Good day and welcome to the StealthGas Fourth Quarter and Final Year Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Jolliffe. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us in our fourth quarter and full-year 2016 earnings conference call. I’m Michael Jolliffe, the Board Chairman of StealthGas. Joining me on the call today is our CEO, Mr. Harry Vafias, and our Finance Officer, Mrs. Fenia Sakellaris. Before we commence our presentation, 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, if you could take a moment to read our disclaimer on slide 2 of this presentation. It is noted that risks are further disclosed in StealthGas’ filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to note that all amounts quoted, unless otherwise clarified, are implicitly stated in U.S. dollars. Slide 3 summarizes our key highlights for the fourth quarter and full year of 2016. In the majority of 2016, we faced a difficult market. Rates remained at low levels and the moderate freight increase we saw in some sub-segments of our market was not sufficient to boost profitability at satisfactory levels. In addition, the spot market remained weak, particularly in the second and third quarter of the year. During the fourth quarter, however, demand has picked up, thus contributing positively to our year’s performance. With the two new LPG deliveries we had in 2016, we managed to drive our vessel calendar days up by 10% year on year. We closed 2016 with an operational utilization of 91%; not a bad figure given the difficult market conditions. In the fourth quarter of the year, our commercial performance strengthened. With 49 out of our 55 operating vessels on period charters, we achieved an operational utilization of 94.2% and reduced our commercial off-hire days by 65% compared…

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our call. With regards to the fleet geography presented in slide 5, 53% of the fleet trades in the Middle and Far East, about 30% in Europe, and about 8% in South America; 5% in Australia, and, finally, 3% in Africa. In comparison to our fleet composition presented in the previous quarter, we had two vessels relocating from America to Asia. On slide 6, we provide you with the analysis of our remaining capital expenditure program scheduled to take place until the end of 2017. Looking at the table on the left-hand side, our remaining CapEx excluding any related advances paid to date is in the order of about $146 million. At the bottom of the table, we provide you with a detailed breakdown of our remaining capital expenditure as to advances and final payments of our future deliveries. In relation to the financing of this capital expenditure, which is presented to the right graph, from a total contract value of $208 million, $62 million are advances paid to date, $140 million is the maximum value of the committed bank debt, leaving us with an equity injection of about $6 million, while our unrestricted cash is in the order of about $65 million. Now, I’ll turn you over to Mrs. Fenia Sakellaris for our financial performance discussion during the fourth quarter 2016 and, later, I will discuss the market and industry outlook.

Thank you, Harry. Good morning to everyone. 2016 was not a very satisfactory year in terms of profitability as weak demand evident in the majority of the year in conjunction with low rates suppressed revenue generation. We enjoyed higher fleet utilization in Q4 2016 and a slight increase in rates. However, this was not enough to compensate for the low earnings of the previous quarters. Let us move on to slide 7 where we see the income statement for the fourth quarter of 2016 against the same period of the previous year. Our voyage revenues came at $37.4 million, at same levels as in Q4 2015 in spite the higher operational utilization and the net addition of one vessel, due to weaker rates particularly in the 7,500 cubic meter segment. It’s worth to note that in Q4 2016 our fleet operational utilization of 94.2% was more than 3% higher than in Q4 2015 and the rates for the 7,500 cubic meter pressurized vessels were more than 8% lower. Voyage costs amounted to $3.7 million, marking a 12% decrease compared to Q4 2015. The key driver of voyage cost reduction was the lower number of vessels operating in the spot market. In Q4 2016, we had 28% less spot days compared to the same period of last year. Net revenues, that is revenues after deducted voyage costs, came at $33.7 million. Running costs at $14.5 million increased by 2.5% compared to the same period of last year. The net addition of one vessel this year compared to 2015 is the outcome of our two new LPG deliveries and the sale of our oldest vessel in December 2016. So, in reality, we have been operating two more vessels throughout this year. In addition, in 2016 we had one less vessel on bareboat…

Proceeding on slide 11, in 2016, Seaborne LPG trade totaled 91 million tons, up by about 6% compared to 2015. Most of the LPG trade growth in 2016 resulted from the expansion of U.S. export volumes, the majority of which were directed to the Asian region. Looking at the period ahead, China is estimated to be the major demand pull of the LPG market towards 2020, but we also see other markets where LPG demand is rising, such as Japan, India and South Korea. It’s also worth noting that we also see a rise in demand for petrochemicals; a fact which supports the trade of the pressurized LPG vessels. Focusing on our segment fundamentals in slide 12, we see that during Q4 2016 rates demonstrated an upward trend; not sufficient, though, to compensate for the decline noted in the past couple of years. West offshore, the pressurized market has remained difficult. The surplus of tonnage controlled by too many competing parties has continued in keeping freight rates at low levels. Lately, however, we have noticed that a few vessels have left the area to go back east in search of better earnings and this has reduced the tonnage overhang. In the East of Suez area, day rates were given a boost compared to where they were six months ago. Petchems continue to be the driving commodity for the improved market. We do expect the market to cool down a bit during spring/summer due to seasonality and turnaround maintenance season for the petchem plants. In terms of scrapping, even though the age distribution of the small LPG fleet favors scrapping, five vessels were scrapped in 2016 and one vessel was scrapped in January 2017. The strong point in our segment is the limited order book for the years to come. As…

The year 2016 was particularly challenging for the pressurized LPGs as, for the majority of the year, our trade was governed by weak freight rates and low demand particularly in the warmer months. However, in the last quarter, we saw a marginal rise in rates in almost all sub-sectors of the pressurized market, but, most importantly, a sudden rise in demand. However, we do acknowledge that it’s too early to judge whether this trend is attributed to the winter or whether it signifies a broader market improvement. Nevertheless, our company took advantage of this market momentum and strategically increased the fleet utilization with new period charters and charter extensions. We have already reached a fleet employment coverage of 73% for 2017 and we increased our earnings visibility to $200 million in contracted revenues. Given that the order book for our segment is almost nonexistent for the years to come, we feel that this may lead to a faster market recovery. We continue to believe that we are very well-positioned to grasp any market upside to the fullest as we operate our extensive modern fleet with low operating costs under a low-leverage model and with earnings visibility through period contracts. Our conservative strategy has helped us to remain breakeven in the down cycles; something that not many companies can say. With a solid cash balance, efficient costs control, and conservative chartering strategy, we have avoided having to issue dilutive equity like many other listed shipping companies have done over the last two years. 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 all.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question today from Sam Schaefer of Global Value Investment Corp. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions today.

Hi, Sam.

My first question is for Michael. With the worst of the market behind us and limited order book, does the Company – or how does the Company feel about reinstating the stock buyback or dividend policy?

Look, we’ve been trying very hard. As you know, we’ve still got the four 22,000 cbm ships coming in the next year and one in – well, three during 2017 and one in 2018. And we are harvesting our cash a little bit in order to pay those OpEx – those CapEx, excuse me – and to allow ourselves sufficient trading room to look for possibilities. We still have the stock buyback on hold, but we won’t be implementing it at least until the next board meeting when we will review it again. We review it at every board meeting, but, as you saw, the market has not been so good last year. It has improved a little bit in the fourth quarter. We’re hoping for better things this year for the reasons that we stated in the presentation. But, we’re keeping our cash close to our chests for the moment. We’ve always been a company that’s been in any danger partly because we’ve managed to keep sensible cash reserves at the right times.

Alright. And then, the next question is for Ms. Sakellaris. I believe in the 2015 20-F the Company had provided us a data point that was the in-water vessels net asset value was exceeding the fair market value. And I believe at 2015 it was $54 million. With the Company taking an impairment charge in Q4 this year, I’m a little curious how the Company decides to take impairment charges versus providing just that data point that states the book value exceeds fair market value.

Yes. With regards to the impairment charge, we didn’t fully analyze in more detail. As we mentioned in our call, it was vessels that are above 20 years of age. In our 20-F last year we have very extensively analyzed our impairment testing methodology and as we followed the same exact methodology this year, we had some, for some vessels not passing the test 100%. So, as we said, the rates have declined particularly up to the third quarter of the year. We have seen now a very good rise in demand in Q4 and we are very optimistic for 2017 that we won’t need to impair any more vessels. And please note that impairment is a P&L loss, but it’s not what we feel was very serious. It’s not a cash flow loss. It’s not a cash item. So, from an adjusted perspective, as you have seen, it didn’t affect our results and profitability.

Alright. And then, one last question. I noticed on the current presentation the Company removed Epic Gas as a comparable. Why was that?

Yes. We removed Epic because we didn’t find, this quarter, information on the latest financials. It wasn’t any other reason.

Oh, okay. Great. Thank you for taking my questions and good luck with the rest of the year.

You’re welcome.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] It seems there are no further questions at this time.

We would like to thank you all 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 at our next call for our Q1 results in May. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.