Hello, good evening, good afternoon, good morning. My name is Charles Maltby, CEO of BW Epic Kosan, and I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Uta Urbaniak-Sage. We would like to welcome you to our call to discuss our results for the third quarter. I highlight that the webinar is being recorded for later viewing and allows for questions to be asked anytime via the Q&A window. We will answer your questions at the end, either verbally or via a written response, or offer to take offline separately later. I draw your attention to the disclaimer on slide two. Our improving headline revenue and TCE was driven by a seasonal recovery in spot rates. When combined with lower operating costs, we delivered a third-quarter net profit of $9 million, up by 105% year-on-year. Our fleet, which includes pressurized, semi-refrigerated, ammonia, and ethylene-capable vessels, earned a record third-quarter revenue of $94.9 million, a 2.9% increase from a year ago. Time charter earnings, that's TCE per calendar day, in the quarter increased by 2.4% year-on-year to $11,619 per day, driven by our evolving mix of vessels and a modest improvement in the underlying market. Our operational expenses, that's OpEx, decreased by 4.1% to $4,964 per day, reflecting a reduction in COVID-related expenses and some combination synergies. Our G&A is also reducing as we benefit from economies of scale following the merger and favorable exchange rates, with the third quarter down by 4.6% year-on-year. As we head towards 2023, we can see that both OpEx and G&A are under increasing pressure from global inflation. Our fleet operational utilization during the quarter was 92.3%, which was a 1.3% improvement on last year. Our lost time injury frequency, that's LTIF, this quarter was 0.74, also an improvement from a year ago. Our year-on-year emissions have increased by 8.4% with an AER of 24.75 grams of CO₂ per deadweight ton mile. Because of increased utilization and consequential fuel consumption, albeit partially offset by our investments in carbon emission reduction, such as silicone paints and other energy-saving initiatives. We are also involved with projects that support wider decarbonization, such as shipping related to carbon capture and storage. Whilst many of our vessels are capable of carriage of future clean fuels, including LPG and ammonia. Our strategy remains to focus on LPG, petrochemicals, and speciality gases, continuing to grow the average size of our fleet and to maintain an average attractive vessel age. As of today, BW Epic Kosan operate a world-leading fleet of 70 vessels, ranging in size from three to 12,000 cubic meters in the pressurized semi-ref and ethylene capable shipping sectors. We aim to deliver to our customers the best solution for their transport needs, along with exceptional service and operational standards. Zero harm drives our safety culture and commitment to operating without accidents and achieving our environmental goals. Our organization has significant commercial and technical capability across the full gas shipping spectrum, and the flexibility and capability to meet our customers' needs around the world. This operational and technical experience is enabling us to work alongside industry partners to not only reduce emissions, but to also explore projects that support wider decarbonization, such as shipping related to carbon capture and storage. LPG remains a primary cargo for which we're an integral part of the supply chain, both for distribution over the last mile or regionally around the globe, primarily into domestic or residential markets, typically for use as a cleaner energy in cooking and heating. We are also involved in the transportation of petrochemicals such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, and VCM. The company is headquartered in Singapore, with Copenhagen covering our regional activities in the West alongside teams in Manila and Tokyo. Turning to vessel supply. BW Epic Kosan has pressurized, semi-refrigerated, and ethylene-capable vessels as part of our fleet. There are a total of 349 pressure vessels on the water, which includes two new builds that delivered during the quarter. The International Pressure Vessel order book has three more new builds scheduled to be delivered in fourth quarter of this year, six next year, and three in 2024. This represents a 5% total increase over three years in the existing fleet capacity. There are also two 7,500 cubic meter CO₂ LPG carrier new builds scheduled for delivery in 2024, which are being specifically built for a carbon capture and utilization storage project in Northwest Europe. Looking now at the semi-ref and ethylene capable sectors. There are three semi-ref vessels which are scheduled for delivery in 2023. This new build capacity equates to a 3% increase in existing semi-ref fleet capacity. There are also three 7,200 cubic meter LNG dual fuel ethylene vessels under order for delivery in 2024, which represents a 2.3% increase in existing fleet capacity. The new build order book must be measured in the context of the potential scrapping pool. In the international pressure fleet today, there are 17 ships that are aged 30 years and older. These represent about 3.3% of existing fleet capacity, which offsets some of the new build fleet capacity growth. In a similar size segment, there are six non-ethylene semi-ref vessels and two ethylene vessels that are aged 30 years and older, equivalent also to 3.3% of existing fleet capacity. To summarize, for the combined smaller gas carrier sectors, our expectations are for two 2%, 1.6%, and 1.5% net fleet growth in capacity before any further scrapping in 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively. Global demand. Global LPG trade has remained robust despite high energy and feedstock prices and supply disruptions. Drewry's latest research has estimated that seaborne LPG trade in 2022 will increase year-on-year by 3.5% to 116.4 million tons, with a related 4.4% growth in ton-mile demand. On the other hand, the global seaborne olefins trade, that is petrochemicals such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, and VCM, is expected to marginally decline from 16.1 million tons last year to approximately 16 million tons at the end of this year, due to the economic slowdown and lower industrial activity in the manufacturing sector. In Asia, the main demand for LPG comes from China, India, Japan, and South Korea, who together imported over 16 million tons in the third quarter of 2022, up by 6.9% Q-on-Q, and by 2.3% year-on-year. Asian petrochemicals production capacity, especially in China, is expected to increase over the next two years. However, high feedstock costs impacting operator rates at cracking units and could also delay the start-up of the propane dehydrogenation, that's PDH products. U.S. ethylene exports declined by 32% quarter-on-quarter, rebounded towards the end of the quarter with an increasing number of favorably priced cargoes destined for Asia, despite a weak market in the Far East. Europe's ethylene and propylene markets remained oversupplied, complicated further by storage and logistics constraints. Derivative demand was weak. Regional producers in Europe have focused on reducing stock levels. Turning to smaller gas carrier demand. High LNG prices in Europe tightened up the availability of LPG in the region because it was used as a substitute fuel or pushed back into the gas stream. This renewed interest in cheaper product from the U.S. towards the end of the quarter. Consequently, despite lower activity in Europe, further impacted by strike action at some French refineries, shipping lengths began to reduce, driven by the increasing ton-mile demand for imports from the USA. In the East, LPG imports into Bangladesh rebounded 10% quarter-on-quarter and 8% year-on-year, indicating firmer domestic demand. Sri Lanka has seen LPG imports pick up during the quarter but remained 30% below last year's level due to domestic economic challenges. The Asian ethylene and propylene markets remain subdued on account of weaker margins and lower downstream demand. China's ongoing zero COVID policy measures have continued to impact demand and market activity. However, on the back of declining U.S. Ethylene prices, comparatively higher prices in Asia have attracted exports from Houston, which have again tightened the shipping demand. China's ethylene and propylene imports in the third quarter were higher by 17% and 64% quarter-on-quarter, and by 9% and 17% year-on-year, respectively. The overall supply demand fundamentals have resulted in firmer freight market levels, improving underlying revenues, and a modest increase to forward cover rates. Quarter-on-quarter, there have been gains across all sectors, +7% to +8% for vessels under 5,000 cubic meter, up by 5%-9% for the larger 7,500-11,000 cubic meter pressurized vessels, and up by 7% for the ethylene 8,250 cubic meter sector. The pressurized 11,000 cubic meter and ethylene 8,250 cubic meter vessels remain below long-term average levels with supply and demand fundamentals supporting further improvement. Our business is globally diversified. At the end of the quarter, we had 12 vessels operating in the Americas, 34 in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and 26 in Asia. In the third quarter, BW Epic Kosan averaged nearly 5 loading operations every day across our fleet, loading 1.3 million tons, and was involved in 938 cargo operations in 221 different ports. Our cargo mix is split about 46%- 54%. That's 46%-54% between LPG and petrochemicals such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, and VCM, and with one vessel in the growing ammonia trade. This diversity in geography and commodity has widened with the formation of BW Epic Kosan and provides options for our fleet and relative stability in our earnings floor. Ship-to-ship, or STS operations, are an important part of our business as an integral part of the global LPG supply chain. We continue to perform STS operations for delivery of LPG over the last mile into developing economies with 227 such operations performed year-to-date. That is almost one a day. We ended the quarter with 67 core vessels, with a total capacity of just over 500,000 cubic meter and an average size of 7,495 cubic meter, up 5.8% year-on-year. We also have five additional vessels with a total capacity of 33,650 cubic meter under our commercial management. We continue to fine-tune our fleet to focus on modern larger vessels. When it comes to the trading of our vessels, we're keen to work alongside customers over the long term and offer flexibility between time charter, voyage charter, Contract of Af freightment, so-called COA, and spot contracts. During the third quarter, the fleet traded under time charter for 64.1% of total voyage days, compared to about the same 63.9% a year ago, with COA days for 8.1% of the total voyage days. During the third quarter, the fleet experienced 134 technical off-hire days, which include two planned dry docks. We incurred 23 days off-hire related specifically to COVID-19, down by 20 days year-on-year, and this is deviation to port where transfers are crew possible, waiting time for quarantine and test results, port processing, and connecting flights. For the quarter, this resulted in fleet availability of 97.8% and an operational utilization of 92.3%. I would now like to hand over to Uta to step through our financials. Thank you, Charles. Starting with our P&L. In the third quarter, we generated TCE revenues of $70 million, about the same level we recorded in Q3 last year. Our TCE earnings per calendar day were $11,619, 2.4% up from the $11,346 we achieved in the third quarter of last year, reflecting an improved market and the increase of our average vessel size as we redelivered smaller vessels and took delivery of larger-sized vessels. Vessel operating expenses decreased from $31 million- $27 million year-on-year, reflecting the reduction in fleet calendar days and the reducing impact of pandemic expenses. Operating expenses on a per calendar day basis also decreased from $5,177- $4,964 year-on-year. Charter in costs increased from $1.1 million- $3.44 million year-on-year due to the conversion of bareboat charter contracts of four vessels into time charter contracts and additional chartered-in vessels on a time charter basis, offset by the redelivery of four vessels in the first half of 2022 that were chartered in on a bareboat basis. As of 30th September, we had 10 ships on inward charter arrangements, one on a bareboat basis and nine on a time charter basis. G&A expenses for the third quarter decreased from $7.5 million- $6.9 million year-on-year, reflecting cost synergies following the business combination that completed in March last year and also favorable currency exchange rates for some of our overhead costs. On a per calendar day basis, they decreased by 4.6% to $1,024 year-on-year. Finance expenses decreased from $5 million -$4.9 million year-on-year due to lower outstanding debt across our fleet, offset by increased LIBOR rates for the unhedged part of our debt. As of the quarter end, we had interest rate swaps in place for $256 million at a weighted average interest rate of 1.15%, covering 76% of our bank debt. We achieved an EBITDA of $31.7 million and a net profit of $9 million for the quarter. This translates into a return on equity of 7.5%. Moving on to the balance sheet. The book value of the fleet at period end is $826 million, $74 million below latest broker valuations. Our total debt, including finance lease liabilities as of 30th September, was $422 million. Including our cash position of $58.5 million, our net debt is $363.5 million, down by $49 million from the start of the year to 44% of book value, which we regard as a conservative level. Our net asset value based on broker valuations is $565 million or $3.54 per share. Subsequent to the quarter end, we sold one older 6,300 cubic meter vessel at a premium to book value and generated net cash proceeds of $5.2 million. We also signed an MOA to sell one of our smaller 3,500 cubic meter vessels and received the 10% deposit with delivery scheduled before the end of this year. I will now hand back to Charles for a summary and outlook. Thanks, Uta. To summarize, the stronger third quarter results have been driven by a seasonal recovery in spot rates, whilst we also continue to add improving longer term coverage for time charters and COAs, combined with lower operating costs. The supply of new build vessels in our sector remains balanced with the smaller gas carrier fleet forecast to grow by 2.2% and 1.6% over 2022 and 2023 respectively before any further scrapping. The order book for larger LPG segments has been running at higher levels, but we note that inflationary pressures are leading to increased shipyard new build costs for all sizes alongside the higher technology costs associated with dual fuel LPG or LNG. Geopolitical conflicts, inflation, interest rates and energy costs are negatively impacting global growth. However, forecast seaborne LPG commodity demand growth for 2022 at 3.5% is positive, and we expect demand to continue to firm over the winter, with 2023 seaborne LPG commodity demand presently forecast to grow by 2.9%. Favorable inter-region pricing for petrochemicals is also providing incremental ton-mile demand. We are working to positively capture upside through the diversity of geo-geography and commodity available to our fleet and continuing to deliver efficiency to our combined G&A and OpEx levels. As mentioned, we are placing forward cover at modestly improving levels. As of the 30th of September 2022, the company was approximately 62% covered for 2022, with 4,000 voyage days covered at an average daily time charter rate of $11,804, leaving over 2,000 calendar days open for the rest of the year. BW Epic Kosan has the scale and operational strength for future success and is working to further improve earnings potential, deliver operational synergies, increase our efficiency and work towards the IMO emissions targets for 2030 and beyond, and support wider decarbonization by involving ourselves in projects such as shipping related to carbon capture and storage, and the demand for ammonia dual fueled ammonia carriers. We have now reached the end of our presentation and would love to invite any questions for live answer. Please drop us a question if you feel like it on the Q&A. There are currently no questions, Charles. Thanks very much, Uta. well, as there's no questions, we'll wish everybody well. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us and listen today. We appreciate your interest in BW Epic Kosan. If you'd like to discuss further, please do contact Uta or I directly. In the meantime, we look forward to catching up in February 2023 for our fourth quarter and full year end 2022 earnings report. Thank you very much.
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