Star Bulk Carriers Corp. (NASDAQ:SBLK) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call May 17, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Petros Pappas - CEO

Hamish Norton - President

Simos Spyrou - Co-CFO

Christos Begleris - Co-CFO

Nicos Rescos - COO

Charis Plakantonaki - CSO

Conference Call Participants

Chris Robertson - Deutsche Bank

Omar Nokta - Jefferies

Ben Nolan - Stifel

Operator

Thank you for standing by, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Star Bulk Carriers Conference Call on the First Quarter 2023 Financial Results.

We have with us Mr. Petros Pappas, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Hamish Norton, President; Mr. Simos Spyrou and Mr. Christos Begleris, Co-Chief Financial Officers; Mr. Nicos Rescos, Chief Operating Officer; and Mrs. Charis Plakantonaki, 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. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today.

I will now pass the floor to one of your speakers for today, Mr. Spyrou, please go ahead, sir.

Simos Spyrou

Thank you, operator. I'm Simos Spyrou, Co-Chief Financial Officer of Star Bulk Carriers, and I would like to welcome you to our conference call regarding our financial results for the first quarter of 2023.

Before we begin, I kindly ask you to take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement on slide number 2 of our presentation.

In today's presentation, we will go through our first quarter results, cost evolution during the quarter, an update of our balance sheet, an overview of interest rate risk management, then bunker benefit and vessel operations, the latest on the ESG front and our views on the industry fundamentals before opening up for questions.

Let us now turn to slide number 3 of the presentation for a summary of our first quarter 2023 highlights.

For the first quarter of 2023, the Company reported the following. Net income amounted to $46 million with adjusted net income of $37 million or $0.36 per share adjusted earnings. Adjusted EBITDA was at $85 million for the quarter. For the first quarter as per our existing dividend policy, we declared the dividend per share of $0.35, payable on or about June 27, 2023.

During this quarter, we have bought back 531,223 shares at a cost of $11.26 million. Since 2021, dividend distributions and share buybacks are over $1 billion. On May 16, 2023, our Board of Directors canceled the previous share repurchase program under which $8.5 million was still outstanding and authorized the new share repurchase plan of up to an aggregate of $50 million.