August 1st, 2024
Gulf Marine Services
PLC
('Gulf Marine Services',
'GMS', 'the Company' or 'the Group')
Announcement of a landmark
new bank deal and establishment of a dividend
policy
Gulf Marine Services (GMS), a
leading provider of self-propelled and self-elevating support
vessels for the offshore oil, gas, and renewables sectors is
pleased to announce that it reached an agreement with First Abu
Dhabi Bank, Commercial Bank of Dubai and HSBC Bank to refinance its
current bank debt. The three banks, two of which are current
lenders, will have an equal participation to the term loan and to
the working capital facility.
The facility will consist of a term
loan of an amount equivalent to USD 250 million in United Arab
Emirates Dirhams (AED) as a well as a working capital facility of
an amount equivalent to USD 50 million, also in United Arab
Emirates Dirhams. The loan will have a tenor of five years from the
facility agreement date. 80% of the term loan will be amortized
quarterly over 5 years with a 20% balloon. Exposure to the AED will
be hedged in full.
GMS Board has also approved a
dividend policy dedicating 20%-30% of annual adjusted net profit
towards distributions to shareholders in the forms of dividends and
potentially share buyback provided all bank covenants are met and
other plans permit.
GMS is also taking this opportunity
to confirm it is maintaining its adjusted EBITDA guidance for the
12 months ending December 2024 in the range of USD 92 million to
USD 100 million, as first announced on 28 February 2024. We
are also working on revisiting our EBITDA guidance for 2025 towards
year end.
Mansour Al Alami, GMS Executive Chairman,
commented:
"I am delighted to finally announce
this deal for a USD 300 million facility today. This is yet another
testimony of the progress achieved by GMS in the past couple of
years. It signals a new dawn for us and the start of a new journey.
It acknowledges our recent years track record and will enable us to
achieve our long term objectives on growth and on shareholders
rewards, without jeopardizing our commitment to
deleveraging.
"I would like to thank all those who
worked hard to get it done.
"As we have made an early settlement
towards our debt last week, our current net debt is USD 234
million, down from USD 267.3 million as of December 31st,
2023.
"GMS continues to monitor the
positive changes to its shareholders register. We welcome our
new investors and are pleased to see institutions showing
increasing interest, higher than we've been seeing in a
while.
"The deal allows us to plan for
improving shareholders value by investment in growth and for
shareholders rewards by reducing restrictions on dividend payment
and share buyback. GMS will look to add opportunistically and on
favorable terms assets that could have an immediate impact on
building the backlog and the profitability."
Alex Aclimandos, GMS Chief Financial Officer,
added:
"This landmark transaction will have
significant advantages to all stakeholders. The financing costs,
currently standing at 300 bps (+ SOFR) will gradually go down to
225 bps (+EIBOR) when net leverage gets below 2.0 times. At
transaction date expected net leverage levels, the financing costs
will be at 250 bps plus EIBOR. This will provide additional cash
liquidity to GMS. The surplus liquidity the deal provides will
accelerate the achievement of GMS goals.
"While we maintain our focus on
deleveraging the business to levels providing agility, the
transaction enables us to achieve shareholder growth. It allows us
to lease or to acquire new vessels to fuel the topline, and removes
most restrictions related to direct payment to shareholders, either
via share buyback or via dividend payment.
"We expect the transaction to close
before December 31st, 2024.
"We will be announcing our reviewed
results in approximately 4-5 weeks. As we stand, our preliminary
unaudited and unreviewed results show our adjusted first half
EBITDA are on track to be within the earlier provided guidance for
the year. Our backlog as of August 1st 2024 stands at USD 414.5
million."
This announcement contains inside information and is provided
in accordance with the requirements of Article 17 of the Market
Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 (as it forms part of UK law by
virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, as
amended).
-ENDS-
Enquiries:
Gulf Marine Services PLC
Mansour Al Alami
Executive Chairman
|
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7603 1515
|
Celicourt Communications
Mark Antelme
Philip Dennis
Ali AlQahtani
|
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7770 6424
|
Notes to Editors:
Gulf Marine Services PLC, a company
listed on the London Stock Exchange, was founded in Abu Dhabi in
1977 and has become a world leading provider of advanced
self-propelled self-elevating support vessels (SESVs). The fleet
serves the oil, gas and renewable energy industries from its
offices in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The
Group's assets are capable of serving clients' requirements across
the globe, including those in the Middle East, South East Asia,
West Africa, North America, the Gulf of Mexico and Europe.
The GMS fleet of 13 SESVs is amongst
the youngest in the industry. The vessels support GMS's clients in
a broad range of offshore oil and gas platform refurbishment and
maintenance activities, well intervention work and offshore wind
turbine maintenance work (which are opex-led activities), as well
as offshore oil and gas platform installation and decommissioning
and offshore wind turbine installation (which are capex-led
activities).
The SESVs are categorised by size -
K-Class (Small), S-Class (Mid) and E-Class (Large) - with these
capable of operating in water depths of 45m to 80m depending on leg
length. The vessels are four-legged and are self-propelled, which
means they do not require tugs or similar support vessels for moves
between locations in the field; this makes them significantly more
cost-effective and time-efficient than conventional offshore
support vessels without self-propulsion. They have a large deck
space, crane capacity and accommodation facilities (for up to 300
people) that can be adapted to the requirements of the Group's
clients.
Gulf Marine Services PLC's Legal
Entity Identifier is 213800IGS2QE89SAJF77
www.gmsplc.com
Disclaimer
The content of the Gulf Marine
Services PLC website should not be considered to form a part of or
be incorporated into this announcement.
Cautionary Statement
This announcement includes
statements that are forward-looking in nature. All statements other
than statements of historical fact are capable of interpretation as
forward-looking statements. These statements may generally, but not
always, be identified by the use of words such as 'will', 'should',
'could', 'estimate', 'goals', 'outlook', 'probably', 'project',
'risks', 'schedule', 'seek', 'target', 'expects', 'is expected to',
'aims', 'may', 'objective', 'is likely to', 'intends', 'believes',
'anticipates', 'plans', 'we see' or similar expressions. By their
nature these forward-looking statements involve numerous
assumptions, risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, as
they relate to events and depend on circumstances that might occur
in the future.
Accordingly, the actual results,
operations, performance or achievements of the Company and its
subsidiaries may be materially different from any future results,
operations, performance or achievements expressed or implied by
such forward-looking statements, due to known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors. Neither Gulf Marine Services PLC
nor any of its subsidiaries undertake any obligation to publicly
update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of
new information, future events or other
information. No part of this announcement constitutes, or shall be
taken to constitute, an invitation or inducement to invest the
Company or any other entity and must not be relied upon in any way
in connection with any investment decision. All written and oral
forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or to
persons acting on the Company's behalf are expressly qualified in
their entirety by the cautionary statements referred to
above.