Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CCOI) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Dave Schaeffer - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Tad Weed - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Gregory Williams - Cowen

Nic Del Deo - MoffettNathanson

Timothy Horan - Oppenheimer

Walter Piecyk - LightShed Partners

David Barden - Bank of America

Michael Rollins - Citi

Operator

Welcome to the Cogent Communications Holdings Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and it will be available for replay at www. cogentco.com. A transcript of this conference call will be posted on the same website when it becomes available. Cogent's summary of financial and operational results attached to its press release can be downloaded from the Cogent website. [Operator Instructions]

And now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Dave Schaeffer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cogent Communications Holdings.

Dave Schaeffer

Thank you very much, and good afternoon to everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm Dave Schaeffer, Cogent's CEO. And with me on this afternoon's call is Tad Weed, our Chief Financial Officer. Hopefully, you've had a chance to review our earnings press release. Our press release includes a number of historical quarterly metrics that we present in a consistent manner each quarter.

Now for a quick overview of our results. In June, we issued a $450 million unsecured 2027 note, and we used a portion of that proceeds to redeem our €350 million unsecured notes that were due in 2024. We received net proceeds from this offering of $71 million, and we extended the average maturity of our debt by extinguishing our 2024 euro notes. We obtained an economic gain of $26 million from the difference between the euro to dollar rate at the date of issuance as compared to the euro to dollar rate at the date of settlement.

We also eliminated a restrictive covenant provision in our euro-denominated notes that was 4.25 to one times EBITDA. This restrictive covenant limited our ability to transfer funds from our operating company to a holding company, and therefore, be available for both dividends and share buybacks.

As of June 30, our cash held at Cogent Holdings was $66.6 million, and we had an additional $219.9 million that can now be transferred to holdings for a total of $286.5 million of unrestricted cash that's available for either dividends and/or buybacks.