Greetings and welcome to Diana Shipping Inc. Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Ed Nebb, Investor Relations adviser with the company. Thank you. You may begin.

Thanks, Daryl, and thanks to everyone who is joining us today for the Diana Shipping Inc. 2023 Second Quarter Conference Call. With us today from management are Semiramis Paliou, Chief Executive Officer, who will introduce the other members of the management team. And so without further ado, I will turn it over to Semiramis.

Thank you, Ed. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Diana Shipping Inc.'s Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Semiramis Paliou, the CEO of the company, and it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you today. I am joined by our esteemed team, Mr. Stasi Margaronis, Director and President of Diana Shipping, Inc; Mr. Ioannis Zafirakis, Director, CFO and Chief Strategy Officer; Mr. Eleftherios Papatrifon, Director of Diana Shipping, Inc; and Ms. Maria Dede, the company's Chief Accounting Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone to review the forward-looking statements applicable to today's presentation, which can be found on Page 4 of the accompanying second quarter 2023 presentation. Q2 2023 has proven to be a profitable quarter for our company despite less robust conditions prevailing in the market. Our disciplined charter-in strategy once again has largely insulated us from the market weakening and has allowed us to generate positive free cash flow. In line with the guidance provided during the company's previous earnings call, we are pleased to declare the distribution of a dividend for this quarter amounting to $0.15 per share which will be paid in shares or at any shareholders' election in cash. We aim to continue rewarding our shareholders when conditions allow us to do so. Turning to Slide 5. I will provide an overview of the company's snapshot as of today. We currently own and operate a fleet of 42 vessels in the water, including a partial interest through a joint venture arrangement in 1 Ultramax with a carrying capacity of approximately 4.7 million deadweight tonnes. Our fleet utilization has remained consistently high, reaching 99.6% for the second quarter of 2023. Additionally, we employed 1,024 people at sea and ashore as of the end…

Hello, everyone. Basically, all the numbers that we're going to be discussing, they are reflecting the fact that the market has deteriorated. And on the other hand, the financing cost had increased for this 6 months and this quarter. So basically, as Semiramis said earlier, the time charter revenues for the 3 months ended June 30 stood at $67.4 million, below the $74.5 million that it was in 2002 but of course, that was with a larger number of vessels 41 instead of 35 as was in the previous year's quarter. This can be seen also the decreased time charter rates at the time charter equivalent rate that we have at 17.3 instead of the $24,600 something that it was in the previous quarter and the previous year. The daily operating expenses that were close to $6,000 for this quarter compared to $5,700 in the year 2022. Next slide. The 6 months, again, the same picture, you could see the time charter revenues at $140 million, similar to what it was in the previous 6 months in 2002 -- at the same period in 2022, where it was $140 million. Again, you can see that, that was with much smaller number of vessels. The time charter rate equivalent stood for the 6 months at $17,900 compared to $23,400 in 2022 for the same 6 months. The operating expenses are more or less the same, 5.7 compared to 5.6 of the same period last year. Moving to Slide 12, the income statement. You can see that we have an increased interest expense and financing costs. We have slightly more debt and also that reflects the increased cost of financing based on the rate environment that we are currently at. And that number was $23.8 million compared to $11.2 million for the…

Thank you, Ioannis. Thanks, and welcome to all the participants of this conference call on Diana's second quarter financial performance and latest on industry outlook. Without doubt, the dry bulk carrier market clocked in the poor performance this year-to-date of all major shipping sectors. We will look at the possible reasons for this and present the outlook given by the most respected shipping analysts. To illustrate the statement about dry bulk earnings in 2023, we only need to look at the Baltic Indices since the beginning of this year. The Baltic Dry Index started the year at 1,250 and closed yesterday, July 31, at 1,127. The Baltic Cape Index moved from 1,653 on January 3, 1,873 yesterday. The Baltic Panamax Index went from 1,438 to 996 over the same period, while the Baltic Supramax Index stood at 968 on January 3 and closed yesterday at 719. So what about the freight market conditions prevailing. Now according to Clarksons' demand improvements this year have been led by slightly firmer trends in China. But these were accompanied by weaker trends in key other regions, which have marginally prevailed thus far. At the same time, lower levels of port congestion have added to active tonnage supply. For this year, we will most likely witness more moderate bulker markets overall, compared to the strong conditions experienced in 2021 and the first half of 2022. However, Clarksons' foresee some improvements in earnings materializing in the coming quarters. The reasons will be analyzed later in the short presentation on the state of the market. So the earnings trend now. According to figures published by Clarksons and other analysts, average voyage earnings for Capes and Panamaxes have been coming steadily down over the last several weeks. 12-month time charter rates have also dropped across the board by…

Thank you, Stasi. And before we open up the call to questions and answers, I would like to summarize the key points from today's presentation. Our ongoing focus remains on generating and securing positive free cash flows. Starting from November 2021, we have consistently distributed substantial cash and in-kind dividends. Additionally, we have communicated our clear intention to declare a quarterly dividend of $0.15 per share for the upcoming quarter. Secondly, our company maintains its strong balance sheet through active capital structure management, which enables us to act opportunistically in renewing and modernizing our fleet and taking advantage of enticing sustainable shipping projects. Thirdly, we remain committed to our strategy of providing stability in a cyclical business, while maximizing long-term shareholder value. Thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to addressing your questions during the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first questions come from the line of Omar Nokta with Jefferies.

I just wanted to check on how you're doing things strategically. You just gave us a pretty solid update just on your views. But I just wanted to kind of get a better sense, you've reaffirmed the $0.15 dividend for next quarter. In the past, Diana has -- during times of market weakness, you've held back on dividends and maybe looked at acquiring tonnage on the cheap. We're in somewhat of a soft period right now. How do you think about capital allocation today versus back then? And are dividends a key part of the story for Diana at this point?

Omar, this is Ioannis. The truth of the matter is that we made acquisitions after being at the low part of the cycle for a while. I have to remind you that the market was at the lower part for 2 to 3 years before we started buying back -- buying vessels or buying back our stock in a stagger manner again and the investment period took around 3 years to do that. So by no means, I don't think we are at this level where we see attractive opportunities to purchase more vessels. As regards the cash allocation, you can see the existing cash, and we feel comfortable paying another $0.15 as a dividend. We continue having the same charter-in strategy. We are not in a position to say whether the market is going to be kept or go even further down materially. And we have also to distinguish the spot market with the time charter market. The levels that we see today, they are not the lowest that you can see or very, very low that you can say that we are at the lowest part of the cycle. We are somewhere in the middle even now as regards the time charter rates. The spot market is not good for sure. So to cut the long story short, we do not think that this is an investment period for us. On the other side, we are prepared to play defense, but we still have the means of paying another dividend.

Okay. That's pretty clear. I mean it seems that in terms of acquisitions, and you mentioned nothing really looks compelling at the moment. Is that just simply -- is it...

Sorry to -- Omar. As an investment, nothing looks particularly attractive today. Having said that, you realize that there are things changing in the fuel consumption of the vessels, fuel burning, what type of fuel, I mean, we're going to be using, et cetera. We have to follow this type of changes. And if you see us doing something to that respect, it would be only to follow the challenges and the changes that are going to be happening. But as investment opportunities, we don't see a clear investment today that makes sense. Sorry to interrupt.

No, no, that was helpful. I just wanted to maybe kind of -- maybe dig at that just a little bit more and understand is the -- is it more just because we're in a soft period in the market today, spot rates are soft or is it that asset values are just too elevated relative to where you think they should be? I know that's somewhat related to circular reference, but could you qualify maybe why you...

No, no. The prices of the vessels have not gone as usually, there is a time lag, where we have not gone to the levels where the rates are today. The big question is, whether they're going to stay at this level for a while or whether they're going to keep going even further down or they will change the caution that will go higher. What I'm saying is that you should not be acting very quickly when you see market movements and especially on the charters. And of course, you know better after so many years but the values of the vessels, they do not follow immediately. There is a time lag between what the market -- where the market is and where the vessel values are, and also, they are correlated to the sentiment. And I have to remind everyone that when the market has dropped from high levels, there is usually the expectation that this is going to be temporary, and people think that there is plenty of wishful thinking in the way they see the market. And this is why the values are kept higher than what the charter rates dictate. So at this time, I don't think that anyone is in a position to foresee or to guess what is going to happen after 3 months. And you know that we are one of these companies that we definitely don't do that. We keep our course regardless of how the market is going to evolve.

Indeed, definitely -- now, you stuck to your long-term allocation policy. So I will -- and deployment of the fleet. So I'll leave it at that.

[Operator Instructions]. I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to speaking to all of you again at our next earnings call -- conference call. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.