310  0 Kommentare DryShips Announces Latest Developments

ATHENS, GREECE--(Marketwired - Oct 20, 2014) - DryShips Inc. (NASDAQ: DRYS) (the "Company" or "DryShips"), an international provider of marine transportation services for drybulk and petroleum cargoes, and through its majority owned subsidiary, Ocean Rig UDW Inc. ("Ocean Rig"), of offshore deepwater drilling services, today announced the following:

• Ocean Rig has agreed to provide DryShips with $120m of immediate liquidity through a short-term unsecured loan. The proceeds will be used, if needed, to repay its 5% Convertible Notes maturing on Dec. 1, 2014.
  
  
• Ocean Rig has declared its third consecutive quarterly cash dividend with respect to the quarter ended September 30, 2014, of $0.19 per common share, to shareholders of record as of October 31, 2014, and payable on or about November 11, 2014.
  
  
• Ocean Rig has been awarded extensions of the drilling contracts for its two ultra deepwater drillships the Ocean Rig Corcovado and the Ocean Rig Mykonos by Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. ("Petrobras") for drilling offshore Brazil. The contracts extensions are subject to partner approvals. The term of each extension is for 1,095 days with a total combined revenue backlog of over $1.1 billion, excluding reimbursement by Petrobras for contract related equipment upgrades. The new contracts will commence in direct continuation from the end of the current agreements with Petrobras, in Q1 and Q2 of 2015.
  
  
• Ocean Rig signed an amendment with Total E&P Angola to extend the date by which Total E&P Angola should exercise the option to extend the term of the contract for two additional one-year periods. The first option is now exercisable until February 27, 2015 and the second option exercisable within one year after the date of exercise of the first option.
  
  
• DryShips expects its third quarter EBITDA to be within the range of $265 million to $300 million.
  
  

George Economou, the Company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"We are delighted to announce another quarter of solid operational performance mainly attributed to the high utilization of about 98% achieved by our drilling segment. We are also excited with the extension for the contracts for the Corcovado and the Mykonos which brings the total backlog of our subsidiary Ocean Rig to $5.5 billion. On the back of this solid backlog, Ocean Rig also announced its third consecutive quarterly dividend payment of $0.19 per share.