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* Budget airline has struggled to shore up finances
* Latest monthly traffic report released a day early
* Overall passenger traffic fell for first time
(Updates with completed share sale and bond issue)
By Gwladys Fouche and Lefteris Karagiannopoulos
OSLO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Norwegian Air on Tuesday
raised 2.5 billion crowns ($272.31 million) to meet the
struggling airline's cash needs through 2020 with its third
share sale in two years and a bond issue.
The airline said it sold 27.25 million new shares at 40
crowns per share in a private placement, a 13% discount to
Tuesday's closing price. It also raised $150 million via
convertible bond issue.
With mounting debts and suffering from the grounding of its
18 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, Norwegian has replaced
breakneck expansion with cost cutting to regain profitability.
The company also announced a deal with a Chinese firm in
October to offload 27 new Airbus planes to ease
pressure on its finances and avoid becoming the latest airline
to collapse.
"The private placement received significant interest from
both existing shareholders in the company and new high-quality
investors. The convertible bond issue received significant
interest from international and domestic investors," it said.
In a statement after the stock market closed, Europe's
third-largest budget airline by passenger numbers said the
transactions would fully fund it "through 2020 and beyond based
on the current business plan."
"The proceeds ... will secure required financing of working
capital during the winter season and create headroom to
financial covenants while completing the strategic
transformation of the company," it said.
The airline also reported monthly figures showing passenger
traffic declined in October from a year ago, the first such fall
on record as the carrier cut loss-making routes from its
network. The data had been scheduled for release on Wednesday.
Overall traffic, a measure of distance flown and the number
of people carried (RPK), fell 3% year on year in October, the
company said. Analysts in a Reuters poll on average had expected
a fall of 12.1%.
Norwegian's RPK had until now risen every month since it was
first listed on the Oslo Bourse in 2003, its records show.
Trimming capacity at a rate of 5% year on year helped it
fill aircraft, raising the so-called load factor to 87.1% from
85.0% in October 2018, in line with a Reuters poll.
Its yield, or income per passenger carried and kilometre
flown, rose to 0.40 crown in October from 0.38 crown a year ago,
also in line with expectations.
($1 = 9.1808 Norwegian crowns)
(Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Edmund Blair
and Cynthia Osterman)
