Global Ship Lease, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Alex and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Global Ship Lease Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Lister, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alex. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. You can find the slides that accompany today's call on our website at www.globalshiplease.com. As usual, slides two and three 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 harbor section of the slide presentation. We would also like to direct your attention to the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on our 2023 Form 20F, which was filed in March of this year. You can find the form on our website or on that of the SEC. 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 and the reconciliation of 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. I'm joined today by our Executive Chairman, George Yeroukos, and our Chief Financial Officer, Tasos Tsaropoulos. George will begin the call with a high-level commentary on GSL and on our industry, and then Tasos 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 answer your questions. So, turning now to slide four, I'll pass the call over to George. George.

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, afternoon, or evening to all of you joining us today. Macro and geopolitical uncertainty have remained heightened in early 2024, but our industry has started the year with positive earnings momentum. In part, this is due to an uptick in containerized freight demand but the pause and reversal of 2023's downward market normalization of charter rates and asset values have mainly been driven by most liner operators avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal, thereby tightening effective supply until the security situation has improved. Nobody knows when this will happen, of course, but we're working hard to grow our contract cover and cash flows while market conditions are supported. Our continuing efforts to deliver and lower our cost of debt have made our balance sheet more robust and we have no refinancing needs before 2026. Also, our floating interest rate exposure to software is capped at 0.64% through 2026. Now we remain focused on our disciplined capital allocation policy that prioritizes returning capital to shareholders via our sustainable quarterly dividend and opportunistic buybacks. And our continued efforts to strengthen our financial position have boosted GSL's resilience and positioned us to move quickly on the right acquisition opportunities when they arise, whether that happens next week or next year, all towards the goal of protecting and building shareholder value through the cycle. With that, I'll turn the call back to Tom.