SeaBird Exploration has launched a private placement to fund the purchase of two of Boa SBL's seismic survey vessels, the sale of which is being forced by bondholders.
Nordic Trustee said last week it was considering a stock accession option to hand control of the Boa Offshore subsidiary to bondholders and divest the 80-metre Boa Galatea (built 2008) and Boa Thalassa (built 2009) to SeaBird.
The option was to be used if a direct sale could not be sealed with Boa SBL.
SeaBird has today issued 208,333,330 shares in the private placement, which will be tradeable on Oslo's Merkur Market on 31 May.
The company's shares were trading at NOK 1.20 as of 3.50pm in Oslo, meaning the tranche of new shares is worth about NOK 250m ($28.5m).
The agreed acquisition price is $11m each, according to SeaBird's first-quarter presentation to investors.
Investment vehicle Miel Holding has been allocated a tranche of five million shares in the placement, which will raise its stake in SeaBird from 3.91% to 5.02% or 19.3 million shares in total, according to an exchange filing today.
Cyprus-based SeaBird intends to carry out a subsequent repair offering of 25,000,000 shares to existing shareholders who were not allocated shares in the private placement.
Following closing of the purchase, which is expected in mid-June, a further 46,110,745 shares will be issued as part consideration to the sellers.
ABG Sundal Collier, Fearnley Securities and SpareBank 1 Markets are acting as joint lead managers and Norne Securities as co-manager for the private placement.
Vessel updates
Once the acquisition has been completed, SeaBird plans to rename the Boa Galatea as Fulmar Explorer, according to its latest investor presentation. The Boa Thalassa will be renamed Petrel Explorer.
SeaBird described the vessels as "two of very few vessels meeting high-end requirements in a growing OBS [ocean bottom seismic] market".
The two survey ships can be made 2D/source-capable at cost of about $11m each, the company said.
SeaBird's first-quarter results show that the Boa Thalassa has been time chartered to Electromagnetic Geoservices (EMGS) until March 2020, plus options for two six-month extensions.
SeaBird also revealed it has chartered in PGS' seismic vessel Nordic Explorer (built 1986) for a fixed period of 120 days plus an optional 150-day extension.
The vessel will undertake a "niche" 3D survey in West Africa for about 80 days that has a total value of about $6.5m, "plus potential other contract opportunities", SeaBird said in its presentation.
First-quarter results
SeaBird's loss from continuing operations was $0.4m during the first quarter 2019, an improvement on the loss of $1.0m posted in the same period last year.
Although revenue was dramatically higher this past quarter than it was 12 months earlier, SeaBird was impacted by higher cost of sales and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses.
Total revenues were $12.3m during the first three months of 2019, compared with $4.7m in the same period last year.
However, this was partially offset by the $8.4m cost of sales, which is over $5m more than in the same period last year.
SG&A expenses increased from $1.5m to $2m over the same time frame.
