Arne Blystad's Songa Container will delist its bond from the Oslo Stock Exchange after completing the sale of its fleet to Germany's MPC Container Ships (MPCC).
The bond will be delisted on 11 August after the finalisation of the deal that leaves former Songa Container shareholders with the third-largest holding in the Hamburg-managed containership owner.
Songa’s bond was scheduled to mature in June 2023.
But the sale of the company's remaining fleet of 11 ships for cash and shares worth $210.5m has enabled the shareholders to take a different path.
The Norwegian company exercised a call option for the outstanding $130m of a senior secured bond issue at the end of July.
Meanwhile, MPCC is understood to have raised $32m of replacement finance for a smaller tranche of the issue.
Songa will then be the second container shipping company to delist from the Norwegian exchange in a week.
Borealis Finance will delist a bond on 13 August after selling a fleet of 12 containerships to New York-listed Global Ship Lease (GSL).
Milestone transaction
The move comes after the completion of a deal announced in June for the sale of Songa Container to MPCC.
That will leave Blystad with a 6.5% shareholding in MPCC, whose total fleet of 75 makes it a significant player in a small ship market.
The deal will comprise part cash and part new shares, with 49.8m new shares being issued in relation to the transaction.
The selling shareholders, including Klaveness Marine and Magnus Roth’s Canomaro Shipping, are subject to lock-up of the shares of up to three months from completion of the acquisition.
Blystad, chairman and majority owner of Songa Container, described MPCC as “perfectly positioned to generate super profits in the current strong container market and to consolidate this segment further”.
“The present market parameters constitute one of the most attractive opportunities in container shipping in the last decades,” he said.
MPCC chief executive Constantin Baack described the agreement hatched on 31 May as a “milestone transaction”.
“Charter rates have continued to rise since the signing of the agreement, improving the risk-reward dynamics of the transaction even further,” he said.
“Our growing fleet reinforces our industry-leading position as an intra-regional trade tonnage provider."
Blystad is building up his container interests through a private company, Songa Box, which has accumulated three containerships this spring in the same size bracket as the Songa Container fleet.
