Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Genco Shipping and Trading Limited second quarter 2023 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 anytime during the next two weeks by dialing 1-877-674-7070 and entering the passcode 028452. At this time, I will now turn the conference over to the company. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Before we begin our presentation, I note that in this conference call, we've been making certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements use words such as anticipate, budget, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe, and other words in terms of similar meaning in connection with a 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 a discussion of factors that could cause results to differ, please see the company's press release that was issued today, the 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 for the year ended December 31, 2022, 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 Bobensmith, Chief Executive Officer of Genco Shipping and Trading Limited.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Genco's second quarter 2023 conference call. I will begin today's call by reviewing our Q2 2023 and year-to-date highlights, providing an update on our comprehensive value strategy, financial 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 second quarter, we continue to execute our value strategy, providing shareholders with a sizable dividend while continuing to voluntarily pay down debt. At the same time, we drew upon our best in class commercial platform and scalable fleet to generate solid financial results. For the second quarter, we achieved a time charter equivalent rate of $15,556 per day, which was approximately $2,500 a day above our scrubber adjusted benchmark. This led to net income for the quarter of $11.6 million and adjusted EBITDA of $30 million. For the second quarter of 2023, we declared a dividend of 15 cents per share, representing our seventh dividend payment under our value strategy with cumulative dividends declared to date of $3.54 per share over those seven quarters. Since Q3 2019, 59.5 cents per share or approximately 33% of our current share price. We believe our track record of meaningful and sustainable dividends over the last four years through varying cycles speaks to the strength of the company's balance sheet and our prudent approach to capital allocation. While our stated formula with a quarterly reserve of $10.75 million produced a $0.13 per share dividend for the quarter, we utilized a portion of our quarterly reserve to declare the $0.15 per share dividend. Importantly, we continued to prepay debt during the quarter on a voluntary basis, paying down $8.75 million during Q2. Genco's industry-leading low cash flow breakeven rate and low financial leverage together with our view of an improvement in freight rates from current spot levels gives the company confidence to utilize part of their quarterly reserve to declare a larger quarterly dividend. Consistent with our previously announced intention to maintain flexibility under our dividend policy, we reduced our reserve from $10.75 million to $9.92 million for the second quarter of 2023. This is a lever we've highlighted since inception of our value strategy back in April of 2021 to utilize the reserve to smooth out quarterly dividends. Importantly, we relied on applying our formula with a reduced reserve without dipping into cash generated in previous quarters, without raising debt, and without selling assets in order to pay our latest quarterly dividends. In addition to seeking to pay meaningful dividends, we continue to focus on proactively paying down debt as we progress towards our medium-term goal of reducing our net debt position to zero, consistent with our compelling risk-reward model. Regarding the current dry bulk market, while cargo volumes particularly into Asia have been strong, we have seen softness in demand in developed countries, which has been met with an unwinding of port congestion in recent months, which has increased effective vessel capacity. While this has impacted freight rates in the near term, we remain constructive on the overall dry bulk market as the new building vessel order book remains near historical lows. Given these capacity constraints, demand growth has a low threshold to exceed in order to outpace low supply growth to further tighten market fundamentals and move freight rates up over time. Despite the temporary softening of the freight rate environment, asset values have remained firm, only marginally declining from earlier year levels. We believe this is due in part to the strength seen in the new building prices. On the ESG front, Genco for the third year in a row was ranked number one in the Weber Research ESG report out of a total of 64 publicly traded shipping companies. We are honored to once again be recognized for our industry leadership in sustainability transparency, and overall capital stewardship. At this point, I will now turn the call over to Peter Allen, our Chief Financial Officer.