Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the EuroDry Conference Call on the Fourth Quarter 2019 Financial Results. We have with us today, Mr. Pittas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer of the Company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you the call is being recorded today, Thursday, the 13th of February, 2020. Please be reminded that the Company announced its results with the press release that has been publicly distributed. Before passing the floor to Mr. Pittas, I would like to remind everyone that in today’s presentation and conference call, EuroDry will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Matters discussed may be forward-looking statements, which are based on current management expectations that involve risks and uncertainties that may result in such expectations not being realized. I kindly draw your attention to Slide 2 of the webcast presentation, which has the full forward-looking statements and the same statement was also included in the press release. Please take a moment to go through the whole statement and read it. I’d now like to hand the floor over to Mr. Pittas. Thank you, please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you all for joining us today for our scheduled conference call. Together with me is Tasos Aslidis, our Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today’s call is to discuss our financial results for the year-end and quarter ended December 31, 2019. Please turn to Slide 3. Our income statement highlights us on here. For the fourth quarter 2019, we reported total net revenues of $7.6 million, adjusted EBITDA of $3.8 million, and net income attributable to common shareholders of $1.3 million. Basic and diluted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $0.45 per share. An average of seven vessels were owned and operated during the fourth quarter of 2019. Earning an average time charter equivalent rate of $12,439 per day. The company declares its first cash dividend of $0.4 million on Series B preferred shares and adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders was $980,000 or $0.43 per share basic and diluted. Please turn to Slide 4 for our chartering operations and sales and purchase highlights of the quarter. The Pantelis was fixed during this falling market for a trip of about 20, 25 days at $6,000 per day, and then extended another $6,050 per day. The actual time charter equivalents were $5,150 per day and $4,400 respectively due to ballasting. Xenia was extended for about a year at 101% of the BPI5 time charter route index with a floor of $11,000 per day. The fourth quarter of 2019, we opened up an FFA heads by selling in October exposure of 90 days equivalents to the open days of one Panamax ship at $14,550. We closed this hedge in November with a net profit of about $112,000 which is equivalent to about $1,200 daily on one…

Thank you very much, Aristides. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. I will take you over now on financial result highlights for the fourth quarter and 12 months of 2018 and 2019. For that, let's turn to Page 14. For the fourth quarter, we reported total net revenues of $7.6 million representing an 8.8% increase for the total net revenue of $7 million during the fourth quarter of 2018 and that increase was the result of the increased average number of vessels that we operated in the fourth quarter of this year. The company reported net income for the period of $1.4 million and net income attributable to common shareholders of $1.03 million, as compared to net income of $0.8 million and net income attributable to common shareholders of $0.6 million for the same period of 2018. Depreciation expenses for the fourth quarter of 2019 amounted to $1.6 million compared to $1.5 million for the same period of last year. Interest and other financial costs for the fourth quarter of 2019 amounted to $0.8 million compared to $1.1 million for the same period of 2018. Interest during the fourth quarter of 2019 was lower with lower debt and lower LIBOR rates during the period as compared to last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $3.8 million compared to $3.5 million achieved in the fourth quarter of 2018. Basic and diluted earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the fourth quarter of 2018 were $0.5 calculated on 2,261,000 basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding compared to basic and diluted earnings of $0.25 for the fourth quarter of last year. Excluding the effects on earnings attributable to common shareholders for the quarter of the unrealized loss of gain and derivatives, the…

Thank you, Tasos. Let me open up the floor for any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Thank you very much. We will now take our first question. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. If you can, and I know a short-term consideration, but can you expand on potential outcomes or short-term outcomes for the two contracts that come due or the term contracts that are expiring this month given the current environment. Can you -- have you had conversations or can you give any more comments on potential outcomes in the short-term for those two ships, please?

Yes, these two ships were on short-term charters will probably continue trading on short-term. We are negotiating right now fixing one of the vessels for another 20, 25 days at charter rates of magnitude of between $2,500 and $3,000 and this is the current market in this Pacific at this point. We could get something slightly higher if we opted to do a much longer voyage but with these rates, we rather do smaller voyages less than a month waiting to see some kinds of recovery in the market.

Great, thank you for that. And then I noticed that in your prepared remarks in the presentation, you talked about iron ore trading volume growth that at risk, does that offset the reduction in or the limited growth and supply of ships or why did you put that in your outlook? And what can we look of that risk?

We just note also that Clarkson that is generally suggesting relatively low demand growth rate going with lower than the historical of the last 10 years. And we're trying to see what are the reasons for that and because iron ore is one of the major commodities that is transported, we looked into what is being built as new mining opportunities and things like that and much is not being built. So it explains a little bit why the growth in drybulk demand is probably estimated to be lower than what it has been over the last decade or so. What counteracts that lower demand, of course is the much lower supply of vessels and the fact that we don't see new orders being placed.

Okay, thank you for that detail on the ships and that comment. Have a good rest of the day.

Thanks Tate.

Thank you very much. We will now take our next question. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Tasos. This is Poe Fratt from Noble Capital Markets. Good morning, Aristides.

Good morning.

Can you just highlight a little bit maybe just would cost push your scene it looks like your budget for next 12 months on taxes just slightly higher than it was in 2019, if you could just comment on that would be helpful.

In terms of the OpEx costs, I think I think we're expecting to see around $5,100 per vessel per day for the OpEx. And that compares, it’s in the same order of magnitude, I think it's just about 2% higher than the actual for 2.5% higher than the actual for 2019, which is the ballpark of our expected interest, the vessels, especially some of our vessels that are in their teens value little more. I think is the same level that we saw in fourth quarter 2018. I don't think we can repeat significantly bigger projection for budgets. It is very similar to 2019 levels.

Poe and I think it’s fair to say that we are completing our analysis of the OpEx of 2019 to evaluate where we can perhaps make some savings and try to go below this initially budgeted level. So we hope that we will end-up with an increase of less than the 2.5% and we're taking measures to see if we can do that. But we'd rather keep to the original budget as it is right now and do better.

Yes, understood better to have a positive surprise and a negative one, right. And I apologize, I get onto call a little late, so I'm not sure if you addressed this. But can you talk about IMO 2020 in the context of how it’s impacted you, your company, and whether it's what's been the biggest surprise or the biggest issue for you and then secondly, whether it's changed your view towards whether you think that you should be doing anything towards the end of this year, maybe next year, as far as making the investment in scrubbers, has anything changed?

Well, what has happened is that we saw a very big spread initially between high sulfur fuel oil and low sulfur fuel oil in excess of 350 the first phase. But this has been the narrowing and now it’s below 200 and seems as if it's going to go even lower, we think the spread is going to become even lower. So yes of course, our cost of fuel increased, it didn't increased very much because we've had generally lowering in the cost of oil. So didn't increased tremendously to what it was for the bigger part of 2019. But it has slightly increased by maybe $100 or so. But for sure that the guys that have scrubbers have taken advantage of the difference in the cost at least the ones that do support business because the ones that do time charter business said that the improvement with the charters and but the spread is narrowing and we think that it may end up being lower than $150. For a big ship, I think that would still make sense to install the scrubbers but vessels up to Panamax that we have, I'm not sure that this investment will ever make sense. But we will wait and see what happens and how the price differential develops in order to take final decision, nothing, no scrubber is at this point is being considered. The other thing that we saw is because of the issues with both the scrubber and the coronavirus creating a lot of issues with shipyards in China, where mostly people go for drydockings, we see that the yards are full and they’re working at very slow rates. And the two ships that we had earmarked for drydock within Q1, we have obtained the extension for their drydocking and we may need to obtain a further extension from class as there are delays there. So I think these are the two things that we've seen regarding this transition into the new oil, of course there has been delays as well in times that you stay waiting for oil, for bunkers and how longer earlier you have to request them that is mainly charter approves and charter problem and as we’re time charter doesn't really influence us.

Great, thank you. And then can you comment on what you're seeing out there as far as just maybe any potential acquisitions, any assets, has it changed over the last month or so as far as just availability of tonnage that might be attractive or can you just comment on what you're seeing out there as far as acquisition activity?

Yes, this is something that we have been monitoring. We've always said that we have two ways of growth. One is organically our sales is slowly and quietly, the other is through some kind of joint venture. We don't have anything to report around the joint venture at this stage although we’re always looking and discussing opportunities, but nothing that is yet to be discussed and reviewed. But also we have been looking at maybe buying one more vessel, if we see prices drop because of what's happening. We might proceed with one more acquisition. But there are no real sellers of good vessels in the market, people are trying to keep the vessels they have and I think all the sellers expects that the current market is temporary and things will improve. So bid and ask prices of ships are quite far apart at this point in time and that's why we see very, very little activity on the sell and purchase.

Okay, great. And then just on the preferred, Tasos you mentioned that it's pushes your cost of debt upward by about 90 basis points or so, in advance of the step-up in the rate next year, has any changing thinking on that as far as just either trying to partially pay down or trying to retire it entirely?

Hi, this is our objective or target is to find ways to either partially or fully retire. If we follow the reviews, the model that we applied in 2018 even partial repayment could allow us to reduce the rate and we can lever up a bit our fleet, we have some capacity of levering up our existing fleet and rising several million dollars to reduce it meaningfully. So that is the fallback position and we’re little more accurate to find (inaudible) financing.

I think in the last call, you mentioned that you had about $4 million to $5 million of “dry powder” from a standpoint of secured lending, is that still the case, Tasos?

That is actually the case of dropping of the vessel values, lightly dropping, but probably was chipped up a bit. But I would expect to have between 4 million or 5 million of levering capacity, it depends on how you level the conventional bank debt that is probably what I just said. But if you look at the sale leaseback opportunities of levering the fleets, you might be able to fully repay the reserves.

Great, thank you so much for the comments.

You're welcome.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Pittas?

Thank you all for participating in our call today. We will be with you in three months time to discuss the results of Q1. Thank you.

Thanks everybody.

Thank you very much. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.