Comtech Telecommunications Corp.

Hello, and welcome to the Diana Shipping Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Ed Nebb, Investor Relations for Diana Shipping. Please go ahead, Ed.

Thank you very much, Kevin, and thanks to all of you for joining us today for the Third Quarter Conference Call of Diana Shipping Inc., Before management begins their remarks, let me briefly remind you of the safe harbor provisions, which you can see the notice attached to today's news release. Certain statements made during this conference call, which are not historical fact, are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, expectations, projections, or beliefs as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. For a description of the risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause future results to differ from what is expressed in forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's filings with the SEC. And now I'd like to introduce Mr. Simon Palios, Chairman, and Ms. Semiramis Palios, Chief Executive Officer, and I'll turn it over now to Semiramis.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Diana Shipping's third quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is Samira Mispaliou, the company's CEO, and it is an honor to have the opportunity to present to you today. Joining me this morning on the call, we have Mr. Stacey Martogaronis, President of Diana Shipping. We have Mr. Ioannis Zafirakis, CFO and Chief Strategy Officer. Mr. Lefteris Papatrifon, Chief Operating Officer, and Ms. Maria Zede, the company's Chief Accounting Officer. Before I begin, I kindly ask everyone to review the forward-looking statements applicable to today's presentation, which can be found on page two of this presentation. Turning to slide four, I will briefly update you on the company's snapshot as of today. Not much has changed since our second quarter call as we continue owning and operating 36 vessels with a carrying capacity of approximately 4.6 million deadweight tons. However, we expect our fleet to grow by one vessel in the first quarter of next year after we take delivery of our announced acquisition, the motor vessel Manolia. Our fleet utilisation has remained at very high levels coming in at 98.9% for the third quarter of 2021 as compared to 99.6% for the second quarter of the year. Moving on to slide five, I will go over the highlights of the third quarter and recent developments. Market conditions remained robust during the last quarter and continue being positive to this date, although we have witnessed some volatility recently. This has resulted in the company producing a strong third quarter and achieving the strongest nine-month results since 2012. This strong profitability and positive cash flow generation has enabled us to introduce a cash dividend of 10 cents per share. As we have mentioned in the past, we would only start paying a dividend again when market conditions were such that would allow the dividend to be sustainable for a reasonable period of time. We feel that such conditions are right currently, and as such, we have initiated the dividend. Together with the dividend, we announced a separate transaction that we believe rewards and at the same time creates value for our shareholders. This is the creation and subsequent spin-off of OceanPal. OceanPal will acquire three of our oldest vessels and will trade separately on the NASDAQ capital market under the ticker symbol OP. Every Diana Shipping Inc. shareholder will receive one share of OceanPal for every 10 Diana shares held on the record date. The specific spin-off structure, the rationale of the transaction, and the potential benefits for our shareholders are analyzed in detail in the OceanPal registration statement filed with the Security and Exchange Commission. While the consummation of this spin-off has been delayed pending the effectiveness of the ocean pile registration statement filed with the SEC, we anticipate that it will be completed in the next couple of weeks with no changes to the terms that we have previously announced. As previously announced, in June of this year, we successfully issued a five-year, US$125 million senior secured bond listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Within September, we utilized some of the bond proceeds to repurchase the remaining old bonds due in 2023. In August, we successfully concluded our tender offer and repurchased approximately 3.33 million common shares at a price of 4.5 US dollars per share. We believe that this return to our shareholders presented a strong vote of confidence for the long-term prospects of our company. Lastly, Our consistent chartering strategy has allowed us to have currently secured approximately $209 million of contracted revenues for the full year 2021 with 97% contract coverage and $83.2 million of contracted revenues for 2022 with 27% contract coverage. Yanis will provide later on a more detailed analysis of our cash flow generation potential. based on the current market environment. One can also find on our website the company's 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance Report, which was released in October. Turning to the financial highlights of the third quarter of 2021 on slide six, we find ourselves as of September 30th, 2021, with a cash and cash equivalence position of $146.2 million, including restricted cash, as against $82.9 million as of December 31, 2020. Our debt, net of deferred financial costs, stood at $434.7 million at the end of the third quarter of 2021, as against $420 million US dollars at the end of 2020. Our time charter revenues for the third quarter of 2021 amounted to 57.3 million US dollars as against 42.3 million US dollars for the third quarter of 2020. Lastly, our earnings per share for the third quarter of 2021 came in at 16 cents versus a loss of 17 cents per share for the same period of 2020. Yanis will go over these as well as the nine-month numbers in more detail further on in the presentation. Moving on to slide seven, we find a summary of all our recent chartering activity. Once again, consistent with our conservative and disciplined chartering strategy, we have taken advantage of the improving chartering markets and have secured attractive time charters for 11 vessels of our fleet. More specifically, We charted nine vessels in the Panamax to post-Panamax side at a weighted average daily rate of $25,858, and for a remaining average period of 336 days per vessel. This can be compared to the $25,693 weighted average daily rate we achieved for the fixtures presented during our last earnings call, an indication of the market remaining robust. We have also chartered two Cape-sized vessels at a weighted average rate of US$33,437 per day for a remaining average period of 148 days, an improvement from the US$25,957 we achieved as an average weighted daily rate for the last quarter's Cape-sized fixtures. We intend to continue chartering our vessels that will be re-delivered to us in a similar by staggering maturities, locking in cash flows, and positioning the company in a manner that will allow us to continue to participate in the market in a balanced way. I will now turn the call to Yannis to go over the third quarter 2021 financials in more detail.