Avantair, Inc. (OTCBB:AAIR), the only publicly traded stand-alone private aircraft operator and the sole North American provider of fractional shares and flight hour time cards in the Piaggio Avanti aircraft, today announced two important milestone achievements for the company: the closing of a financing and the addition of four aircraft to its fleet.
Avantair has closed the final tranche of a financing for total gross proceeds of $10.4 million. Avantair intends to use the net proceeds from this financing transaction to retire approximately $6.0 million of debt and for working capital and general corporate purposes. Early Bird Capital, Inc. acted as the exclusive placement agent in the offering.
The Company’s improved capital structure enabled the addition of three new managed aircraft to the Avantair fleet. The Company is adding one additional managed aircraft prior to calendar year-end 2009.
“We have demonstrated considerable financial growth in recent quarters and the closing of these transactions further augments our ability to execute on our growth strategy,” said Steven Santo, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Avantair. “The completion of the transaction enables us to further improve our capital structure and significantly improve cash flow. We have also entered into agreements to expand our fleet with the addition of four aircraft, three of which we have already received and the fourth which we expect to add before the end of the calendar year. The expansion of our fleet will enable us to keep pace with the strong demand for our flight programs. Each of the positive trends in our business that we have recently announced—including gains in revenues, flight hours, fleet size and headcount—show that we are taking a growing share of the private aircraft market, so the timing of this expansion couldn’t be better. At a time when our competitors are downsizing, Avantair continues to grow at a record pace.
“With our infrastructure and balance sheet soundly in place, we believe we are well positioned to reach new levels of success this fiscal year as the number one value provider in private travel,” Mr. Santo concluded.
Under the terms of the offering, Avantair sold approximately 8.8 million shares of Common Stock to investors at a price per share of $0.95. The sale was consummated among Avantair, the new investors and the investors in June and September 2009 financings. In conjunction with the transaction, the Company also exchanged 817,000 outstanding warrants that had been issued to investors in the two prior financings for 0.61 shares of Common Stock per warrant.
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