Thank you for taking the time to join our Q1 2026 call. Q1 was a record quarter for our company, and Q1 plus Q2 combined will be stronger than any previous year in our company’s history.

In fact, the potential distributions tied to this half year are approaching our original listing price in 2018. It definitely was and is an exciting, stressful, challenging demand quarter.

This cumulative pressure sureed overshadowed the pleasure of earning so much for our shareholders, which is regrettable. Q1 began with a sell-off of freight in mid-January, where the market turned bearish continuously with its fundamentals: Venezuela reopening, India’s adverse packing ports, and most importantly, the extremely rapid consolidation of the VLCC market by Singapore upon its joint venture.

This trend continued until February 28th, where the war in Ukraine began and set off a two- to three-, four-week period of unprecedented strength in the tanker market overall. Following this explosive and unbelievable period, the market found a balance at extremely elevated rates, where the loss of cargo from Hormuz closure is offset by ton miles inefficiencies, vessels trapped inside, and vessels outside waiting for the Hormuz to reopen.

Earlier this week, there were over 55 VLCCs in ballast waiting outside the high-risk area for potential reopening. This doesn’t include vessels waiting around Sri Lanka, off India, Singapore, and the South Atlantic.

Values and time charter rates have also stayed consistent and profound, throughout the quarter, where a period of record earnings and the anchoring bias on values, freight, time charter rates one years ago doesn’t hold anymore. The market needs to recognize this.

What is the natural ceiling where rates and values can go? Internally at OET and looking at Q2, one of our greatest challenges going forward is keeping tonnage available for the immediate exposure to a Hormuz reopening while optimizing our performance.

I hand you over to Iraklis to go through the financials.

Thanks, Aristidis. Let’s have a look at this record quarter.

We achieved fleet-wide time charter equivalent of about 93,000 dollars per vessel per day. That’s 106,000 per day on our spot and 104,000 on all operating days at sea days, and 82,000 on our Suezmax operating days, or day spot.

We report adjusted EBITDA of 110 million, adjusted net profit of 89 million, and adjusted EPS of 2 dollars and 33 cents. This is based on our average share count for the quarter.

Our board declared the 16th consecutive quarterly dividend of 2 dollars per share. This represents 88 percent of our reported net income, i.e.

on our current fully diluted share count post our January 8th consumption. This is the highest quarterly dividend amount since the company’s inception, although I should note everyone’s already more than in the second quarter.

Over the last four quarters, we have distributed 5 dollars per share, or 96 percent of our reported net income for the period. In January, we executed another successful merger equity activities for 130 million dollars in gross proceeds, against five.

Since our IPO in Oslo, we have distributed approximately two and a half times our initial market cap, with over 550 million paid in dividends. Since we have had a fully delivered fleet in 2022, we have paid out 91 percent of our reported net income, clearly demonstrating our commitment to distributing value for shareholders.

Slide 6, we show the detail of our income statement for the quarter. TCEs stood at 132.2 million dollars.

Fleet 2.2 million dollars. At quarter end, we had 176.5 million of cash that included a portion of the equity earmarked for the acquisition of the lease of the Gan and the Gous, respectively.

We also had almost 80 million dollars in freight derivatives. Our restricted cash figure, as a marker refers, includes an amount of 45 million we have deposited on short-term against one of our loan facilities, which has a feature that reduces the interest rate to just half a percent per annum, on a net basis, providing a better return than what we can achieve under time deposit rates.

We may roll forward such cash, characterized as restricted, or liquid amount, on a short-term basis, depending on our cash needs and applicable risks. Our balance sheet debt was 683 million.

Our book leverage stands at 41 percent, while our market adjusted net debt, basis latest broker values and performance of the acquisitions and recent transactions, is now just over 30 percent. On slide 8, looking at our fleets, I am pleased to show the addition of our most recently acquired modern and high-spec vessels.

We have a total of 16 vessels on the water, eight Suezmaxes and eight VLCCs, with an average age of only six years, which will further improve once we get the delivery shortly of the Nissos Ikaria and Nissos Chios currently under construction, South Korea. As a reminder, from a maintenance capital perspective, our only driver for 2026 is that of the Milo’s 10-year survey.

Slide 9, moving on to our capital structure, this is a quarterly update that I have been personally looking forward to for a while. We recently announced three new financings for four vessels as follows.

We purchased back from its sale and leaseback and refinanced the Nissos Agia with a new 60 million dollar bank loan maturing in seven years, priced at SOFR plus 125 basis points. This transaction closed last week.

We will purchase back from its sale and leaseback and refinance the Nissos Asporico with another 50 million bank loan maturing in nine years, priced at SOFR plus 130 basis points. This transaction is expected to close in early June.

We have also signed a 90 million bank loan for the Nissos Tigani and Nissos Chios maturing in May 8 years, priced at SOFR plus 120 basis points. The Tigani will close in a couple of weeks and the Chios in early July.

We have taken advantage of the very competitive financing market and our financiers are appetiteed transactions. Our most recent transactions have demonstrated the relationships and track record we have developed in two key banking markets for us, in Greece and in Taiwan.

We now have staggered maturities all the way through 2035, extremely attractive pricing, and finally put behind us all our legacy syndicateds. On slide 10, we look at our pricing on a vessel-by-vessel.

All our loans are now priced below 2 percent with a weighted average margin of 1.47 percent. That’s an improvement of more than 200 basis points compared to where we were prior to the LIBOR to SOFR transition in mid-2023.

On a consolidated debt of over 750 million, that’s performance of the upcoming drawdowns. That’s an impact of more than 15 million a year, straight into the bottom line.

Quarter on quarter for a while we have been seeing a material improvement in our interest expense, and starting in Q3 of this year, when all this will have concluded, we expect to see the full effect. We are extremely happy with where we are today, but of course, by nature, we continuously monitor the market for opportunities that might further optimize our structure, trying to improve one or all aspects of our base structure, whether it's pricing, tenure, amortization profile, or other terms that affect security energy.

I will now turn it back over to Aristidis for the commercial market update.

Thank you, Iraklis, and great job on the refines. Now, as I said during the intro, Q1 was a record quarter for the company.

Amazing fundamentals, Venezuela reopening, the consolidation of the VLCC market, and likely the biggest shock to oil trading in the past 50 years all converged in the same three months. We concluded fixtures in Q1, mostly realizing Q2, that we could never have previously planned.

Absolutely remarkable. Fleetwide TCE came in at $93,100 per day, with 106,400 on our spot VLCCs and 81,600 on the Suezmaxes.

We achieved perfect utilization across the fleet. One commercial mistake I want to flag was fixing the Nissos Ikaria for one year at a net rate of $90,000 per day.

With hindsight, the market gave us much more, spot market that is. Separately, the Nissos Keros is currently stuck inside the AG, and we have been added an additional line for current the table.

She is being compensated on a commercially agreed rate while she waits to get out. We took delivery of the Nissos Piperi and Nissos Seychella also this quarter.

The market was so firm that we were able to fix cargoes from West Africa on our first voyages and get them into our trading pipelines. The ballast voyage from Korea to West Africa was far longer than the laden, which did negatively impact our Suezmax rates.

On the Suezmaxes, we focused on trading the ships in the Atlantic basin. We did not fix any vessels into the East and kept the voyages shorter while focusing on optimization in our preferred trades.

On the VLCCs, early in the quarter, we committed to longer voyages to lock in higher rates, balancing with some shorter voyages in the East to keep our fixing exposure intact within the quarter. This strategy is what ultimately led to poor Kara being trapped inside the Hormuz.

The same strategy is what set up Q2 numbers. Comparing our Q1 against the peers who have already reported, we are at 28%, 28.5% higher on our VLCCs and 20% higher on our Suezmaxes.

Looking at our guidance for Q2, I believe it is likely that our Q2 earnings will be larger than any previous year's annual earnings. Whether that holds up on Q2 alone or not, Q1 and Q2 certainly combined will be.

As of today, 56% of our available VLCC spot days are fixed at 223,900 dollars per day, and 60% of our Suezmax days at 187,300 dollars per day, giving us a fleetwide average of about 2,209 dollars per day on fixed portion, roughly half the quarter. Comparing Q2 against our peers who have reported earnings, we are about 45% higher on our VLCCs and 24% higher on our Suezmaxes.

We were in the lucky position of having significant exposure right around the spike in mid-March for voyages that were affecting Q2. We were able to fix two ships to loading Yanbu at huge rates, and we fixed the Nissos Ikaria on a long-haul voyage right at the top of the market.

On the Suezmax side, the short trading pattern allowed us to do multiple runs into a rapidly appreciating market. Some of the fixtures concluded those weeks were frankly unbelievable.

One additional Suezmax to be building, the Nissos Tigani is scheduled for delivery this quarter, which will further reinforce our exposure and give us exposure to a potential Hormuz reopening later this quarter. Moving on to slide 14, we reuse this slide for every quarter, and I am very proud of it, almost as proud as Iraklis is of his refinance slide.

We had a gain quarter on quarter of over $25 million just on our commercial level performance. I hope an analyst would trade wins takes this up, but if Berkeley earned the average of our peers who have reported in Q1, our EPS would be over 65 cents less.

Since Q4 2019, we have generated approximately $26 million of cumulative market performance versus our peers. On slide 15, I take two things away from this chart.

Firstly, we have had consistently elevated earnings going back to September of last year. That underpins the fundamental strength of the current market, a strength that predates the geopolitical shock and is only amplified by it.

Secondly, the consistent strength of the market following the loss of the AG barrels. The message of this chart is that the disruption created a spike, but the underlying market has held the level.

To frame the scale of this, roughly 14.9 million barrels per day of crude exports and around 35% of global crude ton-miles normally transit the Hormuz. This is the largest single shock point shock the tanker market has ever occurred.

The well-known effects are visible on the stage, extended ton-miles, vessels trapped inside the AG and the redirection of Saudi and UAE volumes from Yanbu and the Strait of Hormuz, which has been the single biggest mitigating factor to supply. I want to highlight one other factor that I think is underappreciated by the market, the number of VLCCs waiting outside the AG for potential reopening.

Earlier this week, we counted 55 VLCCs in ballast sitting outside the high-risk area, hoping for the reopening. The figure does not include, as I mentioned earlier, vessels positioned further afield by Sri Lanka, off India, Singapore, or the San Francisco.

When you put it all together, 63 laden VLCCs trapped inside the AG, over 55 waiting outside of the AG, and roughly 36 holding at Yanbu. This is 165 VLCCs effectively removed from spot supply.

On the global VLCC fleet of 920 vessels, that is approximately 17% of the worldwide fleet, either trapped or waiting. If we assume the compliant fleet is around 700 vessels, and this is what affects us, that jumps to 22%.

That is a massive restriction on supply supply and is very supportive of rates. One more dynamic to note, in recent weeks previously, we have seen reduced interest from buyers for Atlantic barrels, which in my view reflects an expectation of a Hormuz reopening.

The longer that reopening is delayed, the more those Asian buyers will force back into the market from the Atlantic, which we are seeing this week, which will tighten supply further and push rates higher again. Now looking forward, on slide 17, we lay out three scenarios we see for how this resolves.

I want to be clear up front, we do not take a view on the macro conditions in Syria. Our scenarios are about the shape of the Hormuz outcome and not about the macro.

All three paths are supported of games. What changes between them is the timing, the shape, and the duration of this strength.

Before I walk through them, the key number to anchor is that the pre-disruption Hormuz exports were around 14.9 million barrels per day. The total pipeline throughput past days owned around 7.4 million barrels per day.

That leaves a structural shortfall of about 7.5 million barrels per day, which we can only clear via long-haul ton miles by sea. That gap is what underwrites the demand backdrop in every scenario.

Scenario one, continued closure. Pipeline rerouting stay maxed out, Asian inventories continue to drain, Western barrels rerouted to Asia, and the trap tonnage inside the AG persists.

The result is long-haul ton miles maximized and the compliance fleet supply structurally constrained. The only meaningful risk in this path is demand destruction if it drags on for too long.

Scenario two: partial reopening. Iraqi, for example, and others as well.

There's roughly 3.1 million barrels per day, fastly that can come back for the Saudi. Floating storage gradually released into the market, and the Yamal for January release continue at a fast pace.

There are less Western barrels flowing east, but vessel pre-positioning will affect supply through the vessels reposition. The whole scenario demands on transit normalization holding.

Scenario three: full reopening. Middle East exports normalize over, let's say, about three months, and importantly, that is the same dynamic for South Venezuela.

Any national oil company linked sanctioned tanker might find its way back, but the broader fleet stays isolated. On top of that, you would see Asian and SPR restocking demand continue.

There is an initial spike as oil storage drains and restocking provides a temporary tail and supportive demand, and returning supply moderates rates over the medium term, supportive. We assume that cargos will only be lifted on conventional vessels.

On slide 18, beyond Hormuz dynamic and directly linked to the current situation, is another structural tailwind sitting plain sight in conclusion. OECD commercial inventories have been drawing in OECD well below the five-year range, five-year range as you see on the right-hand side of the graph.

Enter this, the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve.

Inventory builds translates directly into tanker demand, which we read as positive. Slide 19: the order book, a topic that is starting to become relevant and it wasn't a few quarters ago.

Yes, the order book is up. VLCCs stand at 27.5% of the fleet, Suezmaxes at 28.5%.

Although about 3.3% is points of the Suezmax number is shuttle tankers. On the face of it, that is a large number and I understand the concerns.

There is no saying shipping that given enough time in a good market, owners will find a way to shoot themselves in the foot by overordering. I will be first to admit historically this saying is not wrong.

I would argue this cycle is slightly different, and the reason is on the right-hand side of the page, and is supported by the next page as well where we dive a little bit deeper into the actual numbers. Even today, in 26, 48% of the global VLCC fleet is over the age of 15, 22% is over 20.

By 2030, those numbers grow to 61% over 15 and 41% over 20. The Suezmax picture is essentially the same.

Now, if you also add the shadow or dark fleet, which sits within the high age bracket of the above, we know for certainty that most of the vessels will never come back. When you take those vessels out of this live trading altogether, and we should, because they're not competing for the same cargoes as we are, the compliance supply picture gets meaningfully tighter.

Yes, the order book is up, but the ageing fleet plus the dark fleet isolation gives you, in my view, a structurally tight supply market for the next couple years. The numbers on the next slide make this clear.

Slide 20 takes the point I just made and puts it into absolute numbers, which I think is the cleanest way to see it. On the VLCCs, fleet of 919 vessels today, order book of 250.

By 2028, cumulative deliveries, including what has already arrived year to date, gets you to 184 vessels. Over the same period, 365 vessels will be over 15 years old while 124 will be over 20, and 90 will be over 25.

By 2030, you have 250 cumulative deliveries against 375 vessels over 15 and 180 20-plus. Put simply, 250 deliveries chasing a retirement queue of 375 ships.

The order book doesn't cap the aging queue. On the Suezmax, the same story.

By 2030, 204 deliveries against 274 vessels over the age of 20. That is a structurally tightness I was describing about the previous slide in absolute numbers.

The tie, the above altogether, on the demand side we have the Hormuz tunnel reset, inventory restocking ahead, plus all the fundamentals that existed prior to the AG into the Hormuz situation. On the supply side, we have a record order book that still does not catch away the vessels reaching the end of their useful life.

Both sides, equation, point towards the right. I will pass it to the moderator for the Q&A.

Hello, guys. Thank you for taking my question and congrats on a record Q2 bookings, really impressive.

It has been quite hard to keep the fleet open, but what we see now is that term rates are sort of creeping back up again now. The one-year TTT on VLCCs around 120.

My question now is more on commercial strategy. Would you be keen to add more coverage, given that your target quite right in 2020, would be interesting to get your take on it?

Hi, Kristoffer. Thank you for your question.

Look, we even mentioned on the call mistake of fixing the Nikuja on the 90,000 per year. I think at this point, the time charter market isn't that interesting for us, and especially given the reopening of the Hormuz and how aggressively the rates can go up in that case, it will probably just one voyage at those rates, they will outperform even in the moderately spot environment afterwards any one-year time charter.

Just to add some more color to your question, we're also seeing significant decrease in longer-term charter rates on all sizes. I think the VLCC market for three years should be closer to the 70,000 mark.

Right, okay, thanks. Back.

Yes, thank you. Could we go back to scenario three of a post-strait of Hormuz opening?

Would you anticipate in whenever more normal times occur that there'd be more demand out of the Atlantic because buyers of crude would like to diversify away from the Middle East? What would that mean for the demand on the Suezmax side?

Sorry, Liam, can you repeat your question? It came in a bit muffled.

Sure. In scenario three, you discussed a scenario where the Strait of Hormuz is completely reopened.

What I was asking was, is there a situation where buyers of crude would want to diversify away from the Middle East, even with an open strait, and buy more out of the Atlantic, and what that would mean for the Suezmax, understanding the low order book relative to the age of the fleet?

Thank you, Liam. I got the question now.

It's a good question, and I think we've also speaking to some refiners and charters, and reading news in the media, it's obvious that some of the Asian countries that have a very high reliance on AG crude will need to diversify going forward. For example, the Japanese have 9% of their crude imports from AG.

That will have to meaningfully come down, and it may come from imports from West Africa, Brazil, or the U.S. Gulf.

I think at the beginning at least of the Hormuz reopening, everyone will buy whatever crude they can get their hands on. Then as we move into more of the medium term, where there is more strategic and medium-term approach towards buying crude, they're going to start diversifying their purchases.

Now, in terms of the Suezmaxes, all this reopening and this diversification of crude purchases for strategic geopolitical reasons creates inefficiencies. The Suezmax is often a very versatile vessel that does well when the market is inefficient, and there are trading patterns that are less accustomed to, and people need options, and there's different ports.

I think that generally, on a relative basis over the past five years, we've been a tabletop form of the VLCCs and our Suezmaxes, and I do think that the Suezmaxes will still be very strong assets going forward compared to both the larger and smaller crude tankers.

Great, thank you. Then just quickly, your operating cash flow should probably be stronger in the second quarter, and I know you're taking two deliveries of two Suezmaxes later in the year.

Post delivery, your capital allocation, I presume, is going to remain the same with the priority on returning cash to shareholders, or is there any thought about accelerating debt reduction?

Hi again, Mr. Iraklis.

Absolutely.

Hey, our capital allocation policy will remain the same. We have been committed to distributing out as much as possible within the constraints of our capital structure, of course.

As we have explained in the past, it's not possible for us to maintain 100% of our EPS distribution given our capital structure and cash flow, but we aspire to increase that as much as possible, and we have been averaging around 9% for a while. Obviously, we have added already two Suezmaxes at the beginning of the year.

We're going to be adding a couple more over the next few weeks or through the mid of the summer. Our fleet has expanded a bit, and that should be reflected in how we approach our capital structure and balance sheet.

Having said that, we will of course continue to distribute as much as possible.

As a company, we're very comfortable with our LTD, and if anything, it's probably on the lower side, but we're very comfortable with that, and we prefer, given our comfort, to return our profits to shareholders directly rather than paying down debt in advance of the normal repayments.

Great. Thank you very much.

No, thank you.

Thank you. My first question is about your second quarter bookings.

Obviously, it's super strong, but if I look at the fleet today, most of them are actually, or almost all of them, if you look at the fleet are

on a balancing. Could you give some color on them are balancing, for the many open days?

Just give a sense of how good the second quarter could become. Even, hi.

It's Iraklis. Sorry, a part of your question was a bit muffled.

I think you inquired about our Q2 guidance and the impact, I guess, of how our bookings are recorded in for books and the impact of ballast days. Is that right?

That's right.

Perfect, sure. Yes, as we have explained in the past, given our accounting policies, revenue recognition has an impact when we look at cargo days between quarters.

Rest assured that obviously when something is not fixed in the previous quarter, we obviously pass it on and recognize in the forward quarter. We have seen in the past instances where this came play, and that was also the case a little bit with our Suezmaxes in Q1 with certain fixtures that came in late before.

For Q2 it's a little bit early to be able to have visibility on the ballast days of the quarter. We still have a month and a half ahead of us.

Depending on how the vessels trade, there may be some impact, but obviously if you look at it from a TCE perspective, this gets averaged out.

Yep, that makes sense. Another one which you touched upon briefly.

Where do you want to position your fleet at the moment? When you see the reopening of the trade corridors, do you want to take a risk and wait and see for that to happen?

Or do you rather want to trade in the Atlantic until you are certain that the trade corridor is open?

Sorry, again, it's a bit muffled. Your question is whether we want to trade in the Hormuz if it reopens?

Do you want to take the risk and wait outside the Hormuz at the moment, or do you prefer to just stay away until it's actually open?

No, look, that's a good question. One thing just to give you some numerical examples, if one of our VLCCs opens in Singapore today and we ballast to the AG and we wait a whole month and we fix a TV3 voyage, AG to China, where the futures are pricing, I guess those would be July days.

The vessel would earn 300,000 a day. I assume if you wait an extra 60 days, you'd earn $200,000 a day or less.

Clearly, at least where the futures, the FFA market is pricing the AG reopening, the market is going to be extremely firm. The way that we kind of thought about it is that if you usually fix cargoes from the AG three weeks ahead, and there's around 160 cargoes a month recently, that's about 110 cargoes in the over three weeks.

Usually a cargo will fix three weeks ahead, like I said, but today is day zero and three weeks is day 21. You need to cover for 110 cargoes.

I think all these ships that are sitting outside will be absorbed very, very quickly. That doesn't even include whatever exports can be increased because of crew sitting in storage.

I think with the immediate reopening, we'll see a huge sucking of whatever prompt tonnage is available in the area. You need to be a bit careful because, okay, the future market might be wrong, it could be a bit lower, or it could stay closed for a lot longer.

The 30 days waiting to do a TD3 and earning 300,000, while the market today on the cargoes that we're looking at are between 120 and 150,000, is a big difference. I think we've seen companies like Sinokor, who are willing to just take the risk and look for the maximum upside and just wait on some ships, or as a general chartering strategy as a company, we've been a bit more pragmatic and looking to find the optimal cargoes that we like and not have too much waiting.

We need to do a bit of a combination. We made a bit of a matrix internally and we want to make sure that we have ships.

There are at least eight ships every week that could be in the area to do an AG cargo. I think it would be quite risky just to park everything outside of the AG and wait.

Then the analysts would start yelling at me because we wouldn't recognize any income for the rest of Q2. We'd have a huge Q3, but the Q2 actual would come off a bit.

Even would be asking me questions about it, but that's okay, I suppose. We're balanced.

We're going to try to make sure we don't lose all our exposure to reopening on any given day, but we can't just sit everything out there and be completely risk on. The other good thing is that we have a Suezmax that was fixed east, she'll be open in the east in the next month, and we also have the two new buildings, which will be delivering end of May.

That's mid-June, mid-late June, date for the AG, and the other one is July. We have three Suezmax in our whole VLCC fleet that will have exposure to the reopening at some point in the next three months.

I think we're in a relatively good position on the bigger ships.

That's very good. Thank you.

That's all for me.

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. Most has already been covered, but I wanted to ask you about the G&A for the quarter.

I'm guessing there was an impact due to the offering to acquire the last two Suezmaxes, as well as for bonuses. Where do you see the run rate for Q2 and thereafter on, let's say, a normalized basis?

Yeah,

Climent, hi. You're right, this is more a timing issue.

We currently expect to finish the year maybe slightly higher than last year, 10-15% higher, something like that. Obviously, from a timing perspective, Q1 has been much more heavy than the rest of the quarters.

The rest of the quarters, I expect we go back to the usual run rates, and relatively evenly at the moment. Just keep in mind, because quite a lot of our expenses, including G&A, are in euros.

Exchange rates, volatility in exchange rates also plays a role.

Makes sense. Thanks for the color.

This one is just to confirm, regarding the vessel trapped inside the AG, usual 39-day fixture in Q2, will the 74,000 per day be payable until it gets out?

Under our commercial agreements, yes, we obviously had to show the number as of the latest information, and so long as it remains in, that's the number that shows for now.

Okay. Thank you.

I'll turn it over. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks everyone for dialing in.

As you probably are, we're also looking forward to our next update in early August. Thank you very much.