Global Ship Lease, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Dee and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Global Ship Place second quarter 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. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Lister, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. You can find the slides that accompany today's presentation 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 2024. You can find the form on our website or on 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. 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. I'm joined today by our executive chairman, George Yeroukos, and our chief financial officer, Tasos Psaropoulos. George will begin the call with a high-level commentary on GSL and 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 with that, and turning to slide four, I will pass the call over to George. Thank you, Tom.

Good morning, afternoon or evening to all of you joining us today. So far in 2024, it is safe to say that macro and geopolitical uncertainty have persisted and arguably increased, most notably through the continued disruption in the Red Sea and the resulting large-scale rerouting away from Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope this uncertainty has added a significant layer of turn-mile demand to an already strong container ship charter market. While I'm not going to make a prediction about when or how the conflict in the Middle East ultimately resolves, it's clear that the liner operators, our customers, have been increasingly willing to commit to multi-year charters, suggesting a growing industry consensus that the Red Sea security situation and its numerous knock-on effects in the supply chain may not resolve for some time. At GSL, we are capitalizing on these supportive conditions to increase our contractual cash flows at firm and rising charter rates. We added over 400 million of contracted revenue in the first half of the year, more than 85% of which during the second quarter. and are continuing to do so. And by the way, this includes vessels coming open in the market in the near term and also on a forward basis, including into 2025. We continue to deliver, to grow our equity value, to reduce our break-evens, and to benefit from floating interest rate exposure capped at 0.64% of SOFR through 2026. With all of this highly supportive context and reflecting our positive momentum across the board, we decided during the quarter to introduce a supplemental dividend in addition to a fixed quarterly dividend, effectively increasing our quarterly dividend by 20% for as long as market conditions and cash flows remain so extraordinarily strong. In addition to the dividend and our opportunistic use of buybacks, Our disciplined capital allocation policy remains focused on building our resilience, taking advantage of counter-cyclical opportunities, and maximizing value for our shareholders throughout the cycle. Now, with that, I will turn the call back to Tom.