Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Imperial Petroleum Inc.'s Q3 Nine Months Financial and Operating Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers presentation there will be a Question-and-Answer Session. [Operator Instructions] Pleased be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to you speaker today, CEO Harry Vafias from Imperial Petroleum. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the third quarter 2022 conference call of Imperial Petroleum Inc. I'm Harry Vafias, the CEO; and with us today is our Interim CFO, Ms. Fenia Sakellari. Before we commence our discussion, we'd like all of you to read the Safe Harbor disclaimer posted on Slide number 2 of our presentation. In essence, it's made clear that this presentation may contain some forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. We raised the attention of our investors to the fact that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may potentially affect our company's performance in the future. In addition, I would like to state that during this conference call, we will quote monetary amounts. These unless explicitly stated otherwise, are all denominated in U.S. dollars. Let's start from Slide 3 with a summary of our company's performance highlights. With a net income of $15.5 million in one quarter in just one quarter, we announced today outstanding results both in terms of revenue and profitability. Tanker rates, particularly in the spot market, remained firm all throughout the third quarter, so we grasped the opportunity and increased our daily time charter equivalent per ship to about $33,000 compared to $13,000 the previous quarter. We strategically dedicated 70% of our fleet days to spot activity and this proved highly lucrative. Amidst this positive market momentum, we continued to grow our fleet. On October 19th, we took delivery of our second dry bulk handysize vessel and we now count 10 operating vessels, six of which were acquired within a course of just 10 months. Our fleet addition fueled our earnings potential. In Q3 2022, our revenues came in at $42.6 million, up by $31 million compared to Q2 2022. Our EBITDA…

Thank you, Harry, and good morning to, everyone. As evident from our impressive results this quarter, we successfully leveraged upon our fleet expansion in the firm tanker rates. Compared to the third quarter of 2021, we have increased our fleet by an average of four vessels. Strong rates allowed us to capitalize upon our fleet additions and therefore we managed to increase our average time charter equivalent per vessel by 20,000 per day and produced a profit of $15.5 million. Even though we dedicated 70% of our fleet days to spot operation and three of our product tankers repositioned within Q3 2022, we managed to sustain a solid operational utilization of about 86%. Looking at our income statement for Q3 2022 in Slide 8, revenues came in at $42.6 million up by $38.5 million due to our fleet additions, plus mostly due to high spot rates, particularly for the Suezmax and Aframax vessels. Voyage cost increased by $17.7 million due to the increase of spot days by 456 days. That is equivalent to 786% and the rising banker prices. This quarter, we incurred $1.2 million of voyage costs for the balancing of three of our product tankers. The benefit with which will appear in Q4 2022. Our running costs increased by $3 million due to the average increase of our fleet by four vessels and one of our product tanker, the Clean Sanctuary ex Clean Thrasher coming off their boot close to the end of the quarter. Basis the above, we generated a strong EBITDA of around $19 million, that is $17.5 million or 1500% higher than in Q3 2021 and a net profit of $15.5 million corresponding to an EPS of $0.8. Our profit margin for the quarter was in the order of 36%. Moving on to Slide 9,…

This quarter's unprecedented profitability growth is solid proof that our company's strategy is indeed paying off. With the capital recently raised, we have managed to grow our fleet, substantially increase our profitability and cash flow, and create value for our investors. As a result of having acquired six vessels in the course of 10 months, we generated net income of $15.5 million in a single quarter, which is 15400% higher than our profit in Q2 2022, an equivalent to 23% of our current market cap. We incurred moderate debt during the quarter, maintaining a healthy capital structure with 42, approximately $42 million of debt, while preserving a free cash balance available for further fleet expansion of about $92 million. Given the strong market fundamentals and the promising charter rate environment, and by taking advantage of our efficient management of our expanded fleet, we believe that we will achieve strong results and generate significant cash flow going forward. However, the valuation of our shares of common stock does not reflect our strong financial performance and capital available to fund our growth prospects. We've now reached the end of our presentation and we would like to open the floor for your questions. So operator, please open the floor.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Greg Humphreys from Humphreys Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Hey Harry, fantastic earnings report. Great commentary. Definitely been in it for the long run. Any chance of a buyback for the stocks with the extra cash?

That's not a bad idea. Obviously, it's the first really amazing results, so therefore it's a bit too early to start buying back stock as we are still in growth mode. But definitely the Board, if it's is two-three more quarters with these amazing results might be a topic for discussion.

Great, thank you. Keep up the great work. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Just one moment please. We will now take the next question and it comes from the line of Ian Lipman [ph]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you very much. So I had the same question concerning the buyback share program, so it was already answered in the first question. Thank you very much. Great job done. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Regards to Germany.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of [indiscernible] Chemical. Please go ahead. Your line is.

Hello. Good morning from Texas. I just want to congratulate all of you on a fantastic earnings report. I don't think people understand how great the numbers are, so congratulations on that. And I just wanted to ease some concerns with regards to a reverse split in play. I wanted to ask you if that was on the table or off the table, and what plan do you guys have to get the [indiscernible] $1 per compliance?

Thank you for the kind words. First of all, we worked extremely hard to get these stratospheric results. The stock split, the reverse stock split, sorry is not a matter of if we want to do it or not. If the stock does not go above $1, we have to do it. Otherwise, we're going to be delisted, as you know very well. So I hope that with this very hard effort and amazing results, people will understand that you cannot value a company with 10 ships at below its cash levels, and therefore we can push the price up above $1 and therefore, the reverse stock split won't be necessary. But I do agree with you that this must be avoided.

Yes, yes, I completely agree and I agree the company is worth far more than what the share price is at now, and it's just, it's been a concern of everyone and I wanted to get your thoughts on plans moving forward.

Thank you. And as we discussed, we hope we can avoid this.

All right. Thank you, Harry. Congratulations on the fantastic company. You all are doing great.

Thank you. Regards to Texas.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. Please stand by. And it comes from the line of [Jose Tintea] [ph]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hello, Harry. Well, actually, both my questions have been answered. So yes, congratulations for the results.

No worries. Thank you for calling.

Yes.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the next question, one moment, is coming from the line of [Dave Roe] [ph]. Please go ahead.

Yes. Congratulations, Harry, on the great results. Can you ease any -- all the stockholders’ concerns about any dilution or auctions moving forward in the next six months to one year?

As discussed, you've seen that we've not raised any money recently, but the balance sheet of the company is extremely strong. Obviously, we cannot guarantee that we will not raise money in the future and as we are still consider the small company in worldwide terms. But by showing these amazing results, we can easily prove that the war is and what was said in different chat rooms was all wrong. And by announcing a 15,000% increase in profit is just a small piece of evidence that the Board and the Management was right.

Absolutely. And does any EU ban on Russian oil affect the business at all for the consumer?

There is no ban at the moment. There is a potential ban coming on 5th of December for crude oil and 5th of February for product tankers. But in the end of the day, that might be good news as the Russian oil will have to travel longer distances to go to its buyers. So let's see what happens in the next two months.

All right. Thanks a lot, man. Great job there.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. One moment, please.

I will take three more questions and then we will end because it's going too long. So last three questions.

No problem at all, sir. The next question comes from the line of [Andrea Blanco] [ph]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hello, Harry. Just want to say, great job on the earnings for this most recent quarter. My question is in regards to meeting compliance for the dollar, do you plan on asking for the -- an extension, or are you just going to go with a reverse split?

We will do whatever it takes in order not to do the reverse stock split. But as you know, this is not completely under our control. The NASDAQ and the - our legal team have to be - have to convince NASDAQ not -- to give us more time, let's say. As I said, I hope that with these amazing results, we don't need to ask for an extension. We want to see the stock well above $1 and therefore, as I said we will not thereafter need anything, no favors.

Right, I totally agree. There's no way this stock should be valued as low as it is, it's just, it makes no sense. Given the…

Yes, it might be. I agree with you, and that's why some clever people will buy now, which is, at these very low levels and hopefully make a good return when the stock goes above dollar a share.

Great, thank you very much. Good work, everybody involved.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question, and it comes from the line of Scott Shumaker from Mushtaq Enterprises. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Scott? We will go now to the next question. One moment please. And the next question is from Fareed Lebar [ph]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, hi Harry. Congratulations on the, this much anticipated earnings. What a great job your company and you are doing. I have a question regarding if we can, I actually, I have two questions. Are we going to see any more vessel, buyers of vessels before the end year? And also my second part question is, my second part of the question concerns the dry bulk vessel, what are they used for exactly? If you can answer this question, I will appreciate. Thank you so much. Thank you…

Yes, thank you for the kind words. Number one we would like to add more vessels. It’s not easy because the prices have become very high right now, so I cannot guarantee we will buy more vessels within the next 50 days. For the second part, dry bulk vessels means vessels that can carry anything that is dry. In other words grain, coal, sugar, steel, minerals, fertilizers. They can carry more than 15, 20 different cargos. So this is essentially what a dry bulk carrier is.

Excellent, thank you so much sir. I very much appreciated. I know fertilizer is in high demand as well, so hopefully.

Correct, correct. Well done.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for responding.

Last question.

Thank you. Okay, no problem. One moment please. And it comes on the line of PM Pai [ph]. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great results Harry, congratulations. How does the current quarter looks like?

As you understand, we cannot say too much for the current quarter, but from what you read what you heard, sorry in our presentation things look to be quite solid and quite firm. But obviously the point of the call is the third quarter, not the fourth quarter.

Are the rates better than the second quarter?

I would say the same.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. I would like to hand back over to Harry Vafias for final remarks.

We would like to thank all of 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 with us again at our next conference call for our Q4 results. Thank you very much.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.