American Shipping Company (AMSC) is exploring its options in respect of refinancing its existing unsecured bond maturing in February 2018.
The Oslo-listed company has hired Arctic Securities, Clarksons Platou Securities, Pareto Securities and SEB as its financial advisors.
AMSC’s executives Pal Lothe Magnussen and Morten Bakke told TradeWinds the bond is 93% owned by Ocean Yield and the financing need is around $218m.
They said: “Although there is no immediate need to refinance the bond since we still have a decent amount of time, we think it is prudent to start that process now.”
Because the bond is almost solely owned by one party, "it is not really trading and it does not really have a market price".
“We will spend some time to explore what the right terms should be,” AMSC’s bosses said.
The tanker owner still has all of its ships under bareboat contracts with OSG and it is expected that they will remain like that in the long run.
Shares in AMSC were changing hands at NOK 26 ($3.15) each on the Oslo Stock Exchange, down by around 1%.
