Navios Maritime Holdings Inc.

Thank you for joining us for NAVIS Maritime Partners' third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With us today from the company are Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Frangou, Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Stratos Desipris, Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Aerie Cerrone, and Vice Chairman, Mr. Ted Patron. As a reminder, this conference call is being webcast. To access the webcast, please go to the Investor section of Navios Partners' website at www.navios-mlp.com. You'll see the webcasting link in the middle of the page, and a copy of the presentation referenced in today's R&D conference call will also be found there. Now, I will review the Safe Harbor Statement. This conference call could contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 about Navios Partners. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of NAVY's partners' management and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Such risks are more fully discussed in office partners' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information sent forth herein should be understood in light of such risks. Navia's Partners does not assume any obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. The agenda for today's call is as follows. First, Mr. Ngou will offer opening remarks. Next, Mr. Tsipris will give an overview of Navia's Partners segment data. Next, Ms. Zeroni will give an overview of Navia's Partners financial results. Then, Mr. Patron will provide an operational update and an industry overview. And lastly, we'll open the call to take questions. Now I turn the call over to Navya's Partners Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Kargo. Angeliki?

Thank you, Daniela, and good morning to all of you joining us on today's call. We are pleased to report a result for the third quarter of 2022 in which we recorded $322.4 million of revenue and $257.2 million of net income. Net income amounts to $8.36 per unit. we are caught in the crossroads of unprecedented macro events. First, in terms of the general economic environment, central banks are reducing the existing liquidity in the financial system as they return to normalize balance sheets. At the same time, central banks are increasing interest rates to combat rising and enduring inflation. Second, China, the major consumer of raw materials and producer of finished goods to much of the world, has reduced appetite as it experiences slow economic growth and focuses on zero COVID policies. Finally, the conflict in Ukraine has disturbed normal trading patterns for oil and gas, while also creating a scarcity of grains and mineral commodities. In the face of these challenges, a diversified approach has served our stakeholders well. We have about 16 different vessel types operating in three segments. The average age of our vessels in each segment is below the industry average. In the container sector, we were able to take advantage of the market strength by selling two 16-year-old container ships for $220 million. Given the appetite for container ships, We were able to order new vessels and hedging the ownership risk by charting them out for a long period, ensuring a reasonable return on the investor. We also used our balance sheet strength to enter in the new tanker class, the Aftamax, because other tanker companies at the time were constrained by their legacy balance sheet issues. Today, we have six on order, of which we have long-term charges on four of them. We continue to monitor events closely, managing our risk as well as seeking new opportunities. Slide 6 takes a look at selected segment data. Today, we have 185 vessels with an average age of 9.5 years. Each segment has an average fleet age materially below the industry average. You can see the good work that we have done by developing our contracted revenue. In the third quarter alone, we generated 331 million of long-term contracted revenue from our various sectors. Turning to slide seven, we review recent developments. Our LTV has picked up primarily because of compression of container ship values. However, this is mitigated by the 3.2 billion of contracted revenue, of which 2.3 billion is from the container ships. I also would like to focus in our break-even for the fourth quarter of 2022 and fiscal year 2023. You can see that we have $51.2 million contracted revenue in excess of total cash expense for the fourth quarter of 2022. So any revenue from our 4,000 open and index days will be profitable. We also have a very low break-even per open day for 2023, as on November 3, 2022, our break-even per open day was slightly less than $6,000. Slide 8 reviews our balancing initiatives. In the face of rising interest rates, we have been working to mitigate interest rate risk. 30% of our debt has fixed interest rates with an average rate of about 5.8% and 70% balance has floating interest rates. We have been actively working to reduce our average margin on our floating rate debt. So far, we have been able to reduce this margin by about 10% to 2.8% in 2022 as compared to 3.1% in 2021. We have done even better in our new building program, where the average margin is slightly less than 2%. We have a $1.1 billion debt program to finance our new buildings. $740 million has either been approved or is in the process of approval. We are in a serious discussion on the remaining $340 million. we have been able to secure favorable terms on our new building program. 60% of the purchase price must be paid only on delivery. In addition, 500 million of the new building debt has no commitment fee. At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Stratos Desipris. Stratos?

Thank you, Angeliki, and good morning all. Slide 9 details our strong operating free cash flow potential for the fourth quarter of 2022. We fixed 73.3% of available days at an average rate of $25,331 net per day. For Q4 2022, contracted revenue already exceeds total cash expense by over $51 million. We have 4,022 available days that will provide additional profitability once fixed. For 2023, we have 60,591 available days. Approximately 65% of these are days with market exposure. Slide 10 demonstrates the basic principles of our diversified platform in action. We benefit from countercyclicality, which creates the opportunity to redeploy cash flow from well-performing segments into activities in underperforming segments. Asset values can be volatile, and a diversified asset base moves the balance in volatility. We consider this dynamic in our asset base. As of Q3 2022, container values dropped by 42% and dry bulk dropped by 4%, while tanker vessel values increased by 32%. In sum, the net change to our fleet value is a decrease of approximately 14%. In addition, multiple segments allows us to optimize shattering. In segments with attractive returns, we can enter into period shatters. In other segments, we can do basings. As you can see from the chart on the bottom, the container segment was enjoying historically high charter rates. Not surprisingly, we fixed our container fleet on long-term charters with almost 90% of our available container days fixed for 2023. This reduced market and residual risk. We managed the credit risk of the long-term charters independently to ensure we are not simply trading one risk for another. In our tanker segment, current charter rates are surpassing their 20-year average levels. We increased fixing available tanker days to almost 40% for 2023, taking advantage of this market. We expect our tanker fleet will generate strong returns. Lastly, in our dry bulk segments, rates are below the historical averages, so we remain patient by entering short-term starters, thereby fixing only 9% of available days. Over 90% of available days are exposed to market rates, which will be fixed long-term as the market recovers. In slide 11, you can see our fleet renewal activities. We are always renewing the fleet so that we maintain a gang profile benefiting from newer technologies and more carbon-efficient vessels. Navios Partners made 1.5 billion investment in 23 new building vessels that will deliver to our fleet through 2025. In container ships, we are acquiring 12 vessels for a total of 860 million. We hedged our investment by entering into long-term credit-worthy charters, generating about $1.1 billion in contracted revenue for the 6.4-year average duration of the related charters. In the tanker space, we entered the LR2 Aframax subsector by ordering six vessels for a total price of $380 million. Four of the vessels are chartered out for five years at an average net daily rate of $25,971, generating revenues of approximately $190 million. The charterer has the option to charter the other two vessels. Slide 12 gives an update of our fleet activities. Starting with tankers, during Q3, we agreed to acquire two LR2 Aframax vessels for $16.5 million per vessel plus $4.2 million in additional features. We have given the option to an investment-grade counterparty to charter the vessels for five years at a net rate of $27,798 per day plus additional five one-year options at increased rates. The option is declarable in Q4 2022. We also contracted two of the LR2 Aframax vessels for five years at a net daily rate of $25,576, generating almost $95 million in contracted revenue. We also capitalized on the strength of the tanker market, chartering eight product tankers for an average net daily rate of $24,045 and an average duration of 1.8 years, providing contracted revenue of $525 million. On the container ships, in Q3, we completed the sale of two 8,200 TU container ships for $220 million. Also, we fixed our only remaining open vessel for 2022 for six months at a net daily rate of $22,195. Finally, on the drive-back vessels, we acquired 38 vessels, including a new building cape-sized vessel, while at the same time, we sold four vessels with an average age of 16 years for $52 million. On the chartering front, we created $112.6 million contracted revenue by chartering three of our Cape-sized new building vessels for five years at an average net daily rate of $20,567. Moving to slide 13, we continue to secure long-term employment for our fleet. Our contracted revenue amounts to $3.2 billion. Seventy-two percent of our contracted revenue comes from our container ships with charters extending through 2036. with a diverse group of quality counterparties. Almost 50% of this contracted revenue will be earned in the next two and a half years. I now pass the call to Eri Tsironi, our CFO, which will take you through the financial highlights. Eri?