US LPG carrier owner Navigator Holdings is moving quickly to refinance $100m of bond debt maturing next year.
The New York-listed company told the Oslo Stock Exchange it has brought in Nordea, Pareto Securities and Clarksons Platou Securities as global coordinators and joint lead bookrunners, and Credit Agricole and SEB as joint lead bookrunners.
They will arrange a series of fixed-income investor calls starting on Thursday.
Subject to market conditions, a US dollar senior unsecured bond issue may be sold.
In conjunction with this, it may buy back some of the $100m bond that expires next February.
This month Navigator has amended its terminal loan facility to enable the immediate drawdown of $34m.
In addition, the company is seeking to refinance one of its vessel loans to unlock an additional $30m for general corporate purposes.
Limited refinancing risk
This refinancing is expected to be completed during the third quarter.
Navigator had said last week it was continuing to assess the capital markets for refinancing the 2021 bond.
Clarksons Platou Securities said: "With several sources of liquidity at their disposal, we see limited refinancing risk of the NVGS 2021 bonds and believe they trade at a compelling value close to par, yielding circa 8.2%.
"We believe the MGC fully-ref Navigator Jorf is a good candidate for a potential refinancing. The vessel has the longest contract coverage in the NVGS fleet, running through August 2027, and is part of a credit facility with a relatively low bullet loan to value ratio of 43% according to our estimates."
The owner's net profit in the three months to 30 June was $3.49m, against a loss of $7.7m a year ago.
Revenue rose to $80m from $73.5m, with the six-month loss cut to $4.24m from $11m.
Fleet utilisation improved to 88.3% for the three months, compared to 85.2% in 2019.
