Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Q4 2020 Results Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over to your speaker, Mr. Harry Vafias, CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and 12 months 2022 earnings conference call. This is Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas, and I'm going to discuss market and company outlook. And with me is Mr. Sistovaris, handing Investor Relations to discuss the financial aspects. Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you that we'll 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. Risks are further disclosed in StealthGas filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I'd like also to point out that all amounts quoted unless otherwise clarified are U.S. dollars. Today, we released our earnings results for the fourth quarter of '22, completing a full year of trading as a pure LPG company. Following the 2021 spin-off, and we are happy to report yet again a strong profitable quarter and record profits for the year. So let's proceed to discuss the results and what we see in the market in general. In Slide 3, the fourth quarter is typically a seasonally strong quarter for LPG trading. We had just finished drydocking all the vessels that were due, so we had our full fleet available for chartering. Our aim was to charter most of our vessels on period wise reducing the spot exposure, and we did by reducing spot days from 843 to 596. On a yearly basis, we have reduced our spot exposure to just 17% of our fleet days. We kept seeing charter interest in lodging period coverage so we continue entering into period charters at improving rates. We thus managed to have secured total today, 55% of our 2023 days contracted out. We have locked in at…

Thank you, Harry, and good morning to everyone. I will discuss our financial performance for the fourth quarter and 12 months of 2022. Let us turn to Slide 7, where we see the income statement for the fourth quarter and full year of 2022 against the same period of 2021. Net revenues came in at $36.2 million for the quarter and $130.5 million for the 12 months, a slight increase by 2% over the 12-month period despite the vessel sales and roughly an 18% reduction in the total fleet days. Operating expenses were $14.5 million for the quarter and $54.8 million for the 12 months, an 11% reduction in the 12-month period. A similar trend to what we saw in the previous quarters, that was due mainly to the reduction in the fleet size. In terms of drydocking costs, we had $3 million in 2022 versus $5.2 million in 2021. We drydocked four vessels last year. Depreciation is another item that saw a large decrease to $6.8 million for the quarter and $27.8 million for the 12-month period, a 25% decrease year-on-year, and that was also due to the decrease in the number of vessels. Interest and finance costs increased to $3.4 million due to increases in interest rates. But overall, during the year, they were actually lower. Impairment loss was $44 million in 2021 and which was the write-down for the tanker vessels that were part of the spinoff. Whereas in 2022, just $3 million, which relates to the vessels that were held for sale. Equity income in indices is our shares in the profits of our JV structures and came in at $1.2 million for the quarter and $10.9 million for the 12 months. both our JV structures operated profitably. So we can see that for the year…

On Slide 10, we are providing some insight on the LPG market and how trade partners shape the shipping markets for our product. We have laid out these themes previously and 2022 data coming in to support our views. The one positive change from the previous call being the resurgence of Chinese demand. According to data from Banchero Costa during 2022, LPG exports increased 4.5%, slightly better than was expected. The main exporters of LPG being the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries, both managed significant increases in exports last year with the U.S. increasing exports by 9% and increasing volumes destined for Europe. European exports continues to be muted as European countries continue to diversify their sourcing away from Russian supplies and importing a third of the supplies from further away, that is mainly the U.S., thus increasing ton mile demand. Apart from Europe, the largest importers of LPG are India, China, Korea and Japan, all increased their imports. The last quarter of '22 showed the lifting of COVID policies in China, and while there was an initial concern of the rise in COVID infection numbers, it seems that the reopening has finally started boosting LPG imports. And while import data vary widely, all point that Chinese imports grew significantly at the end of the year, making the year-on-year change finally positive compared to negative in the previous call that we had. We therefore remain optimistic on Chinese LPG demand, supported by expected economic recovery that despise in China's GDP growth to 5.5% for this year. A main catalyst for Chinese LPG demand will be the increasing capacity of its PDH plants that use imported propane as feedstock. These plants have been flagged by start-up delays and low production run rates due to the unfavorable margins, but the rapid expansion…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our first question, and the question come from the line of Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Please ask your question.

Thank you. Thank you, Harry for the comments. And I mean, with the cash and restricted cash and short-term investments increasing to $96 million at the end of 4Q, up from $86 million and you paid down debt. Can you talk about capital allocation priorities going forward with that building cash? Are you going to fund more of your two new build deliveries in cash versus debt or -- and can you also comment on your previous potential time line to repurchase this, please?

Thanks, Tate. As we said on the previous quarter, the Board wanted to see two to three good quarters before they allow us to use the cash more opportunistically. They show the second good quarter. Hopefully, if all going well, we're going to see a good Q1. And therefore, after that, we will discuss the different opportunities for the cash. For sure, one opportunity is buying back stock. Another opportunity is paying down debt now that interest rates are rising or a combination of the two, which is something that I would vote for.

And financing the newbuild deliveries for the next year or so, I saw one of your slides you pointed to the available financing on those, will you finance those at a 40% loan to value, 60% or what is your usual financing on new builds to level?

Yeah, 60% debt. The equity requirements are not much as we have already paid a 20% deposit. Therefore, the new money that needs to be injected is actually very little.

And then a follow-up, if I may. You mentioned some delays in shipyards, and I have not heard many other companies mentioned delays from the shipyards. Were these specific to the shipyards where you're getting your Medium Gas Carriers built or have you seen other delays for other companies in the market if you can comment on that, please?

As a very popular shipyards, the majority of them are all facing delays. Thank God, delays are minimal as we want the ships to be active the soonest as the market is strong.

Okay. And last on the ship sales or did you say $12.5 million of proceeds from a three-ship sales. And then the impairment -- so no gains or sales gains or losses on those sales because you already took the impairment on one of the vessels? Is that correct?

$12.5 million total as these were the smallest and oldest by far vessels in our fleet. Imagine, one of the vessels is '97 build, which would normally go for demolition, but we managed to get a higher price and sell it for forward trading.

Thank you, Harry.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our next question, and the question come from the line of Climent Molins from Vale Investor Edge. Please ask you question. Your line is opened.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start by asking about your joint ventures. You mentioned they finished the quarter with a combined cash base of $30 million -- but could you provide some insight on the amount of debt outstanding on those structures?

Sure, I did -- your line is not very clear. The amount what?

Sorry, the amount of debt on the JVs.

It's region $40 million. But if you want, you can send us an email and check it out precisely as we don't have this number in front of us.

Sounds fair. And following up on that capital allocation question and although share repurchases should be very tight here given the outside discount to NAV as well as to previous evaluations. Has the Board given any thought to maybe instituting a dividend policy?

Very good question. As you said very rightly, as we're trading to a discount to NAV, the share buyback is preferred versus dividends at the moment.

That’s all from me. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back the conference to Mr. Harry Vafias for closing comments.

We would like to thank you for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest and trust in our company, and we look forward to having you again with us for our Q1 results conference call in May. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.