05-10-2015

Willbros Group announces sale of professional services segment

Willbros Group, Inc. announced today that it has executed a purchase agreement for the sale of its Professional Services segment to TRC Companies, Inc. for $130 million cash. The agreement is binding and the transaction is subject to normal closing conditions including the expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended. The sale is expected to close before the end of November. Under the terms of its amended credit facilities, Willbros will retain $43 million of the net proceeds to maintain its current liquidity and working capital. The balance of the proceeds, net of closing and transaction expenses, will be applied to reduction of the Company's term loan debt.

John T. McNabb, II, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "This transaction clearly enables us to present a much improved balance sheet to meet the expectations of our customers and investors. We set out a year ago to improve our capital structure and our operating efficiency. We have restructured our Oil & Gas segment with a new management team and a focus on our areas of strength and competency. We have resized our corporate and segment G&A expenses and have significantly reduced our long term debt, optimizing our capital structure. Our three segments are qualified both operationally and financially for the markets we address, and we can now focus on building backlog and delivering net income. With the overall transformation of Willbros, we are confident that we can achieve stable, predictable and improved performance in 2016. Our next milestone events will be completion of the sale of our Professional Services segment and a smaller non-strategic business unit, and we are confident that we will complete both transactions in the near term. With these sales completed, since the end of 2014 the Company will have reduced its term loan debt from $270 million to less than $100 million."