over to the company. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Before we begin our presentation, I note that in this conference call, we have been making certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements use words such as anticipate, budget, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe. In other words, in terms of similar meaning and connection with the discussion of potential future events, circumstances, or future operating or financial performance. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and observations. for discussion of factors that could cause results to differ. Please see the company's press release that was issued yesterday, materials relating to this call posted on the company's website, and the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the company's annual report on Form 10-K. The year ended December 31st, 2021, and the company's reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K subsequently filed with the SEC. At this time, I would like to introduce John Wobensmith, Chief Executive Officer of Genco Shipping and Trading Limited.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Genco's first quarter 2022 conference call. We'll begin today's call by reviewing our Q1 2022 and year-to-date highlights, providing an update on our implemented comprehensive value strategy and answer results for the quarter and the industry's current fundamentals before opening the call up for questions. For additional information, please also refer to our earnings presentation posted on our website. During the first quarter of 2022, GENCO achieved its best results for the January to March period in over a decade as we continued to successfully execute our value strategy, which is focused on paying meaningful and sustainable dividends throughout the cycles, deleveraging, and growth for the benefit of shareholders. Most notably, we declared our first full dividend payout under our capital allocation policy. The 79 cents per share dividend for Q1 2022 represents an 18% increase as compared to the previous quarter and a 14% yield based on yesterday's closing share price. This marks our 11th consecutive quarterly payout, reflecting cumulative dividends of $2.51 and a half cents per share. On an aggregate basis since the start of 2021, we have paid down $252 million, or 56% of our debt, leading to a low net loan-to-value of only 12%. Importantly, we are now in a position in which the current scrap value of our fleet is nearly 2.5 times our debt outstanding. This has resulted in lower overall cash flow breakeven rates, which we believe is essential for paying dividends across diverse rate environments, and is a key differentiator of Genco versus its peers. In January, we completed the acquisition of the two remaining 2022-built Ultramax vessels we agreed to acquire in early last year. These acquisitions have enabled our core Ultramax fleet to more than double in size since Q4 2020. These measures, together with those executed in 2021, have led GENCO to create the most compelling risk-reward model in the dry bulk public market through a combination of low financial leverage, high operating leverage, and industry-low cash flow breakeven rates. Continuing to pay down debt during a time that we do not have any mandatory debt repayments is consistent with our medium-term goal to reduce our net debt position to zero. We continue to be focused on rewarding shareholders through compelling dividends while continuing to delever supporting sustainable dividends over the long term. We view this deleveraging as prudent to further improve our financial standing over time to ensure Genco is in an even stronger position to take advantage of attractive growth opportunities as markets develop. From an earnings perspective, we generated a strong time charter equivalent rate during the quarter of $24,093 per day, an increase of 98% from the same period of 2021, as we benefited from our past success fixing forward cargoes and period time charters ahead of a seasonally softer first quarter rate environment. Looking ahead to the second quarter of 2022, we expect a sequential rise in time charter equivalent rates as we have approximately 68% of our available days booked at over $27,500 per day, highlighting our significant operating leverage to improving market conditions, our sizable fleet, our best in class commercial platform, and barbell approach to fleet composition. In terms of current market trends, Russia's war in Ukraine has led to higher commodity prices, a redirection of cargo flows, particularly those for grains and energy, resulting in growth in ton-mile demand. Higher fuel prices have also led to a slowdown in the sailing speeds of the dry bulk fleet. Despite general uncertainty regarding the longer-term impact of the war, particularly in respect to the global grain trade, we continue to have a positive outlook for dry bulk rates due to the low order book that we believe will enable demand to continue to exceed supply. Notably, low go-forward net supply growth, increased port congestion, and fleet inefficiencies, together with upcoming environmental regulations, have resulted in as good of a supply-side picture as we have seen in decades. As a consequence, demand growth does not have a high threshold to exceed in order to outpace supply growth to further tighten market fundamentals. At this point, I will now turn the call over to Apostolos Sifolios, our Chief Financial Officer.