Natural Resource Partners to sell some assets

OREANDA-NEWS. October 23, 2015. Mineral land owner Natural Resource Partners (NRP) has begun selling some of its assets to reduce its debt in the face of a weakening coal market and low oil and gas prices.

The company expects to write down the value of some of the assets up for sale in its third quarter financial results, which it will release shortly.

NRP has interests in coking and thermal coal, oil and gas, aggregates and industrial minerals across the US. Most of its revenues come from royalties on land it leases for energy development.

NRP also is cutting its third quarter dividend distribution by 50pc to 4.5?/share, the board of directors of its general partner said today. Last quarter's 9? payout already represented a 75pc reduction from the end of 2014.

The moves are meant to keep NRP on track to meet the de-leveraging goals it outlined in April. The company wants to reduce its ratio of debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization ratio to 3.5 by the end of 2017, from 4.9 last December.

The company declined to comment on how far along it is in selling assets. It also plans to pay off \\$500mn in debt by 2017 and extend the deadline for when some of its debt matures.

"We are focused on the long-term best interest of the partnership, and are committed to reducing our leverage during this period of extreme stress in the coal and oil and gas industries," Wyatt Hogan, president and chief operating officer, said today.

NRP made a number of acquisitions over the past several years to grow and diversify its business. But coal producers leasing its property have had to scale back operations because of lower coking and thermal coal prices and demand. That is weighing on NRP's royalty revenues and pushing the company to sell assets to raise cash and cut costs.