Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Q1 2024 Results Conference Call and Webcast. During this call, all participants will be on listen-only mode with no question-and-answer session. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chairman of the Board, Mr. Michael Jolliffe. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. This is Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Joining me on our call today, as usual, is Harry Vafias, our CEO, to discuss the market and company outlook, and Konstantinos Sistovaris, 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. So if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation, that'd be great. We will further disclose StealthGas filing with the Security and Exchange Commission. Today, we released our results of the first quarter. Three months ago, I was here announcing to you our record full year profits. So it is with great delight that we have managed to follow up on that with a great start to 2024 by announcing record quarterly profits. So let's proceed to discuss these results and update you on the company's strategy and the market in general. Please turn to Slide 3, where we summarize some highlights starting with our fleet and operations update. During the first quarter, we sold two smaller vessels and got delivery of two brand-new medium gas carriers. We have not bought or sold any vessels in the current quarter with the exception of one vessel that was owned through a joint venture as previously announced that we will discuss further on in the call. With the market remaining firm, we continued securing more period charters in both our fully owned fleet and for the joint venture vessels with contract coverage for 2024 of 73% of our fleet days for our fully owned fleet. We have thus…

Thank you, Michael, and good morning to everyone. I will discuss our financial results that were released today. Let's turn to Slide number 8, where we see a snapshot of the income statement for the first quarter of 2024 against the same period of 2023. Even though fleet days were reduced by 15%, and we had five fewer vessels, net revenues after voyage expenses came in at $38.7 million for the quarter, an increase of 14% as a result of higher revenues due to better market conditions, the addition of two larger vessels in our fleet with higher earnings capacity and the reduced voyage costs due to lower spot exposure. It is worth mentioning that 26 out of the 27 vessels in the fleet improved their profitability. Operating expenses were [$11.5 million] (ph) for the quarter, down 21%, a better result than expected, mostly due to the 15% decrease in the number of vessels in the fleet. We also note the decrease in the dry-docking costs of $1.1 million as no vessels were dry-docked during this period and the increase of $1.4 million in G&A costs as a result of an increase in stock-based compensation expense. As a result of the increase in revenues and decreases in costs, income from operations increased 80% to $17.5 million for the first quarter of 2024 from $9.7 million last year. Interest and finance costs also increased by $0.5 million year-on-year because in the last year results were included some profits from the selling of swap positions due to the debt repayments. The earnings from the investments in the joint venture amounted to $2.6 million versus $8.8 million last year, a significant $6.3 million drop. The reduction in these profits is due to some profits that were being booked in the first quarter of…

Moving on Slide 11. LPG exports increased by a strong 4.3% in 2023, and we continue to see exports increasing at 5% in the first quarter of this year, although we have expected the US to slow its export growth after the cold snap in the beginning of the year, results for the first year showed that US exports continued unabated, making a 12% year-on-year growth. We expect the US will continue to ship incremental amounts of NGLs in the current year. As we have discussed before, there are logistical issues that have to be solved to meet the increasing volumes. But LPG exporters are already planning ahead to accommodate these incremental volumes from Texas and Canada. While the US accounts for over 40% of global exports, exports from the Middle East that had fallen last year seemed to have rebounded. And although that is hard to come by, particularly as run and exports destined to China seem to be on the rise. We would hope to see other Middle Eastern countries not using the dark fleet, ramp up their exports as well. The situation in Europe as well as one of the largest importance remain the same due to the mild winter with lackluster heating demand and petrochemical usage, volumes that were reduced last year seem to have been flat over year-over-year, although intraregional trade is active. The particularly good news for LPG come from the two most populous countries, China and India. First quarter numbers saw a very strong import demand from China with volumes rising a fantastic 27% year-on-year. India's growing economy of 1 billion-plus people where 45% of LPG demand is for household use has as recently as much decided to extend subsidies for LPG and government-facing general elections soon is supportive of further penetration of…

This concludes conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.