Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the EuroDry Limited Conference Call on the Third Quarter 2023 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. 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 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 number 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. And now I would like to pass the floor to Mr. Pittas. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining us today for our scheduled conference call. Together with me is Mr. Tasos Aslidis, our Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our financial results for the three and nine month period ended September 30th. Please turn to Slide 3 of the presentation. Our financial highlights are shown there. For the third quarter of 2023, we reported total net revenues of $10 million and a loss of $0.5 million, or $0.19 loss per basic and diluted share. Adjusted net loss for the quarter was $0.7 million, or $0.24 adjusted loss per basic and diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $3.1 million. Please refer to the press release for the reconciliation between the adjusted net loss and adjusted EBITDA. Tasos will go over our financial highlights in more detail later on in the presentation. As of September 8, we had repurchased a total of 268,000 shares of our common stock in the open market for about $4 million under our share repurchase plan of up to $10 million announced in August 2022 and extended for another year. This represents about 10% of our outstanding shares. On September 12, 2023, we announced an agreement to acquire three Eco Ultramax vessels, M/V Christos K, a 63,000 deadweight drybulk vessel built in 2015, the sister ship M/V Maria, a 63,000 drybulk vessel also built in 2015, and another sister ship the M/V Yannis Pittas built in 2014 for a total price of $65 million. The vessels are also sister ships to our main M/V Alexandros P, which was built at the same yard in 2017 by ourselves. These acquisitions further expand our modern fleet cluster at a time that we believe is supportive of a healthy market…

Thank you very much, Aristides. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next four slides, I will give you an overview of our financial highlights for the third quarter and nine months of 2023 and compare them to the same periods of last year. For that, let's turn to Slide 15. For the third quarter of 2023, the company reported total net revenues of $10 million, representing a 36.7% decrease over total net revenues of $15.8 million during the third quarter of last year, and that decrease was the result of the lower number of vessels we operated in the third quarter of 2023 versus last year and the lower time charter rates that our vessels earned this year compared to last. We reported net loss for the period of $0.5 million as compared to a net income of $6.2 million for the same period the third quarter of 2022. Interest and other financing costs for the third quarter of 2023 amounted to $1.6 million compared to about $1 million for the same period of last year. Interest expense during the third quarter of this year was higher, mainly due to the increased underlying interest rates, SOFR and LIBOR that our loans were charged during the period compared again to the previous – to the same period of last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2023 was $3.1 million compared to $9.5 million we achieved during the same period of 2022. Basic and diluted loss per share for the third quarter of this year was $0.19 calculated on about 2.8 million basic diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding compared to earnings per share of $2.11 basic and $2.10 diluted calculated on about 2.9 million basic and diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding…

Thank you, Tasos. I'm opening now up the floor for any questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from a line of Kristoffer Skeie with Arctic Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Hello, gentlemen. How are you?

Hello.

Congrats on a quarter, a [indiscernible]. So that's good. I was just wondering if you could tell us a bit more about the rationale for growing your fleet driven joint venture. What's the rationale for this? Is such a platform something you would consider to use more as a means to expand, or how should we think about this?

So the Board had initially decided to acquire two vessels, and we were looking to find them. We then found a group of three vessels, and we said that it would be best and more conservative not to acquire it – with our own equity, although we could. But we wanted to maintain a strong balance sheet. And we had started some discussions with NRP regarding potential cooperation. And finally, we thought that it's a good idea. Why not? They are looking to find something to invest in for their investors. Why not do something together in a joint venture? And the discussions led to an agreement, and we are very happy to have done it, because we open up our company to the Norwegian market, which is a very knowledgeable shipping market and a strong shipping market. And hopefully we will be able to do more stuff with the same investors or other investors.

Thank you. And with regards to asset values, obviously they are still quite high in historical perspective, it doesn't seem like they are coming down anytime soon, although rates are not supporting it. With that in mind, would you consider selling some of your older vessels?

We will definitely be at some point replacing the older vessels with newer vessels. This transition has to happen, and at some point it will happen. When we think the time is right, we will do it. Hopefully within the next couple of years we will see a stronger market, which will make it more interesting for us to sell some of the older vessels. We will see. The transition has to happen at some point. We bought the three Ultramaxes, I think, at the lowest point of values within this year, at least. The prices were softening throughout the summer. Then after we concluded the deal to acquire the ships, the markets in September and October improved, and we saw prices going up a little bit. So we think we found a right time within the year to affect this expansion. We have to see how next year develops, and we'll take it from there.

Okay. Thanks. That's all for me. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. This is Brian Yu on line for Tate Sullivan. Hi. I just wanted to ask, in terms of like the market demand for China, what are some indicators you guys are seeing that helps indicate that the demand for 2024 is going to be moderate in terms of seasonality?

Yes. We think that generally seasonality will persist, right. So, there will be the periods when there is a lot of demand for grain or the factories want to restock and all that stuff, which usually happens. So, seasonality will be an issue again next year. China is a question mark for us right now. There are some positives and some negatives regarding them. I think that China has always managed to – when people expect it to be having difficulties, to come up with the right measures which result in keeping the economy rather strong. So we are optimistic that despite the fact that we've seen – well, we've actually seen a big increase in the coal imports, we've seen significant iron ore imports as well, despite the very poor market on the construction side. We are optimistic that China will manage to continue delivering this 5%, 5.5% growth, which is sufficient to hopefully maintain the rates at good levels.

Okay, got it. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Pittas, it appears we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Thanks everybody for standing by and listening to our today's conference call. We will be back to you within three months' time with the results of the end of the year.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to us.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.