Mercer weighs possibility its financing structure may not be extended

By Devika Patel

Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 17 – Mercer International Inc. management noted that it was pleased with the company’s current financing structure, but as the debt matures, the company may have to pursue other financing sources or decrease its debt load if the markets won’t allow Mercer to roll its facilities over by extending their maturities.

“We’ve been pretty fortunate to have that core, foundational, unsecured, no-covenant, very flexible financing structure in the past, but that may not the place, maybe as we get closer to the first maturity, which is 2026,” senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer David K. Ure said on the company’s fourth quarter and year ended Dec. 31, 2022 earnings conference call on Friday.

“We’ll have to see what the market conditions are for other sources of financing and a lot can change in the next year as well.

“As you know, we’ve got pretty good cash flow, pretty good operating cash flow, so I think we’re going to have the opportunities, if the markets aren’t there to roll those facilities over, we’ll have the opportunity to do something else and that may include shrinking the debt up and we’ll look at the other sources of financing at the time,” he said.

Cash and cash equivalents were $354,032,000 as of Dec. 31, 2022, compared to $345.61 million as of Dec. 31, 2021.

Long-term debt was $1,346,508,000 as of Dec. 31, 2022, compared to $1,237,545,000 as of Dec. 31, 2021.

The pulp producer is based in Vancouver, B.C.

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