Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the EuroDry Conference Call on the Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results. We have with us today Mr. Aristides Pittas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Tasos Aslidis, Chief Financial Officer of the company. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. Please be reminded that the company announced its results with a 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 statement, 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 would now like to pass the floor over to Mr. Pittas. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us today for our scheduled conference call. Together with Anastasios Aslidis, Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our financial results for the third quarter and 9 months period ended September 30, 2021. Please turn to Slide 3. Our income statement highlights are shown here. For the third quarter of 2021, reported total net revenues of $19.5 million, the net income of $11.8 million. Adjusted net income attributable to common shareholders was $10.1 million or $3.77 share diluted. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, $13 million. For the 9-month period, our net revenues were $42.1 million, and our adjusted net income $18 million or $7.29 per share diluted. These results are starred compared to our Q2 results of last year, when the initial impact of the pandemic was first felt in our business. Our CFO, Tasos Aslidis, will go open our financial highlights in more detail later on in the presentation. Please turn to Slide 4 for our operational highlights. As previously announced on September 22, 2021, the company acquired Motor Vessel Good Heart for 63,614 [indiscernible] $24.5 million. The Vessel was financed partly by own funds and partly by a bank loan of $22 million, collateralized by this new acquisition and our Motor Vessel Starlight. There were no dry dockings or major repairs during the third quarter of 2021. To assist us in acquiring the Good Heart, the company raised $9.2 million of net proceeds by issuing about 316,000 shares through our ATM up to September 30, 2021. On the chartering front, our Motor Vessel Alexandros P was fixed for the trip of about 80 to 90 days at $25,250 per day for the first 65 days to $31,000 per day thereafter. Following the delivery of…

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Hello, excuse us, we were cut off. We are continuing from where we were cut off. We were at Slide 7, we were going over the market highlights for this quarter, and we had reached the point to say that after a strong Q3, we have seen in the last month a significant drop in the charter market, where Panamax vessels have dropped to about $21,500 per day. On the second-hand market, according to Clarksons, during Q3, secondhand bulk carrier prices increased by 17% while newbuilding prices increased to more than $37 million and $34 million for Kamsarmax and Ultramax vessels, respectively. And year-to-date, the fleet has grown by 3.4%. Please now turn to Slide 9. Global recovery continues, albeit a bit weakened compared to the previous -- to IMF's previous forecast in July. According to the October IMF report, growth forecast has been revised slightly downwards, hosting global growth projections for 2021 at 5.9% compared to 6% in July, while 2022 has been kept unchanged at 4.9%. Beyond 2022, the IMS continues to forecast a moderate global growth level of 3.3%. For 2021, this modest headline revision reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group due to supply disruptions driven by higher commodity prices as inflation expectations continue. Prospects for emerging markets and developing economies have also been noted down to 2021, especially for emerging Asia. Particularly, the U.S. is expected to grow 6% for 2021, which involves July quarter at 7%. The downward revision reflects a slowdown in economic activity resulting from the rise in COVID-19 cases and delayed production caused by supply shortages and the resulting acceleration of inflation. China's expense economy is expected to grow 8% in 2021, slightly less than the July forecast due to scaling back of public spending and the difficulties…

Thank you, Aristides, thank you very much. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. I will now take you through our financial highlights for the third quarter and 9-month period ended on September 30, 2021, and compare it to the same period of last year. So that, let's turn to Slide 15. For the fourth quarter of 2021, the company reported total net revenues of $19.5 million, representing 186% increase of total net revenues of $6.8 million during the third quarter of 2020, and that increase was primarily the result of the higher time charter rates our vessels churn in the third quarter of this year as compared to the third quarter of last year, but also on the increased number of vessels we operated during this quarter. The company reported a net income of -- for the period of $12.1 million and the net income attributable to common shareholders of $11.8 million as compared to a net income of $0.5 million and net income attributable to common shareholders of $0.1 million for the same period for third quarter 2020. Interest and other financing costs for the third quarter of 2021 remains roughly unchanged compared to last year at $0.6 million since the increase in the other outstanding debt in retail during the period was offset by the decreased LIBOR rates for our loss. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2021 was $13 million compared to $2.8 million during the third quarter of 2020, representing a 362% increase. Basic earnings per share attributable to common shareholders for the third quarter of 2021 were $4.47 calculated from 2.6 million basic shares outstanding and dilute earnings were $4.39 calculated from approximately $2.7 million diluted weight published number of sales outstanding compared to basic diluted earnings per share of $0.06…

Hello. And we open up the floor now for any questions and answers you may have -- any questions you may have.

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

This is Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group, and just a little macro to start. I mean, it seems like shares for a lot of the drybulk companies are following what the indices have done recently coming down from peaks and your comments earlier about steel demand in China flagging recently, but I've heard various comments from dry bulk companies on that. Can you give a little more about how that might be just a temporary factor and the seasonal considerations as well, please?

Sure. the levels of iron ore inventories of steel in China have been significantly depleted, so the prices have also dropped. China is very -- decideful itself when they buy and sell iron ore, so I think that when they realize that the prices are low enough and they want to move the economy, they have the capacity to start ordering iron ore again. We've seen that happen time and time again, and when they do that, we will see again a significant increase in the volumes of iron ore that will be said. So I think that -- And you've seen it in the Capesize vessels trade rate how they vary over the year [Audio Gap] to this kind of movements.

Great. And I apologize, it broke up a little bit there, but I see how -- when it had happened time and time again in previous cycles, is it usually a time line that this -- top 4 to 5 months, I think the rates -- the freight seems to baking that in for the first 6 months of 2022.

Yes, it is breaking up a little bit, but [indiscernible] this unabated rates again within the first half of 2022. Definitely, we think we will. I mean, it might have.

Tasos. And Tasos, on the preferred equity redemption, a great move and lower cost of funding as well. Can you just refresh on the accounting for that in 4Q, redeeming those at par at 13.6% versus the last carrying value of $13.1 million, will that be a loss in 4Q? And can you just -- was the conversion price on that preferred --

[indiscernible] I will think [indiscernible] share that we had initiated 7 years ago gave the company the option after 5 years to redeem them at their [Audio Gap] and given the fact that we pay 8% of that piece of funding and which will become 14% in 14 months, we decided that it was a good use of our revenues to pay down, to resume the whole amount of the preferred equity and keep the dividends returns for other holders.

Go ahead. Your line is now open.

Charles Fratt, NOBLE Capital Markets. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you [indiscernible]

Okay. I hate to do this, so since you broke up a lot on your last answer, so can you highlight what you're going to redeem, how much cash you're going to use to redeem the preferred in this fourth analyst quarter?

I think we're going to use $13.6 million, which is exactly the outstanding amount of preferred equity at par. And so we will pay that plus the any accrued dividends. I believe, by the time we're going to do the retail, the redemption, there will be something like 400,000 accrued dividends, the majority of which is already in our results for Q3, so we would pay them that. So I estimate that there will be about $3 million of cash needed to repay the sales part of the accrued dividends.

Okay. And then can you -- it looks like you've traded the first quarter 2022 FFA market. Can you just highlight whether your thoughts behind that and whether you expect to put any FFAs in place for the first half of the year or even the full year for 2022?

So we don't use FFA's speculative, we only use FFAs to hedge our position. So because we have all our ships in the spot market, rather than fixing the time charter, we decided to fix at the beginning of October FFA contracts for Q1, essentially covering one vessel for Q1 at the level which was $31,000 something, which we deemed very satisfactory at time. So it was done as a head against one of our open vessels, and as the market moves down, we felt the move was very abrupt. And we thought that it would correct sooner than what it is proven to have been corrected. So we closed that position at that point, took the profit of $700,000 and the [indiscernible] has, again, our ship open and exposed in Q1 this coming year. You will never see us doing the offer. You will never see us buying FFAs when we have ships that are open in the market because that would increase our exposure in the market, which we don't want to do. We only want to use FFAs to cover our position. And of course, if at some point, we think that we have overcovered, we might close some positions to reduce the cover or take some profit.

Okay. And has the -- does the FFA market moved back up to where you would be potentially looking at selling again and creating cover or some hedges for the first half of the year or [indiscernible]

It hasn't moved up that much yet. It's around the level that we closed our position, maybe even a little bit lower than the levels that we closed our position at this point. So it's not at $30,000, it's again at around low 20s, very low 20s. Yes, not the level that we think that we would like to take additional cover. We do believe in the market that we should see higher rates happening and transpiring, so we are not ready to fix our vessels out at $20,000 less [indiscernible]

Yes, I see the [indiscernible] -- Sorry.

Yes. We'd rather keep them a little bit, we'd rather keep them short. If we do see them approaching $30,000 again, we will take some additional cover though either by fixing them on time charter or through FFA, you will see.

Yes. Maybe today is a pretty abrupt day, but I see the FFAs for Panamax is down in the first quarter, down under 20 or closer to 19. That's helpful. With -- Tasos, can you talk about the drydocking activity? It looks like drydocking expenses are going up for the next 12 months, and they've potentially totaled close to $4 million. Can you just highlight how much downtime or idle base would be associated with those products?

Yes. I think that in front of me is the exact drydocking schedule of the vessels. Last -- the first 9 months of the year, we had very little drydocking, now almost no drydocking is a thing, that's why you saw a significant drop in the drydocking expenses. I believe we might have 1 or 2 drydockings next year. I'll be happy to provide you. Typically, it takes about 20 days with about 25 days for the off market for the drydock, and if you [indiscernible] of our [indiscernible], we budget between $500,000 and $700,000 per drydock and a little closer to $1 million for the Panamaxes. So I can get a little more specific offline if you want, that's what I recall on top of my head.

Yes. That would be helpful. And then Aristides, can you talk about the S&P market and just what you're seeing there and sort of your stance right now on additional moves to either enhance the fleet or expand the fleet?

I think we need to first seeing how this settle down after this vibrant move in the market. I mean, the very strong improvement in charter rates that we saw in September and the subsequent drop in October from how that affects values. And if we do see the market correcting as far as values are concerned, we haven't seen that yet and it doesn't really happen unless the market is low for quite some time or relatively for quite some time. So we want to see how things develop us before we decide on a particular move in acquiring maybe another ship or even selling an older one replacement with a younger one, which is something that is also a thought that we have had, but we are not ready to implement any of these options at this point. We are more on a way to see situation at this current moment.

Great. That's helpful. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say it looks like the Europe seas acquisition this morning looks pretty interesting. Congratulations on that.

Yes, that's a very good move, but that's different companies have.

We have no further questions I will now hand back to Mr. Pittas for closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for participating in today's call, and we'll be back with you next year with the end of the year results, which you all know will be great. We will take it from there. Let's see what 2022 will bring. Bye-bye.

Thank you. That concludes the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.