Essent prices $500 million senior note offering

Private mortgage insurer Essent Group is the latest home finance industry participant to enter the debt markets, pricing $500 million of senior unsecured notes.

The notes will have twice yearly interest payments at an annual rate of 6.25%. The transaction is expected to close on July 1.

Essent plans to use approximately $425 million of the net proceeds to repay all of the borrowings outstanding under the term loan portion of its existing credit facility, and the remainder for general corporate purposes. This new debt issuance comes at a lower interest rate. The $425 million currently outstanding has a weighted average interest rate of 7.06%, company officials said during the first quarter earnings call.

In a related move, the company entered into a revolving facility refinancing agreement to replace that credit line, which has a committed capacity of $825 million with a $500 million line.

Plus, the new agreement also provides for up to $250 million in uncommitted incremental revolving credit facilities that may be exercised at Essent's option, so long as it receives sufficient commitments from the bank lenders.

This refinancing agreement was entered into with Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase as administrative agents, as well as other unnamed bank lenders, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

For the senior note offering, J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs & Co., Citizens Capital Markets, and US Bancorp are joint book-running managers. Huntington Capital Markets, KeyBanc Capital Markets, M&T Securities, Ramirez & Co., and Siebert Williams Shank are its co-managers.

Essent Group earned $181.7 million in the first quarter, up from $175.4 million three months prior and $170.8 million in the year ago period.

It did the least new insurance written during the first quarter, at $8.3 billion.

Essent also entered the title insurance business when it purchased Agents National Title Holding and Boston National Title from Finance of America/Incenter one year ago.

Coincidentally, FOA tapped the debt markets earlier this week, in a move that extended maturities on high yield debt coming due in 2025.

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