[Call Starts Abruptly] limited to, future expectations, plans and prospects from both a financial and operational perspective and are based on management assumptions, forecasts and expectations as of today's date. Actual results may differ significantly from our forward-looking information and financial forecast. Additional information about these factors and assumptions are included in our annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So with that, I will now pass the floor to our Chairman, Mr. von Appen. Please go ahead, Dag.

Thanks, Randy. Good day to everyone. Welcome to the Navigator First Quarter Earnings Call. First, I would like to thank the Navigator staff and ships cruise for their hard work and dedication to delivering high quality service to our customers. We are very grateful to all our seagoing staff that continues to be impacted by the pandemic and part of it being strongly affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Thanks to strong teamwork, the merger integration is smoothly moving ahead, we keep capturing synergies and our results continue to improve. Special thank you goes for the management committee comprised by Niall, our Chief Financial Officer; Oeyvind, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Michael, our Chief Operation Officer, as they have been leading the company and working together as a high performance team throughout the merger. And we're very glad to have the new Houston office up and running with Randy in charge of our business development in North America and Investor Relations. Second, on behalf of the Board, I would like to extend our huge appreciation and gratitude to our longer service Board member, Alexander Oetker, and to the valuable support of Andreas Beroutsos. Both have stepped down from the Board when we decided to reduce from nine to seven members. Although no longer serving on the board, both remain committed to the ongoing growth and development of Navigator Gas as active and supportive shareholders. The world is going through special times, with amazingly volatile markets, huge pandemic and geopolitical disruptions and at the same time, going green. The European energy crisis, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the highest inflation for the years, multiple interest rate rises in short order and the latest Chinese lockdown have all created material economic headwinds and have impacted trade. But the profile of the COVID-19 economic recovery has…

Thank you, Dag, and good morning, everybody. During the first quarter, the company generated a net income of $27 million, which equates to $35 a share or $12.6 million or $0.16 per share if the unrealized gains on derivative instruments and foreign exchange losses are eliminated. This strong operational performance compares to a net income of $2.8 million or $0.05 per share for the first quarter of last year. The adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $55.7 million, a record for the company, which compared to $31 million for the first quarter of 2021 and to $55.2 million for last quarter, Q4 of 2021. Total operating revenues for the quarter were $119.8 million compared to $85.7 million for the comparative first quarter of last year. $10.2 million of this $34.1 million increase in revenue was principally as a result of the seven additional handysize vessels joining the fleet as part of the Ultragas transaction offset by a slight reduction following the sale of Navigator Neptune on January 14th of this year. There was an additional $13.5 million generated as a result of the revenues derived from the Unigas Pool, representing revenues from the now nine smaller Unigas vessels following the sale of the Happy Bride and 1999 built 8,600 cubic meter LPG carrier in March 2022. We also continue to see an increasing charter rate environment during the quarter, which accounted for $3.4 million of the increase in revenues this quarter as average charter rates rose to $22,933 per day or $697,500 per month, compared to $21,956 per day for the first quarter of 2021. And this was an increase from approximately the $22,500 a day achieved in the last quarter of 2021. Vessel utilization to – nudged up to 89.5% for the quarter, compared to 88.2% a year…

Thank you, Niall. And good morning, everyone. The macroeconomic starts are finally starting to align for Navigator. We are in an environment where gas and its derivatives are in high demand due to disruptions to longstanding trade flows and we are also experiencing a global realization that gas is a necessary lower carbon energy source as a stepping stone towards the future green transition. In addition, we are also seeing supercharged investments in North American natural gas liquids’ production, and infrastructure, especially from the midstream companies. One factor pointing to the NGL production environment is the rig count. U.S. rig count has gone from a low in March, 2020 of 244 to 728 today, a dramatic increase. In connection to this we are seeing renewed interest in debottlenecking European import infrastructure to enable reliable seaborne imports across the Atlantic for all gases, being LPG, petrochemicals, and ammonia, all of the products we carry. In addition, the tonnage situation is restricted to prolonged squeeze on supply chains and commodity prices such as steel, leaving at least the handysize segment with only 7% feet growth over the next three years. All of these factors set the stage for robust freight environment going forward. We expect America to go from strength to strength as a reliable producer and exporter of competitively priced gas products and derivatives. And Navigator is perfectly positioned to benefit from these positive developments. We can clearly visualize this growth on Page 13. It shows natural gas liquid production in North America and exports. U.S. propane production for the month of April set a record of approximately 2,400 barrels per day. Ethane is closely linked to increasing natural gas liquid production, and is also on the rise. Domestic demand remains relatively stable and hence any new incremental volume reinforces continued…

Thank you, Oeyvind. So, yes, we’ll now open the line for some Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. So first question, your line is open. It is on mute.

Randy, can you hear me?

Can hear you now, go…

This is Ben. Yes, there we go. This is Ben Nolan over at Stifel. Hey, so, I have a couple, Oeyvind, you’d mentioned recontracting some of the vessels and I assumed they were Canadian exports. Any sense and appreciating that you might not want to say specifically, but relative – let’s just say for the vessels that you do have on contract across the fleet, any sense of sort of what the uplift is in rates on a percentage basis relative to where things are currently contracted?

These particular vessels that you’re referring to are indeed the ones trading, taking not a Canadian product from the West Coast to Asia, and the rate is 20% a year-on-year up. But they are higher than what some of the third-party ship brokers are quoting for a 12-month time charter rate in that segment. Traditionally, handysize rate assessment lags, where it goes up or down because there’s not that many transactions happening here from week to week. So there is definitely the rates that are being done for those trades are up on what you see publicly published by some of these ship brokers.

Okay. That’s very helpful. Appreciate that, Oeyvind. [Ph] And then moving over to the ethylene terminal, obviously you guys are talking about the possibility of expanding and Enterprise has been very vocal about that themselves. Just thinking about this strategy, I know when you did Phase 1, the idea was to basically have almost everything fully contracted before making that final investment decision. With this being an expansion and in a good market, are you thinking of it the same way or would the joint venture be willing to maybe move forward with the project, even if it was whatever 60% contracted or pick a number?

One thing to keep in mind Ben is when we did the original joint venture Phase 1, we can call refer to it as Phase 1. The pipeline taking product from Mont Belvieu down to the terminal was upsized in anticipation of a potential expansion. Similarly, the storage tank above ground storage tank was upsized from 50,000 cubic to 60,000 cubic because we both felt Enterprise and Navigator that we should be prepared for a future for potential space to doubling capacity. And then you needed those assets to be capable of doing that. So, that’s all in place. So and that was an incremental cost at the time. So when the assets are there for a potential expansion, you would – the strategies that we probably don’t need 94%, 95% throughput commitment for the project to go ahead, what that level is, what level is both Enterprise and Navigator comfortable with that is a different question, which we are investigating at the moment.

Okay. Fair enough. And then lastly for me, and I’ll turn it over. As a lot of this new capacity is coming online, whether it’s from the ethylene terminal or other LPG and petrochemical exports coming out to the United States, you talked about only a 6% order book, it seems like there could be room for additional orders. I guess I was first curious if you guys would be contemplating that and/or is there any appetite on a part of Navigator to maybe do M&A or go out and as was the case last year increased the size of the fleet through existing assets?

I think it's something that is on our mind. We're looking at it continuously, we always have. The thing with ethylene is that it's competing with ethane, so there will be competition between ethane and ethylene markets for shipping. So we envision our situation whereby we will move some ships from ethane trade into ethylene. So to give an example, today our ethylene Luna Pool is about 50-50% –50/50 ethane/ethylene. The tonnage is there depending – just depends what the product is willing to pay. But if all the ships that are trading today moves from ethane to ethylene there's enough, but then the question is what will happen to the ethane trade? So it's a bit of a dynamic situation between the two.

Right. And then I guess the question is how do you resolve that? Is it through new buildings? Is it you guys taking a bigger position through secondhand acquisitions, perhaps?

It's all on the spectrum, but what we can do and what we can control today and so forth [indiscernible] and who we contract with and what product we ship on the existing assets.

Right, right. Okay, that's fine. Good enough. I will turn it over to appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Ben. All right, next caller. We'll open up your line now.

Hi, good morning, gentlemen. This is Chris Robertson at Jefferies. How are you?

Thank you.

Howdy.

So throughput has been elevated in April and May at around 100,000 tons in the month. Can you talk about your expectations for June and how that might relate to any technical or operational capabilities or limitations there? And then following up on that, can you talk about any expectations for seasonality in the back half of the year?

Hi. Chris, thanks for the question. For the ethylene terminal, Q1 was 267,000 tons. For Q2, it will be above 250,000; so close to Q1. So April and May, about 100,000 tons, June will be a little bit less. Why? It's more of a tactical approach from the joint venture whereby it takes time or 125 tons an hour to fill the tank. So we want to start July second – third quarter, 1st of July with a full tank. So at the back end of June, the terminal is unlikely to have full export capability or throughput because you want to go out to the bank 1st of July. So it'd be a little bit less in June, but overall similar to Q1.

Okay. Yes. Thanks for the color on that. And then, so just looking at the ethylene terminal with the expansion plans, but I wanted to ask more on the east coast operations. So given the situation with Russia and Ukraine at the moment, Europeans trying to source energy from different suppliers, and maybe that being a more structural change in the long-term, have there been any plans or discussions around expanding operations in the Northeast to supply Europe?

I think you're absolutely correct in the assessment that Europeans are woken up to the fact that they need to diversify supply, reliable supply of all energy products including LPG, including ammonia, including petrochemicals. So where do they look? Well there's not that many places they can look, but the closest one is east coast of America. So we have seen an increase of exports from the east coast on propane to Europe, and that is for sure set to continue in a bigger way than we have seen in the past because Europeans need it. What is happening now is that the post winter Repauno [ph] started export operations from New Jersey. Marcus Hook, they have connected and finally commissioned [indiscernible] 2x. So the east coast is set to help and support the European demand. And the effect of that is longer. The ships have to say longer to docks. Opening remarks is that the disruption is happening and we see it, and instead of sourcing product from closer locations, then you have to look across the Atlantic. So for shipping demand this is generally a positive. But the U.S. east coast absolutely will play a larger role in providing energy security for Europe.

Thanks for the color on that, Oeyvind. Appreciate the time guys. Thank you.

Thanks Chris. All right, next caller?

Good morning, gentlemen. This is Climent Molins on from Investors Edge. Thank you for taking my questions. Following up on the increasing rate environment in the sector, I was wondering if you could provide some further commentary on the charter market. Past two year or three year contract seen similar increases or have these increases mostly taken place on shorter term fixtures?

Thanks for the question, Climent. Traditionally the handy size time charter market is around about 12 months. That is a typical duration in our segment. So at any given point in time, if you have 12 month time charters, they need to be renewed as you – as we move through the year. So depending on the market conditions at those particular points in time, then traditionally we are able to increase rates or drop rates in this current environment. We are on up-cycle. We talked about starts aligning, there's a lot of – there's many fundamental reasons why the shipping market – our shipping market is tighter or more balanced than it has been in the past. So renewal of time charters that are coming off, we have seen and we commented are at higher rates than we've done 12 months ago. So we're in – we are in an up cycle we believe, and we feel it, and we can show to an increasing average rate across the board.

All right. That's all for me. Thank you, guys, for taking my questions.

Thanks Climent. I see another raised hand here. Go ahead. Your line should be open. Just make sure you un-mute your call.

Hi, this is David Cohen from Minerva Advisors. I'd be interested in any commentary you could provide with regard to the linkage between the change in the accounting lives of the vessel down from 30 years and subsequent investment decisions you might make in the fleet. Is there a direct linkage? Is there an indirect linkage? Is there no linkage? Thanks.

Hi. I think in general there is no or very little linkage. The investment decision on vessels is made on its own merits and probably is a shorter timeline than, than either 25 or indeed 30 years. And it's certainly not something that we have looked at in the past to make an investment decision based on 30 years. So I don't think that's – that's a critical component of that decision. I think the decision made to move from 30 years to 25 was more about the evolution of the ships and the economics and the ecology of newer ships relative to old older ships. And as we've had some, and we mentioned that we've sold the Navigator Neptune which is 22 years of age this year, we can do a comparison between those ships and some of the new ones, which can be rather dramatic and not just economically, but also environmentally. So there is minimal linkage in terms of our investment decision based on either 25 or 30 years.

Thank you. Best of luck.

Thank you. Thanks.

All right. Looks like no further questions. So thank you again to all for joining us on this call and hearing and seeing again, our optimistic outlook for the future. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me directly, randy.giveans@navigatorgas.com. We'll talk soon.

Thank you.

Good bye.