Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease Second Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will have a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today’s conference, Ian Webber, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, very much. Good morning, everybody and thank you for joining us. I hope you’ve been able to look at the earnings release that we issued earlier today and also have been able to look at the slides that accompany this call. As usual, the first two our Slides remind you that today’s call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions and are by their nature inherently uncertain and outside of the Company’s control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the Safe Harbor section of the slide presentation. We also draw your attention to the Risk Factors section of our most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F, which is for 2016, and which was filed with the SEC on April 12, 2017. You can attain this via our Web site or via the SEC’s. All of our statements are qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. For reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to which we will refer during this call to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP, you should refer to the earnings release that we issued this morning. Today's presentation will follow the normal format. I'll provide an overview of our results for the quarter, our fleet, our charter portfolio and our strategy. After that, Tom will discuss the wider shipping -- the container shipping market and provide an overview of our financials. I’ll then return for brief summary remarks and we’ll be then glad to take your questions. Turning to Slide 3. Our fleet was fully chartered through the quarter, generating operating revenue of $40.3 million, net income…

Thanks, Ian. Since our Q1 earnings call, the development of the macroeconomic backdrop has been encouraging. In their July update, the IMF described a firming recovery and although they hold their global GDP growth forecast for 2017 steady of 3.5%, up from 3.1% in 2016, they notched up their 2017 growth forecast to global trade in goods and services from 3.8% to 4%. Furthermore, they note the upside potential of a stronger or more sustained cycling rebound in Europe, where political risks have diminished. But as always, they also caution that downside risks remain. In container shipping, 2017 has shows marked improvement on 2016. Cargo volumes have firmed, idle capacity is down, charter rates and asset values are up and supply-demand fundamentals are moving in the right direction. Indeed our thesis is that the industry is at a point of positive inflection, particularly from mid-sized and smaller vessels and over the next few slides we will provide data to support that contention. So turning to Slide 8. Industry fundamentals are improving, particularly for mid-sized and smaller tonnage. Containerized trade growth of around 5.1% is projected for 2017 and growth and demand is expected to exceed that of supply during 2017 and 2018, continuing a trend of established in 2016. Excess supply remains a consideration but idle capacity has trended down significantly. As you can see from the charts on the right hand side, non-main lane trades collectively represent around 70% of global containerized trade volumes with intra-regional trades, most notably intra-Asia, forming the largest and fastest growing slice of that pie. As you know, these trade groups are of particular relevance as they tend to be served mainly by mid-sized and smaller tonnage which continues to be the focus of global ship leases. Slide 9 focuses on the forces shaping…

Thanks, Tom. If you will now turn to Slide 19, I will give a brief summary and then we can move on to questions. Our charters have all continued to perform as we provide top class counterparties with consistently high quality performance. We maintain close control of costs resulting in stable, predictable cash flows and earnings. As Tom has discussed, the underlying drivers that we have long been focused on, minimal ordering of new vessels in the mid-size and smaller vessel classes, elevated scrapping levels and continued growth in international containerized trade particularly in the non-main lain trades most reliant on our size of vessels. Have driven a meaningful strengthening of the charter market in 2017. While the ultimate sustainability of this charter market improvement remains to be seen and with the majority of our fleet continuing on their long-term fixed rate contracts for multiple years, there is much to be encouraged by in the recent display of positive tension in the market. Finally, our long-term contracted cash flows put us in position where we can actively pursue enhancements to our balance sheet. Having reduced our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio from 3.3 times as of March 31, 2017 to 3.1 times at this most recent quarter ended June 30, we will continue with these efforts, whilst also continuing to look for attractive opportunities to proactively refinance our outstanding 10% loans. At the same time, it's important to keep in mind that we have no material refinancing obligations until April 2019, and we are thus able to approach any opportunity in a measured and disciplined manner, proceeding only at such time as we believe that we can achieve terms that support our long-term goals. We would now be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Howard Bloom with UBS Financial Services.

As the fleet continues to be out on lease, it obviously also ages. What's your view about acquiring ships to replace or augment your fleet as time goes on, in terms of the average age of the ships that you have in your fleet.

Yes. It's evident that we have assets that have an ultimate fair useful life. We work on 30 years. The average age of our fleets is around 12.5. That is as it happens very consistent with the average age of the global fleet for this size of vessel class. As very old ships have been scrapped out and more importantly and there have been limited numbers of new deliveries as investment in new container ships has been towards the large sizes. And that’s shown on page 23 of the Slide deck in the appendix where you can see it graphically. Yes. We are open, as we have been, as we always have been, to potentially acquisition opportunities. It's one of the uses of our cash as we have discussed before. The potential or the other principal opportunity or use of cash today is delevering. We focus mainly on delevering through 2016 and that prima facie continues to be our focus in 2017. But we look out for immediately cash accretive opportunities to add vessels to our fleet providing they come with charter attached with a quality counterparty.

Do you think we should anticipate acquisitions in the coming 12 months?

I wouldn’t really want to speculate but we are open minded.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Nicholas Gower with Clarksons Platou Securities. Your line is open.

So if we look at, I guess, the fleet, and you touched upon in the call there is a few vessels that roll off beginning in I would say September, it sounds like of 2017. As we think about sort of the extension of those charters and sort of looking beyond that period of time. Have you guys been in discussions with CMA CGM or OOCL on those particular assets yet or sort of how should we be thinking about those?

Yes, thanks for question, Nick. It's very much the same answer that we have given on recent calls to this. We had preliminary discussions with both OOCL via brokers and with CMA CGM direct. But it's really too early before the renewals are due for those discussions to be classified as serious. And that’s a function of today's market. It's generally the case that when the market is soft, owners and charterers don’t engage much before three of four, or maybe five weeks before the potential delivery - redelivery of the ship. And that’s exaggerated today in the middle of 2017 as charterers, the liner companies wait to see how their reconfigured fleets post the launch of the alliances that Tom mentioned, settle down. So we really wouldn’t expect to engage with CMA CGM on the two 2200 TEU vessels until mid-August maybe. And OOCL a little later.

Okay. And then I guess just a follow on that. On the Kumasi and the Marie Delmas, the two vessels that GSL has the extension option for, for those particular assets. Is there a certain period of time that you would need to notify CMA CGM to extend those.

Yes. We will be extending those vessels.

Okay. And then just final follow up question. There was, just shifting to the results, in other words it seems like there was one vessel that was ran aground in late March, I believe, and was off hire for about 27 days for repairs and things of that nature. For that particular asset, has sort of all the repairs been made and sort of will you guys be covered from that from an insurance perspective.

Yes. Absolutely. Unfortunately, these kinds of incidents happen. Our record is pretty good but we did have a grounding, as you say. It was 25 odd days of off hire and the repairs have been carried out and the vessel is back in service as Tom said, and the principal costs of the repairs was covered by insurance. We have to prepare a deductible but otherwise the bill is paid by insurers.

Okay. And which asset was that again? Just for my reference.

Well, it was one of the 2200 TEU vessels. [indiscernible] months.

Thank you. I am not showing any further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Ian Webber.

Great. Thank you very much for listening and we look forward to giving you a further update on GSL following the third quarter. Thank you.