Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, announced a series of recent transactions to extend its debt maturity profile and lower the total effective net borrowing rate to the company.

“As we stated last summer and more recently with our second quarter earnings, when we secured financing for the M&M acquisition, we intentionally built a shorter-term debt maturity profile to avoid locking in abnormally wider spreads on longer-term debt and to maintain flexibility to refinance in the future,” said Scott Richardson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. “We positioned ourselves to be highly opportunistic and are pleased to have very cost effectively refinanced and extended maturities of a portion of our debt maturing over the next few years.”

On August 10, 2023 the company’s subsidiary, Celanese US Holdings, has priced a registered offering of US $3 billion aggregate principal amount of notes with maturities from 2028 through 2033 with interest rates ranging from 6.350 per cent to 6.700 per cent. The Notes will be guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by the company and certain Celanese domestic subsidiaries, similar to prior issuances.

The Offering is expected to close on or about August 24, 2023. The net proceeds from the Offering of the Notes will be used (i) to fund the tender offer for up to US$1.75 billion aggregate purchase price of our outstanding 5.900 per cent Senior Notes due 2024, 6.050 per cent Senior Notes due 2025 and 3.500 per cent Senior Notes due 2024, and (ii) for repayment of other outstanding indebtedness, including the full amount outstanding under our three-year term loan credit agreement due 2025, and for other general corporate purposes.

With the completion of these refinancing transactions, the Company will extend the average maturity of its debt from 3.3 years to 4.6 years and reduce the total value of the combined 2023, 2024 and 2025 debt maturities from $6.4 billion to $3.4 billion.

The company also entered into two cross-currency swaps to effectively convert US$ 1billion and US$0.5 billion of the US dollar denominated Notes into euro-denominated and Japanese yen-denominated borrowing, respectively, at prevailing euro and yen interest rates.

Inclusive of the refinancing transactions and the impact of the euro and yen currency swaps, the effective total net borrowing rate for the company will be approximately 4.67%, a decrease of approximately 14 basis points.

“With the completion of this series of transactions, we will have effectively eliminated the need to refinance any debt over the next several years and have also reduced our annual interest costs,” Scott Richardson continued. “These transactions are consistent with our strategy to proactively and opportunistically manage upcoming debt maturities and optimize our borrowing costs. Under our new debt maturity profile we believe we have maintained ample flexibility to aggressively pay down debt and to execute our deleveraging plan. We plan to assess further opportunities to de-risk our debt and lower our borrowing costs, including ongoing work to effectively redomicile a portion of our U.S. term loans to lower rate China debt.”