Rowan Companies plc (“Rowan” or “Company”) (RDC) announced today that effective January 25, 2016, the Company amended its revolving credit agreement to extend the maturity date by one year to January 23, 2021 from January 23, 2020. Availability under the facility is $1.5 billion through January 23, 2019, declining to $1.44 billion through January 23, 2020, and to approximately $1.29 billion through the maturity in 2021. The facility is undrawn today. Additionally, during the fourth quarter of 2015, the Company retired approximately $98 million of outstanding senior notes which would have come due over the next four years, eliminating over $21 million of interest over this same time period.
The Company also announced that its Board of Directors has eliminated the quarterly cash dividend of $0.10 per Class A Ordinary Share effective immediately, providing the Company with additional liquidity of $50 million annually.
Tom Burke, Rowan’s President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “Rowan is well positioned with high quality contract backlog, no newbuild capital commitments, strong liquidity, and an attractive debt maturity profile. The actions announced today further strengthen our credit profile, which we believe will be a competitive advantage during this extremely challenging business cycle. The extension of our credit facility to 2021, elimination of the dividend and recent debt retirements, coupled with our strong cash position in excess of $480 million at year end, will provide us greater flexibility to both weather the severe cyclical downturn and opportunistically invest countercyclically. We will remain focused on reducing our cost structure and capital spending and identifying the best uses of capital to maximize financial returns.”
Rowan is a global provider of contract drilling services with a fleet of 31 mobile offshore drilling units, composed of 27 jack-up rigs and four ultra-deepwater drillships. The Company’s fleet operates worldwide, including the United States Gulf of Mexico, the United Kingdom and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Trinidad. The Company’s Class A Ordinary Shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “RDC.” For more information on the Company, please visit www.rowan.com.
