Good day, and welcome to the Q1 2015 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Harry Vafias. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first quarter 2015 earnings presentation and webcast. This is Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas. Joining me on the call today is our Chairman, Mr. Michael Jolliffe; and Finance Executive, Mrs. Fenia Sakellaris, who will be presenting the company's financial performance at a later stage of our call. Before we briefly present our today's agenda, I would like for all of you to be reminded that we will be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. At this stage please take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2. It's noted that risks are further disclosed in StealthGas's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Let's proceed in summarizing today's topics. I will begin with an overview of our company's highlights for the first quarter of this year, and then we will discuss our financial performance and provide an overview of the LPG market. And finally, after a close look at our stock performance, I will share our views and our company's outlook. I would like to note that all amounts unless otherwise clarified are implicitly stated in U.S. dollars. Let's move to Slide 3; to summarize our company key highlights for the period. With regards to our fleet and operations by the end of April and as per our CapEx plan we took delivery of three new Eco LPG ships, two of which are already fixed on bare charters, while one currently in the spot market will enter into a six-month charter in July. In addition we concluded in April the sell of two of our oldest vessels for demolition, thus easing [ph] our OpEx base, decreasing our fleet's average age, and setting a market example as we feel that the acceleration…

Thank you, Harry, and good morning to everyone. Let us move on to Slide 9, where we see the income statement for the first quarter of '15 against the first quarter of the previous year. In spite of the weak market segment, with declining oil prices, lowering LPG product prices, and consequently freight rates, our company managed to mark record voyage revenues in Q1 2015 surpassing $35 million. In spite of almost $2 million increase in voyage revenue compared to Q1 2014, higher voyage costs due to the increase number of operating vessels and almost double the number of vessels in the spot market, narrowed down our net revenues to $31.4 million. The running costs marked a 9.5% increase because of the five newbuilding additions and one vessel coming off bareboat charter. We would like to note that this quarter we incurred the reverse operating charge of $500,000 and therefore running costs would have been in reality high by the aforementioned amount. With regards to drydocking cost, we faced no charges in this quarter. Overall, our schedule for 2015 has two vessels to be drydocked in the second and fourth quarter of the year. Our EBITDA for this first quarter of the year came at $15.7 million, reduced by $1.6 million compared to first quarter 2014 as a result of the aforementioned increase in voyage and running costs, but also as a result of the incurred charter higher charge of $1 million for the sale and lead back of Gas Cathar and Gas Premiership that were fully owned by the company in the same period of last year. Interest and finance costs marked an increase of $150,000 mostly lead due to higher commitment fees for new loan agreements of vessels delivered within the examined period. With the net income of…

Thank you, Fenia. Let's proceed now to the market update in slide 13. The LPG market continues to grow, global demand for LPG has increased by 14% over the last decade, and global supply has grown by 22%. LPG trade is supply-driven and relies on short term regional differences. Looking at the left side graph which presents world LPG shipping supplied by region, it's evident that the LPG supply is undergoing significant expansion with key growth regions being Middle East, Asia, and North America. The rapid expansion of U.S. LPG associated with the U.S. shale revolution. The U.S. market is expected to play a major role in the development of the international LPG trade. This, however, will be determined by oil price fluctuation, as declining oil prices have led to a reduction in U.S. LPG production. Focusing on the demand side, in the right-hand side graph, it's evident that Asia is already the biggest LPG consuming region. Japan is still the largest importer of LPG, followed by the fast growing India that enjoys the development of the rural LPG market, and China that is highly dependent on the start-up and operation of PDH facilities. Slide 14 shows the evolution of LPG charter rates. As evident by the table presented, the small LPG segment has experienced declining rates during the last five months. Most affected segment has been the 5000 cubic meter pressurized ships, where rates have fallen by about 20%. Taking into account that lowest rate recorded has been about $7000 a day, it can easily be argued that the market is close to the historical lows. Low oil prices affect LPG demand, and consequently trade, and therefore should oil prices decline even further, we envisage to see a further deterioration of LPG rates in the near future. In addition…

Thank you, Harry. We are pleased with our performance during the first quarter of 2015, as our company marked record revenues surpassing 35.5 million in spite of the difficult market environment of the small LPG segment. Indeed, declining freight rates in conjunction with low oil prices have had a negative effect on freight rates for small LPG carriers, and therefore this quarter compared to the first quarter of 2015 fleet operation utilization fell to 95.6%, and our stock market days increased. Our company continues its steady performance, focusing on low leverage and reducing our ships breakeven even through this challenging environment. We are proceeding with our fleet renewal program, consisting of top quality eco gas carriers, and since the beginning of '15 to-date, we have added to our fleet three modern eco LPG newbuildings while scrapping out two oldest vessels, thus lowering our average fleet age to 10.3 years. Within 2015, we expect the delivery of another seven eco LPG carriers mainly from Japanese shipyards. In addition, our chartering strategy has been proven once again successful as we manage within the first quarter of 2015 to expand the fleet employments for the year to 66%, and increase our secured revenues to 238 million, up to 2022, which was 220 million in quarter four, 2014. Most importantly, we have proven to the market that our conservative philosophy works in both good and bad times. Now, current outlook for the remaining of 2015 is for LPG charter rates that lightly mark a further small decrease and inevitably we anticipate this to exert pressure on the weakest owners, thus seeing an increase of demolition. Our strong balance sheet with the ratio of debt to total assets of 34%, a strong liquidity, and ongoing profitability puts us in a position to address any challenges that might arise in the future. We have 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.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Michael Webber from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead sir, your line is open.

Hey, good morning guys, how are you?

Hi, Michael.

Thanks for the commentary. Just a couple questions; and I wanted to start off with something industry-specific. Harry, you talked about this a bit in your remarks on rates, but I was hoping you can go into a bit more detail in terms of the differences between what we are seeing in some of the larger scale gas markets where rates are relatively firm throughout the balance of Q2. And the fact that it hasn't necessarily translated into some of the feeder trades in and around Asia would imply that there is not necessarily -- that the trade is not as volume-driven for the larger assets. So maybe just any color, whether there is a lag associated with that, that we could see a pickup in the next quarter. You touched on it a bit already, but maybe just a bit more color?

Yes. I think Michael, as we've discussed before, the rates between the big and the small ships were never correlated. To give an example, two years ago when the rates for the small ships were very firm, the rates for the big ships were very, very, very weak, created big problems for the owners of these vessels. Now we are in an exact opposite scenario where the rates for the small ships are weak, but the rates for the big ships are very strong. However, do not forget that in the big ships, a category, the huge order book has not yet been delivered. So of course we have to see what will happen when all these new ships fall between now and Q2 '16.

Yes.

And also I don't know how many ships in that size segment are above 20 years of age. At least in our case there has been a number of newbuilding deliveries last year. There are a few more this year, but from '16 onwards the newbuilding order book for our types of ships is relatively small, and if you combine that with the fact that a lot of ships are over age in our segment we are sure that the owners continue to feel the pain for the remainder of the year. They will definitely need to scrap. As we said before we didn't need to scrap because we are very cash-rich and we have very low running cost, but we have to show an example, set an example. So we decided to scrap our two older ships and hopefully if we're right and the market remains weak until the New Year. We hopefully want to see more owners scraping their 22, 23, 24 year old ships.

Right, I guess what I am getting at is the only way they would be correlated is if there was a bump in, say, long-haul volumes that would trickle down to, say, some of the smaller assets in that trading, but it sounds like what you are saying is that that's not the case and the markets are still very, very bifurcated. I wanted to touch on buybacks, because we've continued to execute there. I am just curious with things getting a bit softer, I am sure when you looked at that math, right, your own shares were then at more value than what you were seeing in either secondhand or in the newbuild market at the time. I am curious if maybe that is expressed as just a spread, right, I am curious as to where that math is now relative to where it was, say, earlier this year when you put the buyback in place. And are we anywhere near a point at which you would maybe start to reallocate some of that capital?

Good question. As you know, as we always have our eyes and ears open for acquisitions. Up to now we haven't seen something that is really fantastic and really very cheaply priced. So we have focused all our time and money to continue to buyback stock. We are nearly at the half point of the buyback program. We've spent $12 million. We have another $18 million to go, which I think is very positive for our existing shareholders. Now again, if we see a quality modern ship from a Japanese yard at a very good price, I'm sure that we will discuss it with the Board, and we might buy that. At the moment, the prices for brand new ships have not fallen. They have fallen by 5% or something like that. So we need to see far more pain for a far longer period for people to start discounting these high quality ships.

Got you. And the buybacks to date, those have all been open market? Or have there been any pipes within that buyback program so far?

The vast majorities in the open market we have purchased a few blocks, but not significant numbers because not many people want to sell at this kind of valuation, I guess.

Okay. Just one more, I know you mentioned around the newbuilds the debt is currently under negotiation. I would imagine, given the equity backstop, that that is not going to be too big of a problem, but just -- can you talk around terms and when we should expect something to be finalized there?

Yes, I mean we have even written it on the slide to be even more visible for everyone. We have the terms sit on our table for the remaining debt, but obviously we didn't take it because there is no point of paying fees two years in advance. So we've decided with the Board to finalize the remaining debt discussions by Q1 '16. So within the next, let's say, six months. So we hope that in Q1 '16 we'll announce the finalization of our total debt discussion, and therefore the only money left to be paid will be only the equity remaining for the newbuilds, the $6 to $7 million.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks for the color, guys.

Thank you, Michael.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions in the phone queue at this time.

We would like to thank you 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 our second quarter 2015 results in August. Thank you very much.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.