Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Genco Shipping & Trading Limited second quarter 2021 earnings conference call and presentation. Before we begin, please note that there will be a slide presentation accompanying today's conference call. That presentation can be obtained from Genco's website at www.gencoshipping.com. To inform everyone, today's conference is being recorded and is now being webcast at the company's website at www.gencoshipping.com. We will conduct a question and answer session after the opening remarks. Instructions will follow at that time. A replay of the conference will be accessible at any time during the next two weeks by dialing eight eight eight-two zero three-one one one two or seven one nine-four five seven-zero eight two zero and entering the passcode 8885406. At this time, I will turn the conference over to the company. Please go ahead. Good morning. Before we begin our presentation, I note that in this conference call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements use words such as anticipate, budget, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe, and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with a discussion of potential future events, circumstances, or future operating or financial performance. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and observations. For a discussion of factors that could cause results to differ, please see the company's press release that was issued yesterday and materials relating to this call posted on the company's website, and the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2020, and the company's reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K subsequently filed with the SEC. At this time, I would like to introduce John Wobensmith, Chief Executive Officer of Genco Shipping & Trading Limited. Good morning everyone? Welcome to Genco's second quarter 2021 conference call. I will begin today's call by reviewing our year-to-date highlights, providing an update on the company's new comprehensive value strategy, financial results for the quarter and the industry's current fundamentals, and then open the call up for questions. For additional information, please also refer to our earnings presentation posted on our website. The second quarter of 2021 was a transformative period for Genco. In April, we announced our new comprehensive value strategy centered around growth, de-leveraging, and dividends. Since then, we have made notable progress working towards paying our first dividend under this strategy. Highlighting our strong progress in achieving growth objectives over the last four months, we have agreed to purchase six modern fuel-efficient Ultramax vessels to build out this core portion of our fleet to 15 ships. We believe that we are at a unique point in the drybulk cycle with freight rates at their highest levels in over a decade, while values which have increased year-to-date have lagged the upward trajectory of earnings. This creates compelling return on capital opportunities. To capitalize this and to de-risk our latest purchase of three Ultramaxes, we secured three two-year charters at rates ranging from $23,375 to $25,500 per day, locking in an unlevered cash-on-cash return of approximately 50% over this period on those three newly acquired ships. In terms of our proactive de-leveraging progress, during the first half of 2021, we repaid $82.2 million of debt, or 18% of the beginning of the year debt balance. This included the retirement of our scrubber facility as well as the prepayment of our revolver. Financial de-leveraging is a key part of our value strategy. Given the strong market, we believe it is prudent to accelerate debt repayments to further fortify our balance sheet as we position the company to distribute sizable dividends in diverse rate environments. At the end of this year, we are targeting a net loan-to-value of 20%, which we are currently on track towards achieving. Ultimately, our medium-term goal is to reduce our net debt position to zero through additional debt repayments over the coming years. Importantly, we have now achieved a foundational component of our corporate strategy and a key milestone towards full implementation. Specifically, we are pleased to have entered into a new credit facility to complete the global refinancing of our existing credit facilities. We expect the new facility to significantly enhance our capital structure, improve key terms of our debt, reduce our cash over breakeven rate, and provide further optionality for the company. Later in the call, Apostolos will elaborate on some of the details and features of this new credit facility. Regarding returning capital to shareholders and our current quarterly dividend for the second quarter, we increased our payout to $0.10 per share, our second consecutive quarterly increase. We have now declared a total of $0.905 per share in dividends over the last eight quarters. We are pleased with the progress we are making and continue to target Q4 2021 results for our anticipated first dividend under our new corporate strategy, which would be payable in Q1 2022. In addition to the measures taken to execute our value strategy from an earnings perspective, the second quarter was our strongest in over a decade. Our net income was $32 million, and our time charter equivalent rate of $21,137 per day both marked our highest since 2010. Additionally, our first half adjusted EBITDA was $70.9 million and is nearly identical to our full year 2020 adjusted EBITDA of $71.8 million. Looking ahead to the third quarter, our estimates point to continued strong results with a time charter equivalent over $27,000 per day based on fixtures to date across the fleet. Moreover, we will have the majority of our Capesize vessels open for fixing in the coming weeks to take advantage of the meaningful increase in rates we have recently seen, highlighting our significant operating leverage in a robust and improving dry bulk market. In addition to the current firm market conditions, we view the market outlook favorably. The order book as a% of the fleet is at a historical low, limiting net fleet growth, while unprecedented stimulus as well as the Brazilian iron ore export recovery have combined to create improving supply and demand dynamics. Our positive market outlook, together with our robust balance sheet, has positioned Genco well to implement our new comprehensive Value Strategy as we focus on unlocking shareholder value. Not to be overshadowed by measures we have taken on the Value Strategy, there were several other key corporate updates that occurred in the recent months. Genco was ranked number one out of 52 public shipping companies in the Webber Research 2021 ESG scorecard. To that end, on the environmental side, we joined a working group alongside 33 other participants across the maritime value chain to study the feasibility of ammonia as an alternative fuel as part of the long-term goal to decarbonize shipping. Additionally, we plan to enter into a new joint venture, GS Ship Management, with the Synergy Group for the technical management of our fleet. We expect the creation of this joint venture will provide a unique and transparent service to the management of our vessels and result in increased visibility and control over vessel operations, increased fleet-wide fuel efficiency to lower our carbon footprint, and potentially unlock further vessel operating expense savings. At this point, I will now turn the call over to Apostolos Zafolias, our Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, John. For the second quarter of 2021, the company recorded net income of $32 million, or $0.76 basic and $0.75 diluted earnings per share. The 216% year-over-year increase in our fleet-wide TCE to $21,137 per day was a primary driver, resulting in increased adjusted EBITDA of $50.2 million. During the quarter, we continued to further strengthen our balance sheet through operating cash flows from firm market conditions, together with opportunistic vessel sales, bringing our cash position to $161.2 million, including $44.9 million of restricted cash as of June 30, 2021. We also reduced our debt balance in the year-to-date by 18%, with a combination of scheduled debt amortization as well as the prepayment of our scrubber and revolving credit facilities. As a result, our debt outstanding is $367 million as of the end of the second quarter, which, after considering our cash position, results in net debt of $206 million. Genco's already low leverage position and strong freight rate environment have enabled us to enter into a new global refinancing of our debt. We appreciate the strong and ongoing support from our leading banking group. As a key step towards implementing our comprehensive value strategy, we have entered into an agreement with our lenders for the $450 million credit facility, which consists of a five-year term loan together with a sizable revolver that can be used for growth. This new debt structure will provide improved capital allocation flexibility and significantly reduce our cash flow break-even rate, which, combined with the strength of our balance sheet, provides a solid foundation for our value strategy and our goal to distribute sizable dividends to shareholders. The $450 million credit facility provides for a $150 million term loan and a revolving line of up to $300 million, which can be used for acquisitions and general corporate purposes. Based on current market conditions and management estimates, we are targeting a year-end debt balance of approximately $250 million, following targeted debt paydowns of approximately $117 million over the second half of the year. If we make these targeted paydowns, we will have no mandatory debt amortization payments until December 2025. Regardless of this favorable mandatory debt amortization schedule, we plan to continue to voluntarily pay down debt with a medium-term objective of reducing our net debt to zero. Key terms of the new facility include competitive pricing of LIBOR plus 215 basis points to 275 basis points, and we expect to be on the low end of that range after the first measurement date in relation to September 30 results. A favorable covenant package, including a lower minimum liquidity covenant as compared to our existing facilities and other customary covenants, including a minimum collateral maintenance covenant, minimum working capital, and net debt to capitalization covenants. In addition, there are no restrictions on dividends other than customary event of default and pro forma financial covenant compliance provisions. Importantly, five of our vessels to be acquired will remain unencumbered and not pledged as collateral for this new facility. This will provide Genco with further flexibility and optionality on a go-forward basis. On slide 17, we have provided estimated expense levels on a per-vessel, per-day basis for you. With regard to dry docking, we anticipate 2 vessels to enter dry dock this quarter, resulting in approximately 40 days of off-hire, estimated off-hire during the 3rd quarter. In terms of vessel sale and purchase activity, we anticipate taking delivery of 4 of the 6 Ultramaxes that we have agreed to acquire during the 3rd quarter, and we also completed the sale of our last 53,000 deadweight ton Supramax vessel, the Genco Lorraine, in July. Furthermore, we agreed to sell the Genco Provence, a 2004-built Supramax vessel and the oldest ship in our fleet, for $13.25 million, with expected delivery in the 4th quarter of 2021. Importantly, with this sale, we will be avoiding budgeted dry docking CapEx of approximately $800,000 in next year, in 2022. I will now turn the call over to Peter Allen, our Senior Vice President of Strategy, to discuss the industry fundamentals. Thank you, Apostolos Zafolias. During the second quarter of this year, freight rates continued to increase to decade-plus highs, driven by a resurgence of global economic activity, leading to augmented demand for raw materials. Spot freight rates for both Capesize and Supramax vessels currently stand at over $30,000 per day. During the first half of the year, global steel production rose by 14% year-over-year, supporting the iron ore trade and Capesize rates. While China's output rose by 12%, ex-China has seen a notable rebound, rising by 18% year-over-year, led by India, the EU, and Japan. We have also seen a recovery in the Brazilian iron ore trade, which is up by 11% year-over-year. There is a highly seasonal weighting towards the second half of the year for Brazilian iron ore exports, which historically rise approximately 20% from July to December versus January to June. On the minor bulks, rates have been driven by strong grain demand from China. Additionally, we continue to see increased shipments of minor bulk commodities closely linked to global GDP growth and economic activity. Regarding the vessel supply side, net fleet growth year to date is approximately 2%. The order book as a percentage of the fleet is 6%, which compares to 7% of the fleet that is greater than or equal to 20 years old. Encouragingly, newbuilding vessel ordering has been relatively low this year despite the strong market conditions. We believe these positive supply and demand dynamics provide a solid foundation for the dry bulk market and lead to low thresholds for demand to exceed to improve fleet-wide utilization and freight rates. For the balance of the year, we expect increased iron ore exports to be a catalyst for Capesize rates, while increased grain exports from the Black Sea region in August are expected to be supportive to Supramax earnings in the Atlantic Basin ahead of the North American grain season in the fourth quarter. These demand drivers are expected to be met by favorable supply-side fundamentals underpinned by the historically low order book. This concludes our presentation, and we would now be happy to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star followed by one. That is star one if you wish to queue for a question. We'll pause for a brief moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. one second. We will move on to our first question from Randy Giveans of Jefferies, p lease go ahead y our line is now open. How are you doing, gentlemen. How's it going? Morning, Randy? Morning. Yeah, congrats, obviously, on the best quarter in a decade, and I'm sure I'll say the same again next quarter. I guess two questions from me. First, you mentioned you're going to repay $117 million in debt during the back half of the year. You also have, I believe, $87 million due to complete the acquisition of the four vessels. I guess where does that put your balance sheet and your maybe financial flexibility for future acquisitions or maybe even share repurchases, at this point in the next few months? A couple things. The three ships that we just bought or agreed to buy, which we'll be taking delivery of between August and October. As you saw, we did de-risk those purchases with time charters on three of our existing ships. Two years between $23,375 and $25,500. As I said in the opening remarks, that actually yields a 50% cash-on-cash return. You're effectively paying off half of the purchase price over a two-year period on ships that are 2017 and 2014 built. I think we've done a pretty good job of de-risking and covering. We have a very large revolving credit facility in place. I think part of that was to have additional firepower for acquisition. Having said that, we're also concentrated on the value strategy and de-leveraging the balance sheet. For the time being, I think we're very happy with the acquisitions we've made, Randy. We certainly definitely will still have cash at the end of the year after the pay-downs and taking delivery of the ships. We'll take it as they come, and we're going to continue to look for opportunities. As I mentioned on the call earlier, values are still compelling from where freight rates are and where time charter rates are. Again, evidenced by those two-year deals that we did a few weeks ago. Sure. Yeah, I can see that as well. Speaking of those charter rates that you mentioned there, you chartered out a few of those Ultramaxes, very strong rates, as you mentioned, $23,000, $24,000, $25,000 for two years. I guess a few questions around that. Any additional appetite for further Ultramax charter outs, or is there kind of a base level of spot exposure you want to have there? As it pertains to the Capesizes, I think you only have one charter there or maybe two. Is the reason that charter activity and rates aren't as elevated on the Capesizes because of maybe the uncertainty around Chinese steel production? Really, I'm just trying to ask you about that as well. Kind of a two-for-one question here, because that's clearly the big concern in the market. In terms of chartering activity, we may do two more on the Ultras, but I think you're going to see us focus more on the Capes in terms of locking up cash flows. That is the most volatile sector, and as we come closer and closer to implementing fully the value strategy, I think it makes sense to have coverage in place. Rates today in the Capes are still probably around $30,000 a day for a year, and two-year rates are probably $24,000-$25,000 a day. Good, healthy numbers. Having said that, the spot market is actually quite a bit higher. My guess is as the spot market continues to hold up over the next two months and increase along the lines of the FFA curve, you'll see those charter rates move up further. I think that's where you're going to see us concentrate a little more on de-risking and our portfolio approach and putting some more ships away under longer-term charter. Got it. That makes sense. On the steel front. Yeah. Look, on the steel front in typical fashion, there is a lot of conflicting reports. A lot of times we see the Chinese government say things, but not necessarily execute. I do think it seems like there is definitely some curtailment on steel production. I think a lot of it is centered around the Communist Party anniversary and reducing pollution, particularly around Beijing. It's possible that will continue for a little while, but we don't see any fundamental shift. I would point out that the most important thing to drive bulk shipping in terms of China is iron ore shipments. Granted, the steel production goes into that, but the reality is Brazil is continuing to ramp up and get their logistics system back up and running after early 2019. We expect those volumes to continue. We've seen this before where even steel production has been flat, yet iron ore imports continue to move up. As we're going into the second half of the year, again, typically stronger seasonally. Second half of the year for Vale is usually 18%-20% higher in terms of shipments from the first half. I don't see too much of a change in that right now. I also think the Chinese government was trying to put some downward pressure on iron ore prices, which, successful, no doubt about that. It's actually better for the steel companies to see some of these lower iron ore prices. Quite frankly, Vale and the Australian iron ore miners have low cash flow breakevens on iron ore production. Any of these slight movements downwards are still producing excellent cash flow. A long answer to that, but reality is we continue to think the market firms coming into the third quarter here on the Capesize and the Ultramax as well. Yeah. I appreciate the color and I agree. Obviously, with the increasing Vale exports and really the non-Chinese steel production ramping as well could offset that. Thanks again. Keep up the great work. Thank you, Randy. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, that is star one. We'll move on to our next question from Omar Nokta of Clarksons Securities, p lease go ahead y our line is now open. Thank you. Hi, John, Apostolos, Peter? Good morning? Morning. I guess as Randy said, congratulations on, I guess, on several fronts, the earnings, and then also this refinance and the acquisitions and the new JV. I did want to ask about the $450 million credit facility, which with the $300 million revolver, it's a pretty decent-sized revolver, I'd say, and one I don't think I've really seen much of in the shipping space over the past several years. I guess kudos to you on being able to get a revolver that size. Also wanted to ask in terms of how the mechanics of the revolver, how does that work in terms of vessel acquisitions? We've seen it where if you have a revolver and you use it to buy ships, that portion that's been drawn converts into a term loan. Is that what's happening here or does it stay on as a revolver? Thanks, Omar. It's a regular revolver. It does not convert into a term loan. You're able to draw and pay back and redraw. It has regular quarterly reductions of about $11.7 million. It does not term out. It's just a regular revolver and gives us plenty of flexibility going forward. I will also say that five of the vessels in our fleet will stay unencumbered so that those provide additional flexibility for us in the future. It also has an uncommitted accordion feature, so if we did want to increase the facility amount, we could do that by putting additional vessels in there. Yeah. Omar, I would look at it as a holistic $450 million credit facility. Yes, $300 is a revolver and $150 is a term loan, but it's really a $450 million facility that, as Apostolos says, reduces based on a 20-year amort schedule at $11 million and change per quarter. That's how I would view it. Got it. Yeah. Pretty nice schedule there. Not that you would necessarily want to do this considering you're reducing debt fairly aggressively here, but just in terms of if, let's say all else equal, you don't have that much drawn on the facility. If you were to buy a ship for, say, $30 million, could that be completely fully drawn? If you were to pay $30 million for a ship, could you draw down $30 million to fund it, or does it have to adhere to some LTV covenant? You could- Sorry, LTV cap. You could draw down $30 million, depending on the revolver availability, obviously. You would not need to put it in as collateral. There is an overall covenant of 55% LTV, a drawdown. That's for the whole revolver, right? Got it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for that. I appreciate you answering that. One follow-up is, as Randy asked about, you intend to repay $117 million here during the second half, get you down to that $250 million at year-end. It sounds, if I recall, Apostolos, you mentioned that you're not going to stop there at year-end $250 million. Next year, you intend to continue paying down debt. Is there a certain level or amount of debt you intend to pay, or you have a target of how much of that $250 million you want to pay down next year? Great question, Omar. We don't have a target set yet. As we're coming into the next quarter earnings call, if you will, if you think about it, we will have our third quarter cash flow in the bag, so to speak. We will have it probably 60% of our fourth quarter fixtures done. We will have a very good sense coming into the end of the year, our cash position and how much we'll be paying ultimately down to. Clearly, the target is $250. It'd be great if we could go lower than that, but that's going to depend on freight rates. Also at that time, we're going to take a view on 2022, and we will then let the market know what we plan on repaying for debt for 2022. It's a little bit of a let's wait, let's make sure we have as much information as possible as we head into year-end, and then we can set that repayment for 2022. Makes sense. It sounds like no matter what the amount of debt outstanding at year-end, if I just do a simple calculation, will be below the scrap value of the fleet. Not a bad place to be Yes. Yeah. Based on today's scrap values, yes, I would agree with that. Look, ultimately, Omar, one of the key tenets of this strategy is obviously get down to that net debt zero because we want a rock-solid low cash over break-even rate so that we can continue to pay dividends throughout any type of market cycle. Yeah. Well, definitely. Looking forward to seeing you guys getting closer and closer to that model. Appreciate it. Thanks for answering the questions. I'll turn it over. Great. Thank you, Omar. We will now move on to our next question from James Jang of Univest Securities, p lease go ahead y our line is now open. Good morning, everyone? It's been a while. Good morning. I have a couple of quick questions. We're expecting a start of a real super cycle in the dry bulk sector in the coming year, and we're expecting that to last about two and a half to three years. My question is, are you open to chartering in vessels at current levels? If you have the same sentiment as me with the super cycle coming up, or would you like to own vessels? I think it's a little bit of both. First of all, we definitely are in the owning vessel business and will continue to be. As part of our, particularly our minor bulk strategy, we do quite a bit of booking of forward cargoes and using other people's vessels at times to move those cargoes. We do charter in. Those are typically for short-term cargo covering where we believe we can make a profit on those liftings. We have done some longer-term charters in the sense of three-five months or four-six months. Again, that's usually on the back of a decent backhaul cargo so that we're covering quite a bit of that minimum period and then using it to make money on the front haul. What I think you're referring to is longer-term chartering in, and I would say no. We view that as quite a bit more risk to do longer-term charters. We have a large enough fleet where we can operate very efficiently, and we'd rather use our minor bulk fleet, trade around that with forward cargoes, and as I said, on a short-term basis, potentially use other vessels outside of our fleet. Long term, I would say the answer is no. We just look at that as dialing up the risk too much. Got you. Okay. The next question is on fleet expansion. With the smaller vessels folded in, do we assume that the Capes would be the next ones that you would look at, or is it really more of a case-by-case basis and value? I would call it a case-by-case basis. We have a barbell approach where we've identified we want to continue to grow in Capes and Ultras. There have been some very compelling Ultramax transactions that we've been able to execute on, which we have quickly and definitively. The Capesize market in terms of acquiring eco vessels, which is what we are focused on, is a little more challenging in the sense that the market is not as liquid as the eco Ultramax market. We will definitely continue to look at that, and if we see an opportunity, then we'll move on it. Got you. Okay. Those are all the questions I have. Thank you very much. Thank you. It appears we have no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back for any additional closing remarks. No, thank you everyone for participating today, and I hope everyone has a nice day and enjoys the rest of your summer. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, y ou may now disconnect.