Norwegian is pressing hard against hard

Update: The deadline for bondholders to accept the new offer or it won’t expire at 11pm on Thursday night. At 02:30 a new message from the Norwegian did not arrive.

To bring its bondholders to a crisis solution, Norwegian announced new offers on Thursday afternoon. Therefore, the bondholder meeting, which was due to start at 4pm, was postponed.

The goal here was to approve the airline’s bailout proposal, which involves converting debt into shares. Norwegian will also carry out a share increase of up to NOK 400 million in a share issue. This is to guarantee state emergency loans.

New offer

Norwegian announced Thursday, among other things, the following change in offer to lenders:

• They grant bondholders a partial preferential right to raise capital to be made after debt conversion.
• The airline resolves blocking requirements that establish how long creditors must hold the shares they receive through the conversion.
• Bondholders on the convertible loan have the opportunity to convert the remainder of the loan immediately after the primary conversion.
• Norwegian will protect proceeds from the sale of so-called slots, or departure times, at Gatwick airport to insure the bondholders in NAS07 and NAS08, who have promised these slots.

The offer lasted until 11 p.m. Thursday.

“This is the company’s latest offering,” Norwegian writes in a statement.

– If there isn’t tonight, it’s a very, very serious situation for Norwegian. Then the battle is almost lost, and a miracle is needed to avoid the right to change, flight analyst Hans Jørgen Elnæs tells NTB.

indebted

At the same time, Norwegian states that it will reduce the amount of the convertible bond it will convert into shares to 77 percent, if creditors agree to subscribe for a certain number of shares in the share issue, which must be at least NOK 50 million, then . This was previously at 85 percent, before falling to 80 percent on Tuesday.

Lenders who subscribe to the shares in the share issue also have the opportunity to get 1.6 times more of their assigned shares released from the so-called “lock”, which is an agreement that shares cannot be sold before a certain time.

Thursday’s statement also states that existing shareholders will be offered to subscribe to half of the shares in the share issue, while 25 percent will be allocated to bondholders and leasing companies, respectively, who convert their debt in shares and new shareholders.

Norwegian had a total debt of NOK 61 billion in New Years, distributed in NOK 21.9 billion from the financing of aircraft with promises on aircraft and the rest in debt to bondholders and financial leasing companies.