Good morning, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Franz, and I'll be the operator assisting the call today. 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 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Lister, Chief Executive Officer of Global Ship Lease. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Global Ship Lease First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. You can find the slides, as usual, that accompany today's call on our website at www.globalshiplease.com. As usual, slides two and three remind you that today's call may include forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations and assumptions and are, by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to many factors, including those described in the safe harbour section of the slide presentation. We would also like to direct your attention to the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on our 2025 Form 20F, which was filed in March 2026. You can find the form on our website or on the SECs. All of our statements are qualified by these and other disclosures in our reports filed with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. The reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to which we will refer during this call to the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP usually refer to the earnings release that we issued this morning, which is... I'm joined, as usual today, by our Executive Chairman, George Urukos, and our Chief Financial Officer, Tassos.

So, again, the call with high-level commentary on GSL and our industry, and then Tassos and I will take you through our recent activity, Quarterly Results and Financials. after that we will be very pleased Thank you Tom and good morning afternoon or evening to all of you joining today The opening months of 2026 have been a continuation and in fact an escalation of the themes of geographical uncertainty and volatility that we show in 2025 From the continued disruption of tariffs and the Red Sea to the unprecedented disruption in the state of Hormuz which has resulted in the humanitarian crisis of around 20,000 seafarers being trapped in the Persian Gulf. The world has become more dangerous, extraordinarily unpredictable and complex. And this has ramifications throughout the supply chain. Trade routes have shifted, fragmented and decentralized, ultimately becoming more inefficient, requiring even more container ship capacity and more flexible ships to transport a given volume of containers. In these conditions, we continue to see strong demand for our mid-sized and smaller container ships, which provide valuable flexibility and reliability for our line-accompany customers. In this environment, we have worked hard to keep adding charters so that our contracted revenues now stand at $2.1 billion over 2.6 years. Our charter coverage is 100% for 2026 and 86% for 2027. We continue to deliver and optimize our Fortress balance sheet, all while paying an annualized dividend of $2.5 per share, which is a dividend yield of around 6% on the basis of our stock price at a close yesterday. As always, we are keeping an eye on opportunities for disciplined, prudent fleet renewal that will allow us to continue generating strong cash flow through the medium and long term as our existing cash cows age out. Fundamentally, we maintain a focus on resilience and optionality, which has continued to serve us and our shareholders as well, and provides a sturdy foundation in a world of uncertainty from which to act decisively on compelling opportunities as they arise. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom.

Hello again, everyone. Please turn now to slide 5, where you will see our diversified charter portfolio. As of March 31, we have over 2 billion in forward contract revenues with 2.6 years of contract cover from a well-diversified and top-notch set of charterers. We have 100% of our revenue days covered for 2026 and 86% covered for 2027. On slide six, we go over our dynamic capital allocation policy. A steady stream of significant geopolitical events over the past several years has added further volatility into the already cyclical nature of our industry, creating an environment where resilience, flexibility, and dynamism are critically important. Maximizing long-term shareholder value is at the core of what we do, and our combination of paying an attractive dividend, building equity value through deleveraging, and highly selective fleet renewal, which is a stick monetization of older, non-core assets, are all in the service of that goal. Slide seven shows the cyclicality of our industry, as well as our prudent and long-term thinking when it comes to managing it. You can see our history of ship purchases and how they have been clustered during market downturns, or have otherwise been structured to minimize downside risk while maximizing upside potential. While not shown on this chart, it's worth noting that the flip side of choosing the right circumstances under which to buy ships is identifying the right opportunities to sell ships. All of this sounds simple enough to do in theory, but it is less straightforward in practice, and hopefully you will agree from our track record that we have managed to strike the risk.

With that, I'll pass the call to Tassos to discuss Slide 8 shows our financial highlights in the first quarter of 2026. I would like to emphasize a few key takeaways. Our financial performance and cash flow have remained very strong. Our cash position is 655 million, which on paper bring us almost to net zero debt, although 156 million of this cash is restricted. The remainder ensures that we can fully cover our covenants, work in capital leans and manage the potential financial implications of geopolitical disruptions and other macroevents in an increasingly unpredictable world. It also provides dry powder both for CAPEX to optimize the commercial value of our existing fleet and for disciplined investment in fleet renewal when the right opportunities present themselves. Indeed, as Tom has referenced, we were pleased to agree the forward sales of three of our all the CIFs which will all be 25 years old or older by the time they are delivered to buyers for an aggregate price of 52 million which we expect will unlock a book gain of around 25 million, added to which we will hand on to the cash flows to be generated by their existing charters until they are delivered between 4th quarter of 2026 and 4th quarter of 2027. And we achieve all this while also consistently paying a healthy and recently upsized dividend. Side 9 shows our ongoing efforts to build resilience and equity value while delivering our balance sheet. Our outstanding debt is shown on the left graph, which stood at 915 million at the end of 2022, now sits at under 700 million and is on track to be well below 600 million by year end. The right graph highlights a similar result for financial leverage, but to an even greater extent, which we have reduced from 8.4 times in 2018 to 0.3 times today. Slide 10 bears the progress out further. As seen in the left-hand graph, we have been able to maintain a highly competitive cost of debt even as base rates have meaningfully increased. Our break-even rates have seen a similar trajectory as our progress in reducing interest expense has enabled us to absorb inflationary increases in vessel OPEX over time, primarily related to rising crewing costs. With that, I will turn the call back over to Tom to discuss the market and our fleet.

Thanks, Tathos. On slide 11, we re-emphasize our focus on container ships between 2,000 TU and approximately 10,000 TU. These ship sizes provide the backbone for containerised trade, with around three quarters of global containerised trade volumes flowing in the quote-unquote non-main lane trades, which tend to require ships offering more flexibility and adaptability than the very big container ships, by which I mean the jumbos and A380s of the container shipping industry, that attract more media attention. These very big ships tend to be limited to the big east-west main lane arterial trades, requiring specialized port infrastructure, deep water, and huge cargo volumes. Meanwhile, mid-sized and smaller container ships, like those in our fleet, can go almost anywhere and are not reliant on any one region or trade. And as geopolitical uncertainty has increasingly become a prioritized, operationalized, leading to a larger percentage of trade, further increasing the demand for these mid-sized and smaller container ships that GSL provides. On slide 12, we go over the developing situations in the Middle East. While we're not geopolitical experts by any means and cannot predict how these situations will unfold, we can provide some context about what we are seeing now and what we have seen in the past. Let's take the Red Sea first. Prior to the disruption, about 20% of containerized trade volumes moved through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Since the disruption, ships have been forced to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, a far longer voyage, and one that has absorbed about 10% of effective shipping capacity in the process. After a brief period of optimism that saw a limited return of ships to the area, the security situation in the region sharply deteriorated once again. While, of course, we cannot know for sure, it certainly appears, for the time being, that liner companies are unlikely to return to transiting at scale in the near term. Now, on to the more recent conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping traffic has been and continues to be seriously constrained since the beginning of the Iran conflict. Most of the press coverage has focused on the significance of closing Hormuz to the energy sector and the growing risk of a global energy and fertilizer crisis. However, there is also an impact on container shipping as, prior to the conflict, around 3 to 4% of global containerised trade volumes passed through the strait. Now, major ports and shipping hubs in the area are seeing only a fraction of normal volumes with limited transshipments or overland freight options available to replace the lost trade volumes and cutting across all the land. 30,000 seafarers are currently estimated to be trapped. The longer-term implications of these disruptions remain unclear. For the time being, both situations remain highly dynamic and offer yet another set of complex challenges for the shipping world to navigate while keeping seafarer safety at the forefront of any decision-making. Slide 13 shows supply side and scrapping trends. The situation there remains largely the same as it has been for some time. Idle capacity and scrapping activity both remain negligible. And with capacity constrained and trade routes in continual flux, the global fleet is consistently finding employment and often doing so at very strong rates that are keeping older ships on the water, making money instead of being scrapped. We highlight the order book on slide 14. In recent years, the order book has grown meaningfully, although the segments that GSL operates in have seen far less growth. The overall order book to fleet ratio stands at 37%, but this is dragged upwards by the 60% ratio for vessels over 10,000 TU. In other words, the segments in which GSL primarily competes, the order book to fleet ratio stands at a somewhat more digestible, sub 10,000 TU size segments are aging. If we were to assume that all ships 25 years and older were scrapped through 2030 and netted out that capacity against new capacity delivering from the order book, then the sub 10,000 TU fleet would actually shrink by 3.4%. In the current market, which has minimal slack, GSL is happy to lock in charter coverage at highly supportive rates. And if the market were to experience a downward normalization, we would expect scrapping activity to pick up meaningfully, offsetting the arrival of new vessels in part. Slide 15 shows the charter market. When looking at the market rates on the right side, I would like to re-emphasize that our Our average daily break-even rates are just above $9,800. Operating leverage in our business means that essentially everything over that point falls straight to the bottom line. In this environment, we have added charter coverage so that we now have more than $2 billion of contracted revenues spread over 2.6 years, offering us the comfort of forward visibility in an otherwise highly uncertain world. And with that, I will turn it back to George on slide 16.

Thank you, Tom. To summarize, we are focused on maintaining optionality, resilience, and operational integrity in a complex and uncertain world. As supply chains fragment and shift from one day to the next, flexibility is key, and that is precisely what the GSL fleet provides to our line company customers. We have extensive, multi-year charter cover over $2 billion of contracted revenues, spread over the next 2.6 years in fact. We have built a fortress balance sheet and have highly competitive breakeven rates, such that we are in strong position for any circumstances. And we will continue to follow our mantra of staying patient, disciplined and nimble regarding value-accredited flip-renewal, while also prioritizing the return of capital to shareholders via $2.50 per share annualized dividend. Now with that, we will be very pleased to take your questions.

And we will now begin the question and answer session. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you would like to redraw your question, simply press star 1 again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. As of now, your first question comes from the line of Liam Burke from V-Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, George. Tom, Tassos, how are you today?

Hi, Liam. Really well, thank you. How are you? Just fine, thank you.

If I look at your open charters for 27, have there been – could you gauge charters' interest in forward-fixing those vessels and any kind of appetite for where the rates are going?

The market right now, Liam, is as healthy as has been. There is demand. There's not enough ships. So whatever we see on the market right now is a result of unavailability of tonnage, not a lack of demand. So the market is right now healthy for ships opening in 2026 and obviously for ships that are large enough in 2027. When I say large enough, like I said, always the ships that are in demand forward more than anything else, are ships that are in excess of 4,000 TEU, or three and a half to 4,000 maybe.

You got great prices on the three 2,000 TEU vessels you sold, forward sold, and you've had some great prices on the purchases of the three 8500s in the fourth quarter. But looking at the pricing that you got on the older vessels, Are you seeing any opportunity to add assets here?

Well, Liam, as you know, having listened to our earnings call now for a number of years, I guess, we always keep our eyes open, but we stick to the mantra that George described at the tail end of his remarks. In other words, we're patient, we're disciplined, and we're nimble. So we always keep our eyes open. We're always running numbers. We're always looking at opportunities. But we only move on the right opportunities. So we're continuing to see interesting things, but none that have met our fairly stringent investment criteria and, you know, meet the right mix of risk and return. So as a result, we have not acquired anything. Instead, we've monetized these older assets, and I know Tassel's mentioned that on the call. We get not only the gain on book that we're estimating at roughly 25 million when they're eventually delivered to buyers, but we also get to hang on to the contracted cash flows between now and the time of delivery, and the vessels are being delivered between, depending on the ship, between the fourth quarter of this year and the fourth quarter of 2027. So we're pleased with the deal.

Great. Thanks, Claire. And I just have a real quick one for Tazos. On the SG&A for the quarter, I know you have seasonal expenses that don't repeat the balance of the year, But even on a year-over-year basis, they were higher. Is there anything in there unusual?

Nothing unusual. It has to do with the accounting method of the incentive plan that we have mentioned in the 20th. It has to do with how it is being calculated and, of course, comparing to the share price versus the previous time that it was in 2021.

Great. Thank you, Tassus.

And your next question comes from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning. Thank you.

Appreciate the question.

I guess, you know, giving a commentary to the charter market remains firm for now, but, you know, forward visibility is certainly limited and sentiment might be somewhat cautious. But, you know, how are your customers approaching duration today? Are they still kind of looking to lock in multi-year charters? Are there increasingly favoring shorter tenures, just given the geopolitical uncertainty? You would love to get your thoughts on that. Thank you.

Sure. Stephanie, hi, this is Tom. Thanks for posing the question. I'll kick it off, and no doubt, George and possibly Tassos will add to it. You know, charter negotiations, it's a two-way discussion. So you're absolutely right. I would say that in the context of heightened uncertainty, the charterers would probably prefer to go short rather than to go long. But given that there's such limited liquidity and availability in the charter market, if they want the tonnage, they have to move much closer to the terms that are being offered by owners like us, which means that there's always a compromise found between us, between both rate and duration. And, you know, going back to George's earlier comments, if for the right ships, duration of several years is still very firm rates. George, do you want to add anything to that?

I just take on what you said. It's really a compromise between a negotiation between the charterers and the owners. The owners want the certainty of long employment. The charterers want a good deal. So, you know, longer employment gets better chartered, obviously, than short employment. So you might have an immediate opening, let's say, in the next six months, she might get double what she would get for, you know, she might get double for, you know, a six-month period than what she would get for a three-year period. So it's just a matter of negotiation.

Understood. Thank you. And then I guess, you know, you continue to talk about being selective and disciplined regarding state renewal. Can you maybe just highlight, you know, what your ideal replacement profile looks like, So ship size, age, eco, specification, and the likes, and then maybe a timing or preferences that relates to vessel renewal in terms of your broader kind of capital allocation priorities.

Sure. I'll kick this off. And again, no doubt, George will weigh in. So let's back into this. We're very comfortable with the size segments upon which we're focused, which we think provide the right combination of operational flexibility and an attractive risk-return mix, by which I mean we're going to stay focused upon the roughly 2,000 to roughly 10,000 TEU size segments when it comes to renewal. If you were to offer us the perfect choice, it would probably skew towards the mid and upper end of that, so call it somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 TEU or so. In terms of age of asset, we're not dogmatic. We look at every project or every prospect on its own merits. So as you've seen, we're willing to look at ships with as long as the price is minimal, and we're also willing to contemplate new builds. So there's no dogma on that. We'll look at every deal on its merits, but we will continue in size range, as is our current.

Great. Well, thank you so much.

My pleasure. Your next question comes from Omar Nocte from Clarkson Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, George, Tom, and Tato. I do have a couple of questions. And maybe just first kind of back onto those three shift sales. Tom, you highlighted, you know, $52 million combined price looks fairly decent, but then also you get to generate what looks like perhaps maybe 20 million or so of EBITDA until you sell them. So I think just looking at that, it suggests that ship values are quite a bit firmer than, well, certainly than what the share price implies. Just wanted to get a sense from kind of your angle, is this something broad-based across all container ships, or is this perhaps an ARB that you're able to capture just given that these vessels are maybe later in life? Yeah, I just wanted to get a sense, you know, in terms of where you see values from here. Is it very firm on the back end versus what we kind of think?

Yeah, I mean, that's a sort of multi-million or multi-billion dollar question. Omar, I don't have a sort of a clear and crisp answer for you, but what I can tell you is obviously from an owning perspective, the option value on an asset reduces as that asset ages. So, typically, our view is that it's possible to make much more money from holding and continuing to operate a vessel in the charter market. And, you know, you'll see from the chart in the pack, which contrasts the way in which charter rates, asset values, and new building values fluctuate through the cycle. And there's always much more upside volatility in charter rates than there is even in secondhand So it generally makes sense to hold on to the ships, keep chartering them, and keep locking in additional revenues. However, when you get to ships which are, well, these are going to be between 25 and 27 years old by the time they're sold, that option value comes down somewhat. So we liked the economics that you just laid out of retaining the contracted EBITDA until they're delivered and then divesting them at that price. whether you can draw anything broader from that on where asset values are today or are likely to remain very very difficult to say I think we're in a world where making bets on what will happen in the future or even tomorrow if we would take a brave man probably a braver man than me but George do you want to add to that I mean the the golden rule for shipping is the entry point so So, if you're buying an asset at the right price, then it's only upside potential that

you have to worry about rather than downside. So, the way we look at transactions is protecting the downside first and foremost, and then the upside will come if we have bought the asset at the right price. This is, in general, our theory, which I think is the golden rule of shipping.

Yeah, the GSL way, well, it certainly seems that the exit point here is quite a bit appealing. And then just a follow-up, second question, you're now officially in a net cash position, and that looks to widen now as we move ahead here over the next couple of quarters with no real, no major commitments. Does buying back stock here make any sense? Do you prefer to kind of go in that direction, or do you think it's best to maybe stay conservative, build a bit of cash, and you continue to focus on maybe repaying that?

We think the latter of those two positions, Omar, makes most sense. I mean, it's not only a question of delevering, but it's also building dry powder for opportunistic acquisitions when the right opportunities arise. We do keep an eye on share buybacks from an opportunistic perspective and I think the average price at which we've bought back shares has been roughly 18 and a half, so $18.50 or thereabouts through the cycle where we felt that there was a structural disconnect between where the business was being valued and the intrinsic value in the business so we pounced on it. But at the moment, we think de-levering and building dry powder is the right strategy for where the market is in terms of both risk.

Thanks, Tom. That's a very good commentary.

Before we proceed, again, if you want to ask a question and join the queue, simply press star 1. And your next question comes from Clement Mullins from Value Investors Edge. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to follow up on Liam's question regarding fleet renewal. A couple of the vessels are on the smaller sizes, and you have a few more vessels also on the older end on that side of the fleet. Would you be comfortable downsizing the feeder site further if you don't come across interesting acquisition opportunities, or is there a, let's say, minimum size you'd like to maintain Hi, Clement, thanks for the question.

I mean, we sort of tried to address that at least in part in our answer to Stephanie a little earlier. So while we like the 2,000 to 10,000 TU segment, broadly speaking, if given our choice, we would weight our fleet renewal towards probably the upper half, let's call it the 6,000 to 10,000 TU range. We're not dogmatic about a particular size category, so once again, we will either invest or divest assets where we think the returns are likely to be most favorable for the company and for…

Thank you. And I also wanted to ask a bit about the effect that the middle situation is having on the market. Could you talk a bit about whether you've seen a increase in congestion in regional ports outside the strait and are you seeing any other ripple effects?

Yes, I mean it's hugely. We're seeing ripple effects throughout liner companies' networks and one of the most recent ones we became aware of is congestion as lines look to redirect vessels and optimize their networks. So yes, you're absolutely right. There is disruption in terms of congestion, both at choke points like canals and also in ports. And there are also disruption associated with challenges for the liner operators getting fuel into the right places. And not only the challenge of getting fuel into the right places, but also the cost of And as bunker costs rise, the lines try to reduce fuel burn. and the only way to reduce fuel burn is to flow ships down, so we're seeing...

That's very helpful. I'll turn it over. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations for the quarter. Thank you very much, Clement.

No further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Thomas Lister for the closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Well, thank you very much, everyone, for joining our 1Q call. We wish you a very good summer and look forward to talking to you again on the event of our second quarter call. Thank you again. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining. And that concludes today's conference call. All participants may now disconnect. Thank you.