Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Safe Bulkers Conference Call to discuss The Third Quarter 2022 Financial esults. Today we have with us from Safe Bulkers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Polys Hajioannou, President, Dr. Loukas Barmparis, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Konstantinos Adamopoulos. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. At which time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for the automated message advising your line is open. Following this conference call, if you need any further information on the conference call or on the presentation, please contact Capital Link at 212-661-7566. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Forward-looking statements will be read now. Before we begin, please note that this presentation contains forward-looking statements as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Concerning future events, the company's growth strategy and measures to implement such strategy, including expected vessel acquisitions and entering into further time charters, words such as expects, intends, plans, believes, anticipates, hopes, estimates, and variation of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates, which are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond the control of the company. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to changes in the demand for dry bulk vessels, competitive factors in the market in which the company operates, risks associated with operations outside the United States, and other factors listed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company expressly disclaims any obligations or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the company's expectations with respect thereto or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any statement is based. Now, I will turn the floor over to Dr. Loukas Barmparis. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning. I'm Loukas Barmparis, Chairman of Safe Bulkers. Welcome to our press call and webcast to discuss the financial results for the third quarter of 2022. The third quarter was a good quarter. We had a satisfactory financial performance of $0.41 earnings per share and maintaining our dividend policy of $0.05 per share. We operated in a gradually weakening charter market environment compared to the previous quarter with increased revenues due to past contracts and earnings from scrubber-fitted vessels and higher interest expenses due to increasing interest rates. In this environment, we maintain a strong balance sheet leverage comparable to our fleet's cap value and liquidity in capital resources, providing us with the required flexibility. As we see in slide 3, certain of our characteristics differentiate us from our peers. The quality of our fleet and our fleet expansion on one hand, leverage liquidity and contracted revenues on the other, not only rewarding our shareholders through the dividend policy, but in parallel, creating increasing value through an extensive fleet expansion program with Phase 3 Newbuilds. We would like to focus on our fleet quality and our environmental investments presented in slide 4 because this is the basis on which we compete in the market against our peers. All 44 vessels in our fleet will have Ballast Water Treatment System by the end of 2022. All 8 of our capes will have scrubbers by the end of 2023, and 21 vessels will be environmentally upgraded by the end of 2023. Furthermore, our fleet by the end of 2023 will consist of 19 vessels, 12 being Eco. Out of the total fleet, 19 vessels will be 12 Eco ships and 7 Phase 3 ships. This is slide 5, the environmental ratings according to the RightShip of our two Phase 3 Newbuilds, which we took delivery of during 2022, the MV Vassos and the MV Climate Respect. These vessels have the best environmental performance globally in the dry bulk market on the deadweight tonnage with massive savings in fuel consumption. We intend to compete on this basis with our newbuild fleet with 7 such ships by the end of 2023 and 10 by the end of 2024. We would like to focus on our improved capital structure in slide 6. We are maintaining a comfortable leverage of $441.4 million compared to our fleet cap value of $390 million with a fleet of 10.5 years of age. In 2022, we had $18.7 million, about 80% preferred C shares. At the same time, our average interest rate stands at 2.91% for our controlled dated debt, with a portion of EUR 100 million at 2.95 fixed interest rate in a secured five-year loan. Our liquidity is presented in slide seven. Our liquidity and capital position remains strong at $266 million, which together with the contracted revenue of $327 million, as seen in slide eight, provide flexibility to our management in capital allocation. We are well hedged against the Cape market volatility. Currently, the Baltic Capesize Index 5TC stands at $12,400 today, while, as in the left graph of slide eight, seven out of eight of our Capesize class vessels are chartered under period charters with 2.8 years average remaining duration and a 22,700 average daily charter rate, totaling to $185 million of contracted revenue from Capes alone. As presented in slide nine, we have maintained a level of dividend at $0.05 per share over the last quarters, translated to an improving dividend yield, mainly reflecting prevailing conditions in the capital markets. Focal points in this uncertainty of these capital markets and the world economy is that we continue to direct a portion of our free cash flows to finance our newbuilds that will provide us with competitive advantage in terms of fuel consumption and environmental performance while maintaining our leverage at relatively low levels, as we have already discussed. In addition, we have repurchased 2.8 million common shares. In slide 10, we show the relationship among our debt, fleet scrap value, contracted revenue, cash and liquidity, and CapEx requirements. With a strong company balance sheet fundamentals, ample liquidity leverage at a comparable level to fleet scrap value, secured cash flows from reliable counterparties, fleet expansion with Phase 3 Newbuilds ahead of peer competition and environmental regulations of 2023 onwards, the company is well-positioned to react to challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Let me now summarize the key takeaways in slide 11. We believe that Safe Bulkers fundamentals offer financial flexibility to reflect market challenges and pursue opportunities. We believe that Safe Bulkers, with each component, is among those companies that will successfully navigate the environmental challenges of the energy transition and of aging dry bulk fleet and will tackle the global uncertainties by utilizing the inherent qualities of each fleet and the efficiencies of its large-scale environmental upgrade program. In parallel to the company's expansion, we believe we offer a meaningful dividend. We believe the company is well-positioned for the long run within an environmental-based environment. Now, let's move to slide 15 for the industry update. We present on the graphs the current status of the market. Rates have been volatile, driven by the commodity dynamics at levels substantially lower compared to the highs earlier this year. On the Panamax and Handysize market is likely to support the freight market throughout this year. On the supply side, as presented in slide 14, the orderbook stands at 8.6% at relative, which is relatively low levels compared to capacity, and thus we remain cautiously optimistic despite the global instability caused by war, energy crisis, and evidently inflationary pressures. We do expect scrapping to accelerate as a combined effect of fleet aging. About 35% of fleet is older than fifteen years old, and environmental regulations that kick off from first of January 2023. Moving on to slide 15, we present the development of the CRB Commodity Index, which currently stands at a five-year high. The index reflects basic commodity futures prices, for example, energy, agriculture, precious metals, and industrial metals, which represent leading indicators for shipping. Normalization of monetary and fiscal policies that delivered support during the pandemic is fueling demand as policymakers aim to lower inflation back to targets. The October forecast of IMF downgrades the expected growth of global GDP at 3.2% for 2022. Global inflation has been further revised up due to the war-induced commodity price increases, the broadening price pressures from food and energy prices, as well as lingering supply-demand imbalances, and is anticipated to reach 8.8% this year and 6.5% for 2023. In 2023, this inflationary monetary policy is expected to affect global output with a projected increase by just 2.7%. The forecasted global dry bulk demand growth is expected to increase only by 1% in 2022, and are also challenged for the macro outlook. In China, the deepening of real estate crisis have led growth to be revised downward with major global and dry bulk spillovers. We expect that the electrification will be a major growth driver as global investments in renewable electricity capacity will continue to rise. Emerging share of economies are in a growth slowdown or outright contraction. The global economy's future health rests critically on the successful calibration of monetary policy, the course of the war in Ukraine and the possibility of further pandemic-related supply side disruptions, for example, in China. Turning to the slide 16, we focus on increased value creation as a result of our investment in scrubbers technology, currently installed on 18 of our vessels. The very low sulfur fuel oil versus a heavy sulfur fuel oil price differential is translated to increased revenues for the scrubber-fitted vessels. Presently, Hi5 in Singapore starts at about $270 per ton and at about $205 per ton for 2023 as per futures market. At this assumed price for 2023, the implied scrubber gain potential is about $23 million per annum for our 18 scrubber-fitted vessels. As we said already, we are in the process for additional scrubbers in our fleet mix. our fleet mix. In our market view, slide 17, during 2022, there has been an increased industry-wide volatility driven by geopolitical disruptions. The ESG framework and Paris Agreement adherence becomes increasingly important in dry bulk trade, and as a result, demand for technological efficiency creates opportunities for those willing to invest as Safe Bulkers has done. Such environmentally efficient fleets may affect company valuations and lead to two-tier market with differentiation in earnings capacity of such vessels. Furthermore, there might be spillover situations such as coal scale back, vessel scrapping and nearshoring as a result of the stringent environmental regulations. The market may tighten even further as a result of the uncertainty in the environmental regulations, the transition towards green energy and the global inflationary environment. Now let me pass the floor to our CFO, Konstantinos Adamopoulos, for our financial overview. Thank you, Loukas, and good morning to everyone. As a general note, during the quarter, this quarter, we operated in a gradually weakening charter market environment compared to the previous quarter, with increased revenues due to past contracts and earnings from scrubber-fitted vessels and higher interest expenses due to increased interest rates. In slide 19, we present our quarterly net revenues and adjusted EBITDA, both standing at satisfactory levels. Slide 20, we present our strong chartering performance and example of our management alignment. We achieved a daily time charter equivalent of $23,403 compared to $24,427 during the same period in 2021. The net income for the third quarter of 2022 reached $51 million compared to net income of $55.4 million during the same period in 2021. Our daily OpEx stood at $4,949 versus $4,608 last year. Our daily OpEx excluding dry docking and free delivery expenses stood at $4,571, almost unchanged from last year's figure of $4,570. Our all-in OpEx and G&A for Q3 2022 stood at $6,309, which we believe is one of the most competitive compared to our peers. This number excludes all our dry docking and free delivery expenses as well as all our directors' and officers' compensation. We try to do the right thing. For example, we have 0% commission of chartering management for our managers, and through our managers and management direct relations, we achieve lower average total chartering commissions to third parties of 4% compared to the market standard of 5%. Moving to slide 21, we present our fleet contracted employment percentage, noting that we have contracted revenue of approximately $314 million net of commissions from our non-cancellable spot and time charter contracts, and this does not include any scrubber benefit as of November 4. We present in slides 22 and 23 our low break-even point for the nine months of 2022, which we believe is one of the lowest in the industry, and the cash flow bridge in millions for the same period. The global economy is experiencing a number of turbulent challenges. Inflation higher than what was seen in several decades, tightening financial conditions in most regions, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the lingering COVID-19 pandemic all weigh heavily on the market outlook. Of course, our main focus is lean operations in this inflationary environment. In slide 24, we present our own balance sheet analysis. Our balance sheet is very healthy, and assets are presented in their book value, noting that presently asset values exceed the book values considerably. Moving on to slide 25 with our quarterly financial highlights for the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period of 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2022 stood at $66.9 million compared to $67.7 million for the same period in 2021. Our adjusted earnings per share for the third quarter of 2022 was $0.39, calculated on a weighted average number of 120.4 million shares compared to $0.40 during the same period in 2021, calculated on a weighted average number of 119.9 million shares. In conclusion, in slide 26, we show our quarterly operational highlights for the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period last year. Based on our satisfactory financial performance, the company's board of directors declared a $0.05 dividend per common share. We would like to emphasize that the company is maintaining a healthy cash position of about $136 million as of 4 November 2022. Another $145.3 million in available revolving credit facilities as well as $51 million in undrawn borrowing capacity available under two loan facilities in relation to two newbuild vessels. That's a combined liquidity of over $330 million that provide us with significant firepower. Furthermore, in addition to our contracted liquidity, we have contracted revenue from our non-cancellable spot and period time charters of more than $313 million net of commissions and excluding scrubber revenue. Additional borrowing capacity in relation to seven debt-free existing vessels and seven new builds upon their delivery. We believe that a strong liquidity and relatively low leverage will enable us to be flexible with our capital structure expansively while still rewarding our shareholders. Our press release presents in more detail our financial and operational results. We are ready now for the Q&A session. Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one from your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. We ask that you please wait for your name to be announced. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants that are using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Once again, that's star one. Thank you. Thank you. Our first question is from the line of Chris Wetherbee. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good morning. Yeah, so if we could just dig in a little bit more into, you know, the Chinese COVID lockdowns, you know, softening demand over there in China. You know, how that's really impacting bulk shipments, you know, into year-end as well as the first half of 2023. Didn't know if there was some additional color that you could shed on the situation and, you know, what you're hearing out of there and, you know, what, if there's, you know, if you have an anticipation of, you know, where that's gonna be headed, you know, both near term and into the first half of next year, that'd be great. Yes. The situation with COVID in most countries is back to normal, and the trade is very normalized, including major hubs like Singapore has opened up where ships can do crew changes and take supplies and all the necessary. In China, the situation is still a bit uncertain due to the low vaccine ratio of Chinese population. So there is still this question mark of how the winter will develop and if there will be lockdowns or zero COVID policy will be maintained. For the time being, it’s under control. We don’t see something extraordinary happening there, and business is as usual as it was over the summer. Now if we see some lockdowns there, then this will create congestion. This in the previous round was not necessarily a bad thing to have in the freight market. For the time being, it looks okay, but it's still early in the winter. You know, it's very helpful. Thanks for that additional color. You know, moving on to fleet sizing. You know, it looks like you guys reported 44 vessels within your fleet within this quarter in comparison to 42 in 2Q and 40 in 1Q. Just looking forward at the cadence of the fleet additions and new builds, what are you expecting in terms of fleet sizing moving forward, you know, both into 4Q and again into the first half of next year? Yes. Look, the addition of the new ships that they start coming, or two already delivered and five more will be delivered in 2023, they are happening at a very good time as far as the contribution of that part of the fleet to the revenue of the company simply because the ships have the latest technology, very economical on fuel oil consumption at a time when fuel oil prices are around $700 per metric ton. So these ships, when we ordered them back in 2020, we were estimating that fuel oil price would have been around $400 or $500. So at present levels, these ships could easily perform $5,000 per day better than other modern ships in the market. It's a very welcome contribution to the company at what it looks to be a challenging year ahead of us, mainly for non-shipping reasons, for reasons related to the war and reasons related to economies falling into recession because of high interest rates and efforts to curb the inflation created because of energy prices and the war. For the time being, we consider these additions very good, and they are very welcome, coming into the fleet in 2023. At the same time, we are taking advantage of the high fuel oil prices to install our scrubbers on the remaining Capes in our fleet in order to work in spreads of around $200 for 2023, which give a very quick payback of 2.5 years for those ships. I believe that 2023 is a year also to concentrate on environmental investments on the fleet. We are planning to increase the dry dockings in the year of 2023 from the normal 8 or 9 we have every year to possibly 15 or 16 dry dockings, taking advantage of the lower freight market and at the same time to invest in environmental improvements of the fleet to even be more competitive in the years to come. I believe that the last couple of years shipping hasn't done much towards decarbonization. Now with the low freight market, people will be more concentrated on how to invest surplus liquidity into environmental upgrading of their fleets. We are doing it in two folds. One is Phase 3 Newbuilds, and the second fold is upgrading our existing ships earlier than scheduled with the improvements on environmental devices like ducts and other things and low friction paints and other things that today's technology provides. Yeah. I mean, if you consider that fleet of, I mean, to date it is about 44 vessels and at the end of 2023, 19 of our vessels will be either Eco or Phase 3 vessels. This means something for the ability of the company and the timing of the orders and everything. On the other hand, if you consider 21 out of, I mean, of the other vessels that are really upgraded environmentally, someone could understand that we have cared substantially for the revenue, our revenue in 2023 in terms of environmental investments. Because this corresponds directly to our ability to charter these vessels at higher charter rates compared to the others in the market, based on the fuel consumption. Not only that, this is one part of our environmental investments, but also another indication of how well we are prepared is that for Capes, for example, we have expanded the fleet during 2022 in area. Now it happens that while the market is $12,000, we have chartered on average for two years $22,000. This shows how proactive our management has been and what we are trying to achieve by increasing our revenues and doing orders on time and trying to read the market as better as possible. Thank you. That's certainly very helpful. So, you know, in terms of the five additions, you know, you're expecting to take on in 2023, I mean, do you have any indicator of, you know, is that gonna be in the first half, the second half or, you know, any additional color around that? Yes. Two are in the first half, and three are in the second half. We start in Q1 and Q2, and then we have three more in the second half. They are pretty much evenly spread throughout the year. Those ships will be added. Then we have three more in 2024 and one more in the beginning 2025. By that time, we expect that the company will be able to assess better what on new technologies, other than the IMO Phase 3, Tier 3 vessels, what new technology will be offered by shipyards and what type of new engines will be offered by shipyards before considering the next move. I'm recalling that in the past, we were considering two years ago, ships with dual engine powered by LNG. Later on, other proposals, other ideas came around with vessels burning ammonia. Later came methanol. Now it's coming hydrogen. There are so many things that they are appearing and disappearing in the last 12 months. It's good that ship owners did not dive into these stories before markets becoming more clear. I believe by the time we complete our newbuilding program in the next year or year and a half, we will have more concrete evidence on what the company's future investment would be. To that extent, I mean, the program we are doing here as a company, you have seen on slide number 10, the liquidity we have in the company right now is more than the CapEx to receive the nine new buildings, nine remaining new buildings from the yards. We are planning the future debt on those new buildings that we will be receiving in 2023 and 2024 to be wholly invested on new technologies. From our partners and company, we are doing what we have to do and what we can do to stay sustainable in the future and to be able to be competitive in the future. This is the planning we have done, and for this reason we are happy today that we are getting delivery of these ships without the additional burden of any finances. We are very well prepared when the yards develop the next technologies to be able to participate on those discussions. Thank you very much for that additional color. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, you may press star one to ask a question and please wait for your name to be announced. Our next question is from the line of Gabriel Morante with Safe Bulkers. Please proceed with your questions. Hey, I just wanted to get a little bit of insight into. I know you guys provided some insight into your fleet and how you're looking to upgrade it, but my question kind of relates to the retiring of the previous vessels and how that was, either losses or gains are being recorded. Is that being recorded as part of, you know, your normal operations, or is that being charged against, you know, the retained earnings? If I got the question is what we do with the rest of the fleet, the older ships or something else you ask? Yeah. What I'm asking kind of is, you know, the proceeds, whether it's a gain or a loss on the old fleet, if that's being reported against your operating income. Look, the old fleets, the old part of our fleet is all ships we contracted as new buildings 20, 15 years ago or 10 years ago at very healthy prices. We don't have expensive new buildings in our fleet. Maybe you saw a month ago that we sold one 2006 big vessel for $16 million. The planning was to continue and is to continue maybe selling selectively if the market allows a couple of more older ships and create more liquidity for new technology. Even if we don't sell those older ships, we plan to trade them till their economic life at the end of their economic lives. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the reply. Thank you. At this time, there are no additional questions. I'll now hand the floor back to management for closing remarks. There are no other questions? No, there is not, sir. If you'd like to make some additional comments, please go ahead. Yes. We're fine. Thank you very much for attending this our webcast for the Q3 results of 2022, and we look forward to discuss again with you in next quarter. Thank you again and have a nice day. Thank you to everyone that participated in today's call. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day.