Global Ship Lease, Inc.

ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to the global ship lease q3 2022 earnings conference call i would now like to turn the call over to ian weber ceo please go ahead uh thank you good morning good afternoon everybody and welcome to the global shipley's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call the slides that accompany today's presentation are available on our website

at www.globalshiplease.com. Slides two and three remind you, as normal, 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 factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 20F, which is for 2021 and was filed with the SEC on March the 24th this year, 2022. And you can obtain 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 board 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. As usual, I'm joined today by our Executive Chairman, Georgi Rukos, our Chief Financial Officer, Tasos Savopoulos, and our Chief Commercial Officer, Tom Lister. George will begin the call with a high-level commentary on GSL and our industry, and then Tasos, Tom, and I will take you through our recent activity, quarterly results and financials, and the current market environment. After that, we'll be pleased to take your questions. So turning now to slide four, I'll pass the call over to George.

Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon or evening to all of you joining us today. As we have flagged In recent quarters, macro headwinds and negative economic sentiment have continued to assert pressure on consumer demand and thus on the container shipping industry, driving an ongoing normalization in the charter market, leading to downward pressure on charter rates and asset values from the historically high levels of the recent past. Nevertheless, because we have secured extensive contract cover for a large portion of our fleet, while the market remained very hot, including 10 forward fixings of five years each signed during the third quarter to start in late 2022, 2023 and even 2024, GSL is well positioned to weather the challenges ahead and to capitalize on opportunities that may arise. Quantitatively, we have added nearly a billion dollars to our contracted revenue this year, with $770 million added in the third quarter alone. giving over $2.2 billion of contracted revenue spread over just under three years. As you can see on the right side of the slide here, our results for the quarter continue to demonstrate the heightened level of cash flow and earnings that we established through extensive chartering activity in recent years, as well as our well-timed acquisition of vessels mostly last year on below market rates that we were able to recharter at far higher rates in the market over the course of 2021 and 2022. We have a robust balance sheet with no debt maturities before 2026, and an overall low cost of debt despite the global high interest rate environment, with all of our floating interest rates fully hedged, capping the floating rate at 75 basis points, with a weighted average cost of debt of 4.53%, We're also continuing to pay our sustainable dividend of $1.5 per common share annualized and have opportunistically repurchased 20 million of our shares this year, of which 15 million was in the third quarter, having secured our 40 million buyback authorization during the second quarter of this year. From this position of strength and prudence, we're focused on the long-term resilience of our business, looking to continue to generate sustainable value preparing for decarbonization and further improving our competitiveness by investing in fuel performance optimization of our fleet in conjunction with our customers and supporting wider decarbonization initiatives. As and when attractive counter-cyclical opportunities arise that meet our strict criteria, we want to be ready to act decisively for the benefit of our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to Ian.