Good day. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the solid position for the Nordic American Tankers Limited conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Herbjørn Hansson, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, you may begin your conference. Thank you very much, sir, thank you also to all our friends listening in and prepared to take the floor and ask questions. I will, as an introduction, make a few observations on Nordic American Tankers Limited, and I will just mention them in short at the start of this conference. That is question number one I would bring up, that is what is happening in the marketplace. We are very focused in our group on so-called ton-miles. That is the same as transportation work. The notion of ton-miles does reflect the transportation work. What we are seeing at this time, that is that the transportation work is increasing all the time, and we analyze this from various angles. We analyze our business in Japan, in China, in Korea, and also in India. As you know, we do have our business all around the world. In the recent past, we have started lifting oil from Guyana in South America. Again, I emphasize that we are focused on transportation work. We have a lot of business in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia and in these places. In Oman, we are also doing business. That is the next question I would raise is what will happen after December 5? You know, December 5, we have the new rules coming in. It has to do with Russian oil. I would note that uncertainty has always been good for our business. Uncertainty is, in fact, good for our business. In such times, we have the notion of hoarding. Hoarding. We need to have reserve capacity to take care of the demands coming up. At this time, we see there is an imbalance between supply and demand over tonnage, simply because there is not enough tonnage at this time. I'm also asked why the investor market is nervous, and I simply cannot respond to that question because our market, we are not nervous at all, because to be in the tanker business is no good place to be if people are nervous. We have been in this business for many, many, many years, from the early 1970s originally, we know how to handle the business, that is what we are doing. A fourth point I would mention is our work together with Beal Bank in Dallas. That cooperation is going in an excellent way. They are our main creditor, and we have paid back a lot of debt over the last two years. We also expect to be debt-free in one year or slightly more. I would note that we wish to give priority to dividend. Dividend is our main priority, and we will never leave that policy. We do see now there are many parties who wish to do business with us, and we appreciate that. There is maybe one reason or several reasons, and that is NAT, Nordic American, is very transparent. We have been in America, stock listed since the mid-1990s, and we have been operating in America before that. Everything about our company is in the open. There is nothing hidden as far as our company is concerned. I would also note that major oil companies are our main customers. I'm talking about ExxonMobil, I'm talking about Shell, I'm talking about Total, the French group, and British Petroleum, et cetera. Before ending my short introduction, I would like to mention this question of reduced emissions from ships. We do reduce emissions from our ships through active speed management. Let me explain this because not so many people are aware of this fact. When we go into a loading area, and we don't have cargo, then we go slow speed. When we go slow speed with one of our ships, we consume about 20 tons of bunker oil. 20 tons of bunker oil. When we have a cargo, say, going from Sri Lanka and to the Persian Gulf, when we get the cargo, we are given the so-called lay day canceling. That is when we are going to pick up the cargo. Then we increase the speed, and then, you know, the consumption of oil, bunker oil, could be about 50 tons. Between 20 tons and 50 tons, there is a big, big difference. In the past, tens of years ago, we went much more full speed, and we don't do that anymore. The coordinator, I would like to end my short introduction here, and I would be prepared to respond to any questions that our friends on this line would like to ask. Thank you, sir. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Omar Nokta from Jefferies. Your line is open. Thank you. Hi. Hi, Herbjørn. Good afternoon. Thanks for the update today and, you know, obviously very nice to see NAT in such a strong position with the tanker market really behind it here. Wanted to ask, you know, about the dividend. You mentioned that as being an integral piece of the NAT story. You know, as we look ahead, what can we expect in terms of that dividend? Do you see that growing here over the next several quarters just based off of what we're seeing in the market? Also, is there a certain ratio of earnings that you're looking to pay out going forward? Let me respond to that precisely. We have had in these rather quote-unquote, "difficult times," we have been in a good shape. We have paid $0.01 of dividend, $0.03 of dividend, now we pay $0.05 of dividend. The next dividend for the fourth quarter, that will be announced in February, and we expect it to be paid in March. We have said very clearly that we expect it to be $0.10. We double the dividend from $0.05- $0.10. We have in the past, in our strong position, we had dividends coming up to $1 a year. Of course, that is the objective again. In essence, I repeat what I said, I will always explain, and we will always explain in detail what we are doing, because that is our obligation. Having been in America for such a long time and placing such heavy emphasis on the American flag. Also today, I must say, we are strongly supporting Ukraine. We are strongly supporting Ukraine. Thank you. Thank you, Omar Nokta. Any other questions you had? Thanks, Herbjørn. Just another one about the Beal Bank facility. You mentioned that in your comments. You know, that's obviously given you a lot of flexibility here over the past several years, especially when the market was very soft. You've talked about getting your debt down to zero. How do you think about the facility in general? Do you look to just pay that down aggressively as quick as you can here over the next few quarters if possible? Or do you maybe refinance that here in the next couple of months if possible to sort of enhance the free cash flow profile? I, and we would prioritize dividend, and I would ensure that shareholders shall receive a check every quarter. We have now done that for 101 quarters. When it comes to the Beal facility, it has been very good for us, and we have an excellent relationship with the Beal Bank of Dallas. That relationship, I expect will continue in whatever times are ahead of us. Andy Beal, the head of Beal Bank, he's a very solid friend of Nordic American and vice versa. I would like to ask our CFO, Bjørn Giæver, and talk a little bit about the main numbers in which we are involved here with respect to reduction of debt and our dividend going forward. Could you, Bjørn, talk a little bit about that? Yes, Herbjørn. Hi, Omar. Good to hear from you. Yeah, as you know, the initial $6 million back in 2019, and we added another $30 million to it. Since 2019 we've paid down $205 million on this facility. Today it is $130 million. You know, in a $50,000 per day market, we could just by following the agreement we have, pay down close to $25 million per quarter, while at the same time paying in excess of $0.10 in dividend per quarter. The question of refinancing, we have several proposals on the table, we are looking at, you know, and contemplating what we should do about that. We would like to be debt free and, you know, could be able to increase our dividends even more. No decisions are made and, we're not in a hurry to decide on anything at the moment. There are plenty of options. I would like. Okay. I would like to add, Omar, that we are now, as far as I can judge, one of the strongest companies on the shipping sector in Wall Street. About that is how we see it at this time. I also am, I'm hopeful that our cooperation with Beal will continue in the future, whether we pay down all the debt or not. Again, I emphasize what I said, we will never give up dividend. Thank you. Thank you. No, that's clear. Yeah, it looks like basically, Bjørn, from your comments, you could just based off of this market backdrop, we can assume $25 million of debt reduction and at the same time pay out $0.10 in dividends each quarter. Absolutely. Good. All right. Well, thank you. Thanks, Herbjørn. And thanks, Bjørn. I'll turn it over. Your next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B. Riley Securities. Your line is open. Hi, Herb jørn. Hi, Bjørn. How are you? I'm doing excellent. Thank you for taking part in the discussion. Yeah. You often discuss your fleet management where you're selling your older vessels, which you have, but you also wanna grow from your current fleet to 30 Suezmaxes. How are you managing that? Do you see acquisition opportunities out there, and how do you balance that against your commitment to a dividend and debt reduction? The head of all this is capital allocation. It is a question of a capital allocation program, and there are several elements in that capital allocation program. We wish to expand without jeopardizing the ability to pay dividends. Here we need to have more than one thought in our head at a time. It is a picture with many elements. One is an overriding element, that is the dividend payment. How we manage to maneuver in this mortally environment is a different question, and it would take me an hour to explain in detail all our thinking of my own thinking and my staff and everybody in this company who participates actively in the management of this company and the management of the running of this company. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on that, Herbjørn. Do you see any opportunities to add new assets? People are chasing us all the time. You know, I feel like being at the dancing place in the old days. You know, everybody would like to dance with the girl. I almost feel like that everybody is chasing us in a way because they know we are very transparent and all details are known about us from America and from being stock listed in America. They do know that we don't have any strange things up the sleeve that investors and shareholders don't know about. That transparency is absolutely essential for us. Great. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Turner Holm from Clarksons. Your line is open. Hey. Hi there. Good afternoon, Herbjørn and Bjørn, and echo Omar's comments. It's good to see NAT with the tailwind behind it here. Herbjørn, I wanted to just ask about chartering strategy. I guess, NAT has historically been focused on the spot market, certainly see the one year time charter rates coming up quite a lot. I think they're up about 50% in the last couple of months, they doubled since the summer. How are you thinking about, you know, managing the fleet from a sort of commercial aspect as you move into next year? Thanks. I will again respond in two ways. Firstly, the dividend shall remain there. No, no discussion. Secondly, we are in the spot market, and as a main principle, we wish to be in the spot market. We will never take on any huge debt that could jeopardize our position. To be in the spot market is our strategy because such a policy does produce more money than any other policies. We are balancing all these considerations. You cannot give a clear cut answer to the point you are making. We have now, as I said, sold off a few ships over the last couple of months, and that is a normal renewal process in which we are involved. We are chased every day. I don't know, all these people coming after us, but at this time we are sitting back, and that is a good position to be in, to sit back. We do a lot of business in America, in the U.S. Gulf. We do a lot of business in the Middle East and in the Far East. Generally speaking, we don't wish to go for time charters now unless they are very, very attractive. Otherwise, we wouldn't do that. We would go for short-term voyages, and these are producing a lot of cash. This business is about cash. It is not about accounting. Nobody lives from accounting. Everybody lives from cash. As long as I've been in the business, and that's quite a long time, and I started actively operationally in 1980, and every week I always have a requirement to see how much cash do we have. Thank you. Appreciate that, Herbjørn. As you mentioned, you've been around this business about as long as anybody and, you know, with your sort of experience and perspective, how long do you think this strength in the tanker market can last? How are you thinking about that from a planning, financial planning perspective? As you say, I've been along since I took my first degree in economics in 1974, and I took my second degree in economics also in America a little bit later. If we did know the future, life would have been easy. That is really the function of a manager like myself or the chairman and the founder of this company. If I did know the future, that would be fine, but it is my obligation and our obligation on behalf of shareholders to have a view on the future. If you don't have a view, when we have 80,000 shareholders in America and when people are coming, what do you think about this or that? I cannot possibly say, "I don't know. I don't know," because I would be hiding. That is the last thing I could say. I would say is, "I don't know," because it is my obligation as leader of this group to have a view. If I don't have a view, I should leave this position to somebody else. I can tell you also, my family and I, we are the largest private shareholder group in this company. We have very good and solid support from BlackRock, which is one of our biggest supporters and biggest companies supporting us. We live from all the shareholders in a way, we support our shareholders, we must run the company. I enjoy this opportunity to talk to shareholders and investors because we do appreciate to get input from you. I'm hopeful that the stock price will go up much more than it is today. I cannot promise anything. As a leader of this group, it is my obligation to have a view. Thank you. Okay. I appreciate the perspective. Thank you, Herbjørn. I'll turn it back. Your next question comes from a line of Craig Rose from Axiom Capital Management. Your line is open. Hello, everybody. Well, I'll remind everyone the rates have gotten best during a war in Ukraine, I don't know what happens, nor does anyone else know what happens if the war ends. Regarding staying in the spot market, is there a percent equity that you can buy, new boats with the banks that don't require you to take on a time charter for that new vessel? Absolutely. The answer is yes. What is that level? I couldn't respond directly to your question because as I said, this is a question of managing capital allocation. I would be pleased to discuss this in more detail if you can send it to me, but I'm also very not concerned, but focused on not diverging information, internal information which does not fit in the open marketplace before it does materialize. We wish to act very transparently, and we wish to act very correctly. That level you mentioned, I couldn't respond in detail during this. Okay. Session. Okay. So the most conservative way is if you were able to pay down debt in a year, and rates stayed at these great levels, you could buy a new boat for cash almost every year, going forward if rates stayed at $50,000 a day. I believe you are absolutely right. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Masco from MRM Capital. Your line is open. Hello, Herbjørn Hansson. Hello there. Regarding your ATM, it seems like you issued another 6 million shares, with business being so strong, why do you continue to use the ATM and dilute shareholders? We have not used it for a long time, but Bjørn Giæver may elucidate pertinent aspects connected with this. Bjørn, could you comment on that? Yeah. We used it a little bit in the early parts of the quarter, simply because of, as you know, we've been going through an extremely low market for the last eight quarters. When the markets turns, it takes a little while before the good freight rates arrive in our bank account and our working capital increases. We wanted to make sure that we managed through it. I would assume going forward with business being so great that you're not gonna need to use it going forward like you didn't in the second half of the quarter, correct? Yes. I would say it's correct. That would be my view. It is correct. Yeah. When the market is as strong as now, we can do essentially whatever we wish. You may wish to supplement me, Bjørn. No, I totally agree with you. Mm-hmm. Do you have any view, like the previous questionnaire, do you have any view regarding if the war would end at some point, how that plays out in the tanker market? I could comment on that. The most simple response is, I don't know. I can tell you, in the past, some of you have heard about George Soros. George Soros is an American investor, and he said that we are now in World War III. Many years ago, I was working together with him on a special project in New York and in London. Given the premise that he says it's a World War III, that is one scenario. I don't need or wish to discuss international politics, but it was said this morning that a lot of people in Russia are against Putin. A lot of people are against him. We don't carry Russian oil anymore. We did carry Russian oil from the port of Primorsk in the Baltic Sea. We were invited into Russia to become a permanent company in Russia. We said, "No, we are not going to have an operation in Russia." At this time, we don't carry oil from Primorsk in the Baltic Sea, and we don't carry Russian oil. I can assure you, we have been involved and are to some extent involved in quote-unquote, dangerous areas like the Black Sea. We are doing business, not today, but with ExxonMobil and with Chevron. You know Chevron, of course, and who are in San Francisco. We have visited Chevron in the past, and we have a long business relationship in the past. Coming back to your question, what will happen? I'm hopeful that the war will end, but it will not impact us to any significant extent in the present circumstances. The thing is for us to be able to adjust very quickly, and we do adjust very quickly. We have a very competent Board of Directors on which there serve two Americans, one in Los Angeles and one in New York. The person in New York, he used to be the managing editor of Time Magazine. He was working for Bloomberg, who at one time aspired to become President of America. Jim Kelly, who was managing editor of Time Magazine, is a strong member of our board. Another strong member is Jenny Chu, who started out in Los Angeles as an ordinary worker in a hotel reception, and she became the managing director of a big financial institution in America. She speaks Korean, and she's helping us she's American citizen, and she's helping us a lot with our business in Korea. Coming back in response precisely to your question. I don't foresee any dramatic consequences of the war coming to an end for us. I can tell you, we are doing a lot of business in the Middle East. We are doing a business with Bahri. Bahri who is a part of Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest company in the world. We are doing business in Saudi Arabia, and have very good contacts and a business relationship with the top people in Saudi Arabia. My response to you, sir, is that I'm not concerned about the war coming to an end. I'm very hopeful that the war come to an end. I can tell you also that we are supporting Ukraine very strongly in all possible respects. One major Norwegian company, Kongsberg, they are supporting Ukraine with a lot of equipment for the Ukrainian activities. Again, I respond precisely. I don't see that the end of the war in any way will impact our business, except it will be a positive thing. What we do see in the tanker trade, that oil is moving in all directions, all over the world. Thank you. Albert, could I just ask, just to add a little comment to what you were saying, regarding the market. Is this Mike? Well, it's Erik Tomstad. Head of Chartering. Oh, yeah. There is our chartering. The top man of chartering. Can you, Erik, comment on this? Yeah. I would just like to say that there are quite a few things which point in the direction that we are heading into a supercycle in this tanker market, regardless of this ongoing war. You have an historical low order book. It's, I think it's around 2% of the fleet on order, and that's very, very low. We have new trading patterns coming up at the same time, which you can say it's a result of the war, but I think these changes will likely be permanent for at least for a long, long time. I can hardly see Europe's gonna be dependent on Russian oil for a long time to come. Things are looking very good from a general market perspective. Some people are complaining that we don't see very much scrapping of ships, but there's been a lot of ships sold to remote buyers in remote places of the world, which will continue to import Russian oil going forward. That's what you call it a shadow fleet, which is being built up at the moment. This fleet, we have a reason to believe it will not be very well-maintained. It's gonna not be very well insured, and it's not gonna be very well manned. It's not for all these ships to come back to the market if the war should end, which we of course hope it will soon. There's gonna be a lot of ships taken off the market just because of this. All in all, I think the future looks very good for the tanker market, going forward long term. If I should add to you what you said, Erik. Erik, who is heading up all our chartering activities. The oil companies, big oil, having about 50% of our business, ExxonMobil and the like, they wish to do work with the good people having the good fleet. We have both good people and good fleet. We have access to money via the American capital market, always. As you know, on this call, if you have a good project are always people there. It has to do with our reputation. Fortunately, we have built up a good reputation over the years because we never cheat, and we don't try to be quote, unquote, "clever." We always act with integrity and with honesty. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star one in your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from [Nick Lindheim] from Sefton. Your line is open. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I had a couple, if that's okay. Could you tell us currently, how many time charters you have and when they end, and if you can tell us what the rate on those time charters is? Yes. We, we can tell. Bjørn will know that, and I will know that. Will you comment? I think we're- Erik. Yes. We have four ships on time charter, and we have a total fleet of 19 ships. We have four on long-term time charters. We have two ships going to OQ Trading. They are committed for six years. Started early this year, or mid this year. We have one 2018 big ship, the Nordic Cygnus, which is on to Equinor. Equinor is one of the biggest companies in Europe. Yeah. She's committed for another year for as a minimum period. They have an option for another year on top of that. We have the Nordic Vega, which is a 2011 big ship which is on to Unipec, which is actually the biggest tanker chartering company in the world, it's the Chinese state. That's for a year. I asked Unipec when he had meetings with them, very good friends. How many people are you in your organization? They said, "500,000 people." I said, "That is a little bit more than we have," I said. Okay, thank you. One other question, if I can ask. You have two 2003 vintage Suezmax left in the fleet. Would you expect to be selling those in the next year? Or do you think in the current market, you can continue to operate those for a few more years? The response is that in this market, we don't wish to sell anything. When people ask us if they could buy ship from us now, I send one of my longest emails to them with two letters, no. N-O. Again, the big advantage of our organization is that we are able to change our minds on a very short notice. We are not a big, huge oil company who have many committees and many meetings and a lot of people. We are very efficient and also, when we do things, we do them quickly and in a smart way, I would add. Okay. Last question. What portion of the current debt is on fixed rates versus floating? Fixed, on the debt. Can you comment on the debt, fixed rate debt? We don't have fixed rate debt, do we? No, we don't. No, we don't have. We don't have fixed rate debt. Okay. All floating interest rate. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Pleasure. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Herbjørn Hansson, I turn it back over to you for some closing remarks. I would like to thank you very much for taking your time to listen to this conference. I have been strongly advised by my colleagues here and abroad to be very modest in my judgment and in my comments, I remind myself about that. I must also admit, I think this is very exciting in a way, and I have to tell you that I will continue and, this is not a threat or a promise, it is a fact. We enjoy every day we have, and we think it was great that we could have this conference. Any of you are welcome to contact my colleagues and myself whenever you wish. We are very sensitive not to divulge any information that is not circulated in the marketplace. It comes back to my comment earlier, nobody knows what the future is holding, but in this business, there is nowhere to hide. I, Mr. Coordinator, I would like to thank you very much for arranging this thing. If you don't expect me to say anything more, I declare that this conference is adjourned.