Nasdaq-listed Top Ships has agreed a new $36m loan to finance its latest two MR newbuildings.
The Greek owner said its 50%-owned subsidiaries City of Athens and Eco Nine had entered into an agreement with an unnamed European bank for a senior debt facility to fund the delivery of the 50,000-dwt Eco Holmby Hills and Eco Palm Springs from Hyundai Vinashin in Vietnam.
The loan will be payable in 20 consecutive quarterly instalments of $0.3m per vessel.
There is a balloon payment of $11.9m per vessel payable together with the last instalment.
Interest is LIBOR plus a margin of 2.9%.
Eco Holmby Hills was delivered last week, and started a time charter to Clearlake Shipping this week.
This will last three years, with two optional 12-month periods attached.
Eco Palm Springs is due in May.
No share offerings
Top Ships also said that it does not intend to conduct any share offerings or offerings that include variable priced securities for the next 12 months.
Nor does Race Navigation, a company controlled by a trust for the family of CEO Evangelos Pistiolis, intend to convert any of its 1.25m warrants into shares.
The company has also decided to carry out a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.
But no other stock split is planned in the next 12 months.
The number of outstanding shares will be cut to 17m from 170m.
Pistiolis believes that the stock trades at a 75% discount to current net asset value, placing it "among the most undervalued tanker shipping stocks on Nasdaq," he said.
It is currently $0.23, below the Nasdaq limit of $1 for continued listing.
But it has risen nearly 30% since the loan announcement.
Focus on financing
Pistiolis said: "Following the delivery of the remaining six of our newbuilding vessels, our tanker fleet will have an average age of two years and will consist of 14 high specification newbuilding product and crude oil tankers."
He added that as of 1 January, revenue backlog for the fixed charter period of operating vessels was about $155m, increasing to about $172m when adding the 50% of the joint venture tankers.
"We are currently focused on ensuring that our shipbuilding programme is adequately funded both from an equity and debt point of view and within the boundaries of our newly adopted capital raising corporate strategy.
"We are also focused on closing the gap between our equity market capitalisation and our net asset value in order to be in line with the remaining listed tanker companies."
