Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Safe Bulkers conference call and Fourth 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. [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 this conference call will soon be made available on the Safe Bulkers website at www.safebulkers.com. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Dr. Loukas Barmparis. Please go ahead sir.

Good morning to all. I'm Loukas Barmparis, President of Safe Bulkers and I'm welcoming you at our quarterly financial results. We are having premium charter rates for environmentally upgraded vessels and our Phase 3 newbuilds and benefiting from our Capes that have period time charters. It seems that our policy for renewing our fleet and upgrading the existing vessel works and offers additional operational financial advantages. The charter market weakened during the fourth quarter of 2024 and this impacted our revenues and profitability. In this environment our company maintains a strong capital structure with required liquidity with a leverage of about 35%, and we have declared a $0.05 per share dividend rewarding our common shareholders. We remain focused on capital allocation towards our new build program, on improving our operational efficiency and the environmental footprint and all our actions are targeting to increase the wealth of our shareholders. Following a comprehensive review of the forward-looking statement presented in slide 2, let's begin with the market update on slide 4. The Cape market segment has been moving downwards throughout the quarter. All eight of our Capes are presently period chartered, with an average remaining charter duration of over two years and an average daily charter rate of $22,000. This provides us with a considerable degree of cash flow visibility, topping $145 million in contracted revenue from Capes alone. On the Panamax front, the charter market stands soft at $9,000, with signs of improvement. Moving now to slide 5, we will present an overview of the CRB commodity index fluctuation in basic commodity prices. The rising tariffs elevate policy uncertainty and pose a considerable downside risk for global growth against this inflation. There are rising fears of higher for longer interest rates from central banks and lower investments globally in the context…

Thank you, Loukas, and good morning to everyone. During the fourth quarter of 2024, we operated in a weaker charter market environment compared to the same period in 2023. We decreased revenues due to lower charter hires, decreased earnings from strata-fitted vessels, and increased operating expenses. Let us focus now on our liquidity, cash flows, and our capital structure as presented in slide 13. We maintain a comfortable leverage of 35%. Our debt of $545 million remains comparable to our fleet scrape value of $331 million, although our fleet is just 10 years old. Our weighted average interest rates or our debt stood at 6.12% for our consolidated debt, with a portion of €100 million being fixed at 2.95% coupon in an unsecured 5-year bond. We have already paid $84 million, or 29% for our CapEx in relation to our outstanding order book. Our liquidity and capital resources stand strong at approximately $276 million, which together with a contracted revenue of about $205 million makes a total of $481 million, and this is more than double our outstanding CapEx of $206 million on the new builds, providing flexibility to our management in capital allocation. Furthermore, we have additional borrowing capacity in relation to those seven new builds upon their delivery. We strive to ensure that our capital expenditures are adequately recovered by our contracted future revenues, fortifying our balance sheet towards a trajectory of sustainable growth. Moving on to slide 14, with our quarterly financial highlights for the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same period of 2023. Our adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $40.7 million, compared to $50.7 million for the same period of 2023. Our adjusted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $0.15. This calculated on a weighted average…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Omar Nokta with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Thank you. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for the update. I guess just a couple of questions on my end and maybe just perhaps first on the shared buyback. You announced the $5 million program in November. You went to work fairly quickly buying $1.5 million, but then in December, you went ahead and terminated it. I just want to get a sense. Was there a trigger maybe that kick-started the buyback program, and was there something that caused you to terminate it outright? Or is it just the way safe brokers tend to do its share buyback?

Look, from time to time we are doing buyback programs, especially when we feel that our market, the price of the stock market is very low and we execute always a portion of it, so this has happened in the past, it can happen again in the future. We believe really that the asset, the valuation of our carbon is quite low compared to the net asset value, especially because we have made all these investments since the last two years. We have upgraded our fleet, we have renewed our fleet, we have new builds, and we offer to our shareholders a solution where when they invest on us, they have the ability to invest in a company which basically has a better operational and financial prospects with the same number of ships because they run with a lower fuel consumption and advanced energy efficiency.

I may add what Loukas said. Sometimes the company evaluates a program also related to the current trade market. If the company feels that the current trade market is not performing or it's too much weaker than working sources would be, we may slow it down or we may stop it for a quarter and continue later. So all these parameters are assessed, on a daily basis as the program develops and as the market develops. When we have more clear sight of market, the program can always be reinstated in the next quarter. I mean.

Okay, so that makes sense then in terms of looking at this share price versus NAV in a vacuum isn't the only decision. If the freight market is there and supports positive cash flow, then that would be a trigger given that the market is softer so far. Okay, all right.

And then when you have freight market approaching original OpEx expenses like it did late in December, and consider the buyback program, it could wait for a couple of months.

Got it. That's clear. Yes. And maybe just a follow up, just in terms of kind of the underlying NAV itself and what we've been seeing in asset values. Can you give just a sense from your perspective, it feels that even though the freight market has softened over the past two or three months, asset values, at least from what we're seeing quoted by the various brokers, seem elevated. There hasn't really been much pressure. Would you say that the values are firm or is there just simply not enough business being transacted to have a good sense?

Yes, the market has dropped a lot in December and January and prices have definitely been affected. We can say that older ships have been affected by as much as 25%, while younger ships around 15%. But at the same time, there are many, many owners that have made a lot of money, especially in other categories like tankers or. But they are always looking to buy in a cheaper sector, which is at the moment the drybank sector. So I don't think that the prices have a long way to go unless the market, freight market continues to slide. So if the freight market stabilizes, as it is doing the last few weeks, I don't think that values will have a great deal of way to go down, maybe another 5%, 10%. And at the same time, when buying power is around, especially in the freight [ph] market, I believe that prices will strengthen in the second half of this year. Not a lot, but from the current levels.

Okay, very good. Well, thank you. That's it for me.

Thank you. At this time I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much for attending this conference call that we had today for the Q4 and year-end financial results. And we are looking forward to discuss again with you the following quarter. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.