Ryan Vaughan: Thank you. Hi, Sam, hi, Dick, hope you guys are doing well. Great job in the quarter. And, Sam, thanks for the guidance, it’s some big time numbers. So, it’s a great job there, especially for 2024. Thank you for that. Come ahead on a few other things I was going to ask you about, but maybe for, Sam and for Dick, if you could just help us out a little bit generating a ton of free cash flow, look at for $160 million EBITDA this year, $175 million next year, leverage it’s getting pretty, low here at $1.5 million on a net basis. With that being said, obviously, we’re at a good point in the cycle. Can you guys just talk about what you’re thinking about, it’s a bigger balance, but it’s from an actual leverage perspective, it’s quite low. How are you thinking about what’s ideal? Where would you like to be, as we start thinking out six to six months, maybe toward the end of the year as far as debt and cash balances, what’s ideal for the company?
Richard Trueblood: Yes. I think, clearly we have one piece of debt maturing next year. And then in 2025, we’ll start to see some additional debt maturities arising. I mean, I think, in some respects, we would like to continue, and we are continuing to deleverage our business a bit, and reduce what our fixed obligations are. But, as you know, Ryan, it becomes a real mix of what other opportunities are out there, on how to deploy cash and make capital investments for the future. We have an opportunity now to look at repaying some debt without refinancing it. And I think that would [indiscernible] the very near-term be attractive. But, decision is going to be made based on how we see opportunities unfolding for adding a ship to the TSP program, for instance, and whether that is, again, it’s outright purchase or it’s a bareboat charter and what that implies.
And then, we continue to have an interest in expanding our fleet that participates in the TSP as it grows from 10 to 20 vessels. And so we’re going to have to look at those capital commitments as well, and then balance it all out. So, I think it’s going to be an evolving outcome.
Ryan Vaughan: Fair enough.
Samuel H. Norton: Yes, Ryan —
Ryan Vaughan: Oh, sorry.
Samuel H. Norton: Ryan, maybe I can add one of that. There’s — in loose bucket terms, there’s probably three areas think we’re going to need to expand some of it, well, leaving aside share repurchases and debt repayment in terms of sort of investment in the business opportunities in the near-term, there’s probably three [technical difficulty] that we consider we need to be mindful of when we think about our forward cash requirements. One is, as Dick mentioned, the replacement of the Mykonos TSP program, whether that’s a bareboat or an outright purchase that would obviously have implications on the amount of cash that would be used. And then the second is, we remain hopeful to be able to find, means of reactivating the Alaskan frontier that would involve capital both for likely the acquisition of that vessel, which is currently still owned by BP as well as pretty substantial investment into bringing that vessel back to an operating condition, since it’s been in lay-up since 2019.
So, there’s some hope that we have some clarity on that by the end of the year. And then the third area, that I addressed in, at some detail in my prepared comments is, investments in capital expenditures to reduce fuel consumption in our ships. Again, those are investments that will be made likely over the period of 2024 and 2025. So, all these things are out there. And, how we fund those and how we finance them, really will evolve from day-to-day. I would note that pretty attractive, all of our debt is currently fixed rate. And in an environment where interest rates are rising, the real benefit of prepayment of debt becomes pretty marginalized when you look at particularly specific loans that we have out there. I think, all else being equal, we will pursue and continuing deleveraging of our business through acquisition of some [technical difficulty] of those or capital deployment on those projects that I mentioned, either with minimum amounts or no amounts of new debt, and then look to refinance or put some more debt on those existing projects once they’re completed.
