Global Ship Lease, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, your call will continue to be placed on music. Hold until the conference begins. The conference will begin momentarily. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Oh, my God. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Global Ship Lease Q1 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Ian Weber, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the GSL First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. The slides that accompany today's presentation are available at our website, www.globalshiplease.com. Slides 1 and 2, as usual, remind you that today's call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions and are, by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the safe harbour section of the slide presentation. We also draw your attention to the risk factor section of our most recent annual report on Form 20F, which is for 2019 and was filed with the SEC on April 2, 2020. You can see this via our website or via the SEC's. All of our statements are qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. For reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to which we will refer during this call, to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP, you should refer to the earnings release that we issued this morning, which is also available on our website. I'm joined today by our Executive Chairman, George Yeroukos, our Chief Financial Officer, Tasos Seropoulos, and our Chief Commercial Officer, Tom Lister. George will begin the call with some high-level commentary and an update on our current areas of focus. and then Tessos, Tom, and I will take you through the quarterly results, our financials, and the current market environment, after which we'll be delighted to take your questions. Turning now to slide three, I'll pass the call to George.

Thank you, Ian. As we all know, we're in the midst of an unprecedented global coronavirus pandemic, and while our extensive contract cover provides our financial results with a great deal of insulation from the market, It will be no surprise to anyone on this call today that the global COVID-19 pandemic has been the focus of much our attention and activity in recent months. The timing and shape of global economic recovery and other potential longer-term consequences remain open questions. That said, we believe that our strategy, fleet composition, contract cover and balance sheet position us well during these uncertain times and were focused on taking specific concrete steps to maximize GSL's resilience, such as deferral of dry dockings and intended divestment of two ships. Before I discuss our strategic areas of focus during the crisis and the impact of the pandemic on containerized freight flows and demand for ships, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the human element underlying these economic issues. The health and safety of our seafarers as well as that of our staff on shore are of highest priority to us, and I'm pleased to report that we have not experienced any COVID-related health issues on ship or shore, which speaks to the effectiveness of the measures we have taken to protect our people and to keep the business running smoothly. Despite the challenging backdrop, Global SIPLIS continues to have strong liquidity and a healthy balance sheet, supported by almost US$700 million of contracted revenue over the average of more than two years, set against less than 5 million of debt maturities between now and late 2022. We have made great progress over the last year in strengthening our charter portfolio virtually eliminating any debt maturities through the medium term, diversifying our charter portfolio and ensuring that we are financially resilient so we are capable of withstanding a wide range of potential scenarios in an industry that is subject to cyclicality in even the best of times. We remain committed to refinancing the bond as soon as possible, but we're focused in the near term in responding to the challenges posed by the pandemic. Critical to a strong liquidity and cash flow is our ability to maintain the highest level of commercial and operational uptime for our ships. Success in this regard is central to our strategy and to our competitive advantage as a trusted provider of container ship donuts to our customers. In much the same way, we're focused on providing consistent high-quality service for our liner operator partners. During this challenging period for global trade, the reliability, operational flexibility, low slot cost, and high refer contest of our ships are of heightened relevance to the shipping lines, allowing them to maintain their own service integrity on a cost-competitive basis. We are pleased to work with a cross-section of the global market leaders in the liner industry. And our provision of highly competitive best-in-class tonnage and operations ensures that we continue to do so through good times and bad, well into the future. With that, I will turn the call to Ian for a review of our fleet and charter portfolio, as well as an overview of recent developments.