Hello. Good afternoon, good evening, and good morning. Thank you very much for joining us today. 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 Q4. I would like to highlight that the webinar is being recorded for later viewing and allow 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 would also like to draw your attention to this disclaimer on slide two. The Q4 saw strong utilization of over 95%, rounding off a stronger year overall. It's driven by a tighter market and our increasing average vessel size. Combined with effectively managed operating costs, we delivered a full year net profit of $21.4 million, up 78% year-on-year. With an eye on a sustainable and future-focused fleet, we continue to upgrade our portfolio, which includes pressurized semi-refrigerated ammonia and ethylene-capable vessels by releasing nine less attractive vessels during the year, whilst taking delivery of a larger new build vessel under time charter and contracting two similar further vessels for 2023 and 2024. Consequently, we earned full year revenue of $362.3 million, up 9.1%. However, in the Q4, our revenue of $90 million was down 1.4% year-on-year due to the impact of a 5.2% reduction in fleet calendar days. Time charter earnings, that's TCE per calendar day for the year, increased by nearly 4%. With the final quarter improving by 2.5% year-on-year to $11,618 per day, driven by the evolving mix of our vessels and improvement in the underlying market. Our operational expenses, that's OpEx, for the full year were $5,298 per day, up 6.5% during part up to pre-spend related to upcoming dry dockings, our larger average vessel size and inflationary pressures. Our G&A expenses per calendar day increased 36% year-on-year in the Q4 to $1,271 per day, partly due to a one-off integration cost and bonus payment to all employees addressing inflation. For the full year, G&A expenses were more balanced, up 1.6% to $1,086 per day. Our fleet operational utilization during the quarter was 95.3%, which was a 2.8% improvement on last year. It resulted in a full year improvement of 1.4%. Our lost time injury rate, LTIR, this quarter was zero. Also an improvement from a year ago, and means we ended the year with an improved 0.23 days per million hours worked LTIR. Although our full year emissions, year-on-year emissions, have increased by 6% with an AER of 24.4 grams of CO2 per deadweight mile, this has been a natural consequence of increased utilization and a larger average ship size. This has been partially offset by investments in emissions reduction, such as silicone paints and other energy-saving initiatives, including new propeller designs. We are committed to lowering our emissions further, and we'll publish our sustainability report in March with fuller details on our strategy. Our full year-end ROE is 4.5%, up from 2.6% in 2021. It's a step in the right direction, but there is still work to do. In June last year, we paid a dividend of $4.5 million, and in line with our dividend policy to target a dividend payment of 50% of our net profits, we today announce a further dividend of $6.2 million payable on the 13th of March to shareholders on record as of March 3rd, amounting to a total for the year of $10.7 million or $0.067 per share. Our business. As of today, BW Epic Kosan operate a world leading fleet of 67 vessels, ranging in size from 3 to 12,000 cubic meters in the pressurized semi-ref and ethylene-capable sectors. We aim to deliver our customers the best solution for their transportation 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 pressurized semi-ref, refrigerated gas, and petrochemical transportation, 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 are 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 actively involved in the transportation of petrochemicals like 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 now to supply. That's vessel supply. BW Epic Kosan has vessels in the pressurized semi-ref and ethylene capable sector. There are a total of 352 pressure vessels on the water, which includes three new builds that delivered during the Q4 of last year. The International Pressure Vessel Order Book has 12 new builds scheduled to be delivered in 2023, three in 2024, and two in 2025, a total of just over 100,000 cubic meter. This represents a total of 5.5% increase in the existing capacity. There are also two 7,500 cubic meter CO2 LPG carrying new builds scheduled for delivery in 2024, but these are being built specifically for a project in Northwest Europe. Looking now at the semi-ref and ethylene capable sectors, the smaller size semi-ref fleet has no new builds on order. There are three 7,200 cubic meter LNG dual fuel ethylene vessels under order for delivery in 2024, which represent a 2.3% increase in the 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 vessels totaling approximately 60,000 cubic meters that are 30 years or older. These potential scrapping candidates represent a 3.2% of existing fleet capacity, which offsets most of the new build fleet growth capacity currently on order. In the similar size segment, there are four non-ethylene semi-ref vessels and three ethylene vessels that are aged 30 years and older, equivalent to 2.8% of the existing fleet capacity. To summarize, for the combined smaller gas carrier sectors, our expectations are for 2.3%, 1.1%, and 0.3% net fleet growth before any further scrapping over 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively. Moving now to global demand. It has been a positive year for global LPG seaborne trade despite high energy and feedstock prices. Drewry's latest research has estimated that seaborne LPG trade in 2022 increased by 3.5% year-on-year to just over 116 million tons and with a related 4% growth in ton-mile demand. Amidst weaker and uncertain economic conditions, industrial and manufacturing activity declined, which impeded the recovery of the petrochemical sector. Consequently, the seaborne olefins trade, that is ethylene, propylene, butadiene, VCM, equivalent to 16.1 million tons last year, was 0.6% lower. In Asia, the main demand for LPG comes from China, India, Japan, and South Korea, who together imported a combined 62.8 million tons of LPG in 2022, 3.6% up on a year ago. China leads LPG demand and import growth in Asia, driven by its petrochemical sector. Lower manufacturing activity due to COVID-19 related lockdowns, weak petrochemical margins, and a slump in the country's economy have all played a part in slowing down the pace of growth. Turning now to the USA. Total exports from the USA reached 1.2 million tons in 2022, 64% higher than in 2021, driven by strong volumes from Enterprise Terminal in Houston. Europe's ethylene and propylene markets remained dull in the Q4 with limited spot trades. Cracker operating rates were carefully managed and plant maintenance schedules extended to counter low demand and storage constraints. In Asia, high feedstock costs impacted operating rates at crackers and propane dehydrogenation plants, that's PDH plants. Product price is extended losses with weaker buying interests amid bearish downstream demand in China despite the uplifting of COVID-19 restrictions. Turning now to the smaller gas carrier market. The European market remained quiet in the first half of the quarter. Above average temperatures, limited regional LPG demand for heating and shipping length persisted in the smaller size sector. Appetite for cheaper U.S. product started to grow and several large size pressure vessels were fixed for transatlantic stems, which tightened shipping availability and pushed up freight levels. The shipping market tightened significantly in December as inclement weather, port congestion, and other constraints disrupted schedules. Olefins production in Europe has been restricted in response to low demand with the intention to reduce inventories. USA ethylene exports to Asia in the Q4 remained strong on account of favorable pricing and dominated the long-haul olefins trade. With 65%-70% of the stems bound for Asia, the handy-size sector tightened significantly, offering potentially more intra-region fixtures on the smaller vessels. In the East, LPG imports into Bangladesh have continued to grow, gaining 6% quarter-on-quarter and 9% year-on-year, supported by strong demand from their domestic sector. While Sri Lanka's total LPG imports remained flat on the quarter and declined by 15% year-over-year, the small ship import trade declined by 29% quarter-on-quarter and 43% year-on-year, impacting the regional shipping balance for smaller vessels. Olefins production in Asia improved alongside China easing off its COVID-19 restrictions. In the Q4, China's propylene imports were lower by 5% quarter-on-quarter and 2% year-on-year. Total imports of 2.3 million tons in 2022 were 6% lower compared to 2021. On the other hand, China's ethylene imports of just over 2 million tons remained flat compared to 2021, despite a 24% quarter-on-quarter gain in the Q4, largely driven by the USA exports. In the long-haul propylene trade, the Asia to West cargos that provided backhaul and repositioning opportunities were nonexistent in the second half of the year compared to approximately 94,000 in 2021 and 65,000 tons in the first half of 2022. Similarly, there were no butadiene cargos in the Q4 to Mexico and the USA, with most of the stems removed in the Q1. How does this all pull together now for the time charter market and what's happening in the headline rates? The overall supply-demand fundamentals have resulted in increased utilization and firmer freight market levels, improving the underlying revenues and an encouraging increase to forward cover rates. Year-on-year, there have been gains across all sectors, plus 5% for the 3,500-5,000 cubic meter vessels, 9% for the 7,500 cubic meter, and 5% for the 11,000 cubic meter pressure vessels, and also for the ethylene 8,000 cubic meter sector. The ethylene 8,000 cubic meter vessels remain below the long-term average levels, the supply and demand fundamentals do support further improvement over 2023. If you wish to follow the market from month-to-month, we do publish an update every month on our website. Turning now to our operations. Our business is globally diversified. At the end of the quarter, we had 12 vessels in the Americas, 33 in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, and 24 in Asia. In the Q4, we averaged nearly five loading operations every day across our fleet, loading 1.3 million tons, and was involved in 960 different cargo operations in 265 different ports. On a full year basis, we have loaded 5.5 million tons and carried out over 4,000 such cargo operations. Our cargo mix is split about 47% to 53% between LPG and petrochemicals, 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 we are 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 295 such operations performed over last year. Turning now to some of our operating metrics. We ended the quarter with 65 core vessels with a total capacity of just under 500,000 cubic meters and an average size of 7,676 cubic meters. That's up 7.4% year on year. We also have four additional vessels with a total capacity of 23,500 cubic meters 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 are keen to work alongside customers over the long term and offer flexibility between time charters, voyage charters, c ontracts of affreightment, and spot contracts. During the Q4, the fleet traded under time charter for 76% of total voyage days, compared to 67% a year ago, and in COA for 9% of total voyage days, about the same as a year ago. During the Q4, the fleet experienced 118 technical off-hire days, which included the impact of three planned dry dockings. For the quarter, this resulted in improved fleet availability of 98% and strong operational utilization of 95.3%. I would now like to hand the call over to Uta to step through our financials. Thank you, Charles. Good morning, good evening, everyone. Starting with our P&L. In the Q1, we generated TCE revenues of $70 million, down from the $72 million we recorded in Q4 last year, Q4 2021, due to a reduction of fleet calendar days. Our TCE earnings per calendar day were $11,618, 2.5% up from the $11,337 we achieved in Q4 2021, 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 $32 million to $32 million year-on-year, reflecting the reduction in fleet calendar days by 5.2% and the reducing impact of pandemic expenses. Operating expenses on a per calendar day basis increased from $5,415 to $5,857 year-on-year. The increase is partly due to pre-spend related to upcoming dry dockings, our larger average vessel size, and inflationary pressures. On a full year basis, operating expenses per day were $5,298. Charter-in costs increased from $2.1 million to $3.8 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 31st of December last year, 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 Q4 increased from $6.6 million to $8.1 million year-over-year, partly due to one-off integration costs and a bonus payment to all employees addressing inflation. On a per calendar day basis for the full year, they were $1,086, slightly up from the $1,069 in 2021. Finance expenses decreased from $5 million to $4.7 million year-over-year due to lower outstanding debt across the fleet, offset by increased LIBOR rates for the unhedged part of our debt. As of the year-end, we had interest rate swaps in place for $242 million at a weighted average interest rate of 1.14%, covering 75% of our bank debt. We achieved an EBITDA of $26.7 million for the quarter and $118.2 million for the year. At year-end, we assessed that there were no indicators of impairment for our fleet of vessels. In the year, we recognized an impairment charge of $4.4 million for certain vessels classified for sale at year-end. We finished the year with a net profit of $21.4 million. This translates into a return on equity of 4.5%. Moving on to the balance sheet. The book value of the fleet, excluding assets held for sale at period end, is $761 million, which is $86 million below latest brokers valuations. Our total debt, including lease liabilities as of December 31st, was $438 million. Including our cash position of $78.5 million, our net debt is $360 million, which is down by $71 million from the start of the year to 43% of book value, which we regard as a conservative level. Our net asset value based on broker valuations is $575 million, or $3.6 per share. Subsequent to the year-end, we sold two 3,600 cubic meter pressurized LPG carriers and redelivered two 3,300 cubic meters semi-refrigerated vessels under a time charter. The net cash proceeds from the sale amount to $8.6 million. In line with our strategy to focus on larger tonnage, we have also signed MOAs to sell another two of our smaller 3,600 cubic meter vessels, with delivery scheduled over the next three months. I will now hand back to Charles for a summary and outlook. Thanks, Uta. To summarize, the Q4 saw strong utilization, rounding off a stronger year overall. Our improved annual results were driven by a tighter market and increasing average vessel size. We also continue to add improving longer-term coverage for time charters and COAs and are effectively managing our operating costs. The supply of new build vessels in our sector remains balanced, with the small gas carrier fleet forecast to grow by 2.3% this year, as before any further scrapping. The order book for larger LPG segments has been running at high levels, but 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. We note that 72% of new build orders now placed for LPG vessels are for dual-fuel LPG, ethane, or LNG. We expect that the implementation of the IMO's EEXI and CII regulations in 2023 will result in a general reduction in the global fleet's steaming speed. Our sustainability report, which we will publish in March, will provide more details on our sustainability strategy. We're optimistic despite headwinds in the form of energy inflation, high interest rates, uncertainty on China's economic recovery, and ongoing conflicts. LPG demand is expected to remain firm, and Drewry's latest research estimates seaborne LPG ton-mile demand to increase by 3.1% over 2023. The olefin seaborne trade is also forecast to grow by a more modest 0.2%. Asia will continue to drive the olefins market, but will be impacted by the pace of China's return to post-COVID normalcy. Ethylene exports from the USA is an important driver, and whether most cargoes end up in Asia or in Europe will determine shipping availability accordingly. We are working to manage these impacts through the diversity of 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 improving levels. The company is approximately 43% covered for this year, with over 9,000 days covered at a daily average time charter equivalent rate of just under $12,500 per day. That's about $500 per day above this time last year and leaves us 50% open, that's 12,000 days, for the rest of this year. BW Epic Kosan has the scale and operational strength for future success and is working to grow the average vessel size and to maintain an attractive average fleet age so that we can provide safe transportation in a lower carbon world. We believe that LPG will continue to serve as a cleaner form of energy than many alternatives, especially in the residential sector, where it is a growing source of fuel in developing economies. Alongside LPG, we are optimistic for growth opportunities in adjacent sectors such as ammonia and carbon dioxide, that is CO2 shipping. We have now reached the end of our presentation. If you have any questions, please post them now, and we'll answer or come back to you in the next few days. If you have no questions online today, please feel free to drop us an email to Uta or myself, and we'll follow up one-on-one with you. Thank you. Charles, as of now, there are no questions in the Q&A section. Thanks, Uta. If you have a question, please post it. Otherwise, if we've missed anything, please drop us a line and contact us, and we'll follow up with you in the next few days. Thank you very much for joining our call today. In the meantime, we look forward to catching up in May when we will release our Q1 2023 earnings report. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us today. Uta, we've just got one question coming. Is that right? Oops. Yep. Okay. Do you want to answer that one, Uta, or...? Yeah, you can go ahead. Okay. Thank you. So we're seeing rates firming strongly as we went into winter. Of course it takes time for that to price into your fleet. You can't click your fingers and start earning immediately the spot rates in the market, because often, you know, about half of our fleet is already covered. We're seeing rates that have pushed up strongly to highs that we haven't seen for sort of six or seven years. The current rates are at levels that are above the rate levels we've been concluding on the one year time charter and the cover levels. It's holding quite firm at the moment. As if you wish to follow up further with us, please do take it offline. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much to everybody for joining us. We'll look forward to catching up in May. Take care.
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