Global Ship Lease, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Global Ship Lease First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Franz and I'll be the operator assisting the call today. 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 1 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 of Global Ship Lease. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Hello everyone and welcome to the Global Ship Lease first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. You can find the slides as usual 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 2025 Form 20F, which was filed in March 2026. You can find the form on our website or on 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 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, as usual today, by our Executive Chairman, George Yuroukos, and our Chief Financial Officer, Tasos Psoropoulos. George will begin the call with high-level commentary on GSL and our industry and and then Tasos and I will take you through our recent activity, quarterly results and financials, and the current market environment. After that, we will be very pleased to answer your questions. So, turning now to slide four, I'll pass the call over to George.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, afternoon, or evening to all of you joining today. The opening months of 2026 have been a continuation and, in fact, an escalation of the themes of geopolitical uncertainty and volatility that we saw in 2025. From the continued disruption of tariffs and the Red Sea, to the unprecedented disruption in the state of Hormuz, which has resulted in the humanitarian crisis of around 20,000 seafarers being trapped in the Persian Gulf. The world has become more dangerous, extraordinarily unpredictable and complex. and this has ramifications throughout the supply chain. Trade routes have shifted, fragmented, and decentralized, ultimately becoming more inefficient, requiring even more container ship capacity and more flexible ships to transport a given volume of containers. In these conditions, we continue to see strong demand for our mid-sized and smaller container ships, which provide valuable flexibility and reliability for our liner company customers. In this environment, we have worked hard to keep adding charters so that our contracted revenues now stand at $2.1 billion over 2.6 years. Our charter coverage is 100% for 2026 and 86% for 2027. We continue to leverage and optimize our fortress balance sheet, all while paying an annualized dividend of $2.5 per share, which is a dividend yield of around 6%. on the basis of our stock price at a close yesterday. As always, we're keeping an eye on opportunities for disciplined, prudent fleet renewal that will allow us to continue generating strong cash flow through the medium and long term as our existing cash cows age out. Fundamentally, we maintain a focus on resilience and optionality, which has continued to serve us and our shareholders well. and provides a sturdy foundation in a world of uncertainty from which to act decisively on completing opportunities as they arise. On compelling, excuse me, opportunities as they arise. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom.