Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Starbolt Carriers Conference Call on the fourth quarter 2025 financial results. We have with us Mr. Petros Papas, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Hamish Norton, President, Mr. Simas Biru and Mr. Christos Begleres, Co-Chief Financial Officers, Mr. Nikos Reskos, Chief Operating Officer, Konstantinos Simenderes, Head of Marketing Analysis, and Mrs. Cheras Plankatanaki, Chief Strategy Officer of the company. At this time, all participants are in a 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 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded. We now pass the floor to one of your speakers today, Mr. Spiro. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Simo Spiro, Co-Chief Financial Officer of Starball Carriers, and I would like to welcome you to our conference call regarding our financial results for the fourth quarter of 2025. Before we begin, I kindly ask you to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor Statement on slide number two of our presentation. In today's presentation, we will review our fourth quarter 2025 company highlights, financial performance, capital allocation initiatives, cash evolution during the quarter, operational performance, our continued investments in the fleet, developments on the regulatory front, and our perspective on industry fundamentals. We will then open the floor for... Moving to slide three. The fourth quarter was characterized by solid profitability, disciplined capital allocation, and continued balance sheet strength. For the fourth quarter of 2025, our net income amounted to $65.2 million, while adjusted net income reached $74.5 million, or $0.16 adjusted EPS. Adjusted EBITDA was at $126.4 million, demonstrating the strong cash-generating capacity of our platform, even in a moderate rate environment. We continue to actively return capital to our shareholders. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 1.2 million shares for a total of 22.7 million. Year-to-date, during the first quarter of 2026, we have repurchased approximately 1.9 million shares, totaling $37.9 million. In addition, our Board of Directors declared a $0.37 per share dividend for the fourth quarter, payable on March 19th to all shareholders of record as of March 9th, 2026. Balance sheet remains a key strategic advantage. Total cash and cash equivalents are approximately at $459 million. Outstanding debt is approximately at $1 billion, and we have an undrawn revolving capacity of $110 million. Importantly, we also have 27 debt-free vessels with an aggregate market value of approximately $630 million. This unencumbered asset base provides substantial financial flexibility security to fund growth opportunities as well as downside protection. To further enhance shareholder value, we have taken the following capital allocation actions. Dividend policy. Going forward, we intend to distribute 100% of our free cash flow, subject to maintaining a minimum cash balance of $2.1 million per vessel, while preserving a minimum quarterly dividend of $0.05 per cent. We have also offered a million dollars share in substantially the same terms as this dual-track approach for punistic buybacks funded from vessel sales allows us to dynamically allocate capital depending on the market conditions and the discount of relative to the increasing value. These initiatives reflect both our confidence in the company's visibility and our commitment to maintaining a competitive and sustainable capital return profile. On the top right side of slide number three, you can see our per vessel daily performance metrics. Time charter equivalent came at $19,012 per day per vessel. Daily operating expenses and net cash G&A expenses at $6,444 per day per vessel. This results in a daily cash margin of approximately $12,570 per vessel per day before debt service and capex. These numbers highlight the operating efficiency of our platform and our ability to generate meaningful cash flow even at mid-cycle rate levels. Slide number four summarizes our capital allocation track record over the last five years. Since 2021, we have executed approximately $3 billion in value-enhancing actions, including dividends, shares repurchases, and debt repayment. During this period, we have returned $13.49 per share in dividends, representing approximately 55% of our current share price. We have reduced our total net debt by 47%, being leveraged to a level where it is 0% of the current demolition value of the fleet. At the same time, we expanded the fleet opportunistically through accretive fleet acquisitions, issuing equity at or above NAV, thereby increasing scale while protecting per share value. The result is a larger, more efficient platform with materially lower financial risk and significantly enhanced free cash flow per share potential. Slide number five illustrates the movement in our cash balance during the beginning quarter with $457 million in cash. We generated $101 million in operating cash flow. and after-sale proceeds, debt roll-downs and repayments, capex payments related to new buildings installments, energy-saving devices and ballast water treatment systems, the share buybacks and the fourth quarter dividend payment, we ended the quarter with $502 million in cash. This sequential increase in cash underscores the strong internal cash generation of the company even after substantial shareholder returns and investment in fleet upgrades. Slide number six highlights the inherent operating leverage embedded in our business model. With approximately 49.5 thousand fleet available days per annum, and based on the current next 12-month FFA curve of approximately 18.5 thousand per day on a fleet-wide basis, the company would generate approximately $2.7 per share of free cash flow, representing an almost 11% implied cash flow yield. The slide illustrates the strength of our platform on a rising market. Every $1,500 per day fleet-wide increase in our TC equates to an EBITDA increase of $73 million. This would translate to $0.65 per share of incremental dividend to our shareholders given our existing approach to distributions. In summary, during the fourth quarter, we delivered solid profitability, strengthened our liquidity position, continued to delever, return meaningful capital to shareholders, and preserve significant optionality for future capital allocation. Our balance sheet resilience, operating efficiency, and disciplined capital allocation framework position us well to navigate market volatility while continuing to enhance per share value. With that, I will now pass the floor to our COO, Nikos Reskos, for an update on our operational performance and the continued investments we are making in our fleet. Thank you, Simo.

Please turn to slide 7. Covering our operation, we continue to run one of the CATCNA at work in our peer group. This operation's new buildings are on track with 206.6 million of CAPEX remaining. Financing is well advanced. We made meaningful progress during 2025, fitting 13 additional vessels and 6 with high efficiency We completed 55 out of 80 ESP total installations, over 14 plans for 20. We have also nearly completed our telemetry rollout with 121 out of 1, now retrofitted with digital multi-bottom, 26, 6 million, with around 50 European-listed peers, with 141 vessels for another day, 0.1 years. to update the recent weather environmental regulation development.

Thank you, Nico. Please turn to slide 10, where we highlight our progress across ESG priorities. Despite the one-year postponement of the IMO-net-zero framework in October 25, we remain committed to our strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our fleet's operations. Alongside the ongoing renewal of our fleet, in Q425, we continued to enhance the energy efficiency of our vessels with targeted technical and operational measures, including the successful testing of high-cleaning robots and silicon anti-fountain coatings. In 2025, the Starbuck fleet achieved an average C rating in the Riotship greenhouse gas rating. We also maintained our B-score, or Effective Environmental Management, in the 2025 Carbondisclosure Project and Water Management Submission. We continued to contribute actively through the work of the Maritime Emission Reduction Center, working with our partners to assess emerging technologies and at improving vessel performance. To comply with Hulu-U Maritime, and consistent with last year, we entered into a pooling agreement with an external party to cover 100% of our CO2 deficit for 26 and part of 27, purchasing surplus units to the most cost-effective compliance strategy. On the Logifront, we completed the deployment of Starlink and installed on-board firewalls across the fleet to enhance connectivity and strengthen cybersecurity. As part of our artificial intelligence strategy, we delivered the company's first custom built AI application while continuing to leverage AI within existing systems and to develop new tools to further automation and optimization. The well-being of our people remained a priority. During Q425, we conducted a comprehensive company-wide employee survey to listen closely to our teams and identify tangible solutions to better support them in their roles. I will now pass the floor to our head of market analysis, Konstantinos Simantiras, for a market update and his closing remarks.

Thank you, Harris. Then to slide 11 for a brief update of supply. In 2025, 36.2 million deadweight was delivered and 5.2 million deadweight was sent to demolition, resulting in net-lit growth of 31 million deadweight, or 3% year-over-year. The new building order book has grown over the past and remains at relatively low 12.8% of the fleet. Contracting remains under control, decreasing to 45.8 million debris during 2025, reflecting limited city of capacity through 2028, high shipbuilding costs and ongoing uncertainty along with top propulsion technologies. Contracting in the case segment over the last few months. It continues to age, and by the end of 2027, approximately 50% of the existing fleet will be over 15 years, some upside timing halves in West Africa, where loading operations remain particularly time-intensive. Moving to classrooms, 1.3% in volume and 2.1% in tonne miles during crash, driven by record bauxite and minor bulk exports, plus a solid recovery in iron ore, coal, and grain volumes in strong Atlantic exports, longer Pacific distances, and ongoing war-related inefficiencies supported from mild growth throughout the year. After the 40% below pro-hoofing remained high, imports were essentially flat during 2020. Meanwhile, imports to the rest of the world continued to recover in international trade relationships. Non-China import volumes grew 3.2% throughout the year, supported by lower commodity prices, a weaker U.S. dollar enhancing affordability, and resilient demand in key regions. Growth was mainly driven by Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East, with additional support from Africa and intra-Asian trade. Looking ahead, drive-off demand is projected to grow by 0.6% in tons and 1.9% in tons miles during 2026. The IMF recently raised its 2026 to impose locked or fixed asset investment presents downside risk, breaking down by key commodities in 2025, and is projected to rise 1.9% in 2020. China crude steel production fell below 1 billion tons, down in 2025, and another result of foreign real estate stock of high Chinese steel exports helped offset weak domestic consumption, while steel output in the rest of the world increased by 1.2%. Domestic iron ore output declined by 2.5% in 2025, and the gradual rampart of high-quality exports from 4-ton might grow over the coming years. Core trade contracted 5.6% during 2025, and is projected to decline another 2.5% in 2026. Volume experienced a strong recovery in the second half, but stayed below 2026. Longer renewable expansion in China should continue to pressure demand. Domestic production in China and India is out facing consumption growth, and stockpiles remain high. Indonesian coal exports are expected to decline further in 2026, following announced production in 2025, and is projected to surge 7.8% in 2026. Second half 2025 volumes jumped to Argentina and recovered over the next two years. More important, China resumption of U.S. soya bean purchases under the trade cruise will carry into 2026, boosting ton miles for mid-size. We've gained 20 million tons by the end of the current season and around 25 million tons annually through 2028. Minor bulk trade grew 5.2% in 2025 and is projected to expand by 2.1% in 2026. Minor bulk scale benefit from healthy macro outlooks across major economies. That said, growth should moderate somewhat next year due to rising protectionism and a slowdown in growth of West African bauxite volumes absent surge. As a final comment, we remain optimistic about the dry market outlook under things by a favorable supply backdrop, tightening environmental regulations, and easing to extensions. In a period of high danger political uncertainty, we remain focused on actively monitoring our diverse progress-seated fleet to come over to the operator to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. And our first question will come from Chris Robertson with Deutsche Bank.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, team. My question is just related to the underlying demand in timeout expansion that's happening in the iron ore market with Brazil and West Africa. Are there any other tribal commodities that have a similar dynamic where, you know, let's say underlying demand for the commodity remains slattish or maybe even slightly weaker but time-mile demand is held stable or expands because of the geographical dispersion of where the commodities are coming from? Any commentary on that would be helpful?

So besides bauxite and iron ore, we see a very strong trade on grains, which are going to be increasing by about 7.5% to 8%. Most of them are coming from Brazil. We will get some extra tonne miles from there. We also see demand from West Africa on smaller vessels, and that is going to create congestion as well because of construction projects that they got, and I think this is going to be a positive as well. Now, minor bulk, if Indonesia actually goes ahead with cutting down 25% of their exports, imports may have to come from further away. So we think that overall there is other possibilities as well, But the bauxite and the iron or trade are actually going to be big pluses.

Yeah, makes sense. Thanks for the color there. Just kind of following up on the potential for greater congestion in West Africa, are any of the projects, whether it's rail or trucking or the ports themselves, et cetera, are there any projects right now to build out that infrastructure a bit more to make the supply chain more efficient? kind of what's going on there that may lead to, you know, congestion maybe going up in the short term, but being alleviated in the long run as potentially infrastructure is more built out.

Well, I don't know details about that. What I know is that ultramax calls in West Africa have increased by about 30% during the past year. Now, if our analyst knows anything about the projects, he can...

I would add that it's exactly what you said, Chris. We expect that we will have in the short term an increase in congestion, and over the next few years as the infrastructure is upgraded, this will gradually go down, but this is not something that would take this in one, two years. Got it.

Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over. Thank you, Chris.

And as a reminder, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. We'll go next to Omar Nocta with Clarkson Security.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. I just wanted to ask maybe just about the capital return policy, just a bit more detail on that, you know, clearly the move back. The decision, I guess, to boost the dividend payout, did that come about simply just given the strong, or is there more to it?

The better the share does, the stronger the incentive to pay a dividend as opposed to a share repurchase. and, you know, so there's nothing really more to it than that. Okay. Thank you.

And then just to follow up into that, as we think about free cash flow, is earnings a good representation of that to approximate what free cash flow looks like? I know a quarter to look at it, do you think it understates?

It's not terrible, but, you know, you have to look at the difference between depreciation and debt repayment. and change in work and income, and also, as he was saying, it's the change in networking capital.

So in the market that...

This now concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

No closing comments, operator. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.