Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Genco Shipping and Trading Limited fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call and a 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. Instruction will follow at that time. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release, as well as on the company's website. 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 will be 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, and other words in terms of similar meaning in 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 a discussion of factors that could cause results to differ, please see the company's press release that was issued yesterday, 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, 2023, 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 Wilbensmith, Chief Executive Officer of Genco Shipping and Trading Limited. Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to Genco's fourth quarter 2024 conference call. I will begin today's call by reviewing our Q4 2024 and year-to-date highlights. Additionally, we will provide an update on our value strategy, discuss our financial results for the quarter, as well as 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. Starting on slide five, Q4 2024 marked another solid quarter for Genco, capping off what was a very good year for the company. as we grew earnings and advanced our comprehensive value strategy focused on three pillars, dividends, deleveraging, and growth. Specifically during a time when we continue to provide shareholders with sizable returns and take additional steps to lower our financial risk, we are pleased to have acquired another high specification Cape size vessel. In October, we took delivery of the Genco Intrepid, our third Cape size acquisition over the last year. increasing our investment in modern high specification vessels to approximately $285 million since 2021. Importantly, the acquisition of the Genco Intrepid is part of our broader fleet renewal strategy. Earlier in the year, we completed our exit from the four smaller and older 169,000 deadweight ton vessels and have redeployed the sale proceeds and additional cash towards the acquisition of three 2016-built Cape-sized vessels. Notably, these accretive transactions enhance our earnings power as we add premium, high-quality assets to the fleet and reduce dry docking capex in 2024 and 2025 by $13 million. Turning to slide six, we highlight what was a strong 2024 for Genco. Our EBITDA exceeded $150 million, a nearly 50% increase versus 2024 levels, 2023 levels, I apologize, led by our success, increasing time chart equivalent rates to $19,107 per day from $14,766 the prior year. In addition to the strong market, we continue to outperform our benchmarks, adding approximately $1,600 per day to our TCE rates, demonstrating the continued strength of our commercial platform. Furthermore, we also increased distributions to shareholders by 70%, declaring $1.46 per share in dividends during the year, or an annualized yield of 10% on the current share price. We continue to provide sizable dividends to shareholders as highlighted on page 7. We are pleased to advance our track record of providing dividends to shareholders through market cycles as we declared $0.30 per share dividend for the fourth quarter. This marks our 22nd consecutive dividend, which in aggregate represents $6.61.5 per share, or 45% of our current share price as of February 18th. The solid fourth quarter dividend follows our recent decision to enhance our dividend policy, which is aimed at increasing cash distributable to shareholders while maintaining significant financial strength to grow and renew our fleet and further strengthen our earnings power. Specifically, we removed the dry docking CapEx line item from the dividend calculation going forward. Turning to slide eight, we believe Genco remains in a highly advantageous position moving forward. Specifically, we have an industry-low net loan-to-value of 5%, a low cash flow breakeven rate, and over $330 million in undrawn revolver availability. Coming off of a strong 2024 dry bulk market, the beginning of 2025 has seen downward volatility in part due to seasonal factors. Despite this near-term softening of freight rates, we remain constructive on the longer-term dry bulk fundamentals which are led by a moderate new building order book and growth in cargo volumes from long haul origins. At the same time, given our strong balance sheet, favorable risk reward balance, and significant access to capital, we built Genco to capitalize on diverse freight market environments to both opportunistically grow the fleet through the dry bulk cycles and continue to provide sizable returns to shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Peter Allen, our chief financial officer. Thank you, John.