Good day, and welcome to the StealthGas Fourth Quarter and Final Year Results 2017 Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Harry Vafias, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning everybody and welcome to our fourth quarter 2017 earnings conference call. This is Harry Vafias, the CEO of StealthGas and joining me on the call today is our Finance Officer, Mrs. Fenia Sakellari, who will provide commentary on our financial performance during the same period. Before we commence our presentation, I would like all of you to be reminded that we will be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. At this stage, if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2. It’s noted that risks are further disclosed in StealthGas filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to note that all amounts quoted unless otherwise clarified are implicitly slated in U.S. dollars. Slide 3 summarizes our key highlights for the fourth quarter of 2017. Taking advantage of the positive momentum that the small LPG market is in. We managed to achieve a remarkable operational utilization of 97.2% looking out the whole of 2017, our idle days were reduced by 58% compared to 2016, while our average fleet days was reduced from 9.6 years in the beginning of 2017 to 9.2 years today. The market for our dominant segment that of small LPGs has clearly strengthened with rates increasing over the past year by about 25%. Although a number of our vessel are still legacy charters this is collection rates ensure they boost to our revenues, but obviously to be more evident from Q1 2018 onwards. We ended the fourth quarter of 2017 with $38.5 million in revenue, despite the reduced fleet resulting from the sale of the four older vessels and EBITDA $15 million. Looking at the whole of 2017 compared to 2016, our performance was evidently improved, as revenue…

Thank you, Harry and good morning to everyone. Fourth quarter 2017 had strong performance aspect. Demanding the small LPG segment had clearly picked up with our operational utilization reaching a 97.2%, that is exceeding the levels of 2012 were market rates in our segment were much higher than current levels. We concluded that contracts have improved to 8 and we expect the impact will be more visible in the first quarter of 2018. Our profitability however was quite hindered for reasons that will be explained in full detail below. Let us move on to Slide 7 were we see the income statement for the fourth quarter of 2017 against the same period of the previous year. Voyage revenues came at about $38.5 million and increased of 2.5% compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. This increase is attributed to the high utilization of our fleet and improved rates as in the fourth quarter we operate with vessels than in 2016 following the sale of some of our older vessels. In the last quarter of 2016, the revenue contribution of the vessels we sold was $2 million in addition to this, due to softer market conditions our revenues from the tankers and our fleet were reduced by 10% compared to 2016 and other factors hindering our revenue. Voyage cost amounted $4 million marking a 6% increase compared to Q4 2016 due to high number of vessels operating spot in the quarter-on-quarter increase of average market price by 19%. Net revenues that is revenues after detecting voyage costs came at $34.5 million corresponding to a net revenue margin of 90%. Running cost at $50 million marked to $500,000 increase compared to Q4 2016. This increase is attributed to the operation of our 22K semi ref vessel, the Eco Frost delivered in 2016…

Let’s proceed now with Slide 11. Seaborne trade in 2017 total 92.9 million tonnage, up by 2.5 from the previous year. China remains the biggest importer at 17 million tonnage. However, India is the country expensing the largest increase in LPG imports surpassing Japan and therefore becoming the second largest LPG importer. The Indian government continues to incentivize the use of LPG through subsidies. U.S exports continued its rapid expansion recording a growth of 4.2 million tonnage to a total of 29.6 million tonnage. Focusing on coastal LPG trading areas, Europe is the largest markets for sure of the whole trade followed by the intra-regional trade between Far East countries. In terms of trading of products, we see a solid growth in petrochemical trade which is anticipated to grow further benefiting mostly the smaller tonnage. On Slide 12, we see the during Q4 2017 rates, for almost all LPG segments continue to be on rise, the stand of half thousand cubic meter segment and in the year with around 230,000 per month, having started the year at around 180,000 a month, a gain of nearly 25%, overall is evident in the past quarter that your experiencing a gradual upward market trend which is anticipated to continue. In terms of trade west of Suez, spot rates have reached their highest in two, three years, is there also less competition from semi-ref vessels. There is still a significant number of the larger pressurized vessels of 7K cubic meters and up in the spot market, but they have been keeping busier the last couple of months. In the East, on the period side, the activity has continued and charters have been come to lock in charter coverage to avoid the risks of a tight spot market. 5,000 cubic meter ships remain in tight…

[Operator Instructions]. We’ll take our first question today which comes from Randy Giveans from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Hey thanks operator, how is it going Harry. Quick questions on the…

Hi Randy.

Hey on the, Arctic and the Ice for the charters through 2020, what are those rates on average or an estimate 15,000 a day, 12,000, 18,000?

Yes good question, we have not disclosed publicly the rates, but I can tell you that they are about breakeven levels. So you can do your math on that.

Got it, breakeven it’s okay.

All inclusive breakeven, just to clarify all inclusive breakeven, not OpEx of course, all inclusive breakeven.

Not just cash, net income breakeven. Okay. And then you have 7 vessels older than 20 years of age, so what are your kind of fleet growth or renewal plans for those and with that do you expect your fleet to be little large, little smaller than it is current of last year?

Randy excellent question, I mean as I think we’ve discussed the idea last year was to sell some of those for scrap, but the good market quoted up with us and we found trading sellers for them and thus we were able to sell those very old ships at a nice premium over demolition, sometimes in some cases up to 200%, which is an amazing boost to our bottom-line. The idea is to slowly dispose of the vessels, how quickly, you know who knows. The plan is not to immediately replace them as we’ve have been taken delivery of brand new ships, non-stop over the last three years. So, it all depends on, what the market does, what the prices do and what our share price does, because if we still trade at such discount to NAV, there is no point of adding more ships at NAV, right.

Yes that’s fair. So speaking about, first look at that, so your price been averaged 30%, so you are saying your NAV is what $14?

I haven’t done the math today, because you know it changes weekly, but a safe number would be $13.

Okay, so it’s hard to calculate that obviously unlike the drydock market there is not a huge S&P market for these kind of smaller LPG vessels. So I guess what value you are using there is the big difference, because already these on a $7, $8. So, you are using kind of last done asset valuations or how are you getting to your - I guess the…

Randy, I would tend to agree with you is not of course as liquid as dry as, but especially in 2017 we saw a big number of ships being sold, which gives some valuation ideas. And every six months we take two independent valuations for the whole fleet and basis on those valuations, we come up with a NAV. So, this is how we do it and the number is around $13.

Sounds good. And then with that, I guess looking at your cash balance, looking at pretty significant free cash, you only have one delivery coming, I guess in April now, so kind of uses of free cash going forward, if you had a 30% of the NAV seems like the share repurchases might seem attractive here.

Yes, if when we announce the Q1 results, the market continues to be going, as strongest as it has been until now and we have shorter doubt the tankers as well, because we have phenomenon where tankers are going down and LPGs are going up, I think go through only have four tankers, yes and the stock is still such a huge discount to NAV, then obviously we will go to the Board with the request for further share repurchase, don’t forget that during the bad times we spent close to $21 million to buyback our own stock.

Yes, no I think that was a good play there and hope going forward you have more opportunities, obviously the share price recovers maybe not, but well thanks again for the time and…

I hope we don’t have the opportunity.

Right that’s fair. Good talking with you and I’ll hop off.

Thank you, Randy.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. And our next question today comes from Greg Weiss from Boston Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi Harry, how are you?

Hi Greg.

So, I’m kind of intrigued by, the supply demand case you outlined just looking at your presentation. Obviously your fundamentals have been getting better recently, but, with as you say 23% of the fleet over 20 years old and virtually no orders, I just kind of what’s the tipping point, one if you order ship stay when can you order ships for and if we are going to have with essentially, either no growth or a negative fleet growth and increasing demand what seems like your pointing to, or is this are you losing share to bigger ships or is your fundamentals going, is your market going to continue to get tighter going forward?

First of all if you order ship now you need between 18 and 24 months to take delivery. Secondly, we are very lucky, because the huge Chinese yards of our building bulkers and container ships like crazy don’t want to build those little LPG ships. So we are protected from these Chinese mega yards. Thirdly, the big ships cannot really hit in our business, because they don’t have the size, they don’t have the small size needed to go to the majority of the ports that we visit. So, I think it will all lead to a tighter market, which hopefully will lead to tighter rates as we saw back in 2012, again back in 2008 and again back in 2005.

Got it. Okay, so why do you think we have not seen ordering in your sector?

Because, it’s quite simple Greg, in this business there are only two big companies of which both don’t, don’t want to order ships. Then you last with another 10, 15 smaller companies of which half of them were nearly bankrupt and the other half don’t have finance because, they were bleeding money for the last three years. If the market continues to improve, some of these people will find money and might order. But we are not worried as we are going to see a huge wave of ordering like it happened in the last nine months on the dry side on the container side. We are protected from that, because of the bottleneck of the yard capacity.

All right, congratulations. It sounds like hopefully things continue to move in the right direction, which based on supply demand and…

It seems to have, fingers crossed for the Q1 results.

I recommend you Harry, but I don’t think you have given up credit sometimes on navigating the bottom of the cycle without a stress balance sheet you deserve versus what we’ve seen in other classes of the shipping sector, where becoming extremely proud. This could…

That is frankly, I most hear the negative things and very few people do say the positive things. You are one of the older shareholders and an old friend. So, I do appreciate the comments, because you know how hard we’ve been working in the last three years to keep the ship steady and keeping the balance sheet in a healthy mode.

Okay, thank you, Harry.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Okay, we don’t seem to have any further questions today. I’ll hand back over to you for any closing remarks. Thank you.

We would like to thank everyone for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest and trust in our company. And we look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for our first quarter results in May. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you so much for your participation today. You may now disconnect.