Norway's seismic surveyor PGS plans to raise up to 850 million Norwegian crowns ($95 million) in new equity via a private placement to partly refinance its debts maturing in the next 18 months, the company said on Tuesday.
The Oslo-listed company said it would use the proceeds from the private placement to partly redeem its $212 million senior unsecured notes due in December 2022.
The company also said it had received commitments for a four-year term loan of $489 million, and an extension of $215 million of its revolving credit facility until September 2023 from September 2020. The commitments and the extension are subject to raising at least $75 million in new equity, it added.
The company also said it agreed maturity of about 90% of existing $377 million four-year loan until March 2024 from March 2021. Last June, PGS called off a planned debt refinancing, citing worsening investor sentiment towards the oil service sector, sending the shares down by more than 20%.
The company, which owns a fleet of seismic vessels that scan the seabed for buried hydrocarbons and sells the data to oil and gas explorers, said last October it aimed to refinance its debts without raising new equity.
Since October, its shares have surged more than 60%. In the same statement on Tuesday, PGS said its preliminary fourth-quarter segment earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization stood at $194.1 million, up from $154.5 million a year ago.
The company's order book totaled $322 million, while net interesting bearing debt, including lease liabilities, was at $1.2 billion at the end of December, it added. PGS is due to report final quarterly results on Jan. 29.
($1 = 8.9680 Norwegian crowns)
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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