Norwegian Cruise Line secures over $2 billion in added liquidity

Easing many of the concerns raised in an SEC filing that we reported on earlier, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) today reports that it has successfully secured over $2 billion of additional liquidity.

Yesterday, Norwegian launched a series of capital markets transactions, led by Goldman Sachs, to raise approximately $2 billion. The total has since been upsized to gross proceeds of $2.225 billion ($2.4 billion if the underwriters exercise their full overallotment options) due to significant oversubscription and demand across all three offerings.

The transactions consisted of (1) $400 million public offering of common equity, (2) $750 million exchangeable senior notes offering, (3) $675 million senior secured notes offering and (4) $400 million private investment from global consumer-focused private equity firm L. Catterton.

Contingent on completion of the transactions, the company expects to have approximately $3.5 billion of liquidity. This significantly strengthens the company’s financial position and liquidity runway and it now expects to be positioned to withstand well over 12 months of voyage suspensions in a potential downside scenario.

The company says that, while this is not the company’s base case expectation, it has taken a swift and proactive approach to protect its future given the significant uncertainty and unknown duration of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

When the transactions are completed, the company says, the additional liquidity alleviates management’s concern about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern for the next 12 months.