Thank you. I’d like to now outline the agenda of today’s call. First, Ms. Frangou will offer opening remarks. Next, Mr. Petrone will provide an operational update and industry overview. Following Mr. Petrone’s remarks, Mr. Achniotis will go through an overview including recent financials for Navios South American Logistics. Then, Mr. Desypris will review Navios Holdings’ financial results. Last, we will open the call to take your questions.
I’d now like to turn the call over to Navios Holding’s Chairman and CEO Ms. Angeliki Frangou. Angeliki? Angeliki Frangou Thank you Operator, and good morning to all of you joining us on today’s call. We are pleased to report our results for the second quarter of 2011. We increased EBITDA by about 14% to about $104 million and net income by more than 9% to almost $51 million. As a sign of our continued confidence in our cash flow, we declared a $0.06 dividend for the second quarter. This dividend represents a yield of more than 7.7%. Slide 2 shows our current structure. The value of Navios Holdings primarily derives from 4 components: The dry bulk fleet within Navios Holdings, and 3 principal operating subsidiaries. As you can see from some [quick marks], the value of NM’s interest in the 2 public subsidiaries is $2.92 per share. This means the market is assigning a value of $0.20 to the two remaining businesses. NM’s core dry bulk fleet consists of 43 vessels in the water. This fleet has long term charters with credit worthy counterparties that are all insured by a AA+ European governmental entity. For 2011, Navios contracted about 95% of its fleet days, and for 2012 about 56% of its fleet days. With this significant long term coverage we can operate well above breakeven until 2017, even in very difficult market conditions. The value of Navios Logistics is growing and has been transformed into a key provider of integrated logistics in the [unintelligible] region.This region has been enjoying significant growth over the past few years and is projected to continue growing well. As you know from the world news, we are in the middle of a very difficult market. The dry bulk industry is driven by global GDP. Leading economies are revising downward estimates for growth in the developed countries. The rate of growth in developing countries appears to be slowing as well.
With this [voice] in the backdrop, the sovereignty debt crisis in Europe is bubbling over into a potential European banking crisis. The political gridlock in the U.S. led one rating institution to downgrade the U.S. debt. Others may follow if the deficit is not appropriately addressed. The post-World War II global order is being threatened. We live in a very uncertain time with fear escalating and liquidity disappearing. One has to dig deeply to find some good news. Our conservative approach serves us particularly well in a fearful environment. Our balance sheet and business [unintelligible] make us an attractive partner. As you can see on slide 3, we have excellent liquidity of $412.6 million, of which $361.5 million is cash. Our net debt to book capitalization is relatively modest at 44.7%. Of course liquidity and cash balances must be viewed in terms of future capital requirements. As you can see, we have no significant capital repayment or capex until 2017. In addition to having excellent liquidity and a strong cash position, our debt is long term and stable. Bonds represent more than 60% of our debt on our balance sheet with no [unintelligible] until maturity. These bonds have favorable covenants, allowing us operating and financial flexibility in fiscal markets. In a market featuring declining asset values, perhaps the most important is the option of any loan-to-value maintenance obligation, and we have continued access to the debt market as the commercial lending market tightens. Our commercial lenders understand that loan-to-value covenant issue. As a result, most of our commercial loans base these covenants on charter-adjusted values, taking away volatility from declining asset values. Read the rest of this transcript for free on seekingalpha.com