Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Safe Bulkers Conference Call on the Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results. We have with us Mr. Polys Hajioannou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Loukas Barmparis, President; and Mr. Konstantinos Adamopoulos, Chief Financial Officer of the company. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Following this conference call, if you need any further information on the conference call or on the presentation, please contact Capital Link at 212-661-7566. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. The archived webcast of the conference call will soon be made available on the Safe Bulkers website at www.safebulkers.com. Many of the remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ materially from the results projected from those forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that can cause actual results differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the third quarter 2024 earnings release which is available on the Safe Bulkers website again at www.safebulkers.com. I would now like to turn the conference call over to one of your speakers today, the Chairman and CEO of the company, Mr. Polys Hajioannou. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay. Hi. Good representation. Good morning to all. I’m Loukas Barmparis, President of Safe Bulkers. We had a good quarter compared to the same quarter last year, however, the charter market is gradually softening, allowing with continuing geopolitical uncertainties. We remain focused on capital allocation towards our newbuilds program, on improving our operational efficiency and on rewarding our stockholders with a dividend of $0.05 per share of common stock. Following a comprehensive review of the forward-looking statements, which is presented in Slide #2, let us begin with a market update in Slide #4. The Cape market segment has been volatile throughout the quarter, all eight of our Capes are presently period charted, boosting an average remaining charted duration of 2.6 years with an average daily rate of $23,600. This provides us with a considerable degree of cash flow visibility, topping $175 million in contracted revenue backlog from Capes alone. On the Panamax front, the charter market stands soft at low $10,000. Moving on to Slide 5, we present an overview of our CRB Commodity Index fluctuation in basic commodity prices. Global disinflation continues, raising the prospects of further easing of interest rates, but with a decreased rate, leading to higher for longer interest rates in the context of policy uncertainty. The geopolitical landscape, with continuing tensions in the Middle East, the Red Sea and Ukraine, underscores the heightened level of global uncertainty, which leads to softer global GDP growth expectations for 2025 and 2026, as reflected in the IMF October forecast, for a growth of about 3.2% to 3.3% in the coming years, accompanied by control of inflationary pressures. The dry bulk demand outlook indicates slowing growth with significant uncertainty. According to BIMCO, the forecasted global dry bulk demand growth will have a 1% fall in 2025. China’s slower growth…

Thank you, Loukas, and good morning to all of you. General note, during the third quarter of 2024, we operated in a stronger charter market environment compared to the same period in 2023, with increased revenues due to higher charter hires, increased earnings from scrubbed vessels and higher interest expenses due to increased interest rate environment. Let’s now focus on our liquidity, our cash flows and our capital structure as presented in Slide 13. We are maintaining a comfortable leverage of 32%. Our debt of $499 million remains comparable to our fleet’s scrubbed value of $330 million, although our fleet is young at just 9.9 years old. Our weighted average interest rate stood at 6.35%, inclusive of margin for our consolidated debt, with a portion of $100 million in euros (sic) [€100 million] [ph] fixed at a 2.95% coupon for the unsecured five-year bond. We have already paid $94.6 million or 29% of our commitments for our CapEx in relation to our outstanding order book. Our liquidity and capital resources stand strong at approximately $318 million, which together with a contracted revenue of about $250 million gives a total of almost $570 million. This is more than double our outstanding CapEx of $232 million and this provides flexibility to our management in capital allocation. Furthermore, we have additional borrowing capacity in relation to two existing unencumbered vessels and seven newbuilds upon their delivery. We assure that the capital expenditure is adequately covered by our contracted future revenues, fortifying our balance sheet towards a trajectory of sustainable growth. Moving to Slide 14 with our quarterly financial highlights for the fourth quarter of 2024 in comparison to the same period of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2024 stood at $41.3 million. This compares to $30.9 million for…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Emily Harkins with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. This is Emily on for Omar. Thank you for taking our question. First, you outlined that consolidated leverage is 32% at the end of the quarter. We wanted to know, are you comfortable at this level or are you striving to lower your debt? Is the goal to be debt free? Why or why not?

Yeah. Could you please speak a little bit slower because the sound is not very clear?

Yeah. Of course. I wanted to ask, you outlined that consolidated leverage is 32% at the end of the quarter and we wanted to know, are you comfortable at this level or are you striving to lower your debt and is the goal to be debt free?

Yes. Good morning to you. No, this is a very comfortable level. We don’t plan to reduce it much further. We take newbuilding deliveries in the next three years. So this ratio or anything below 40% is good enough, even if it raises to 45% or 50% in later years, it’s still a very comfortable ratio given the age of the fleet.

Thank you. And as a follow-up, Panamax spot rates have lagged in comparison to other dry bulk classes, such as the Capes and Supramaxes. Could you please provide some color as to why there might be a discrepancy there?

Look, the company owns Panamaxes and Kamsarmaxes, post-Panamaxes and Capes. So basically on the medium-to-large dry bulk assets. And we don’t own any Ultramaxes or any Handys. There is not one category that you can decide to expand on. It’s opportunistic if you will expand. The company will expand in Kamsarmax or Capes in the future. It remains to be seen according to opportunities that appear. Capesize vessels are not that many and their market is even in periods of low market. They have been doing well in recent years because of demand from China. And of course, in the future if there is opportunity to expand in that sector of the market, we will do so. But we need to see lower prices to do that.

Thank you. I’ll turn it over.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. It appears we have no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Okay. Thank you for your attention. Just a quick remark also in terms of how comfortable we feel with the 32% consolidated leverage. I mean you can see in Slide 13, the leverage in comparison with the scrap value of the vessels when they are 25 years old. We understand that we feel extremely comfortable because we are just about less than $200 million from that price. Thank you for attending this conference call and we are looking forward to discuss again with you in our next quarter for the next quarter and year-end financial results. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.