Scorpio Tankers Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the Scorpio Tankers Inc. Third Quarter 2020 Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Brian Lee, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, and thank everyone for joining us today. Welcome to the Scorpio Tankers Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. On the call with me today are Manuel Oro, our Chief Executive Officer, Robert Bugbee, our President, Cameron Mackey, our Chief Operating Officer, Lars Teltner-Nielsen, Commercial Director David Morant, Managing Director James Doyle, Senior Financial Analyst. Earlier today, we issued the third quarter earnings press release, which is available on our website. The information discussed on this call is based on the information as of today, November 5th, 2020, and may contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements for discussion of these risks and uncertainties. You should review the forward-looking statement disclosure and the earnings press release that we issued today, as well as the Scorpio Tankers SEC filings, which are available at scorpiotankers.com and sec.gov. Call participants are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live on the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. An archive of the webcast will be made available on the investor relation page of our website for approximately 14 days. There is a short presentation that is on our website. at scorpiotankers.com on the investor relation page under reports and presentations. If you have any specific modeling questions, you can contact me later and we can discuss offline. I'd now like to introduce Emmanuel Varro.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning or afternoon. Thanks for being with us today. The third quarter is is seasonally the quietest period of the year for CPP tankers, and this normal seasonal pattern was further reinforced this year by a steep drawdown in maritime as well as onshore inventories. That said, I'm pleased to say that our earnings have continued to show progressive improvements from the equivalent quarter in 2019 and 2018 respectively, despite the extraordinary events of 2020. So we're pleased with the balance sheets, the progress that we've made over the year, which has allowed us to retire debt, as we have outlined on the presentation that Brian was referring to and on the earning press release. We've also almost concluded our extensive investment and CapEx in dry dockings and scrubber installations. So the vast majority of that is behind us now, which is another positive. As far as market update is concerned, our commercial director, Lars Denker-Nielsen, will give us his views on the market in the next few minutes. I'll leave that to him. Overall, put simply, I would observe that we are well positioned for the stronger seasons and normalization in the global economic activity. In particular, our strategic focus on modern LR2s over the last couple of years has started to bear fruit. We see this in the rates and the strategic decisions that we've taken to stick to clean trades on our LR2s as really bear fruits in 2020. It is early to assess the impact of further lockdowns. We are experiencing it in a wide scale in the Northern Hemisphere these days. And as I said, very difficult to assess the impact that this will cause. However, inventories are largely back to normal levels. Many parts of Asia and the developing world are back to near normal levels of economic growth. We see the longer-awaited opening of the new refineries in the Middle East adding to ton-mile demand. Continued with the ongoing closure of older refineries, we actually see the impact, the positive impact on ton-mile. Supply continues to be benign against the backdrop of a rapidly aging underwater fleet. in the previous quarterly calls, and we continue actually to see the description previously provided unravel quite favorably. So on the supply side, we feel comfortable. We believe this following wind will be a significant support to rates over the coming quarters and years. and look to the future with confidence. We, of course, have the question mark put upon us of COVID and 2020 in general, but however, the fundamentals do look normalized. And as I said, we do see and look at the future with confidence. With this, I'd like Lars to go through the market update, please. Lars, over to you.