Michael Jolliffe
Management
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our fourth quarter and 12 months 2020 earnings conference call and webcast. I’m Michael Jolliffe, the Chairman of the Board of StealthGas. And with me on our call today is Harry Vafias, the Chief Executive Officer of StealthGas, along with our Finance Officer, Fenia Sakellaris. Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you 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 all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation. Risks are further disclosed in StealthGas filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to point out that all amounts quoted, unless otherwise clarified, are implicitly stated in United States dollars. Slide 3 summarizes the key highlights of our fourth quarter 2020 results that we released today. Our market environment in this last quarter of 2020 remained fairly unchanged compared to quarter three 2020. Main reason for this flat market is, of course, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly affects LPG demand. Vaccine delays, along with the recurring lockdowns, prevented any meaningful recovery, particularly in the European region. Admittedly, we faced a far tougher market in Europe than in Asia, where trade, although primarily spot, was indeed more stable and at better freight rates. Given this environment where new time charter activity was quite negligible, our presence in the spot market was even stronger than in the third quarter of 2020, with more than 16 vessels operating predominantly on the spot market throughout most of the quarter. Hence, trading risks were high with voyage costs and off hires, thus undermining our earnings potential. Even in this difficult market, StealthGas demonstrated quite strong performance and managed to…