Bis Industries refinances (again), asks for respite from repayments

afr.com:

Troubled times at Bis Industries, the mine-site trucking company that’s no stranger to a balance sheet burdened with debt. The Perth-headquartered group is already refinancing its debt just one year after securing a financial lifeline that required its owners, The Carlyle Group and Varde Partners, to put in an additional $130 million in capital to keep the company afloat.

Term sheets obtained by Street Talk show the company wants to defer interest payments that were due in late July, with lenders calling in KordaMentha and Clayton Utz for advice. Carlyle and Varde, however, will have to advance $32.5 million to the company as a condition for the change.

Carlyle and Varde are being advised by Gilbert+Tobin, while Bis Industries has engaged FTI Consulting and Herbert Smith Freehills. “The Lenders will defer the due date for payment of the interest accrued on the loans outstanding under the Syndicated Facility Agreement for the period ending 27 July 2023 and scheduled amortisation amounts due in September 2023, December 2023 and March 2024” of $15 million until next June, according to the Bis Finance term sheet seen by Street Talk.

Bis Industries has lost contracts in the booming Hunter Valley coal fields. 

It’s not the first bump in the road this year for the company. In April, haulage contracts awarded to Bis, which has been controlled by Carlyle and Varde since KKR relinquished control in a debt-for-equity swap in 2017, were prematurely cancelled in the otherwise booming Hunter Valley coalfields.

The cancellation of the contracts to haul coal for Glencore and Yancoal’s HVO mine happened shortly before Bis’ separate decision to sell its haulage business in the Gunnedah basin region, The Australian Financial Review