Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Third Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time all participants’ are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation there will be the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today Michael Jolliffe. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter and nine months 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. This is Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. And joining me on our call today is Harry Vafias, our Chief Executive, to discuss markets and company outlook and Konstantinos Sistovaris, Investor Relations to discuss the financial aspects. Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you 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 two of this presentation. Risks are further disclosed in StealthGas’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to point out that all amounts quoted, unless otherwise clarified, are implicitly stated in United States dollars. Now let me start by saying that as you may have read this month, the world's population surpassed the 8 billion mark. In this world, there are still 2.5 billion people using kerosene, wood and charcoal for their fuel needs. We believe LPG has less carbon intensive than other fossil based fuels can play an important role for these people to meet their future energy needs in a decarbonizing world. Today, we released our earnings results for the third quarter of 2022, which was also the third quarter of trading as a pure LPG company and we are happy to report yet another profitable quarter. So let's proceed to discuss these results and what we see in the market in general. Turning to slide three, we summarize some highlights. As we mentioned in our previous call, in the summer months, there is typically less activity, so we took the opportunity to perform the scheduled drydocking in four of our…

Thank you, Michael, and good morning to everyone. I will discuss our financial performance for the third quarter and nine months of 2022. Let us turn to slide number seven, where we see the income statement for the third quarter of 2022 against the same periods of the previous year. Net revenues came in at $28.2 million for the quarter, and $94.4 million for the nine months, slightly reduced by 2% over the nine months period as we went from 41 vessels to 34 vessels, roughly a 17% reduction in total fleet days. We note the increase in voyage costs for the quarter as we had more spot days and our bunker costs were considerably higher, due to the rising oil prices, but we expect this to come down in the following quarters. Operating expenses were at $14.1 million for the quarter and $40.3 million for the nine months, a 13% reduction in the nine months period, a similar trend to what we saw in the previous quarters, due to the reduction in the fleet size. In terms of drydocking costs, we had $1.7 million in the third quarter of 2022. We did drydock four vessels during that period, a similar number to last year's. And we expensed this instead of amortized exam, so they do add some more volatility in the numbers when they all occur in the same quarter. Depreciation is another item that saw a large decrease to $7 million for the quarter and $21 million for the nine month period, that is a 26% decrease year-on-year, mainly due to the decrease in the number of the vessels. Interest and finance costs increased $3.6 million during the quarter, despite having lower debt levels. This is obviously due to the increases in interest rates and we expect this…

Moving to slide 10, we'll provide some insight on the LPG market and reiterate the points we have made in the past as they still hold true despite all the current economic and geopolitical uncertainties that cast the cloud overall future predictions. So far this year, global LPG exports have increased 3.8% in line with what was expected. The main exporters of LPG being the U.S. and the Middle East countries according to data from Banchero Costa both have increased exports this year. The U.S. by 10% and the Middle East countries by over 20%; European countries on the other hand like Norway have decreased exports translating into ton mile increases. It's no coincidence that currently freight rates on the larger sized vessels are sky high. On the receiving end, the largest importers of LPG are India, China, Europe, Korea and Japan. Out of this role, with the exception of China, import a significantly higher amount year-to-date, India plus 12%; Japan plus 9.3%; Europe plus 6%; and Korea, plus 13%. The problem with China is that after having reduced imports overall at minus 2.3 year-to-date and despite some revival in its imports since early in the summer and continues to have lockdowns and restrictive COVID policies that hinder economic activity. The Chinese economy did grow by modest for its standard 5% in Q3, but there is still a cloud over the sustainability of its growth and the general economic condition. We remain cautiously optimistic on Chinese demand and feel that any resurgence will be a catalyst and already stable and framing chartering market. That is why we continue to refer to the Chinese PDH plant capacity additions that are projects that are slowly coming on stream with delays, but eventually should have significant demand for LPG and petrochemical products. Now…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Now we're going to take our first question. And the first question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hello, thank you. Good day to all. Harry, at the end of your remarks, you mentioned your intent to further diversify your mix of your fleet are acquisitions still available in this strong market, please?

Yes, but at very high prices, so we prefer unless we find a oneoff opportunity to wait until price -- secondhand prices and newbuilding prices go down to more logical levels.

And then if that decrease in asset values does not occur before you take delivery of the most recent two newbuilds? I mean, do you intend to continue to reduce leverage? I mean, you've had a meaningful reduction in leverage in the last year and a half and continue to reduce your net debt. So will that be your potential strategy until you take delivery of the two ships?

Yes, since now interest rates have become way too expensive, reducing debt will only be positive for the company.

Okay. And then on the seasonality, I'm just with the rates -- healthy rate environment currently. So do you in this current quarter with your secured date -- secured rates and then the spot rates available expect to have a year-over-year increase in your time charter equivalent rates, compared to last year? And what -- and I don't know if you have handy, maybe we can take it offline. What was your time charter equivalent rate last year excluding the tankers that you spun off?

I don't have that information. And even if I had, you would be confused, because as you know, we have many, many different sizes and many, many different ages of the ships. So one number would not be a good day much of what's going on.

Okay. All right, yes. But it still looks like a good quarter-over-quarter increase usually in the fourth quarter on LPG? And then also just circling back to the leverage, but do you target an ideal amount of leverage so you have or that you have available liquidity conduct acquisitions?

If the rates were low as it was the last four, five years, we would say anything below 50%. Now that the interest rates are very high and might get higher, I would say the lower, the better.

Thank you. Thank you, Harry.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. And the next question comes from the line of [Brad Boston] (ph) from Boston Consulting. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Good morning. Good results in the quarter. I guess the question I have, Harry, is as CEO of both StealthGas and Imperial Petroleum. Do you believe the questions around reverse split, share buybacks, listing, expense, et cetera, of Imperial Petroleum are affecting the investor decisions to invest more in StealthGas? And if so, can you clarify if you -- if and what you might be doing to avoid delisting of Imperial Petroleum over the next month? Thank you.

We cannot comment on Imperial Petroleum or StealthGas, not at all, where there is a different strategy with StealthGas, with a different board. So what we do is StealthGas, as you might have seen, has nothing to do with what we do with the other company?

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Now we're going to take our next question. Please standby. And the next question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Thank you for allowing a follow-up. On the scrapping environment, your comments about potentially seeing more scrapping in ’23 or do you have ships that you may consider scrapping in this current rate environment? Or will you continue to operate your ships if you can still obtain the current rates that are available?

We only have one old -- very old vessel and we will try and sell for further trading. If that's not possible, we will scrap it.

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Dear speakers there are no further questions at this time.

We would like to thank you for joining us with 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 fourth quarter ’22 results in February ‘23. Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.