Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Euroseas Conference Call on the Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results. We have with us 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 their results with a press release that has been publicly distributed. Before passing the floor with Mr. Pittas, I would like to remind everyone that in today’s presentation and conference call, Euroseas 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’d 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 Tasos Aslidis, our Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our financial results for the six-month period and quarter ended June 30 2023. Let’s turn to Slide 3 of the presentation to go over our income statement highlights. We are very pleased with our results for the second quarter of 2023, which is one of the best results we have ever had since Euroseas became a containership focused public company in 2018. For the second quarter of 2023, we reported total net revenues of $47.7 million and the net income was $28.9 million, or $4.15 per diluted share. Adjusted net income was $29 million, or $4.17 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the cost was $30.6 million. Please refer to the press release for the reconciliation between adjusted net loss and adjusted EBITDA. As part of the company's common stock dividend plan, our Board of Directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per common share for the second quarter of 2023, which will be payable on or about September 16 to the shareholders of record on September 9, 2023. The annualized dividend yield based on current share price, is above 9%. This is the sixth consecutive quarter of the company paying meaningful dividends. We remain committed to continue paying significant dividends to our shareholders. The original share repurchase program of $20 million approved by the Board in May 2022 has been extended for another year. As of August 9, we have repurchased 396,000 of our common stock in the open market, for a total of about $8.1 million. This represents close to 6% of our total shares. Tasos, will go over the financial highlights in…

Thank you very much. Good morning for me as well, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next four slides, I will give you an overview of our financial highlights for the second quarter and first half of 2023 and compare them to the same period of last year. With that, let's turn to Slide 17. For the second quarter of 2023, the company reported total net revenues of $47.7 million, representing a 9.6% decrease. Our total net revenues were $48.5 million during the second quarter of last year. And that decrease was the result of the lower fund charter rates our vessel churn in the second quarter of 2023, as compared to the same period of last year, partly offset by the increase in the average number of vessels we own and operated in the second quarter of this year. The company reported a net income for the period of $28.9 million as compared to net income of $30.7 million for the same period of 2022. And other financial costs for the second quarter of 2023 amounted to $1.2 million, which is the result of $2.4 million unrealized in finance costs pay for our loans, partly offset by $1.2 million of imputed interest income as we start finance the construction of our newbuildings, before they delivered. Compared to $1.1 million for the same period of last year, during which we did not included net interest income. Just in case of the interest paid for our loans is due to the amount of debt that we can and the increase in the weighted average of LIBOR and SOFR rates that we face in the current period as compared to the same period of last year. Additionally, it should be noted that in the second quarter of 2023, the total interest income come…

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

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question is from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.

Good day, how are you?

Hi, Tate.

Hello. On Slide 13, you showed a little more than 9% fleet growth this year for TEU vessels less than 3,000. Is that indicating what you indicate year-to-date that roughly half of the vessels have entered what so far this year with another half and the other approximate numbers of the new ships entering the fleet this year?

Yes, half of the vessels that were supposed to a little bit less than half than the vessels that were supposed to enter the fleet this year have actually entered already, yes.

And then what have you observed in terms part in yes please?

Sorry, I didn't get you.

What have you observed in terms of chartering activity for those newbuilds entering the market in terms of securing contracts and the length of time securing contracts that had a delivery?

There were quite a few ships that were quite large that had already secured employment, even smaller ships had already secured employment. For example, our Terataki that was delivered in July. We have secured the employment since last year, and it was obviously at very high rates. A similar vessel that opened up that was delivered to somebody else and was not chartered was able to be fixed at around $25,000 per day for the year. So the ships that are being delivered are being fixed today, but slightly, but at lower rates than what was achievable last year.

And I think for the previous announcement, you announced that July 25 were the new contracts for the Rena P and the Emmanuel P. And I think you mentioned that was with ZIM. Can you mention a part of how the negotiations went for that? I mean when I first went the headline, I was expecting lower contracts for yourself, but you did extend on for longer terms at higher rates than the previous contract. So can you give more of the situation behind those contract negotiations if you can?

Sure. I have to be very clear to you so that we don't give any wrong impression. We have no obligation to cancel the charters that we had with ZIM. And there was no such request. We were told that if we wanted the vessels free, we could take them and charter them elsewhere. We looked in the market. We saw that we can get something a little bit better than what -- and for longer than what we had in our ZIM charters. And very amicably, we agreed with ZIM that we would cancel the charter with them. And we would fix with OCL at what we did. So everything was done very amicably and without any distress.

Great. Do you think that kind of example will occur in the containership market for the rest of the year? I mean, is there out continue to be counterparty risk with longer-term contracts? And how do you manage that still?

I think that the main counterparties are all very credible operators of ships. So they will stick to the charters and will perform. I don't expect us to see non-performances. Everything that will be done if there is some rearrangement because some lines want to reduce -- to reduce or others want to increase the number of ships on the charter. Everything will be done amicably and commercially and without dispute.

Okay, great example on the contract with the OCL. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Tate.

Next question is come from the line of Kristoffer Skeie with Arctic Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Hello. How are you?

Hi, Kristoffer.

Congrats on a great quarter. I was just following if you can share some details on how you are progressing on the seven new builds, both in terms of employment, but also on the financing side, I mean, how much is now remaining CapEx? And how much do you expect to fund through senior debt?

On the employment side, we haven't raised anything yet. We are in contact with various charters. But I think it's too early to fix the ships yet. So we will see closer to the delivery date, how we fix them. On the financial side, Tasos can brief a little bit more. We have a range or pretty close to a range in the financing of the first ship that we -- yet on the first ship that will be delivered in 2024. And in discussions with other financers regarding the rest. I feel very comfortable about it. But Tasos, your figures please.

We had about $ 280 million of vessel payments to make. The value of the vessels that were to deliver about $ 290 million, which have made about $60 million of advanced payments against that through equity. We serve the equity already built in our numbers that we'll be able to cover with our own cash flow generation. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to assume incremental debt of around $165 million, give or take to finance the vessels. So $165 million debt, about $60 million remain, and we're going to put another $60 million of equity to cover -- another $40 million of equity to cover the payments.

That's around 165 and then remaining 40 through cash on hand? Okay, great. And with that, I mean it's quite a comfortable cash level and you will definitely build a lot of cash over the coming quarters. You mentioned in your presentation and results that you -- that you are building a significant war chest in order to pursue investment opportunities. So I was just wondering, can you elaborate a bit what you mean about that? And are you starting to see any opportunities out there in the market on secondhand transactions that might be -- might be interesting?

Sure. As I said in the presentation, our cash flow buildup is sufficient to easily finance the new building program that we have. It is sufficient for us to continue paying dividends in the foreseeable future that are significant, that are close to the 10% yield and of course, to continue acting on our stock repurchase plan. But in addition to all that, the liquidity we are building, and we currently have, I think, about $50 million is sufficient to also look at potentially new -- potential new acquisitions. At this stage, we would not buy something speculatively. We would only invest if we can find a deal that is backed by a charter that will bring the residual value of the vessel at the end of the charter at extremely low levels. So that is the strategy, and we feel comfortable about its implementation.

Great, thank you. That's it for me.

Thanks, Kris. Thank you.

Our next question is from the line of Climent Molins with Vale Investor's Edge. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by asking about the ADN Express. Could you provide an update on how the arbitration against the previous charter is going?

Yeah. As we said in our previous call in the previous quarter, we have assumed that we will recover nothing from that arbitration. And unfortunately, it probably seems that we are moving along that line right now. The charter has disappeared. He is -- we think he has -- is winding down the business. We can't find him that we can't locate the assets, but we continue trying to do that. So hopefully, we will find something. But as we said, our projections suggest that this will be a loss that we will -- that we have incurred already. So if there is any surprise, it will be -- it can only be a positive surprise because we've planned for the worse.

You've pursued a very balanced approach to capital allocation by ordering new build distributing dividends and repurchasing shares. Despite that, the market is still valuing the company at a significant discount to NAV. So share repurchases continue to make a lot of sense. Are tender offers something the board has or would consider? Or do you prefer to stick with share repurchase in the open market?

I think that a purchasing in the open market is the way that we want to continue. It is -- tender offers usually has to be made at a higher price. And we think that by implementing gradually the strategy with the stock repurchases, we are doing it more economically.

Make sense. That's all for me. Thank you for taking my questions. And congratulations for the quarter.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. At this time, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the call over to Aristides Pittas for closing remarks.

Thank you all for participating in this call. And we will be back with you in three months' time, hopefully, with a -- good results again. Thanks everybody.

This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.