Navigator Holdings Ltd.

and myself, Randy Givens, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development in North America. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. As we conduct today's presentations, we'll be making various forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, the future expectations, plans, and prospects from both a financial and operational perspective and are based on management assumptions, forecasts, and expectations as of today's date. August 15, 2024, and are as such subject to material risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ significantly from our forward-looking information and financial forecast. Additional information about these factors and assumptions are included in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I will now pass the floor to Mads Pieterzakko, the company's CEO. Please go ahead, Mads.

Good morning, and thank you all for joining this Navigator Gas Earnings Call for Q2 2024. Please turn to page number three. To begin with, I'll review the key data on our Q2 2024 performance, and then I'll go over the outlook for the rest of the year. Gary, Oivin, Randy will then bring more detail and analysis. Yet again, we generate more revenues during the quarter with operating revenues up 8% compared to both the same period in 2023 and also Q1 of this year. This was driven by both higher rates, but also strong utilization. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 set yet another navigator record of $78 million, which is well above the EBITDA of $69 million earned in Q2 of last year. The balance sheet is strong with a robust cash position even after we repaid on our debt facilities. We continued deploying capital into our Ethylene terminal expansion, and we also bought back shares. The return of capital continued in Q2 with both the 5 cents fixed dividends and the share buyback up to now in combination 25 of 25% of net income. This will continue after the Q2 results. And in addition, you probably also noted that during Q2, we bought back 3.5 million shares from BW Group for a total of $51 million at $14.52 per share. Commercially, we continue pushing up rates and secured average Q2 TCE rates of $29,500, which is 9% higher than the same period last year. We achieved utilization above 93%, which is high, and more than 4% above the same period last year. We are pleased with the direction and continued improvements in our commercial results across rates and utilization, and thereby our operating revenues. Throughput at our joint venture Ethylene Export Terminal was down at 231,000 tons for the quarter, and Oivin and Randy will provide a bit more context to this in a few minutes. The expansion of the terminal continues on track for completion in Q4 2024 and with progress payments that are continuing. We have for some time now talked about the significant opportunities lying ahead for Navigator with the transportation of CO2 and clean ammonia. So we are very pleased to have announced progress on both fronts. Within ammonia, we've entered into an MOU with Uniper. And within ammonia, we've committed a small but important investment into Tenno8. None of these will absorb or produce significant cash flows in the near term, but both are paving the way for new, potentially very significant markets for Navigator. We remain confident about the outlook for our business for both the near, mid, and long term. We expect utilization to remain near 90% in Q3. And we continue to renew our expiring time chargers at higher rates. So with solid demand for transportation on handy-sized gas carriers, we see older vessels being sold out of international trade and limited supply from new buildings in our segment. We expect this to continue. So with that, I'll just pass it over to you, Gary, now, so you can provide a little bit more detail on the financial result. Go ahead.

Thank you Mads and very good morning or afternoon to everyone. Our second quarter 2024 results have continued our progress with again some really positive results and another new record high just at EBITDA as Mads mentioned. On slide six, our total operating revenue was 146.7 million in the second quarter of 2024 with strong utilization of 93.4% against 89.3% for the first quarter of 2024 and boosted by still stronger time charter equivalent rates that were on average $29,550 per day in the second quarter compared to $28,339 per day in the first quarter of 2024. and $27,241 per day in the second quarter of last year, 2023. In the second quarter of 2024, our vessel operating expenses were held steady at $43.5 million, despite the larger number of vessel dry docks that are taking place in 2024, and depreciation was principally in line with the previous quarter at $33.3 million. We incurred some additional non-recurring general and administrative costs in the quarter, related primarily to the secondary public offering of 7 million common shares by the BW Group of which we concurrently bought back 3.5 million of those shares, and they were cancelled. In the second quarter, we also saw a swing in our non-cash unrealised movements on our non-designated derivative instruments compared to the first quarter of 2024, this being related to movements in the market valuation of our long-term interest rate swaps over the quarter, and which movement turned negative, thus impacting our accounting net income figure by just over £4.7 million, but which had no impact on our cash or liquidity. Our income tax line reflects current and mainly deferred taxes, primarily derived from our investment and share of profits in our ethylene export terminal at Malden's Point. Then overall, net income attributable to stockholders of Navigator Holdings was £23.2 million, with a basic earnings per share of 32 cents, and adjusted net income, which excludes those unrealised gains and losses on derivative instruments and any vessel sales, was £24.8 million, or 34 cents per share. Ethylene terminal throughput volumes in Q2 2024 were 230,857 tonnes, resulting in a contribution of $4.7 million from our Ethylene Terminal Joint Venture, and Randy will talk some more about the terminal shortly. As Mads mentioned, our new record adjusted EBITDA was 77.6 million in the second quarter, coming from robust available ownership and earnings days, which translated into strong vessel utilisation then combined with generally increased charter rates. Our balance sheet, shown on slide 7, remains very strong with a cash and cash equivalence balance of over $138 million at June 30, 2024, and that's despite paying out $87.9 million for scheduled loan repayments and share buybacks in the second quarter, plus $16 million in progress payments for our Ethylene Terminal Expansion project. Our total available liquidity at June 30th, 2024 was 167 million, and we currently anticipate further robust cash generation from our operations in the third quarter of 2024. As already noted, as part of our share buybacks, we repurchased and then cancelled 3.5 million of our common shares in a secondary offering from the BW Group in June at a cost of $14.52 per share, which was a total cost of $50.8 million worldwide. We believe this transaction was highly accretive to the company, given our underlying net asset value is currently over $25 per share, and we were pleased to be able to complete it. On slide eight, we were also pleased to report that on August 9th, 2024, we entered into a new six-year secured term loan and revolving credit facility of up to $147.6 million, which is to be used to refinance our existing March 2019 secured loan facility that matures in March 2025. to fund the repurchase in October 2024 of the Navigator Aurora pursuant to our existing October 2019 sale and lease back arrangement and for general corporate and working capital purposes. The facility releases up to $45 million in additional liquidity to the company and we've negotiated improved terms over our existing 2019 facility, including a new lower margin at 190 basis points and which rate is significantly below the cost of our existing sale and lease back arrangement. We're also very pleased to say that the margin of 190 basis points includes a sustainability linked adjustment of five basis points, reflecting our continued commitment to concentrating our efforts on the environmental impact of our fleet. We then have two debt maturities, our unsecured bonds and another bank facility, both due in just over one year's time in September 2025, which refinancings were already planning and which may result in positive liquidity events for the company. And we'll provide more updates on those as they progress. On slide 9, our leverage remains very comfortable with net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 2.3 times for the 12 months to June 30 of 2024. And our net debt to capitalisation was just 31.2% as of June 30, 2024. We're continuing to reduce our debt with more than $100 million of average annual scheduled debt amortisation payments during 2024 through 2027, as you can see on the graph. And within our refinancing workstreams, we're looking to target further reductions in the average cost of our debt. We do expect that some of our cash will be needed for the remainder of our ethylene terminal expansion project unless and until we finance the project later in the year, and as well for other projects and investments that we're considering that will enhance shareholder returns. As we mentioned in previous earnings calls, there are a number of projects that we're actively looking at, but meantime, we'll continue to manage our business carefully, reduce our debt, look to our capital distributions and share buybacks, and remain an active steward of the business's capital. On slide 10, we outline our latest estimated cash break-even for 2024 at $20,800 per day, which shows a slight increase of $100 per day compared to the previous quarter estimate, but which figure is all in and includes our scheduled debt repayments and our heavier dry-up schedule this year. Even considering this, with such a break-even level relative to today's charter rates, recalling our average TCE for the second quarter of 2024 was $29,550 per day, It will enable Navigator to generate a very positive EBITDA with significant headroom throughout the shipping cycle. As we like to present, on the right is our daily OPEX guidance for 2024 across our differing vessel size segments, ranging from our smaller vessels to our larger, more complex ethylene vessels. And following is guidance for the third quarter of 2024, as well as updates for the full year across vessel OPEX, general and admin costs, depreciation and net interest expense, all of which are materially unchanged from the guidance given in our first quarter 2024 presentation. Slide 11 outlines our historic quarterly adjusted EBITDA, showing this second quarter's record high figure and demonstrating yet again the very positive and consistent rates, results we have been able to report for many quarters now. And despite a currently narrowing ethylene arbitrage, we expect this trend to broadly continue in the third quarter of 2024. On the right side of slide 11, we show our historic adjusted EBITDA bar for 2023, our last 12 months adjusted EBITDA, and an annualised adjusted EBITDA based on this second quarter result. In addition, the EBITDA bars then to the right provide some sensitivity and illustrate an increase in adjusted EBITDA of approximately $18 million for each $1,000 incremental increase in average time charge equivalent rates per day. Then finally for me on slide 12, an update on our vessel's scheduled dry docks. We have 18 vessels scheduled for dry docking during 2024, of which six were completed in the first half of the year, with an expected total for the 18 vessels of 504 off-high days and total dry docking capex anticipated of $29.3 million, all of which is scheduled, fully costed and included in our cash flow plans. As we've set out before, some further detail on the expected timing and costs of these dry docks is shown below, noting that three more vessels are scheduled to have completed their dry dock by the end of August, leaving seven more to complete during the remainder of 2024. Also, as an important reminder, we're taking these dry dock opportunities to install energy saving technologies on those vessels at a total cost of around $4.8 million, with many of these technologies having a very short payback period. Then finally, we also provide here some guidance on 2025 and 2026 scheduled RIDOCs for those that are interested, which guidance remains very similar to previous figures we've disclosed. Overall, Navigator has had a very good quarter both operationally and financially with record adjusted EBITDA, high TCE rates and utilisation. We've completed one key step in our refinancing plan and we're looking forward to keeping our momentum for the remainder of 2024 and beyond. So with all that said, I'll now hand over to Oivind to talk about our commercial position and outlook. Oivind.