Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the StealthGas Inc. first quarter 2010 results conference call. For your information, today's conference is been recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Harry Vafias, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our conference call and web cast to discuss the results for the first quarter ended March 31st. I'm Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas, and I'd like to remind you please that we'll be discussing forward-looking statements in today's conference call and presentation. Regarding the Safe Harbor language, I would like to refer you to slide number one of this presentation as well as to our press release on our first quarter 2010 results. With me today is Andrew Simmons, our CFO. And if you need further info on the conference call or the presentation, please contact Andrew or myself. Let us begin from slide number two, we would like to reiterate our stated business strategy, and later I would like to discuss the outlook for 2010 and beyond. Our primary objective is to continue to run a highly efficient and modern fleet on secure employment contracts with first-class charters that serve a very specific niche market. Our core LPG fleet has no correlation whatsoever to most of our shipping sectors, so it remains a surprise to us that our stock seems to continue to trade in tandem with the share movements of companies with vessels trading sectors completely unrelated to our core LPG market. During the first quarter of 2010, we completed the sale of two of the five older LPG carriers in our fleet that we have contracted to sell by May of this year. I'm pleased to say that the majority of these vessels have been (inaudible) at prices very close to the vessel’s book values. These sales have not only boosted our liquidity and reduced our level of debt, but they have also in my view made our fleet more efficient in that several of these vessels will have…

Thank you, Harry, and good morning, everybody. With slide number five, we now turn to the financial highlights for the first quarter of 2010. With an average of 41 vessels owned and operated in the first quarter of 2010, we realized a net income of $1.6 million on voyage revenue of $28.8 million, and we produced an EBITDAR of $9.9 million. For the first quarter of 2010, we reported a loss of $3.2 million on interest rates swaps and currency hedging arrangements, which included an unrealized non-cash loss of approximately $1.5 million and a realized cash loss of approximately $1.7 million, plus a non-cash impairment loss of $80,000 via the sale of the Gas Eternity and a $50,000 non-cash provision for restricted stock portion of deferred stock-based compensation. Excluding these non-cash items, our net income was $3.2 million or $0.15 per share calculated on 22.3 million average shares outstanding, as our share buyback program had not commenced during the course of the first quarter of this year. Our net debt to capitalization stood at 43% at the end of Q1 2010. We continue to believe that maintaining our leverage at moderate levels is important. As currently structured, no further debt will be incurred by the company until early 2011, and as outlined in our recent press release, we are currently reducing our overall level of indebtedness through the sale of some of our smaller and older LPG vessels. We now turn please to slide number six. This slide provides you with an overview of the development of our income statement for five consecutive quarters. In comparing our results from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010, revenues decreased by 1.4%, EBITDA increased by 15.1%, and our EPS, excluding non-cash items and the $80,000 impairment loss was…

Slide 11 please. This slide shows you the volatile spread markets over the past six years for the medium-sized and large-sized gas ships. In comparison with mid-sized and smaller semi-refrigerated and fully pressurized vessel, our core sector, have experienced a much lower volatility, and until recently, steady growth in freight earnings from mid '05 onwards, and a mild recovery in one year charter rate in this sector is evident. It’s clear from this data that our type of ships, which form the core of our business and that are far removed from dry or wet container markets for over the past six years, not experienced a wild fluctuation in rates that these other shipping sectors have seen. And we are hopeful that this relatively non-volatile trading pattern will continue to remain intact, as I believe we proved during a challenging 2009 and through our reported results for Q1 of ’10 that we are discussing today. That point is further emphasized by slide 12, which shows the one year time charter equivalent volatility since the year 2000 between the dry bulk and the crude tanker sectors, and the 3,500 fully pressurized, and 3,200 semi-ref vessels, which are typical of our fleet. As you can see, based on the mean average of these sectors over this quite extended period, the level of volatility is far higher in the dry and wet spaces running our core segment. We continue to expect that the supply of products will increase during 2010 and beyond, plus demand is expected to continue to be steady, particularly in the Far East, and developing world. Therefore, we continue to believe that the outlook for our core market is encouraging. And therefore, we will continue with the contracted acquisition during ’11 and ’12 of five brand new gas carriers, while…

(Operator instructions) Our first question comes from Natasha Boyden of Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning everyone.

Hello Natasha.

Hi, Harry you mentioned in your -- in the press release the asset values have held up better on the gas carrier market than the other shipping sectors, can you provide may be any details about how asset base has performed within the LPG sector, maybe a percentage versus maybe some of the other sectors. And then secondly, what kind of S&P activity are you seeing in the LPG carrier market at all. I mean, I know you have managed to sell a couple of your older ones. I really just want to get a feel of what is going on there?

Firstly on the asset prices, I don’t need to comment on the wet and dry container values, because you know better than me they have dropped significantly during ’09. Some of the segments have seen a recovery, not as it was before but a recovery of 10% or 20%. The drops were huge in some cases close to 60%, especially on the container sector as you know well. In our segment, you’ve seen what we sold [ph]. You might remember, or might read our old announcements of what we had paid for these vessels. So you will see for modern vessels more than I mean five years or younger, you’ll see that the drop is no more than 5%. So basically I would say no drop at all actually. So that is fantastic having in mind that in ’07-’08 these vessels were making 11,000 to 12,000 a day, and now they are making 8000 and their values are still the same. For all the vessels, of course there is a bigger drop. That I would say 10% to 15% subject of course to the age and size of the ship. Again we sold a lot of these kinds of ships. So again you can compare to what we paid for them. S&P activity, it’s a very small segment as you know, don’t allow no more than 300 vessels. So not too many vessels are being sold, but we have sold close to 10 vessels in the last two years. That has been another, I don’t remember off my head, but probably another 10 from different owners. So I would stick to my opinion that for older vessels, meaning older than 8 to 10 years, during this bad times the drop in values has been 10% to 15%.

Okay, great. And actually that leads me to asking the next question, so you have obviously been selling a lot of your -- or some of your smaller older vessels, when you look at your fleet in total, are there other ships that you consider selling or do you think for the moment that you sold all the vessels that you would like to for the time being?

I would like to sell a minimum of another 4 “older vessels”.

Okay, right. That’s helpful and then just moving to really the other side of the (inaudible), are they completely on track to be delivered on time, any possibility of early or delayed deliveries at all?

The Japanese are famous for their delivery on time. I cannot guarantee their performance obviously, but we are always trying to find excuses to lower the price. We are trying to do that as we speak. So we have not reached an agreement yet with the builders. If we do, of course we’ll announce it.

And if you can just remind us, perhaps Harry or Andrew, what your remaining Capex plan is for this year and next year, and whether or not you have the financing in place.

The total amount for all these vessels is 120. We’ve already paid 20% of that. So you can do the math and see how much we have to pay, remaining to pay. Obviously, as you can understand this, if we don’t buy back more stock or we don’t buy anymore vessels, then obviously we don’t need to, we don’t need to even raise finance. We can take delivery of the billings [ph] with our own money actually.

Okay, and then just lastly actually you touched on the stock repurchase program. Obviously, is this still at present your number one use of cash for you?

Of course, when you are trading at such a big discount and the vessel values, as we have discussed, has not dropped as much as we wanted. You have two choices, one is buy back stock, and then is to look for cheaper pro rata assets and this is what we’re doing.

All right. Thank you very much gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Burke of Clarkson Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon guys.

Hi Daniel.

Hi Harry, kind of just pulling off of where we just left of there in the questioning. Can you kind of -- can you talk about the, you know, the other sectors where you see opportunities that might be attractive and sort of you know, in view of the fact that it sounds like you plan to continue some buyback activity for potentially could continue some buyback activity, you know, what’s the relative trade-off between buying back shares, and you believe they are pretty heavily discounted against NAV versus moving forward with acquiring additional assets.

We will do both if we have the financial strength to do it. So, I personally believe that tankers is the best medium term segment, having in mind its fundamentals and its outlook for ’11 and onwards. The other sectors are too dangerous at least for my belief. We will continue to buy back stock because indeed it is very cheap. Obviously, if the stock price goes up, we’ll have to reduce this buying back activity, but at these levels it is extremely cheap and we’ll continue to buy back stock.

I do think it’s encouraging to see that buyback you know, being physically implemented. I wanted to refer back to a comment you made earlier. I thought you said you’d like to sell another four vessels that just seemed kind of specific. I assume you’re just looking at the -- the oldest couple on the list, and those are kind of the logical target that just seemed like a kind of specific figure to throw out for.

No, it’s not a specific figure. I can sell five or I can sell two. It’s only a matter of the price I get, but I said four because it’s you know, an average number of ships that I feel comfortable with selling and I’m sure that if we indeed sell these vessels that are older, smaller, and don’t have a lot of debt on them, it will be good for our cash flow or increase liquidity, which means that we continue to buy more shares on the $50 million mark, but we are also filling [ph], and probably buy ships, if we find attractive opportunities, especially in the tanker segment.

Okay, and then I guess the last one from me. In terms of the banks and their role in financing the new bills, certainly moving forward to buy back is another indication of your confidence that your relationships with the banks are pretty healthy, but when would we expect to hear from you all that you’ve, you know, gone ahead and secured you know, some financing arrangements for those new bills?

We have, unless another Lehman Brothers happen, we have zero doubt that we will finance the vessels with the best possible terms, because the banks trust 100%, not only StealthGas, but the family growth, which is one of the healthiest shipping groups in the country.

And any thoughts on when we…

It depends when the yard agrees to our pressure. I don’t know. I cannot answer that. I don’t know.

And when you see that yard agrees to your pressure, are you accepting to do a little rework on the schedule or the pricing?

Yes. I discussed that on the previous question if you heard me. I’m trying to push them to get better pricing. I don’t know if I will succeed because the Japanese are very, very firm on these things, but we lose nothing in trying.

Great. Thanks for the comments.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will move to David Wiser [ph] of Mentor Partners [ph]. Please go ahead.

All right. Thanks for taking my question. This is more of a nitpicky question, but during the quarter you sold, I guess, I was just trying to reconcile the cash flow statement. You sold, just reshipped the Natalie to profit (inaudible) and those all closed during the first quarter. Is that correct?

Yes.

And then after the quarter, I guess was what should have closed would be (inaudible)?

Yes.

Is there anything I’m missing there?

No.

Okay, so then my question is maybe you can show it to me, just based on your announcements for the sale of Texiana, I thought you said sale prices could be about $17.7 million.

Yes.

So on the cash flow statement you are showing $13.1 million net from the sale of vessels, is that because -- why was the big difference there? Is that because there was debt on the vessels or --

There is debt on some of the vessels, not all of them of course. Andrew is looking at the chart as we speak and shall return to you, I don’t know by heart those things.

Okay, all right. Thank you.

Yes, we’ll come back to you on that.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate that.

(Operator instructions) We will now take a follow-up question from Daniel Burke of Clarkson Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.

Andrew, I’m just trying to fill some space here to give you sometime if you can pick up that answer, maybe you didn’t want to say, but any case I had another one, but frankly kind of goes back to you as well, but Harry, I thought the quarter looked pretty healthy, you know, particularly given the amount of dry-dock activity you guys did have it going on. Did you also have available may be what that dry-dock schedule looks like on a per quarter basis, just an update for the remainder of this year?

Yes. How many ships is there?

(inaudible) we have five more for this year.

Five more for the whole of the year?

740,000 in Q2, 400,000 in Q3, and about 800,000 in Q4.

I heard 800,000 in Q4 and 400,000 in Q3. I did not hear the Q2 figure.

740,000 in Q2.

Okay, great.

Basically from the summer onwards every quarter should be better than what we faced during ‘09 and this first quarter. That is my again personal opinion.

And Harry, it is not early to look ahead, just qualitatively is next year is higher or lower than, is the ’11 higher or lower than the dry-dock budget for ’10?

Higher.

Higher.

Okay.

But we expect the market to be higher as well. So, let us see what happens.

Okay, great. Alright, thanks guys.

Thank you.

(Operator instructions) It appears we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Okay. We’d like to thank everyone for joining us at our conference call today, and for your interest and trust in our company. We look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for second quarter in six months 2010 results. Thank you.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.