Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's Nakilat's 1Q21 earnings results call. My name is Charlie and I will be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may register to do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Ahmed Hazem, to begin. Ahmed, please go ahead. Thank you, Charlie. Hello, good morning and good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and Ramadan Kareem. This is Ahmed Hazem from EFG Hermes Research. We'd like to welcome you all today to the Nakilat 1Q2021 results conference call. We have with us on the line, Mr. Hani Abuaker, CFO of Nakilat, and Mr. Fotios Zeritis, Head of Investor Relations. I'd like to start off by congratulating Nakilat on the results. Then hand over the call to Fotios. Fotios, please go ahead. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Nakilat's first quarter 2021 conference call. For your convenience, the tracking of this call and presentation will be available on the company's investor relations section of our website. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Many of our remarks contain forward-looking statements. For factors that cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, please refer to slide two of the investor relations presentation. In addition, some of our remarks contain non-IFRS financial measures. A reconciliation of this is included in the notes of this presentation. Nakilat CFO, Hani Abuaker, will begin today's call with a discussion of company's highlights. Followed by a brief discussion of group earnings results. After, I will give you an overview of LNG shipping market. Finally, Nakilat CFO, Hani Abuaker, will walk you through the company's business outlook. We will be happy to address your question. Now, we'd like to hand it over to Mr. Hani Abuaker, our CFO of Nakilat. Hani, please go ahead. Thank you, Fotios. Ramadan Kareem to everyone and welcome to our first quarter 2021 earnings results presentation. Together with our Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Fotios Zeritis, we will guide you through today's presentation. I hope that all of you and your family are safe and follow the precautious measures against the COVID-19. Before we start into our results and discussing our performance, we will take a moment again to say thank you to all our seafarers and shore-based staff for their extraordinary dedication to maintain business continuity and resilience during the challenging moments, bringing cleaner energy into the world without disruptions or delays. In spite of ongoing COVID-19 restriction worldwide, Nakilat successfully managed to receive the delivery of its second new build LNG carrier during the month of January 21st, 2021, on time and on budget. This is a substantial testament to the Nakilat technical and expertise, as well as to our seafarers' commitment to excellence. Now, please let's turn to slides eight and nine of the presentation, to discuss the financial performance. Despite of the COVID-19 pandemic challenges and market volatility, we are pleased to announce that Nakilat reported a profit of QAR 320 million or QAR 0.06 per share for the first quarter of 2021, and 14.5% increase compared to the same period in 2022. Which was effectively supported by streamlining of our business expenses and creating additional savings to ensure the continuation of sustainable return to our shareholders. Specifically, Nakilat's operating expense decreased by 28.1% and 4.1% respectively compared to the same period in 2022 due to Nakilat, again, management emphasis on cost rationalization and economical scale. Nakilat EBITDA reached QAR 803 million in Q1 2021. This continues to be in line with Nakilat goals to maximize sustainable bottom line growth and create value for our shareholders and stakeholders, and we efficiently deliver our services to maintain healthy cash flow to our shareholders. Last but not least, Nakilat current ratio is at 1.3 and return of equity has stood at 12.77% due to the full utilization of our growing fleet and our efforts to cost saving and streamlining our cost structure. Now, let me hand it back to Fotios to take us through an overview of the LNG shipping market. Fotios, can you please take us from here? Thank you, Hani. Hello, everyone. Ramadan Kareem. I will give you a brief update of the LNG shipping market. We are glad to see that COVID-19 vaccines have been rolling out worldwide, and as a result of this, it might have a positive impact of the world economy and the demand for LNG shipping. According to Clarksons, the seaborne LNG trade growth is projected to pick up to 5.6% in 2021 from the estimated 1.6% growth in 2020. Some support is expected to be provided from an uptick in the global gas demand as COVID-19 restrictions are eased back, as well as the LNG export project startups. Ton mile trade is forecasted to grow by 9.1% on the back of expected firm U.S. export and Chinese import growth, according to Clarksons. Now, please turn to the slide 13 to slide 14 in our presentation. According to SSY, the current spot charter rates for modern two-stroke ME-GIs is around $52,000 per day, $42,000 per day for DFDs and TFDs, and $30,000 per day for steams. The term contract, which dominates the LNG shipping market chartering, have not been impacted substantially like the spot market. SSY assessed the one-year LNG shipping charter rates at approximately $72,000 per day for ME-GIs, $60,000 for DFD, and $33,000 for the steam, which is a helpful benchmark when the owners discuss current charter opportunities. Please turn to slide 14 of our presentation. In 2020, the LNG newbuild price supplies have been stabilized at average price of $187 million per newbuild. You can see that the global LNG fleet has 556 vessels in operation and another 120 conventional LNG ships on the order book until 2025 as per Clarksons. This implies an increase of 24% of the LNG fleet in terms of number of conventional LNG vessels as of March 2021. The long-term fundamentals for global LNG shipping are healthy, which will be beneficial for Nakilat due to the fact that our core competency is around the transportation of LNG. I would like to hand it back to Mr. Hani Abuaker to give you an insight into Nakilat business outlook. Hani, please go ahead. Thank you, Fotios, for the brief overview of the LNG shipping market during the first quarter of 2021. Well, Nakilat ships are a critical component of the global LNG value chain that acts as a flexible floating pipeline, which offers loading and destination flexibility. Nakilat's unique portfolio of long-term fixed contracts will continue to allow us to generate consistent cash flow, further reduce our leverage, and return capital to our shareholders. The unique tailwinds in the global LNG industry provide a strong outlook for our shipping business in 2021 and beyond. We believe the steps that we are taking today to further strengthen our financial foundation will position us very well in the future. All of this makes Nakilat to continue present a compelling investment vehicle for the global investors. Moving on to slide 16, I will shortly discuss about Nakilat business outlook before we open the floor for the questions and answers. In 2021, we expect to see another successful year for Nakilat due to the management focus to expand its core LNG shipping business and to persist to streamline its operating expenses. In the second half of 2021, we expect to receive the third newbuild jointly owned LNG carrier under Nakilat's commercial and technical management. We are closely working with our shipyard team to mitigate any adverse exposure to this segment. In addition, we are continuously screening the global LNG shipping market to identify attractive business opportunity which will add value to our company and shareholders. Before we open the floor for questions, let me say that we will not take any questions during the call with respect to QP's LNG shipping tender announcement. Nakilat cannot comment on commercial and technical details related to this tender, which is a project that is owned by QP and Qatargas. For additional details on QP announcement, I refer you to QP press release, which is available on their website. With that, I will ask the operator to open the floor for questions, hopefully we will try to answer them as much as we can. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, it is star followed by two. If you have joined online, please press the flag icon on your web browser. Our first question comes from Santosh Gupta of Drewry Financial Research Services. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Thanks. Hi, Hani and Fotios. Hope you are doing well. I have two questions. The first question is specific to the result. I wanted to understand what is driving the decline in operating cost for the last two quarters. I think this quarter we have seen operating cost declining by a 4.1% year-over-year. My second question is, recently we have come across plans of GasLog, which is one of the big player in LNG shipping, to go private following acquisition by BlackRock infrastructure entity. Also we have seen Höegh LNG planning to delist from Norwegian stock exchange. Again, it is the same story with Morgan Stanley related entity buying the outstanding shares. Is Nakilat looking at potential acquisition opportunities in the market? These are the two questions. Detphul, if you can answer, please. If the first question is about property and equipment, is not it, Santosh? Is it you are asking why it is being decreased? Operating cost. Yeah. Operating costs, basically. Yeah. Which had- Yeah. Yeah declined. Yeah. As you understand, we've talked about this one before so many times, is basically as we are taking over more and more vessels to operate in-house, we're gaining the economies of scale, it allows us to really better utilize our resources over time. You have to remember, as we always said, we've been building the capabilities of the company to be operators since maybe 2007 and 2008. As we take more and more vessels in-house, and we have a bigger fleet, it allows us to enjoy the economies of scale and allows us to utilize our resources better. That's one. As you understand that we, as a company with the size that we are growing and with the expertise that is being developed over the years, we can try to really also secure a more cost-effective in the way we manage our third party with different vendors to ensure that we really continuously bringing our costs in line and achieve a better saving in the way we deliver our duties to operate these vessels. We should really always view such savings to continuously happen as we're becoming bigger and bigger, and as we always strive to continuously manage our operating costs, working with our vendors and suppliers to ensure that we're becoming more cost-resilient in that regard. In regards to what's happening and what we have seen in the market with different entities that there's some sort of consolidation that is happening. As you understand, we in Nakilat have been always looking out there for opportunities that as they become available to us. We even looked at and acquired the INSW share before. We are kind of always opening into opportunities to explore. It always depends on the economics, and if it makes sense, and if it is provide us with the right return for the level of risk. That's something that we're always exploring, but we just wait if there's any opportunities available to us. This could happen whether acquiring the new assets, whether finding the opportunities. That's something we will continue to do, what we've been doing over the last many years. I hope I answered your questions. Sure. Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you have joined online, please press the flag icon on your web browser. There are currently no further questions on the line. Hi, Charlie. I think there's a question in the queue. Yes. We've just had one come through. From Onkar Jambhale of Decimal Point Analytics, your line is open. Please go ahead. Thank you for the presentation and the opportunity. I have one question related to the different JV performance. If you could go for some background, how they performed during the quarter, and what's the outlook for that, specifically for the LNG and LPG business. Onkar, the line is quite bad. Are you on speaker phone at all, so we're able to hear your question? Thank you for the presentation and opportunity. I have one question related to the JV performance during the quarter, and the outlook for 2021, especially for the LNG and LPG. Maybe if I can understand the question. You're talking about the outlook of the LNG market. I think that's something maybe Fotios can address. If it's about the shipyard- Yeah. LNG and shipyard. Performance of LNG and shipyard business during the quarter and the outlook for 2021. Yeah. Sure. I got you. Okay. In regards to the LNG and the performance, we're expecting it to be as we have just said. We expect 2021 to be another good year for us. As you understand, our business is very resilient. We're going to enjoy the continuously better performance with saving in our operating costs. We should also expect, as we de-leverage our interest expense, to also decrease. We should really hopefully see a better performance also in our LNG JVs, which will contribute for us. Usually, that's what we see in the second and third and fourth quarters of the year. In regards to the shipyards, it looks like the outlook is going to be better, hopefully, for this year. We believe that our team in the shipyards, they're working very hard to mitigate any potential impact. We are seeing a better outlook or better results coming out of the shipyard entities after the COVID-19 for the last three or four quarters. So far, all the indications is moving to the right direction. Assuming things doesn't get worse, we should really expect better results as we move forward later on in the following three quarters. Okay. Regarding the LPG, how the rates are moving during the quarter and the outlook? Yeah. The LPG rates, also they have really shown good results for the first quarter. I will leave it up to Fotios to give us an update about the rates in the market and what's the outlook, hopefully, for the remaining of the years. Fotios, can you please give us an update about the outlook for the LPG business going forward, or the LPG rates, at least? Yes. Okay, great. According to Clarksons, at the moment, the average Very Large Gas Carriers rates are at approximately $46,500. It was this number in 2020. At the moment that we are speaking about the spot market, it's approximately $33,000. Have it in your mind, however, there is a kind of seasonality in LPG always. It's not like so much. It's more volatile than LNG. For 2020, the global seaborne LPG volumes fell approximately 2% year-on-year of 106.8 million tons. The current fleet order book remains at reasonable levels. We should see a kind of support rates for the market in medium to long term view in terms of LPG always. I hope I answered your question. Okay. Thank you. That was very useful. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If I can take the time to ask a question, please, Hani and Fotios. My question here is on the debt side. When should we expect a sizable repayment in debt to the point that you can effectively restructure and benefit from the lower interest rates? I understand that there is a hedge on the interest, so interest is effectively fixed. Is there a mismatch in maturity in the hedge, or will you basically benefit from any possible restructuring down the line? Thanks, Ahmed. I think we have answered this question repeatedly. On the items that is being hedged until the end of the 2025 contracts, which is in 12 years, there's not much we can do about it. However, we have in some of our joint ventures and some of even of the vessels that we took over with INSW, they will go through a refinancing phase in 2022 and 2023. That's where we're going to have an opportunity to really refinance at a lower rate because these were hedged almost 100%, close to 100%. That should be potentially some savings there that we can achieve in 2022 and 2023. In relation to everything else, as they come for the maturity and they become maturing the same as the INSW vessels, yes, we can really leverage that and trying to achieve a lower financing cost. Other than that, we should always benefit as we move forward as we de-leverage, and then our interest cost will be lower. I hope I did answer your question, Ahmed. Yes. Thank you very much. There are currently no further questions on the telephone lines. As a reminder, it is star followed by one if you would like to ask a question. We have a question from Divye Arora of Daman Investment. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for the call. Just a question on, I think somebody was touching upon the hedging component of the debt. So if you can clarify, what portion of your debt is hedged? On a group level, you can say 75% is being hedged. Okay. All right. In terms of the expansion plans, it's mentioned in your presentation there are two more vessels coming this year in 2021. Beyond that, we don't have any further visibility, right? Beyond that, we don't have any visibility, we haven't announced anything. Okay. Anything you want to comment regarding the Qatar North Field project in terms of, they have signed some contractors to build the fields that might take three to four years, any discussions have started with Qatargas in terms of the future transportation and/or the need for the vessels in the future in 2024, 2025? We just said before we start the question and answer that we are not going to be taking any questions about the QP LNG shipping tender announcement. We don't comment on the commercial and technical details related to this tender, we leave it up to them for what they can announce. If you need any further details, just go to their website and you can see what they are announcing for the time being. Okay. Let's not talk about them itself, any major client who is looking to expand capacity- Absolutely. We are out there. Remember, these four vessels that they're constantly- Sorry. My question is not that. My question is that if any client is trying to expand capacity, how much before the capacity coming online they will come and start talking to the vessel operators? It will be two years before they will start to come and seek the vessel? That is my Absolutely. Fotios, maybe you can take that question, please. This is something that we don't know specific each operator, what it does or what they select. What I can tell you is that usually, when you build a vessel and you give the order to a shipyard to build a vessel, needs approximately three years to build a vessel. You need to do back calculation to understand when the vessel is needed and to estimate approximately three years before you need to order it to be ready, let's say, as owners, as whatever who want the ships to be able to operate. Three years you need the construction for a ship. This depends of the size of the vessel, of the technology of the vessel, the specification of the vessels, the demand and supply at that time of the shipyard, many parameters. As a rule of thumb, three years needs a ship, LNG carrier to be built. A client who is looking to, let's say, a company who's looking to increase production of gas in general. Just trying to understand how much is the oversupply in the market right now. They may not even need to go to anyone and give them an order for the vessels because there is enough available in the market. They can just pick it up on the market and put it on the long-term charter. That's how we should look at, or it depends how many vessels they want, and they will rather go three years ahead and tell the vessel company which owns the vessels that we will need maybe 10, 20 more vessels in next three years. Give them a contract so that those guys get the vessel built in next three years. Charter decision always. The charterer will decide how many vessels he needs. The charterer will decide if they want to secure vessels of existing market or to place new orders. It depends on the charterer around the world. Every charterer around the world has different approach and different strategy. We have seen charterers around the world to seek vessels, existing vessels and new builds. We have seen charterers who have go to ask only new builds with specific specifications. This is kind of answers that only can be answered from the charterer. It is not a shipowner. It is the charterer decides, because the charterer locks the vessel for many years to be employed to the shipowner. The shipowner just supervise the vessel. I told you, if you want to do a calculation, three years, you need approximately construction. How many vessels, what carrier types, it's just the chartering decision always, not shipowners. Okay. All right. Clear about it. In terms of the demand supply situation in the market, in 2020, you have mentioned that there are 543 vessels in total, and in 2021, I think 41 more vessels are coming. Right? That's what you are mentioning. Can you comment upon the utilization rate in the market? I don't understand your question. If your question is about the QP, what they have announced, we don't comment. We were specific- No, not QP. You have a slide in the presentation, which is you're talking about the LNG shipping supply. You have said that 543 vessels were there in 2020 in total in the LNG market. We are trying to understand what was the utilization rate in 2020. You are talking about the order book, page 14. The order book, which 556 for 2021, the order book is 41, which we are talking about? Utilization rate. Are these vessels, most of these vessels contracted? What percentage of these vessels are contracted and not contracted in the market? We don't have the slide of utilization. If you want to ask for the utilization, approximately for your mind, 90% of the ships have contracts above six months, the remaining 10% is approximately open to the market. We don't have the slide. Okay. All right. Thank you. As a final reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. I think one of the participant is trying to use pressing star one, and that's not working, and he's asking about what we are doing about ESG in Nakilat and why we are still not yet being rated on Qatar Stock Exchange. I think there's a great initiative that the company have embarked on in 2021 to really have an ESG framework built into our business model. Fotios, if you can please answer. By the way, this question is coming from Mr. Akber Khan from Al Rayan Investment. Fotios, if you can please shed some light about our ESG initiatives that we have started in 2021. Yes. Okay. Let me tell you, first of all, you need to understand that Nakilat's model and the industry that we are operating is ESG story because we deliver cleaner energy around the world. As you know, Nakilat takes very seriously on the element of sustainability and the environment protections all this year. The world demands more governance and transparency, better commitment and greater responsibility to the society, climate and environment. For this reason, Nakilat is always committed to comply with the pollution thresholds imposed by IMO 2020. For people who don't know what IMO, it's International Maritime Organization. The IMO has specific goals for gas emissions and healthier, greener environment. Nakilat is working internally to implement the new ESG report for the company. This will be a very well-structured ESG reporting system, which will actually be in line with international ESG standards, which will meet the expectation of capital markets and our shareholders. Have it in your mind that generally that Nakilat is a ESG story only also that we deliver cleaner energy around the world and we have actually very positive impact on the global society. Thank you very much. I think I answered your question. Akber, what I would like to emphasize is that ESG is a topic that is quite frequently is being discussed at our board, and we are fully committed. In 2020, we were putting in place a roadmap to implement our ESG reporting. Hopefully in 2021, you will see the reporting and the results will include Qatar Stock Exchange, MSCI, all kind of different framework. Just please stay tuned. Hopefully, in the third or fourth quarter of this year, where we start to really publish our ESG reporting, and then hopefully it will meet the different stakeholders' requirements. We have no further telephone questions at this time, I will hand back over to your host, Ahmed. Thank you, Charlotte. Mr. Hani and Mr. Fotios, would you like to make some closing remarks? Well, thank you very much, everyone, for listening to us and continued interest in Nakilat story. We really appreciate that. We look forward to speaking to you hopefully one day in the next two quarters in person, hopefully when things goes back to normal. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact Fotios. I'm sure he will be able to address your queries and questions. Other than that, please stay safe and healthy, and thank you very much. Thank you so much guys. Thank you very much. Thank you for participating again. All your question was well received and we'll communicate with our top management. Please be safe and take care of yourself and your family. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.