PPC refinances debt ahead of business plan
Public Power Corporation (PPC), hit by unpaid bills during years of austerity, said it has reached a deal to refinance a 1.3-billion-euro syndicated loan and is close to finalizing a five-year business plan.
The terms of the refinancing agreement with Greek banks were “satisfactory and absolutely reasonable,” PPC’s chief executive Manolis Panagiotakis told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday.
The loan is due in May 2019.
Shareholders at the meeting voted overwhelmingly to renew Panagiotakis’s tenure as CEO for three years after his term expired in April.
The CEO said PPC, which is 51 percent state-owned, had also agreed a new 175-million-euro credit facility with banks, to tap if it needs help to repay outstanding notes of 350 million euros due next year.
PPC’s share price was hit last month after media reported that adviser McKinsey had drafted a five-year business plan that indicated it needed to take immediate action to reduce arrears, boost its profit and cut its workforce.
Panagiotakis said that PPC was in the final stage of drawing up the plan, which will include specific measures to boost the utility’s finances by 2022, upgrade its operations and develop new activities in the next 10 years.
“Specific actions will take place in June to make sure [the plan] will be implemented,” he said.
[Reuters]
