Navios Maritime Partners LP

Thank you for joining us for Navios Maritime Partners 3rd Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With us today from the company are Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Frangou, Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Stratos Desypris, Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Erifili Tsironi, and Vice Chairman, Mr. Ted Petron. As a reminder, this conference call is being webcast. To access the webcast, please go to the Investors section of Navier's Partners website at www.navier-mlp.com. You'll see the webcasting link in the middle of the page, and a copy of the presentation referenced in today's earnings conference call will also be found there. Now I will review the State Harbor Statement. This conference call could contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Integration Reform Act of 1995 about novice partners. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of novice 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 other partners' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information set forth herein should be understood in light of such risks. Another partner does not assume any obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. The agenda for today's call is as follows. First, Ms. Frangou will offer opening remarks. Next, Mr. Desypris will give an overview of Navios Partners segment data. Next, Ms. Tsironi will give an overview of Navios Partners financial results. Then, Mr. Petron will provide an industry overview. And lastly, we'll open the call to take questions. Now I turn the call over to Nervous Partners Chairwoman and CEO, Ms. Angeliki Frangou. Angeliki?

Good morning and thank you all for joining us on today's call. I am pleased with the results of the third quarter of 2023 in which we reported revenue of $323 million and net income of about $90 million. We are also pleased to report net earnings per common unit of $2.92 for the quarter. Before I provide some comments on the company, I would like to share my views regarding economic sentiment. The US economy is generally healthy, but there are clouds on the horizon. The US has high government debt levels and the highest peacetime fiscal deficits. The Fed is engaged in quantitative tightening and there is a risk of interest rates rising further from their current relatively elevated levels. China, the world's largest consumer of commodities, is not firing on all cylinders. These factors along the walls in Ukraine and Israel have contributed to making this one of the most dangerous times in memory. Despite these clouds, the shipping market is robust and healthy. Our company is doing well and positioned for all weather. We continue to focus on things that we can control, such as reducing leverage, being eco-friendly by keeping a modern, energy-efficient fleet, and expanding into areas which will promote our long-term prospects, such as the recent tanker bills we entered into with various oil majors. Navios Partners is a leading publicly listed shipping company diversified in 15 asset classes in 3 sectors with an average vessel age of about 9.6 years. We have 180 vessels split roughly equally into 3 sectors based on a charter adjusted value. We turn to slide 7. We have about 270 million of cash on our balancing. In the third quarter, we have about 5.3% on an annualized basis on our cash balances. In addition, we are positioned well for the fourth quarter, as we have 52 million of contracted revenue in excess of cash expenses and 2,304 open index days. In the third quarter, we enter into the transsegment business. We modify the Navios Vega ultra-handimax vessels to have the equipment necessary to provide transshipment operations and enter into a five-year charter with Navios South America Logistics. The vessel is expected to commence this operation in the fourth quarter and generate about 30 million of EBEDA over the course of its charter. The vessel itself in this trade should have an extended useful life of about 30 years. Please turn to slide 8. We provide an S&P update. Year-to-date, 2023, we generated 255.2 million gross proceeds from the sale of 14 vessels. In the first 9 months of the year, we received 242 million dollars and we received 13 million balance in the fourth quarter of 2023. In terms of acquisition, we spent 421.6 million for four new buildings Krabber fitted Afromax LR2 vessels and four Japanese new buildings MR2 vessels. We also spent 28 million dollars to acquire a 2019 built Kamsa Maxx vessel that we previously charted in. We continue to work on obtaining long-term contracted revenue. In the third quarter, we created 257.9 million of contracted revenue. Of this amount, we expect to receive 171.9 million dollars from five tankers with an average charter period of 3.8 years. In addition, we expect to receive 47.1 million from the vessel we place into the transshipment business. Finally, We expect to generate 38.9 million from three 4,250 PU container ships. Average about 18,300 net per day for 1.9 years. This year we were approached by certain counterparties to enter into amendments that would relieve them of certain liabilities. We facilitated this transaction at an estimated 10.2 million net present value benefit to Navios. 3.5 million of this value is attributable to a 52.5 million prepayment of charter hire for two container ships and 6.7 million of this value was attributable to charter amendment and extension for two container ships. Please turn to slide 9. Since our transformation in 2020, our financial performance has been strong. A 9 months 2023 adjusted EBITDA is 11.4% higher than 9 months 2022. Looking backwards, 2022 was 57% higher than 2021 and almost 570% higher than 2020. We believe that our diversified business model can continue to perform in difficult markets. I now turn the presentation over to Mr. Stratos Desypris, Navios Partner, Chief Operating Officer. Stratos?

Thank you, Angeliki, and good morning all. Please turn to slide 10, which details our strong operating free cash flow potential for the fourth quarter of 2023. We fixed 83% of our available days at an average rate of $23,610 net per day. Our contracted revenue exceeds expected total cash expense for Q4 2023 by about $52 million. We have 2,304 open and index-linked days that will provide additional profitability. Please turn to slide 11. We are always renewing the fleet so that we maintain a young profile. It is part of our strategy to reduce our carbon footprint by modernizing our fleet benefiting from new technologies and ecovessels with greener characteristics. We have 1.7 billion remaining investment in 28 new building vessels delivering to our fleet 3027 for which most of the financing has already been in place. In container ships we acquired 12 vessels for a total of about 860 million. would be hedged by entering into long-term credit-worthy charters, generating about 1.1 billion in contracted revenue for about 6.5 years average duration of the related charters. In the tanker space, we acquired 16 vessels for a total price of approximately 885 million. We have already chartered out 10 of these vessels for an average period of 5 years, generating revenues of about half a billion. The dry-bulk new building program of eight vessels was completed in June 2023 with the delivery of the last cave-sized vessel. We have also been actively and optionistically selling all their vessels based on segment fundamentals. Year-to-date, we have sold 14 vessels with an average age of approximately 15 years for $265.2 million. We sold seven tanker vessels for about $160 million, taking advantage of a strong tanker market. Also we sold 7 dry bulk vessels for a total price of 95.4 million. Our last sale was a 19.3 years old cage size vessel which we sold within Q4 for 13 million. Moving to slide 12, we continue to secure long term employment for our fleet. As Angeliki mentioned earlier, in Q3 we have created about 260 million additional contracted revenue. Approximately 172 million comes from our tanker fleet and about 40 million comes from our containerships. Additionally, we agreed a five-year contract with Navis Logistics for Marios Vega, one ultra-handy max vessel that was modified to perform transshipment operations, which is expected to provide about 50 million in revenue. The vessel is expected to be delivered within the fourth quarter. Additionally, we amended charters for four of our container ships. For two of the vessels, we agreed a prepayment of higher, of 52.5 million, and the assumption of the subcharters that the vessels are currently on. This prepayment was received in October and resulted in a net present value benefit of approximately 3.5 million. For the remaining two vessels, we have agreed to amend the current charter rate and extend the duration of the charters for an additional 2.4 years at an implied rate of $18,000 net per day, creating 31.7 million additional revenue and resulting in a net present value benefit of approximately 6.7 million. In slide 13, you can see our total contracted revenue, which amounts to 3.3 billion. 1 billion relates to our tanker fleet, 0.4 billion relates to our dry bulk fleet, and 1.9 billion relates to our container ships. Charters are extending from 2037 with a diverse group of quality counterparties. About 50% of our contracted revenue will be earned in the next two years. I now pass the call to Erif Tsironi, our CFO, which will take you through the financial highlights. Erif?