StealthGas Inc. (NASDAQ:GASS) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 21, 2023 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Harry Vafias - President & CEO
Konstantinos Sistovaris - IR
Conference Call Participants
Tate Sullivan - Maxim Group
Climent Molins - Value Investor's Edge
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the StealthGas Q4 2020 Results Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand over to your speaker, Mr. Harry Vafias, CEO. Please go ahead.
Harry Vafias
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and 12 months 2022 earnings conference call. This is Harry Vafias, CEO of StealthGas, and I'm going to discuss market and company outlook. And with me is Mr. Sistovaris, handing Investor Relations to discuss the financial aspects.
Before we commence our presentation, I would like to remind you that we'll be discussing forward-looking statements, which reflect current views with respect to future events and financial performance. At this stage, if you could all take a moment to read our disclaimer on Slide 2. Risks are further disclosed in StealthGas filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I'd like also to point out that all amounts quoted unless otherwise clarified are U.S. dollars. Today, we released our earnings results for the fourth quarter of '22, completing a full year of trading as a pure LPG company. Following the 2021 spin-off, and we are happy to report yet again a strong profitable quarter and record profits for the year.
So let's proceed to discuss the results and what we see in the market in general. In Slide 3, the fourth quarter is typically a seasonally strong quarter for LPG trading. We had just finished drydocking all the vessels that were due, so we had our full fleet available for chartering. Our aim was to charter most of our vessels on period wise reducing the spot exposure, and we did by reducing spot days from 843 to 596.
On a yearly basis, we have reduced our spot exposure to just 17% of our fleet days. We kept seeing charter interest in lodging period coverage so we continue entering into period charters at improving rates. We thus managed to have secured total today, 55% of our 2023 days contracted out. We have locked in at about $105 million for subsequent periods.