DryShips Ups Its Revolver Facility

Nasdaq-listed dry bulk owner from Greece DryShips Inc. has secured an increase to its revolving facility provided by an entity controlled by the company’s Chairman and CEO, George Economou.

The company said that the revolver was amended to increase the maximum available amount by USD 10 million to USD 70 million, to give Dryships an option to extend the maturity of the facility by 12 months to October 21, 2019 and to cancel the option of the lender to convert the outstanding loan to DryShips common stock.

As part of the transaction the company has also entered into a Preferred Stock Exchange Agreement to exchange the 4,000,000 (100,000,000 pre-split) Series B Preferred Shares held by the lender for USD 8.75 million. Following the transaction, the outstanding balance under the revolver stands at USD 28.75 million and the total number of issued and outstanding shares of common stock amount to 26.8 million.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement to increase and extend our revolver which will provide greater financial flexibility for the company and remove the overhang on our share price the lender’s option to convert to shares of our common stock had created,” Ziad Nakhleh, Chief Financial Officer commented.

Having posted a USD 2.8 billion net loss for 2015 due to a prolonged market downturn in the drybulk segment, the company has entered into talks on restructuring of its debt facilities with lenders.

Specifically, three of its bank facilities have matured and the company has not made the final balloon installment. For the remaining bank facilities, DryShips decided to suspend principal repayments to preserve cash liquidity.

As of 31 December, DryShips accrued USD 236.9 million in total debt.

DryShips owns a fleet of 23 drybulk carriers, and 6 offshore supply vessels, comprising 2 platform supply and 4 oil spill recovery vessels.