Global Ship Lease, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Global Ship Lease Q4 2022 earnings conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question, you'll need to press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ian Weber, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. The slides that accompany today's presentation are available on our website at www.globalshiplease.com. Slides two and three of that presentation remind you that, as normal, today's call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions. and I are, by their very 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 2021 and was filed with the SEC on March 24 of 2022. You can retain this via our website or via the SECs. 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 forwarded statements. The 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 usually 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 Saropoulos, and our chief commercial officer, Tom Lister. George will begin the call with a high-level commentary on GSL and our industry. Then Tasos, Tom, and I will take you through our recent activity, quarterly results and financials, 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 put pressure on consumer demand and thus on the container shipping industry. This has exerted downward pressure on charter rates and asset values, although they still broadly at or above levels prior to the pandemic. Nevertheless, because we secured extensive contract cover for a large portion of our fleet, while the market was very strong, GSL is well positioned to weather the challenges ahead and to capitalize on opportunities that we expect to arise now that we have clearly entered a different phase of the cycle. Our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results reflect our very strong contracted cash flow profile, and once again represent a dramatic step up relative to all prior years, reflecting our well-timed growth and the attractiveness of the charters that we secured across our fleet, many of which extend on a fixed rate basis several years into the future. We have a robust balance sheet with no significant debt refinancing obligations before 2026 and a low overall cost of debt. Our floating debt is fully hedged through 2026, with LIBOR and SOFR capped at an attractive 75 basis points only. We continue to pay our sustainable dividend of $1.5 per common share annually and have opportunistically repurchased a cumulative $40 million of our shares, of which $10 million was done since our last earnings call. From this position of stability and financial strength, we're continuing to reinforce the long-term resilience of our business in the face of cyclicality, evolving regulations, and the increasing decarbonization focus of our customers. With that, I will turn the call over to Ian.