Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Euroseas Conference Call on the First Quarter 2024 financial results. We have with us 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 call 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 over to 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 #2 on 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 over 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 3-month period ended March 31, 2024. Let's turn to Slide 3 of the presentation. to go over our income statement highlights. For the first quarter of 2024, we reported total net revenues of $46.7 million and the net income of $20 million or $2.87 per diluted share. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $18.5 million or $2.66 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the period was $24.6 million. A reconciliation of the adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA to net income is shown in the press release. Our CFO, Tasos will go over our financial highlights in more detail later on in the presentation. As part of the company's common stock dividend plan, our Board of Directors declared again a quarterly dividend of $0.60 per common share for the first quarter of 2024, which will be payable on or about June 21, 2024 to shareholders of record on June 14. The annualized dividend yield based on the current share price is again above 6%. This is the ninth consecutive quarter of paying meaningful dividends. As of May 23, 2024, we had also repurchased 400,705 of our common stock in the open market for a total of about $8.2 million since the initiation of our share repurchase plan of up to $20 million, which was announced in May 2022. We will continue to use our share repurchase program at management's discretion depending on our stock price to enhance our ability to drive long-term shareholder value. Please turn to Slide 4, where we discuss our recent sales and purchase, new building,…

Thank you very much, Aristides. Good morning from me as well, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next 4 slides, I will give you an overview of our financial highlights for the first quarter of 2024 and compare those results to the same period of last year. For that, let's turn to Slide 17. For the first quarter of 2024, the company reported total net revenues of $46.7 million, representing an 11% increase over total net revenues of $41.9 million during the first quarter of 2023. We reported a net income for the period of $20 million as compared to a net income of $28.8 million for the first quarter of last year. Interest and other financing costs for the first quarter of 2024 amounted to $3.2 million as compared to interest and other financing costs of $2 million for the same period of 2023. This increase is due to the increased amount of debt we carry and the increase in the SOFR rates of our bank rates in the current period as compared to the same period of last year. In the first quarter of 2024, our interest figures are reduced by the capitalized imputed interest of $ 5.4 million and due to the self-financing of the predelivery payments for our Newbuilding program as compared to $1.1 million of [ acute ] interest during the same period of last year. Finally, interest income in the first quarter of this year amounted to $0.55 million compared to $0.23 million in the same period of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2024 was $24.6 million compared to $26 million achieved in the same period of last year. Basic and diluted earnings per share for the first quarter of this year were $2.89 and $2.87, respectively, calculated on approximately 6.9 million…

Thank you, Tasos. Let us now open up the floor for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group.

Starting with the cash commitments for the newbuilds yet to be delivered and the 2 that were already delivered this quarter. You said you're adding $100 million, I think I heard, in debt to finance a newbuild. What's the remaining newbuild commitment for the payment schedule?

The remaining, I think I can make a quick estimate. I believe we have paid about $87 million before. I think it would be roughly about $20 million. I can get you a more exact number, but I think roughly about $20 million would be the equity commitment.

Okay. So total of $120 million. Okay. And then for the contracting the new builds and then sincerity, you contracted the Monica already for $16,000. And then can you talk about the stuff in the [ 8-K ], what do you still expect to get that before the end of the quarter? Should we expect a similar new build rate or if you could decide to go longer term, could it be lower than that $16,000 daily rates?

I think that we will be able to fix something which is very similar to this level. We would like to fix around a year's time. We will see. We are talking with some charters, and we will know relatively soon.

And just logistics, you start to get paid on the contracts for newbuilds right when they exit -- upon exiting the shipyard, is that correct based, on your previous...

Correct.

Okay. And then to Tasos for the financing for the newbuilds, will you secure the financing upon delivery? Or do you -- will you get financing for the installment payments for the remaining? How would you manage that?

We financed -- we pay the installment payments ourselves, and we arrange it delivery financing. Usually, we are in the financing of the vessels at delivery a month or more in advance. For example, next 2 vessels that we expect to take delivery of our already financed, as we announced already. The last 2, we haven't completed our financing arrangements yet.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Kristoffer Skeie with Arctic Securities.

I was wondering if you could provide some color -- on more color on the ongoing charter discussion with us to open vessel days in '25 and into '26, are you seeing a lot of interest for covered fixing by liners and with regards to that as the duration on these discussions changed in recent months? Are you seeing sort of a site or a longer charters rather spot rate has bounced back?

Yes. We currently don't have many ships opening up soon. other than this newbuilding vessel that will take delivery in about 1.5 months time. So there's not too much to fix at this point. The market, though, is definitely improving. We've seen that we fixed our 2,800 TEU ship at around $20,000 a day about a month ago for 2 years. And now we've seen similar ships being fixed to $25,000 a day. So the market is firming up, periods available are increasing and there is a continuous increase in the market. How long this continues, it's very difficult to say. The liners would fix ships that open up within the next couple of months, but not -- they wouldn't offer anything really competitive for ships opening up 6 months from today. And therefore, we're not really active in trying to find something today.

And our next question is Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group.

A follow-up, sorry. You announced the sale of the Astoria in April for $10 million, the 20-F indicated a cost of the carrying value of 3.95. Did that change? Or are there other considerations for the implied gain on that sale for this current quarter?

I think that would be -- that's correct. The difference of the minus commission expenses or whatever would be the implied capital gain on sale.

[Operator Instructions] And we do have a follow-up from Kristoffer with Arctic Securities.

Can you just comment on what you're seeing in terms of sort of interest on potential divestments. I mean, you sold the one in April as previously mentioned. Are you considering to reduce or exposure or reduce your fee by divesting the vessels?

We are considering what -- we guess what to do with the older vessels as the charters expire. And we haven't taken any decisions yet. But of course, the levels which initially we thought that we would be needing to scrap at the end of the lucrative charters that we had secured for all of them. Today, the market is better. So we are considering the options that we have of reselling them or keeping them and rechartering them, and we will develop our strategy as things move on.

Okay. Good. And in terms of our useful life, what do you see as a sort of typical useful life on these vessels now?

Well, technically, even though we have the issues with the CII and the EXI and all these new requirements. Technically, the ships can still easily last till their 25th year. And by selling at a little bit slower speeds, they do satisfy the requirements. So it's more of a commercial decision to decide what to do with them. rather than the technical decision. So if that means that the charter rates are satisfactory, we can easily keep them for longer.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Pittas for closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for listening in to our results of this quarter. We will be back to you in 3 months' time. Bye.

Thank you, everybody.

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