Happy new year! I would like to wish a prosperous new year for everyone of you.

The exceptionally long-standing boom in shipping market that started in 2004 did not lose its momentum last year. While this conditions were driven mainly by strong bulk sector, Kyokuyo could also benefit from them as newbuilding demand was steady, albeit less spectacularly, for other types of dry ships, like container carrier, multi-purpose cargo (MPC), or pure car carrier (PCC), to which our shipyard is familiar.

In fact, we could add contracts for 2 PCC's, 2 MPC's and some repeat orders to our backlog during last calendar year. Taking into account other provisional agreements, we hold now sufficient orders to keep us busy until September 2011 - this is a new record order backlog in 65 years Kyokuyo history. I would like to thank all of customers for their continued patronage.

In the meantime, we should not feel euphoric, naturally. There are an increasing number of new shipyards that are being constructed, or planned to be so, in Korea and China. An overheated market will calm down sooner or later. Supply and demand balance of tonnage can be easily lost in a corrective phase. We have to be prepared.

Under such situations, I believe that our best strategy to survive is maintaining our technical and commercial efforts to differentiate the company's products by focusing on highly value-added vessels, which are not easy for its competitors to build. For this, we have to continuously improve ourselves in terms of design abilities, product quality, and price competitiveness. Using delegation of authorities effectively, to motivate employees and to encourage skill transfer through generations, I would like Kyokuyo to be an energetic, well-balanced and single-minded team to challenge the target.

To Kyokuyo, 2008 is the year of groundwork for survival. We will implement the following actions :

1. New products : Kyokuyo will introduce new more energy-saving and eco-friendly standard designs of container carrier and PCC, complying with new regulations. We are also planning to develop new real multi-purpose cargo vessels, which lead to maintaining of our rich backlog, hopefully.
2. Better production control : While the company are facing some challenges in this area, frankly, such as workforce aging and sharp increase in the price of equipment and materials, we will strive after better production control and competitiveness by timely procurements as well as organization improvement, through correct relocation of personnel, aggressive recruitment, introduction of suggestion system and effectively motivating employees.