StealthGas Inc. Aktie

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Inc. Q1 2026 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. I'm Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. And joining me on our call today, as usual, is our CEO, Harry Vafias and Konstantinos Sistovaris from Investor Relations.

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 and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. So if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation. Risks are further disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So let's proceed with the presentation on Slide 3 for a brief overview of another successful quarter. Revenues were high at $42.8 million in quarter 1, 2026, 2% higher than the $42 million of quarter 1, 2025 and 9% higher than the previous quarter's $39.4 million.

Adjusted net income for the quarter was $15 million, lower compared to the $16 million achieved last year, but higher than the $13.3 million of the previous quarter. In terms of adjusted earnings per share, these were $0.40 for the quarter and underlying the fact that the company's stock is very attractive on price to earnings multiples. Since achieving our strategic goal of deleveraging the company completely last July and repaying over the previous 3 years, $350 million in debt, we continue to maintain a very flexible capital structure. We are one of the very few, if not the only public shipping company that has managed to achieve 0 bank debt. We also do have a share repurchase program in place and bought back $21.2 million worth of shares since 2023.

But as the share price has appreciated, we did not buy back any shares during the first quarter. This company also has a strategic objective of maintaining a visible revenue stream, opting for longer period charters when available. And so as of June, we have $100 million in contracted revenues with charters up to 2029 and 45% of the fleet calendar days 1 year forward are secured by period charters. In terms of sale and purchase activity, we continue to look for opportunities to sell some older tonnage and possibly replace them with newer tonnage. We entered in March into a contract to sell another one of the smaller ships, the Eco Royalty and expect to deliver her in September.

Two more vessels that we have previously agreed to sell, one was delivered in March to her buyers and the other one in May. Finally, let me mention again the Eco Wizard situation following last July's incident as the vessel remains impaired, both in a literal sense and in terms of accounting as advised previously. The company is in discussions with the insurers of the vessel, and I'm afraid I cannot disclose more at this time. Suffice it to say that discussions are progressing, and we expect within the current month or coming quarter to have resolved the situation.

So you should hear something on this fairly soon. Let us move on to Slide 4 for our fleet employment as at the end of May. Chartering activity was relatively consistent over the past few months. We did conclude 5 new period charters of 3 months or longer, same as last quarter, but this time, the durations were longer. One charter was for 2 years, was for 1 year and the remaining 3 for 6 months duration. As we enter the summer months and the geopolitical situation remains fluid, the spot exposure for our fleet has actually increased, and we currently have 5 of our operating vessels in the spot market. Our intention is to reduce the spot exposure.

Overall, we continue to maintain high period coverage. As of June, for the remainder of 2026, we have secured 55% of the fleet days on period charters, bringing in about $52 million in revenues for the remainder of the year. One-year forward coverage is at 45%. Total revenues secured for all future periods up to 2029 are around $100 million. In terms of dry dockings, 5 vessels were scheduled during 2026, an average number. Two of these dry dockings were for the first quarter, and we actually performed more earlier than schedule. So in total, during quarter 1 2026, we dry docked 3 vessels, hence, the increased dry dock expenses. Two vessels remain to be dry docked during 2026.

Looking at the geographical location of our fleet presented in Slide 5, our company mainly focuses on regional trades and local distribution of gas, while the larger vessels mostly engaging intercontinental voyages like loading in the U.S. to discharge in Europe. We continue to position the majority of our fleet, 2/3 west of Suez and particularly in Europe and the Med in order to take advantage of the higher rates and more liquid market. In the Far East, we only have one of our older vessels and for the time being, do not intend to reallocate more vessels there as the rates continue to be lower in the East. We also have 4 vessels trading in Africa, and we are building relationships there as we are optimistic that in Africa, demand for LPG will grow faster.

There are many LPG storage facilities under construction on the continent that will increase seaborne trading in the future. Insofar as the conflict in Iran is concerned, we have not seen any particular change in trading patterns for the smaller vessels. Most affected were the VLGCs that were used for the majority of Persian Gulf exports and to a lesser extent, MGCs and Handysizes, particularly for Iraqi exports. As we said last time, we have one MGC vessel inside the Pershian Gulf where it remains until today. The vessel had gone to load LPG in Saudi Arabia just before the conflict began. We are anxiously monitoring the situation, but have not attempted to exit as we do not consider the passage to be safe for the time being. The vessel is on time charter, so the freight for the time the vessel has stayed there has been paid.

We hope the situation is resolved swiftly. I will now turn the call over to Konstantinos Sistovaris for our financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Starting with Slide 6, where we have a snapshot of the income statement for the first quarter against the same period of 2025. While the fleet was almost similar at 28 vessels counting the vessels that entered and exited, the days the vessels were earning revenue was reduced by 8.5% and this was due to the timing of the dry dockings when vessels are off-hire and also the inclusion of one still nonoperational vessel, the Eco Wizard, until this case is resolved. Despite this reduction, revenues for the first quarter came in strong at $42.8 million, marking a 1.9% increase year-on-year as the vessels continue to operate in a firm market with especially the largest sizes reporting improved results.

Voyage expenses were higher by $1 million as they include some additional insurance premiums related to the conflict in the Middle East. Operating expenses were $13.8 million for the quarter and were contained only slightly higher than last year's. This quarter, we had a significant increase in dry docking costs, which depend on the timing the vessels are sent to the yard as 3 out of the 5 vessels that were due for drydocking this year were dry docked during the first quarter compared to only a single vessel last year. Another item that influenced the results this quarter positively was the gain of $2.5 million from the sale of 1 vessel. The agreement for the sale was done last year, but the delivery took place in March.

We also note a reduction in the interest cost by $1.4 million compared to last year as the company no longer pays any interest following the debt extinguishment. Net income for the first quarter was $15.9 million, marking a 12.9% increase. And earnings per share for the quarter were $0.43. On an adjusted basis, earnings were $15 million and $0.40 per share. So overall, the company maintained high profitability. It has been enjoying lately. And although this was not a record quarter, it classifies among the best 5 quarters in its history in terms of profits. Looking at the balance sheet in the next slide. As of March 31, 2026, the most important point to consider is the fast growth in the company's cash position that grew 32% from $99 million to $131.2 million in the space of 3 months through the sale of 1 vessel and $18 million in operational cash flow.

Two vessels were held for sale as of March 31, one already delivered in May and one expected to be delivered in September upon the termination of its charter with the proceeds of these sales expected to boost the cash position by about $26 million. The book value of the vessels in the fleet was $475 million, reduced by 3.4% as one vessel was moved to held for sale as well as the regular depreciation. Current assets were $79.7 million, close to the previous quarter and mostly include the book value and related expenses of the MGC vessel pending resolution with insurers. On the liability side, we want to show again that debt remains 0 and the total liabilities of the company are a mere $26 million, all current. In a very short time, the company has achieved one of the healthiest balance sheets in the shipping space. Shareholders' equity increased over the 3-month period by $17.2 million to $708 million, a 2.5% increase.

Moving on to Slide 8, what most of you may be familiar, but it's worth repeating for those listeners who are new. The company in the past always relied on debt to finance its operations and had a sizable amount of debt over $350 million, but always moderately leveraged. Through asset sales and operational cash flow, it embarked on a strategic goal of eliminating debt while at the same time, maintaining its liquidity. Particularly since the beginning of 2023, in a little over 2.5 years, it repaid about $350 million and became in July 2025 for the first time since its inception 20 years ago, a debt-free company with a fleet of 26 unencumbered vessels. Only the joint venture vessel is currently financed, but it's not consolidated in the results.

And during January and April of this year, also repaid most of its debt with $7 million remaining. With no debt amortizing or interest payments, the cash flow breakeven for the fleet is significantly reduced, enhancing its competitiveness. The elimination of debt also gives the company much more leverage and agility when the time comes for expansion and puts it in a significantly better negotiating position with its banking partners while achieving significant savings in interest costs in the meantime.

I will now hand you back to our CEO, Harry Vafias, for some insights on the market.

Let's continue on Slide 9. a world view on the LPG market. at the forefront of, of course, is the conflict with Iran and the closure of the straits. 1/3 of LPG supply came from the Middle East and the majority going through the Straits of Hormuz. At the moment, the straits are closed. We know as we have a vessel there and want to exit, but cannot do it. The immediate impact was a drop in the global LPG exports estimated at 3% for the first quarter. Of course, when we get the second quarter data, we expect to see a much more steeper drop. The effects of vessel repositioning took some time to appear in the LPG market, while tanker rates hit their highs in early March. VLGC rates reached their highs in late May.

For LPG, the alternative sources is U.S. so many vessels previously trading in the Middle East has been repositioned to the U.S. and currently, many of those once loaded returned to the Far East taking the longer route via the Cape of Good Hope, a 45-day journey adding significant ton miles to the equation. U.S. LPG companies are wrapping up their exports, and we saw a record amount of propane being exported for the last week of May, surpassing 2.6 million barrels, a 22% year-on-year increase. This is a very short time frame and quarterly increases are lower, but it goes to show that new records are broken and exports are ramping up. This is an ongoing theme as exports from the U.S. have been rising consistently for many years and the expansion of terminals in the U.S. with the most recent additions by Enterprise of the Houston Channel and Neches River expansions proved extremely well timed.

Even if the pace of export increases eventually moderates, the underlying investment thesis for the planned capacity additions is proving to be sound. So we expect LPG exports to continue growing and more plans for new additions. It's important that supply chains are operating in time of strains. In that respect, Europe proved to be less impacted as it was well supplied at the start of the conflict. LPG prices did increase impacting demand, but also naphtha prices rose even more. During May, the propane naphtha differential reached a yearly high of over $250 opening up a short window for increasing use of propane in the petrochemical sector.

But in generally, high temperatures in Europe are expected to weigh in the demand. It was a different story in the East. China rushed to secure supplies. It has just recently decreased its imports from the U.S. to 30% due to trade tensions and now unable to get Middle East supplies, the share of U.S. imports have jumped back to over 60%. India, the second largest importer was the most impacted nation. India depends on imports for 60% of its LPG consumption, mostly residential, of which 90% came from the Middle East. It has just this last November made a historic agreement with the U.S. to start importing U.S. LPG, but this diversification was not fast enough nor big enough.

The immediate effect from the crunch was a drop in demand, while the government put cars on industrial consumption and renewed subsidies on residential consumption. At the same time, local production in March increased by 30%. As more cargoes from the U.S. find their way in India, the situation should normalize. The conflict in Iran has shown how important is to have a resilient supply chains and the need for strategic reserves. We also need to keep in mind that the prolonged conflict could also eventually lead to demand destruction and longer-term investments could be abandoned, be it production facilities in the Middle East like the Qatari projects or PDH plants in China. We have not even reached a resolution yet. But even when this is done, it will take some time for the situation to normalize.

Ships will need time to reroute and installations that have been hit, particularly in Saudi Arabia will need to be repaired to be back to full operation. Countries will need to reconsider their supply agreements and their strategic reserves they hold and will need to replenish. But all this is clouded in uncertainty, and we're not in the business of making predictions. Let's move to how actually our shipping market has performed over this period. Slide 10. The market in Q1 was building on the strengthening seen in Q4, and we saw a reasonable tight tonnage availability in Europe through the quarter, resulting in rates remaining at firm levels.

The size of the European pressurized market has grown in recent years with more volumes and more vessels, and there is, in general, decent liquidity in the market compared to Southeast Asia, where we see significantly less liquidity. The 3.5 cubic meter ships and the larger pressurized ships have corrected a bit downwards from the peak as a few more vessels have positioned into this region. We expect the TC market to take somewhat of a breather over the summer as spot vessel availability increases. Ordering continue at a very slow pace, a handful of vessels mostly for [ 28 ] and [ 29 ] deliveries, some for the larger sizes of 11,000 cubic meters.

And we continue to believe that the order book remains very healthy, while the existing fleet has a large number of older ships that will eventually need to be scrapped. -- roughly 1/3 of the fleet over 20 years of age, but with a firm market, we continue to see only a few vessels being scrapped. For the handysizes, the events and inefficiencies seen in Q1 resulted in a firm freight environment overall. Rates were on a slightly firming trend Q1 and the same trend was continuing into Q2. Most of the TCs concluded that for LPG, very few of the petchem players are willing to commit on TC as the trading environment on the petchem fluctuates significantly both on price and cargo availability. There were no new orders for the size of vessels and the current order book sitting close to 10% over the next few years remains very healthy.

Similarly to Handys, the MGC market was also influenced by the commencement of the war in the Middle East. Until the war started, we were seeing a normal seasonal pattern with the firm market, but nothing extraordinary. After the war started, the market had become extremely tight and the rates for spot voyages have firmed a lot. At the time, the MGC spot market is around all-time high, very strong, supported by a VLGC spot market, which is also at all-time high. The firming market helped absorb the incoming new buildings as we are now in a period where the vessels already ordered are starting to enter the fleet. On the plus side, unlike what continues to happen with the VLGCs, the ordering for MGCs seems to have abated.

Only 2 vessels were ordered. Still the remaining order book remains substantial at close to 40%. So much will depend on demand growth in the long term to keep pace with the fleet expansion. To conclude today's presentation, we announced today another highly profitable quarter with $16 million in net income. By zeroing the debt, we are now improving the cash flow considerably and continue to sell some of the older smaller vessels in our fleet. That means that we have grown our cash from $99 million to $131 million at the end of the quarter and to $155 million today. Our intention is to invest in renewing the fleet once the situation with the Eco Wizard is resolved.

We can neither predict nor much less influence what happens in the market, but we have steered this company in a very fortunate position with a fully flexible balance sheet with 0 debt and a growing cash pile to either weather any storm that may come or take advantage of new opportunities or simply enjoy the fruits of a very firm market. StealthGas is a solid company in a niche market with a bright outlook. We have now reached the end of our presentation.

I would like to thank you for joining us at our conference call and look forward to having you with us again at our next call for our Q2 results. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Fourth Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. This is Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. And joining me on our call today, as usual, is our CEO, Harry Vafias; and Konstantinos Sistovaris from our Investor Relations.

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 and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. So if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation, I shall be grateful. Risks are further disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So let's proceed with the presentation on Slide 3. And since this is the year-end results, I will start by saying that 2025 was a very successful year for StealthGas despite all the geopolitical turbulence. The company maintained its high profitability, reporting adjusted net income of $65.6 million for the year, the second highest in its history. So we are very pleased that our strategy has worked, and we are able to achieve high profits consistently for the last 4 years. Now in terms of quarterly results, we did hit a bump in the fourth quarter as we did face some idle time on some larger vessels and one of those was out of action.

Revenues came in at a respectable $39.4 million in quarter 4, albeit 9% lower than last year. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $13.3 million, also lower compared to the $16.4 million achieved last year. In terms of earnings per share, these were $0.36 for the quarter and $1.77 for the year, underlying the fact that company's stock is very attractive on price to earnings multiple. During 2025, we also completed our strategic deleverage after repaying $86 million in bank debt, bringing the total repayments over the last 3 years to $350 million and achieving a very flexible capital structure.

We are one of the very few, if not the only quoted shipping company that has managed to achieve 0 bank debt. We also do have a share repurchase program in place and bought back shares worth $1.8 million earlier in 2025, bringing the total up to $21.2 million since we began in 2023. But as the share price appreciated lately, we did not buy back any shares during the fourth quarter. As far as our other objectives, we strive to maintain a visible revenue stream, opting for longer period charters when available and so have $104 million in contracted revenues and 48% of the fleet calendar days 1 year forward secured as of March 2026.

In terms of sale and purchase activity, we continue to look for opportunities to sell some older tonnage and possibly replace these ships with newer and bigger tonnage. So far, we have been more active on the selling front, having sold 4 vessels. The latest news on that front is that in December, we agreed to sell another one of our smaller vessels, the 2015-built Eco Universe with delivery most likely in April, and we expect to book a profit from that sale at that time. This month, we also expect to deliver to its buyers the Eco Invictus that we had previously agreed to sell.

Finally, there is the issue of the Eco Wizard following last July's incident. As previously announced, the vessel was moved to a dock in Latvia where it remains today. The fact that the vessel is not generating revenues for quite some time now has impacted our results. We had expected this to be a long process and the condition of the vessel is under assessment by technical teams to identify and quantify repairs and damages while at the same time, we are in discussions with the insurers of the vessel. Due to the delicate nature of the issue and the ongoing discussions, we will update you when we have more concrete information.

For the time being, subject to changes based on final resolution, we have impaired the book value of the vessel with no effect on the profit and loss account since the vessel is insured. Let us move on to Slide 4 for our fleet employment as of March. Chartering activity was relatively consistent over the past few months. We did conclude 5 new period charters of 3 months or longer, but the majority of these were shorter periods. Although we did recently conclude an unusually long period charter of 3 years with a major European petrochemical company. At the moment, we only have 2 of our active vessels trading in the spot market [indiscernible] intend to keep a low spot exposure.

Overall, we maintain high period coverage, albeit slightly lower than previously. As of March, for the remainder of 2026, we have secured 48% of the fleet days on period charters, so almost half, bringing in about $66 million in revenues for the remainder of the year. Total revenues secured for all future periods up to 2029 are around $104 million. In terms of dry dockings, we now expect to have 5 vessels dry dock during 2026, an average number. Two of these dry dockings fall in the first quarter of this year.

In terms of our fleet geography presented in Slide 5, our company mainly focuses on regional trade and local distribution of gas, while the larger vessels mostly engage in intercontinental voyages, often loading in the United States to discharge in Europe. The way we have positioned our fleet remains the same. While most of the major LPG importers and the higher percentage of the global fleet trades in Asia, we have only 3 vessels trading in that area. And actually, one is in the Red Sea, one in the Arabian Gulf and one in Australia. This is because rates East of Suez have for quite some time now been considerably lower than West of Suez. As a generalization, older vessels tend to congregate in the Far East, earning lower rates, whereas to trade in Europe where rates are higher, newer, better maintained vessels are needed.

As a result, more than 2/3 of our fleet trades in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean in order to capture that premium. The Suez Canal, the most important East-West axis has reopened for some time now following the deescalation of tensions. But so far, we have not seen a flurry of vessels changing their locations from east to west. But in view of Friday's development, this may change in the next few days if the Houthis start attacking ships again. Moreover, we are also following closely the situation with Iran, not just because we have a vessel in the Gulf, but also as the straits of Hormuz is a vital trade route, not just for oil, but also for LPG.

An escalation of the contract could severely affect trading if Iran decides to block navigation and attach passing vessels. What that would mean in terms of rates, it may not be possible to predict, but what past experiences have shown are that conflicts tend to lead to significant rate increases and shipping benefits. Tanker rates especially have been -- have seen considerable increases for the past few weeks before the conflict even began.

I will now turn the call over to Konstantinos Sistovaris for our financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Starting with Slide 6, where we have a snapshot of the income statement for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025 against the same period of 2024. I will start with the quarterly results. While there was a small increase in fleet days of 3%, operational utilization overall fell to 89% as a result of dry dockings and spot exposure that led to increased off-hire days, especially on a couple of the larger vessels, including the MGC that was out of action.

As a result, revenues for the fourth quarter came in at $39.4 million, marking a 9.4% decrease year-on-year. Operating expenses were $12.7 million for the quarter, well contained and lower than last year's. In terms of other expenses, there was also a reduction in G&A expenses, depreciation and particularly reduced interest costs by $1.4 million as the debt was extinguished.

Net income for the fourth quarter was $12.8 million compared to $14.2 million for the same quarter of last year, a 10% decrease. Earnings per share for the quarter were $0.34 and on an adjusted basis, $0.36. So overall, the company retains its high profitability as LPG charter rates continue to be at historical elevated levels. In terms of the yearly results, revenues came in at $173.2 million compared to $167.2 (sic) [ $167.3 ] million last year, a 3.5% increase as the majority of the vessels achieved high rates and also as a result of the slightly higher number of fleet days.

However, this was counterbalanced by a doubling of voyage expenses, an increase of $10.9 million, mostly consisting of port and bunker expenses, which is consistent with the doubling of spot market days for the fleet during the year. OpEx for the year also increased by $4.1 million, mostly due to the addition of the vessels that were bought from the joint venture and also due to a general increase in crew and technical costs. There were significant savings in interest costs for 2025 as these were reduced by $6.8 million as a result of the deleveraging.

Another point when comparing yearly results was that in 2025, there was a reduction in the earnings coming from the joint ventures of $10.5 million. As discussed during the second quarter results, this was basically a result from a profit that JV had during that period of 2024 when it sold one of its vessels at a huge profit and distributed the proceeds.

Looking at the balance sheet on the next slide. As of December 31, 2025, the company considerably improved its liquidity, holding cash of $99 million with no restricted cash after having repaid $86 million in debt over the 12 months and invested about $8 million for the share in the JV vessels, while at the same time, receiving $25 million net from the sale of 2 vessels earlier in the year. Two vessels were also held for sale as of December 31, both to be delivered within the next couple of months with the proceeds of these sales expected to boost the cash position by about $29 million.

The book value of the vessels in the fleet was $491 million, reduced by the sale of 4 vessels, 2 delivered and 2 held for sale at the end of the year and also the reduction from the value of the medium gas carrier pending the final treatment with no P&L effect so far due to the insurance. The investments in our joint venture with a book value of $23 million relate to a single medium gas carrier after having either sold off or bought back all the other joint venture participations that we had previously.

On the liability side, debt is now 0, and the total liabilities of the company are a mere $21 million, all current. In a very short time, the company has achieved one of the healthiest balance sheets in the shipping space. Shareholders' equity increased over the 12 months by $63.8 million to $690.3 million, a 10% increase.

Moving on to Slide 8, what most of you may be familiar, but it's worth repeating for those listeners who are new. The company has very swiftly and successfully executed a debt reduction strategy. Since the beginning of 2023, in a little over 2.5 years, the company using its operational cash flow as well as proceeds from vessel sales, repaid $350 million and became for the first time since its inception 20 years ago, a debt-free company with a fleet of 28 vessels, none of which is financed. Only the joint venture vessel is currently financed, but it's not consolidated in the results. And during January of this year, half the debt on that vessel was also paid off.

The elimination of debt gives the company much more leverage when the time comes for the expansion and puts it in a significantly better negotiating position with its banking partners while achieving significant savings in interest costs in the meantime. Also, it means that the cash flow breakeven for the fleet is significantly reduced, enhancing its competitiveness. At the moment, we estimate cash flow breakeven at $6,500 to $7,000 per vessel daily, which means that even if the market was to fall by 50% and all the vessel rates were readjusted, something unlikely to happen, the company would still be accumulating cash.

I will now hand you to our CEO, Mr. Harry Vafias, for some insights on the market.

Let's continue on Slide 9 to discuss the news on the LPG markets. Global LPG exports continue to register strong growth at 6% last year. U.S. exports of propane saw a resurgence in Q4 following a slight drop in Q3 as a result of trade tensions and registered close to 6% growth for last year. Driving the increase in exports, as discussed before, is the U.S. now accounting for about 47% of global exports. The major terminal expansion projects underway in the U.S. will allow for a substantial increase in LPG exports and resolve any bottleneck issues.

Within this year, Enterprise expects to have online 2 major projects in Neches River and the Houston Channel. And while LPG exports are generally production driven, the key will be to find buyers for the product as it may be challenging for demand to keep up with the increased supply as the recent U.S. inventory buildup in late 2025 shows. In the Middle East, there is also -- there are also expansion projects underway in Qatar and the UAE that will add 20 million tons by the end of the decade. However, developing at this moment is the situation in Iran as Iran, despite the sanctions, is a major LPG exporter with over 12 million tons last year and exports -- or exports from the Gulf in general if the conflict spreads may lead to a major trade disruption.

In the face of such uncertainty, rates usually spike violently. As far as other major players, there are good news coming out of India with significant growth in LPG imports of 12% for last year and a major increase in imports from the U.S. There's still a lot of room for U.S. volumes towards India to rise as they were almost nonexistent before the deal was made earlier last year. Of course, they will face competition from the Middle East countries as they're also vying for a piece of that pie with companies like Saudi Aramco recently exploring direct investment in India's petrochemical sector. Further east, we have the largest LPG importer in China that showed no growth in imports in 2025. The U.S.-China LPG trade has been a victim of the trade tension with the U.S. with the U.S. share of the Chinese imports falling from 60% to roughly 30% last year as China is trying to diversify its sources.

In the longer term, we continue to see Chinese demand being driven by the PDH plants and the share of imports allocated to PDH plants continues to grow, estimated now to be at 55%. However, breakeven margins are currently leading to lower operating utilization in those plants. There is a risk that the current climate may lead to a slowdown in commissioning. All in all, future capacity additions from the U.S. infrastructure projects, Middle East expansions and Asia demand growth create a positive outlook for sustained market expansion through to 2030.

On Slide 10, we're updating you on the commercial side. Contrary to the seasonal softening typically seen in Q3, the spot market strengthened through Q4 on the back of improved winter demand and tighter tonnage availability. The TC market continued to hold firm through Q4. 3,500 cubic meters and 5,000 cubic meter ships have remained around historically strong levels and 7,500 cubic meters and above have stabilized. Levels in the East of Suez remain substantially below the Western market, and we have no plans to increase our presence in the Asian pressurized market.

There are some new orders placed for '27 and '28 deliveries, mostly from Asian clients in Asian yards as well as a few '29 deliveries in Brazil. Overall, still the order book remains very healthy, while the existing fleet has a large number of older ships that need to go. Roughly 1/3 of the fleet is over 20 years of age, but as expected in a healthy market, scrapping remains limited.

For the Handysize ships, petchems continue to be a key driver for the market through Q4. LPG activity improved modestly compared to Q3. The TC market remains heavily influenced by the very small pool of owners. With a limited order book and a constructive medium-term outlook, we continue to expect TC levels to remain firm moving into 2026, albeit with some activity to global economic sensitivity to global economic developments.

The MGC spot market maintained the positive momentum seen in Q3 and strengthened even more during Q4, supported by continued activity in the VLGC segment and improved arbitrage economics. The improved spot environment encourage some charters to secure forward coverage, particularly for modern [indiscernible]. At the same time, the substantial order book scheduled for delivery over the next 2, 3 years remains a key medium-term consideration and market sustainability will depend on demand growth keeping pace with fleet expansion.

Concluding this presentation today, we believe that last year has been an excellent year for our company as demonstrated by the financial performance, generating $66 million of adjusted profits, one of the best results in our history despite this being the most volatile year I can remember in terms of geopolitics and despite having one of our MGC vessels out of action. We finished the year with $29 million in free cash that has grown currently to $110 million. We expect to have some more concrete information on that situation within the next couple of months.

The market, as we are in the winter season, holds firm, and we are optimistic for the short term. The situation in Iran may lead to higher short-term volatility, but we are in a strong position to take advantage of any situation as it develops or weather any storm. Over the last couple of years, we have achieved a lot, improving our profitability, strengthening our cash position, reaching our strategic goal of being completely debt-free and looking after our shareholders with share buybacks. StealthGas is a solid company in a niche market with a bright outlook.

We have now reached the end of our presentation. We'd like to thank you all for joining us at our call today and look forward to having you with us again for our Q1 quarter results in May. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q3 '25 earnings conference call. This is Harry Vafias, the CEO; and joining me today is Mr. Sistovaris from our Investor Relations. Before we commence our presentation, I'd like to remind you that we'll be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance and are subject to material risks and uncertainties. So if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2 of this presentation. Risks are further disclosed in our filings with the SEC.

So let's proceed with Slide 3. I'll give you some highlights. In our LPG market, the third quarter is traditionally the weakest quarter due to the seasonality in demand. This was the case this year as well, and we did incur increased idle time on the spot vessels. Despite that, the revenues we produced were high, coming in at $44.5 million, 10% higher compared to $40.4 million of last year, but below the record of $47.2 million that was achieved in Q2. While we did grow our revenues, expenses also grew considerably during the third quarter. As a result, adjusted net income for Q3 was $14.4 million, only slightly above that of last year. In terms of earnings per share, on an adjusted basis, these were $0.39 for the quarter. While for the 9 months of '25, we have reported $1.42.

In terms of our strategic objective of deleveraging, we reached that goal during the third quarter, paying the last bank loan and after having repaid $86 million in total during '25 and $350 million in the last 3 years, we now have all our vessels in the fully owned fleet debt free. With regards to our share repurchase program, we have bought back shares worth $1.8 million in Q1 and Q2 of this year, bringing the total up to $21.2 million since we began in 2023, but we did not buy back any shares during the third quarter. As far as our objectives, we continue to be conservative by maintaining a visible revenue stream with $130 million in contracted revenues and 57% of the fleet calendar days 1 year forward secured as of November 2025.

In terms of sale and purchase activity, we continue to look for opportunities to sell some of the older tonnage and possibly replace with newer tonnage. The latest news on that front is that we recently agreed to sell the 2014-built Eco Invictus with delivery most likely in January or February '26, and we expect to book a profit from that sale at that time.

Finally, there is the issue of the Eco Wizard that we discussed last time that was proven quite difficult and time-consuming to resolve. The vessel underwent temporary repairs that were completed, and it's now a matter of having the vessel moved to a dry dock facility outside of Russia in order to perform more permanent repairs. However, during the current geopolitical situation, even the approval of payments by the EU authorities for works performed are a time-consuming process.

On Slide 4 is our fleet deployment as of November. Chartering activity was relatively more muted over the past few months. We did conclude though 5 new period charters, of which one was for a 1-year duration and the other 4 were between 3 and 7 months. Lately, as the market is firming, we are seeing some renewed interest in longer period charters. At the moment, we only have 2 of our active vessels trading in the spot market with one of these vessels being on subject for a period charter. Overall, we maintain high period coverage. As of November, 1-year forward coverage is slightly below 60%. Already for '26, we have secured 46% of the fleet base, securing $77 million in revenues for next year. Fixing one more vessel for a year and we have secured half of our revenues for next year.

Total revenue secured for all future periods up to 2027 were reduced to about $130 million. In terms of drydocking, we have the scheduled drydockings for 2 more vessels in Q4, 4 in total this year. And next year, we will have 6 vessels due for drydock.

In terms of fleet geography in Slide 5, our company mainly focuses on regional trade and local distribution of gas, while the larger ships go mostly intercontinental voyages often loading U.S. to discharge in Europe. Market dynamics that we have discussed in the past have led us to position the majority of the fleet West of Suez, 2/3 of the fleet trades in Northern Europe and Mediterranean, where our vessels get a premium, but there are also more costs involved, particularly related to environmental regulations, recently implemented like the EU ETS scheme for carbon emissions. We only have 3 vessels trading East of Suez, a low number considering that in the past, as much as half of our fleet was located there. And in fact, only one vessel trades in the Far East and is currently located in Australia.

So when the trade dispute between U.S. and China escalated in October, leading to a truce in November, we didn't expect any direct impact to our operations. That being said, we still need to acknowledge that Chinese demand for LPG has a major influence in markets. Further West, we have the de-escalation of tension in the West Suez with Houthis stopping their attacks for now on ships crossing this vital trade route. This may lead to more vessels moving east to west. One of our handy vessels trading in the Middle East was recently repositioned in Europe via the Suez, but generally, we don't expect any significant effect in trade routes.

I turn now the call to Mr. Konstantinos Sistovaris for our financial performance.

Thank you. Starting with Slide 6, where we have a snapshot of the income statement for the third quarter and the 9 months of 2025 against the same period of 2024. Due to sale and purchase transactions that took place over the period, there was an increase in fleet days of 7%. So driving the results was the addition of 2 vessels in the fleet and our MGC that was out of action but still incurring costs.

Revenues for the third quarter were at $44.5 million, marking a 10% increase year-on-year, mostly driven by the 2 additional vessels in the fleet, while the handysizes also performed well in terms of revenue generation. During the quarter, we also had more vessels operating in the spot market. That led to 2 things. Firstly, an increase in voyage expenses to $7.2 million, particularly port expenses and bunker expenses; and secondly, an increase off-hire days as there was more idle time incurred between voyages. Hence, we saw a reduction in the operational utilization to 90.3%. The TCE revenues for the quarter were $37.3 million, a seasonally low in par with last year's. Operating expenses were $15 million for the quarter on the high side, driven by the additional vessels as well as expenses incurred for repairs and an overall increase in costs, particularly crew across the board. Although we do pride ourselves on running these ships at cost levels below our peers, we have faced inflationary cost pressures this year. In terms of other expenses, we had reduced dry dock expenses, reduced G&A expenses and particularly reduced interest costs of just $0.2 million. During the quarter, we repaid the last loan on the books.

As a result, the reported net income for the third quarter was $13.3 million compared to $12.1 million for the same quarter of last year, a 10% increase. Earnings per share for the quarter were $0.36 and on an adjusted basis, $0.39. So the bottom line reflects the seasonal drop in activity that was pretty much expected during the third quarter. But overall, the company retains its high profitability as the LPG charter rates continue to be at historically elevated levels. Looking at the balance sheet, the next slide, as of September 30, the company continued to maintain strong liquidity with cash of $70 million and 0 restricted cash after having repaid $32 million in debt over that quarter and $86 million over the whole 9 months and also after having invested about $8 million for the share in the JV vessels in the previous quarter, while receiving $12.2 million net for the sale -- from the sale of one vessel earlier in the year.

Two vessels were held for sale as of September 30, one delivered already in the current quarter, the other next year. And the proceeds of these sales will boost the cash position by slightly over $25 million. Together with the operational cash flow, the company's cash is expected to hit the $100 million mark before the end of the year. On the liability side, debt is now 0, and the total liabilities of the company are mere $21 million. In a very short time, the company has achieved one of the strongest balance sheets in the public shipping space. Shareholders' equity increased over the 9 months by $50 million to $676.4 million, an 8% increase.

Moving to the next Slide 8 to recap what has been a very swift and successfully executed debt reduction strategy. Since the beginning of 2023, in a little over 2.5 years, the company using its operational cash flow as well as proceeds from vessel sales, repaid about $350 million and became for the first time since its inception, a debt-free company with a fleet of 28 vessels, none of which is financed. This gives the company much more leverage when it comes time for expansion while achieving significant savings in interest costs. It also means that the cash flow breakeven for the fleet is significantly reduced, enhancing its competitiveness. At the moment, we estimate a cash flow breakeven at $6,500 to $7,000 daily, which means that even if the market was to fall by 50% and all of the vessel rates readjusted, something unlikely to happen, the company would still be increasing its cash position.

I will now hand you back over to our CEO, Mr. Harry Vafias, for some insights on the market.

So let's continue with Slide 9 to discuss the news on the LPG markets. Global LPG exports continue to register a strong growth at 5% in the first 9 months, only slightly lower than previously. U.S. exports as a result of trade tensions were relatively flat over the quarter, but we have registered close -- but they have registered close to 6% growth in the 9 months of '25 compared to last year. Driving the increase in exports, as discussed before, is the U.S. now accounting for about 45% of exports. There are 4 major terminal expansion projects underway in the U.S. that will allow it to increase its LPG export capacity substantially and resolve any bottleneck issues. And in the Middle East, there are also expansion projects underway in Qatar and the UAE. In Europe, the floating of the market with competitive U.S. LPG is set to reach a new record of 8 million metric tons in '25 and almost reaching half of all imports in the continent. The low price of imported propane around $430 a ton is about $200 below last year, which means that it stays competitive compared to naphtha for the petrochemical end users, and that is what is supporting demand in the continent.

In order to support U.S. exports, growth LPG exporters need to find new customers for their product. One such instance was the announcement by India that it was planning to source 10% of its imports from the U.S. being close to 0 before. And just this week, and in a very short time, it was announced that the contract is already in place for the import -- for the importation of 2.2 million tons in '26. On the other hand, the U.S.-China LPG trade has been a victim of the trade tensions with June marking a steep drop in imports and the U.S. falling from accounting for more than 50% of Chinese import to the low teens. It's been a roller coaster with tariffs and counter tariffs and ethane permit revocations, then permitted again and port fees threatened briefly applied and then taken back. And nobody can predict how this will play out, but at least the most recent truth for one year seems to be over sufficient time for some to return to normalcy. Both countries rely on each other as far as LPG trade is concerned.

Among all these swings, Chinese LPG imports from all sources still managed to record a 1% growth in the first 8 months, albeit the lowest in the last few years and according to reports are expected to remain stable this year. In the longer term, we continue to see Chinese demand being driven by the PDH plants and that need LPG for propylene production. And while in the short term, weaker margins and steam cracker competition may lead to lower operating rates, plants continue being built that should underpin longer-term demand. [indiscernible] we expect just this year, bringing total capacity to 27 million tons. There is a risk, however, that the current climate may lead to a slowdown in commissioning. All in all, future capacity additions from the U.S. infrastructure projects, Middle East expansions and Asia demand growth create a positive outlook for sustained market expansion through 2030.

Moving to Slide 10. For pressurized ships, in line with the normal seasonality, we saw a softening on the spot market in Q3 and rates adjusted downwards as idle time became a more common factor for the owners. The TC market managed to stay quite firm through Q3, even though the spot market softened. 3,500 and 5,000 cubic meter vessels have remained at all-time high levels and 7,500 cubic meters and above saw a slight softening from the peak levels as more TC candidates became available. There weren't any new orders placed in '27 and '28 deliveries and the order book remains very healthy, while the existing fleet has a large number of older ships that need to go. But as expected in healthy markets, scrapping remains limited.

For the Handysizes, the petchem market had its challenges through the quarter with the tariff war going on between U.S.A. and China and all these uncertainties have followed. We saw some open positions incurring substantial idle time, which can happen from time to time in this segment when inquiries dry up. Rates, however, have a tendency of keeping up quite well even with minimal activity as you only have a small handful of owners with potentially open positions, relatively often only one owner. Considering the limited order book and promising outlook for the handy market, we expect TC rates to stay relatively firm. We had the opposite picture for the MGCs, -- the spot market improved compared to Q2, supported also by the firmer VLGC market and the TC market saw significantly more activity. This, we could attribute to improved sentiment as trade frictions fears subsided until October. The rates continue to hold firm as a temporary trade bill was accomplished between U.S. and China.

For MGCs, as we said before, there is -- there is a substantial order book to be delivered in the next 2, 3 years, about half the existing fleet. So the question now will be how well the market can sustain all these new tonnage coming in. On Slide 11, we are outlining some of the key variables that may affect our performance in the quarters ahead. Concluding this presentation today, we believe that so far, 2025 has been an excellent year for our company as demonstrated by the financial performance despite this being the most volatile year we can ever remember in terms of geopolitics. We did see the soft patch in the third quarter as we expected, due to the seasonal weakness and the incident with our MGC vessel. It seems that it will take some considerable time until we fully resolve the situation. The markets as we have entered the winter season is in firming mode, and we are optimistic for the short term. We also feel there is less opaqueness in terms of geopolitics and see a return to normalcy that should be good for sentiment and hope it's good for rates as well.

In the past periods, we have achieved a lot, improving our profitability, strengthening our cash position, reaching our strategic goal of being debt-free and looking after our shareholders with share buybacks. For longer term, the reports we read point to a continuous growth in demand for LPG, mainly driven by U.S. production, while from the shipping market perspective, the fleet expectations are for increasing demand and for our services from producers and consumers of LPG. StealthGas is a solid company in a niche market with a bright outlook, and there's a lot of potential here.

We have now reached the end of our presentation, and we would like to thank you for joining us at our call today and look forward to having you with us again at our conference call for our Q4 results in February '26, and we wish to all our American listeners a happy Thanksgiving.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Q2 2025 Results Webcast and Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. This is Michael Jolliffe, Chairman of the Board of Directors. And joining me on our call today, as usual, is our CEO, Harry Vafias, to discuss the market and the company outlook and Konstantinos Sistovaris to discuss the financial aspects.

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. So please 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.

Now so let's proceed with presentation, starting with some highlights on Slide 3. And let me stress right off the bat that in a market that was trying to find its balance, we today reported our second best ever quarterly profits. These very strong results were driven by a record $47.2 million in revenues for the second quarter compared to $41.8 million last year and $42 million in the previous quarter, demonstrating the very strong performance of our commercial operations. Adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2025 was $21.7 million, 35% higher than the previous quarter, but 20% lower than last year.

As I mentioned in my opening, it was the second best quarter ever. And in terms of operations of our fully owned fleet, it was actually the most successful ever. We didn't surpass last year's net income record because the share of the profits we got last year from our investments were boosted by the sale of a vessel at the time.

In terms of earnings per share on an adjusted basis, these were $0.59 for the quarter. While the second quarter was a period where uncertainty increased due to trade frictions, our high period coverage allowed us to improve profitability. In terms of our strategic objective of deleveraging, we have used $86 million this year to pay down the remaining debt and completed the last repayment in July. All the vessels in our fully owned fleet are debt-free.

With regards to our share repurchase program, as stated in the previous call, management has spent approximately $1.8 million in buying back shares this year in what we consider a sound use of our liquidity, given that the stock continues to trade at a discount to net asset value. We are further delivering on our strategic priorities by keeping a visible revenue stream and maintaining our period coverage for 2025 to over 70% of our fleet days while securing over $150 million in future revenues.

In terms of S&P activity, we sold one vessel in the second quarter and recently entered into an agreement to sell another one, the Gas Elixir, later in the year. In the meantime, in early June, we completed the previously announced acquisition of the shares in 2 of the vessels that we already partly own through a joint venture. We will continue to look for opportunities to sell some older tonnage and possibly replace with newer tonnage.

In the current third quarter, we also had an unfortunate event on one of our larger and newer vessels. In early July, our LPG carrier, the Eco Wizard, whilst loading at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia, an ammonia cargo destined for fertilizer plants in Europe, a fully compliant trade was hit by 2 explosions. None of the crew was injured. The vessel has sustained damage to the engine room and in cargo tank and it is stable.

Since then, the vessel has remained at the port for investigation and temporary repairs. The indications show that the explosion were due to external devices. This is also what has been the case with other similar incidents. It is expected that the vessel will be ready after temporary repairs to depart in about a month's time and then a plan and work scope for permanent repairs will be prepared.

Due to the nature of the incident, the vessel's relevant insurance underwriters have been notified as per the applicable policy. Until such time that the vessel is fully repaired and able to return to operations, if at all, it will remain off par and will not generate revenue. And then we should say that indicatively during the first 6 months of 2025, the vessel generated approximately 8% of the company's revenues. We are trying to resolve the matter as swiftly as possible, but it is a complex situation, and we don't have all the answers yet. We will follow up with further updates as the situation progresses.

Let us move on to Slide 4 of our fleet employment as of August. Since our last call, we saw more interest in period fixing from our charterers. As a result, we concluded 5 period charters, 4 of which were for one year, 3 of those were extensions and one charter was for 3 months. That currently leaves us with 4 vessels operating in the spot market the same as in our previous call and excluding the Eco Wizard that is out of service. Two of the vessels in the spot market are the larger Handy Sizes.

We continue to prefer to fix on period charters where possible, and we have managed to maintain a high period coverage of 70% of available days for 2025, securing about $48 million in revenue for the remainder of the year. One year forward coverage, we are at slightly above 60%. Total revenues secured for all future periods up to 2027 were reduced at $150 million. During the second quarter, one vessel entered dry docking in late June, and we have scheduled dry dockings for 2 more vessels for the remainder of the year. It is a fairly light year in terms of dry dockings. However, those are being performed in the West where overall costs are higher than in the East.

In terms of our fleet geography presented in Slide 5, our company mainly focuses on regional trade and local distribution of gas, while the larger vessels mostly engage in intercontinental voyages, particularly in exports from the U.S. to Europe. We now only have 2 vessels trading in the East. It is an unusually low number considering that in the past, as much as half our fleet was located there, but we have moved even more vessels to Europe since our last call.

For the first time, over 70% of the fleet is trading in Europe and the Mediterranean. This is due to the disconnect in rates between Asia and Europe. We get a premium trading West of Suez, and so we are adjusting the position of the fleet. We have discussed in the past how trading in Europe is more demanding. Nevertheless, our vessels are well maintained, adhering to all required regulations, so we feel we are in an advantageous position. And we prefer to compete with companies that follow the same high standards as our own.

In terms of ammonia trading, our Handys and MGC vessels can carry this cargo, and we are optimistic for its future, although lately, the activity has been relatively low. Lastly, I once again stress that the majority of our vessels are built in Japan and some of the larger ones in Korea. No vessel in our fleet was built in China as it is one of our core policies to invest in the best quality assets available.

In terms of our joint ventures, after taking into the fold the last 2 smaller vessels, we now only have one vessel under joint ownership, so we feel there isn't a point to dedicate a whole slide to it anymore. So we will skip straight to the financials.

I will now turn the call over to Konstantinos Sistovaris for our financial performance.

Thank you, Michael. I will discuss the financial results that were released today, starting with Slide 6, where we have a snapshot of the income statement for the second quarter and 6 months of 2025 against the same period of 2024. Due to sale and purchase transactions that took place over the period, there was a very small increase in fleet days of about 4%. Revenues were at $47.2 million for the quarter, marking a 13% increase year-on-year. Although there was a slight increase in number off-hire days from the vessels in the spot market, the majority of the vessels improved their earnings to arrive at a record quarterly profit.

This result also led to record revenues for the 6-month period of $89.2 million. Net revenues or what we call time charter equivalent revenues, both for the quarter and the 6 months were also at all-time highs. Operating expenses were $12.7 million for the quarter. Costs were contained, and this led to a mere 1.5% increase from last year, below the relative increase in the fleet. After subtracting more expense items, we arrive at the income from operations. Again, the second quarter was a record-breaking quarter at $19.7 million, a substantial 22% increase compared to last year.

Interest costs at $0.6 million for the quarter were reduced by $2.1 million. Following the final debt repayment in July, the company will save completely on interest costs. Earnings from our investments in our JVs were just $0.7 million for the quarter. There was a large reduction of $10.7 million in earnings from our nonconsolidated joint ventures. The reason is twofold. First, that there were fewer vessels as the joint ventures are wind down, and there is also a single vessel left in the joint ventures. And two, and most importantly, that last year, the majority of these earnings reflected the sale of one of the larger vessels, as you may recall. Back then, we had received a massive dividend from that sale that we had used to repay debt.

Net income for the second quarter was $20.4 million,compared to $25.8 million for the same quarter of last year, a 21% decrease. Earnings per share for the quarter were $0.55 and on an adjusted basis, $0.59. This marked the second most profitable quarter in the company's history, only surpassed by the second quarter of last year. While this year, in terms of revenues and operational income was actually the most successful one.

Looking at the balance sheet, the next Slide 7. The company continued to maintain as of June 30, strong liquidity with cash, including restricted cash of $87.3 million after having repaid $19 million in debt over the quarter and invested net about $8 million for the share in the JV vessels and while receiving $12.2 million net from the sale of one vessel. The operational cash inflow for the quarter was at $25 million.

In the liability side, total debt was at $32 million, consisting of a current portion of $2.1 million and the long-term portion of $29.7 million, representing the last remaining facility that was actually later repaid in July. Shareholders' equity increased over the 6-month period by $35.7 million to $662.2 million, a 5.7% increase.

Moving on to Slide 8 for the final update on the debt reduction strategy. As of today, the objective has been complete, and the company has repaid all its debt. Since the beginning of 2023, when our cash flow started improving considerably, and when interest rates had increased from their lows, we set out to deleverage the company, not thinking that in 2.5 years, we would, for the first time, achieve 0 debt. Since then, an impressive $348 million were used to repay the debt. During the current year, $86 million was used in repayments, $32 million of which in the current third quarter.

That was the last facility and all the vessels in the fully owned fleet are now unencumbered. Only the single JV vessel remains financed, but our investments are not consolidated. This strategy has resulted in significant interest cost savings, especially as interest rates remain stubbornly high, and that allows for significantly faster cash flow accumulation going forward and gives the company the agility to pursue other goals.

I will now hand you over to our CEO, Harry Vafias, who will discuss the market and the company outlook.

Continuing on Slide 9, we're discussing the LPG market, where despite the trade upheaval and uncertainty caused by during the Q2, the main themes we have discussed in the past are pretty much unchanged. Global LPG exports continue to register strong growth at 6.6% for the first 6 months. U.S. exports continued to increase year-on-year, albeit with ups and downs as the second quarter was actually weaker than the first quarter. U.S. terminal expansions are underway. Enterprises expanded terminal exported its first cargo in July, an ethane cargo and Energy Transfer's Netherlands terminal expansion is expected to also come into service by the end of the year with more planned for the years ahead.

In the Middle East, where there are also projects underway to increase production and exports. We have the Iraq tenders last quarter that led to several Handy Size vessels finding business therein supporting the market. China LPG imports in May climbed to 3.4 million tons, registering a 6.7% increase.

India's demand was more muted last quarter, but the latest headlines from there are that the country plans to source 10% of its imports from the U.S., that if it happens, will definitely lead to an increase in thermal demand as India currently is a major Middle Eastern client.

Finally, trade disputes are always on the agenda. In the second quarter, they did create market uncertainty. Since May, this mostly affected ethane exporting because of the export license issues, but this seems to have been resolved in July. In the longer term, we continue to see Chinese demand being driven by the PDH plants that need LPG for propylene production. And while in the short term, more than 25% of the capacity remains off-line, plants continue being built that should underpin long-term demand. Three more we expect just this year, bringing total capacity to 27 million tons.

Moving on Slide 10 to update you on the shipping market, where the picture is pretty much unchanged. The smaller vessels continue with an East West divide. The rates remain firm at high levels in Europe. In the spot market, we have seen a slight drop in activity, which is typical seasonality. A small number of new orders were placed for '27 and '28 deliveries, but the order book remains very healthy, while the existing fleet has a large number of older ships that sooner or later need to go, yet scrapping remains limited.

For the Handy Size ships, rates were slightly softer, and there was limited activity mostly coming from the Iraqi tenders. The order book for Handy Size remain very slim, and we don't see new orders being placed. With no delivery scheduled for this year, we should logically support the period market.

On the MGCs, the softening in Q1 continued in Q2. TC inquiries remain limited. At the time of writing, however, assisted by a strengthening VLGC market, the past few weeks, we are currently seeing a slight firming again of the MGC spot rates. The order book provides for a more limited number of deliveries in '25, but beginning of next year, more vessels will start joining the fleet. Expectations for the next few years with a significant order book coming remains challenging. On the plus side, although we still see a few additional orders since our last call, the pace of ordering has slowed down significantly.

On Slide 11, we are outlining some of the key variables that may affect our performance in the quarters ahead. Summing up, the unfortunate development of the Eco that will keep the vessel out of employment for some considerable time will have an impact on our revenue generation for the near future. The situation is still developing, and we are committing our resources for a swift resolution.

The results we have announced so far this year are excellent. Revenue growth exceeded our expectations, setting a new quarterly record of $47.2 million. We also set new records in terms of operational profits. We achieved that in an environment that was not as inviting, trade frictions have created uncertainty. And although we did see improvements since Q1, challenges remain. Also as presented today, the chartering markets were relatively stable yet we managed to shed new records again.

At the same time, during the current third quarter, we completed our strategic objective of deleveraging the company completely, having repaid $86 million in debt this year and close to $350 million of debt since we began at the start of '23. We are confident that the fundamentals for LPG shipping continue to be positive and our company is in a very favorable position to take advantage of the rising demand. As we are now exiting the seasonally weaker summer months, we expect chartering activity to pick up in the fourth quarter.

We have now reached the end of the presentation, and we'd like to thank you for joining us and for your interest and trust in our company. We look forward to having you with us again at our next conference call for our Q3 results in November.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

[Audio Gap] Results for the first quarter of 2025. It was another successful quarter in what can be described as a tumultuous market. We generated $42 million in revenues during the first quarter compared to $41.6 million last year and $43.5 million in the previous quarter, demonstrating resilience in terms of commercial operations. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2025 was $16.1 million similar to the fourth quarter of 2024, albeit somewhat lower than the first quarter of 2024, mostly due to increased expenses as shall be discussed later on.

In terms of earnings per share, on an adjusted basis, these were $0.44 for the quarter. In this volatile environment, our high period coverage allowed us to sustain the high profitability we have been experiencing over the past year for yet another quarter.

In terms of our strategic objectives, we are close to completely deleveraging the company. We have reduced debt by $54 million this year, bringing the current debt level close to just $30 million currently while maintaining a free cash balance of more than twice that figure. So the company is now debt free. All the vessels in our fully owned fleet of 31 ships are debt free, except for just 1 vessel that currently has a mortgage. Deleveraging also means that going forward, we are accumulating cash much faster. With regards to our share repurchase program, during the last call, we announced that we will be authorizing additional share repurchases. And since then, management has spent approximately in buying back shares in what we consider a sound use of our liquidity, given that the stock continues to trade at a steep discount to net asset value. We are further delivering on our strategic priorities by keeping a visible revenue stream.

It was difficult commercially to expand on this strategic objective as the sentiment was not there, but we have managed to maintain period coverage for 2025 of 70% of our fleet days and have now secured over $165 million in future revenues. In terms of our fleet, the strategy, which is to conservatively diversify and renew, we saw some activity lately. During the first quarter, one joint venture vessel was sold as previously discussed. In April, we found a buyer for another 1 of our vessels, the Gas Cerberus that we expect to deliver in June. Then last week, we came into an agreement with our joint venture partners to acquire their share in 2 vessels that we jointly own, the Gas Haralambos and the Eco Lucidity. And we also expect this to conclude in June so that our fleet will see a net increase by 1 vessel to 29. We will continue to look for opportunities to sell some older tonnage and possibly replace with newer tonnage.

Let us move on to Slide 4 for some more details on our fully owned fleet employment as it looks today. Just like in our previous call, period interest from charterers was relatively low and mostly focused in Europe. As a result, we only concluded 3 period charters, 2 of which were extensions. One was for 6 months and the other 2 for 1-year duration, all 3 related to trades in the West. That currently leaves us with 5 vessels operating in the spot market, 2 more vessels than in our previous call. Two of the vessels in the spot market are the larger handy sizes. The company's chartering strategy is to fix on period charters when possible and profitable, so we are looking to extend the duration of our charters. Although a couple of ships were redelivered overall, we have managed to maintain the visibility of our earnings to a high 70% of available days for 2025 and and have secured about $70 million in revenues for the remainder of this year.

One year forward, coverage is at 60%. Total revenues secured for all future periods up to 2027 and were reduced at $165 million. During the first quarter, 1 vessel entered dry dock towards the end of March, and we have scheduled dry dockings for 3 more vessels for the remainder of the year. It is a fairly light here in terms of dry dockings.

In terms of our fleet geography presented in Slide 5, our vessels are mainly engaged in regional trades, short trips that can last just a couple of days from load port to destination delivering gas to customers from major cost ports down to draft-restricted destinations inside rivers. We continue to focus the majority of our fleet, over 55% west of Suez in Europe, particularly in the Northwest and in the Mediterranean. The remainder of our fleet is evenly scattered around the globe. Our larger vessels, that is the handy sizes and the to intercontinental voyages and for example, we have a couple of more vessels in the U.S. at this time that are set to load in the U.S. Gulf and discharge their cargo in Europe. It is telling that in the first quarter of 2025, the U.S. accounted for 63% of imports in Northern Europe, up from 55% in the previous quarter. We believe that in the short term, the market will continue to pay premium rates west of Suez as there continues to be -- the shortage of suitable well-maintained vessels in Europe.

European ports and charters adhere to very strict regulation [Audio Gap] to recently imposed environmental regulations related mainly to carbon emissions, a situation favoring established owners or owners with good management records. As a result, older vessels that are actually a high percentage of the overall pressurized LPG fleet are not always suitable for European trades yards even if we had to pay more for them. As such, the majority of our vessels are built in Japan and some of the larger ones in Korea, no vessel in our fleet was built in China.

On Slide 6, I will update you on our joint venture investments. Starting in 2019, we have through 2 joint ventures invested in 9 vessels, 4 small gas carriers and 5 medium gas hires, and through the course of the year with the joint ventures being more opportunistic plays, sold most of these, including 1 that we took back in our own fully owned fleet last year. During the course of this year, 1 pressurized vessel was sold in January. The debt on the 2 remaining pressure vessels was repaid in March. As of March 31, our investment consisted of just 3 vessels. Two pressurized LPG carriers and 1 medium gas carrier with the book value of the investment being $27.3 million. Out of the 3 vessels, 2 of these are operating in the spot market while the 1 pressurized vessel is on period charter until December, as announced during the previous call. There are no forthcoming dry dockings during 2025 for any of these vessels.

During last week, we came to a principal agreement with one of our joint venture partners since their investment after 6 years has come full circle. To acquire back their half ownership share in the 2 pressurized vessels, the Gas Haralambos and the Eco Lucidity and we expect a cash flow outflow close to $10 million subject to final valuations. This agreement is subject to being formulated, but all going well, we expect to have it concluded and take delivery of the vessels within the next 2 weeks and before the end of the current quarter. From our standpoint, we are familiar with these vessels in their good condition, and we are taking them at a favorable price. This will leave a single vessel jointly owned, the medium gas carrier echo source that was built in 2023. I will now turn the call over to Konstantinos Sistovaris for our financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. I will discuss the financial results that were released today. Starting with Slide 7, where we have a snapshot of the income statement for the first quarter of 2025 against the same period of 2024. Due to sale and purchase transactions that took place over the period, there was a very small increase in fleet days of 2%. ECE or net revenues, that is the revenues after the voyage expenses came in at $36.9 million for the quarter, a decrease of $1.8 million or 4.6%. This was due to the weakness in the spot market. And while most vessels on period performed well, there were at times between 4 and 5 vessels operating in the spot market, generating increased voyage costs due to bunkers but not generating enough revenue to compensate for that. Two of the vessels were handysizes and they had the biggest variances.

Operating expenses were $13.5 million for the quarter, a 17% increase, mainly due to higher crew costs and maintenance fees. It should, however, be noted that it is actually last year's number that was unusually low due to one-off items, whereas this year's OpEx was more in line with our cost structure and actually slightly lower than in the fourth quarter of 2024. This quarter's results also included some dry docking expenses of $0.4 million, mainly relating to the dry dock 1 vessel during the end of March and there was no dry docking during the same period of last year. Similarly, the first quarter of 2025 results were also impacted by an impairment of $0.5 million for the vessel gas servers bringing down its value to the value that was agreed later in April that it would be sold. The vessel is still in the fleet, and it should be delivered to the buyers in June. There were no impairments for the first quarter of last year. Interest costs more than half million to $1.4 million during the first quarter of 2025 as a result of the lower debt levels. This number also contains an amortized portion of finance expenses. We expect that interest costs will be further cut in half in the following quarters. Net income for the first quarter was $14.1 million compared to $17.7 million for the same quarter of last year, a 20% decrease.

On an adjusted basis, net income also marked a 15.7% decrease from $19.1 million to $16.1 million. Overall, $14 million in profits for the quarter is a high number and although reduced compared to last year's record, it is actually on par with the fourth quarter of 2024. In terms of earnings per share, that was $0.38 and on an adjusted basis, $0.44. Looking at the balance sheet in the next slide, Slide 8. Given the relatively uneventful first quarter of 2025, the balance sheet as of March 31 is fairly similar to that of December 31. Cash, including restricted cash was at the end of the quarter, $7.1 million, a 9% reduction as cash was used for debt repayments, but still very solid for a 28 vessel fleet with a very low debt. There were no vessels held for sale as of March 31 as the gas server sale was agreed in April after the close of the quarter. In the liability side, the current portion of that was $20.7 million and includes the $18.6 million facility that was due to mature in December of this year, but was actually repaid early in April.

While the long-term portion of the debt is where the big variance for this quarter was it stood at $61.5 million as of December 31 and was reduced to $30.3 million as of March 31. The other quarterly variance was that the shareholders' equity increased by $14.8 million over this 3-month period as a result of improved profitability.

Moving on to Slide 9 to reiterate the debt situation as this is where the strategy has been focused in the past couple of years. So for the past the company's debt has been oscillating in the range of $300 million to $500 million. Since the beginning of 2023, that interest rates rose significantly and thanks to the improving cash flow generation, the company embarked in a massive debt reduction effort initially aiming to reduce debt. But as things turn out, with the opportunity to eliminate debt altogether. In 2023, $154 million was repaid in 2024, while the company took 17 million for the 2 vessels that were acquired, then 108 million was repaid. Then in the first quarter of 2025, another $32 million was repaid and during the current second quarter, another $22 million, bringing the total debt repaid during 2025 to $54 million, with just a single facility remaining, totaling $32 million which matures in 2032 versus a free cash balance of more than double, making the company net debt free.

Debt amortization is now reduced to just 2.2 million per annum compared to EUR 28 million per annum just 2 years ago. That has allowed for significantly faster cash flow accumulation going forward. If we managed to keep operating cash flow at current levels, we are looking at a run rate of close to EUR 100 million per annum in cash flow generation. I will now hand you over to our CEO, Harry Vafias, who will discuss the market and the company outlook.

On Slide 10, we're discussing the LPG market. As we have previously said, over the last 3 years, global LPG exports are on a steady upward path and marked an increase in 2024 or 4.4%. It looks like it's on track to register similar growth for the first half the world's largest exporter in the U.S. after having registered an impressive 11% year-on-year growth in exports. Last year, shifted gear lower, but still marked a solid 8% year-on-year growth for Q1. It was actually in the current month of May that Propane Exports from the U.S. for the first time, broken new records surpassing 2 million barrels per day. U.S. and NGL exports are facing capacity constraints, but we are already approaching the first plant capacity additions, starting with Energy Transfer's Netherlands, Texas terminal that will export 250,000 additional barrels per day in the second half of 25. And thereafter, on several more expansion projects are completed by 28. In the U.S. Gulf, the Eastern Seaboard as well as in Western Canada, volume should increase by over 25%.

Now these increased volumes are about to compete with Middle Eastern exports, and we have not discussed recently -- we have not discussed recently Middle Eastern exports as the region has been losing market share being supplanted by a dominant U.S. However, traditional LPG exporters, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE are also looking to strengthen their exports lately, in particular, Qatar and UAE have projects underway, mostly related to LNG, like the North Field expansion by Qatar Energy that are also going to increase the LPG production significantly before the end of the decade. In the short term, we should expect increased LPG volumes, LPG being a byproduct of both crude oil and LNG production coming as a result of the decision by OPEC to gradually lift oil production cuts starting in April. In fact, the latest OPEC decisions in May show that they intend to triple the original production increases and potentially bring back to the market the 2.2 million barrels per day voluntarily oil production cuts before the end of this year instead of late '26 as was originally envisioned.

Looking at the other side of the equation, and the 2 largest importers in Asia, China and India, preliminary figures for first quarter show that both increased their LPG imports China with a more subdued 8% year-on-year and India at a stronger 10% year-on-year. Imports in China were particularly volatile but declined compared to the previous quarter. This was the result of geopolitical tensions. In our last call, we had said that during the first phase of counter tariffs, LPG was spared since China depends for over 50% of its imports on the U.S. However, the decisive month proved to be April and the escalation of the trade war led to China retaliated by imposing tariffs of 125% on U.S. LPG and ethane. This led initially to a collapse in the charter market and an abrupt pause in trade. Fairly quickly, volumes were rerouted with China looking to the Middle East to get its supplies. However, the capacity is not there yet.

In a shift turn of events, there was a de-escalation in May and the 2 countries entered in anti-date truce, whereby tariffs on U.S. LPG imports were reduced to only 10%. Since then, we have seen flows normalizing. There's not much point in speculating what will happen next. What we could infer is that this climate in the medium term may lead LPG importing nations diversifying their sources creating new trade routes in the process that could be positive for ton mile demand. In the longer term, we continue to see Chinese demand being driven by the PDH plants that need LPG for propylene production. And while in the short term, more than 25% of the capacity remains off-line, plants continue being built that should underpin long-term demand the more we expect this year, bringing total capacity to 27 million tons.

On Slide 11, we're updating you on the shipping market. In general, the situation was similar to the previous quarter with the exception of the larger ships that are more affected by a worsening sentiment due to trade tensions. Looking at the small pressure serves the majority of our fleet, we saw a firm spot market in Northwest Europe during Q1, where the majority of the fleet is located. In addition to the seasonality factors, the cargo volume was good and particularly the seaborne LPG imports into Poland were strong following the EU ban on Russian LPG, this resulted in quite a tight tonnage situation and firm spot rates for the owners. The TC market continued along with historically high levels through Q1, and there's still interest from charters to lock in tonnage forward, which shows continued optimism for the future. We see a major difference between the spot markets, East and West of Suez with the Western markets, yielding superior returns to the owners, [indiscernible] been doing for some time.

The spot market east of Suez remains quite soften in liquid and owners prefer to look in TCs where they can and period rates remain more or less flat. For the handysize vessels, the market continued in Q1, a similar manner as 24 ended with a weak trading environment for LPG and with petchems pulling the majority weight. The time charter market was relatively quiet through Q1, some to see extensions were heard by limited new inquiries came out. We have seen more TC action during the first half of where several deals have been done, rates remain relatively stable. The order book for Handysizes remains slim with no delivery schedule for this year, and this should logically support the period market. For the MGCs, the MGC spot market continued to soften through Q1 as more vessels were delivered from TCs and charters found themselves with ample tonnage to choose from. We have since the end of Q1 is in a very volatile VLGC market with a massive crush in April and then a significantly firming market where VLGC rates at the time of writing are at a 1-year high. This could pave the way for a better MGC market in the second half of this year.

The order book provides for a more limited number of deliveries for this year, but we need to see a change in the market sentiment for TC rates to improve. Beginning 2016, we're going to gradually see more vessels joining the fleet. We have touched on this before and how the large order book in this segment of over 50% of existing capacity should be worrisome until our unless the ammonia market expectations kick off. On the plus side, since our last call, the pace of wording has slowed down significantly. Looking at the order book on the Handysize fleet, we continue to see a very limited interest for owners for new vessels. In fact, there were no new orders since our last call in novices delivering this year. The order book remains healthy for this type. As far as our core fleet of pressure ships, we saw very few more vessels being ordered since our last call, around 10 -- some of these are going to be unreported since their delivery. But overall, the order book ratio continues to be normal at around 7% of them for the next 3 years.

We continue to stress that the pressures fleet is quite old with over 30% of the existing vessels are over 20 years of age, and the fleet will need to be replenished. Owners are keeping older vessels trading sometimes even up to 30 years old and still refrain from scrapping. But even without scrapping, it's increasingly getting difficult for older ships trade in international markets, especially in Europe, given the safety and environmental regulations.

On Slide 12, we are lining some key viables that may affect our performance in the quarters ahead, summing up, the results that we announced today point to a strong start to a year and underpin our confidence in sustaining the momentum we have built over the last years throughout '25. There's no doubt the period of uncertainty that demands cautiousness. That being said, despite all the upheaval witness so far, the data from Q1 has shown that almost every major importer of LPG with the exception of Japan, has actually increased its LPG imports, while the major exporters in the U.S. and the Middle East have significantly increased exports. And while we have no data for the second quarter, the bellwether VLGC market is currently at yearly highs. In this volatile environment, StealthGas remains steadfast in its strategy and has eliminated its financial risk being net debt free after having made over $50 million in debt repayment during this year and having 27 out of 20 vessels -- 28 vessels unencumbered. At the same time, in order to return value to our shareholders, we have begun buying back shares, spending $1.8 million in share repurchases since March and over $21.2 million in share repurchases since June 23. We have now reached the end of our presentation. I'd like to thank you for joining us at our conference call today and for your interest in our company. We look forward to having you again with us at our next call for our second quarter results in August. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.