Norway's Hoegh LNG Holdings is taking early action on debt maturity with new deals in a hot Oslo bond market.
The Oslo-listed company said on Monday it had successfully completed a tap worth nearly NOK 161m ($17.3m) under its existing HLNG04 series of NOK 650m senior unsecured bonds falling due in January 2025.
Chief executive Sveinung Stohle told TradeWinds that one single investor in its HLNG03 series NOK 1.5bn bond due in February 2022 bought the new bonds, allowing Hoegh LNG to buy back NOK 150m of that issue.
Now the company is launching another tap issue in its 2025 notes for other investors in the HLNG03 series. The shipowner can sell another NOK 650m, including the NOK 161m already issued.
Stohle said the purpose was to allow investors in the earlier bond to "roll over" their participation, while the aim for Hoegh LNG is to reduce the maturity due in 2022.
Moving way ahead of maturity
"As we have done before, we are refinancing way ahead of maturity when the bond market is open and right now it is open," he added.
The tap issue of HLNG04 was priced at 93.61% of par value, and the bonds in HLNG03 were repurchased at 100% of par.
Danske Bank, Nordea and Swedbank were due to hold a call with HLNG03 bondholders on Monday over the new tap deal.
The owner of LNG carriers and regasification vessels is the latest in a series of owners like Klaveness Combination Carriers, Color Group and Navigator Holdings to have gone to the Oslo bond market in recent weeks.
The HLNG04 tranche was sold in January this year at three-month Nibor plus 600 basis points. It was significantly over-subscribed at that point.
In August, the senior management of Hoegh LNG said they were set to take up senior posts at the company’s US-listed master limited partnership (MLP) Hoegh LNG Partners.
Stohle and chief financial officer Havard Furuwill took up the same positions at the spin-off.
The two were named to the posts after Steffen Foreid, who held the dual role of CEO and CFO at Hoegh LNG Partners, announced his resignation earlier in August.
