Change of Currency Offer for Holders of NEC03 Bond Issue
Norse Energy Corp. ASA announces that NOK 60.5 million of the bondholders in NEC03 have accepted a voluntary offer to exchange existing bonds denominated in NOK for bonds in a new bond issue with USD currency and fixed interest of 9.5 %.
The new issue will have the same loan structure with annual interest payments from July and repayment in 2010, but with USD currency and coupon. For detailed information see attached term sheet.
The bonds will be exchanged at price of par value (100%) and the currency exchange rate was set at NOK/USD 6.92 per Tuesday December 16th.
The new bond issue will have denomination of USD 100 000. Any fractions will be rounded up to nearest USD 100 000.
The offer has been distributed to all existing bondholders in the NEC03 issue.
The current bond issue will prolong according to the current loan agreement. The offer has been in order to minimize the company's foreign exchange exposure.
Following the recent bond restructuring Norse Energy Corp’s new bond exposure is the following;
Name Denomination and amount Interest Maturity
*NEC01 NOK 286 million Fixed 10% 2010 (July)
New issue USD 8.8 million Fixed 9.5% 2010 (July)
NEC02 USD 75 million w/warrants Fixed 6.5% 2011 (July)
NEC04 NOK 27 million Fixed 11.5% 2012 (Sept)
**New issue USD 17.8 million Fixed 10.707% 2012 (Sept)
*In NEC01 NOK 139 million is swapped into USD at NOK/USD 5.76 with interest rate 8.5 %.
** This new issue was recently converted into USD at NOK/USD 7.08 as announced on December 2nd.
All interest payments are annual, except 2012 bond issues where payments are semi-annual.
Following this, the company’s total bond exposure is USD 126 million at weighted interest rate 7.68% and NOK 174.5 million at weighted interest rate of 10.23%.
Fearnley Fonds ASA is acting as financial advisor to Norse Energy Corp. ASA in connection with the Offer.
For further information please contact:
Anders Kapstad, CFO
Tel.: +47 67 51 61 12
Cell: +47 918 17 442
Email: akapstad@norseenergy.com