Online food delivery company Waitr Holdings Inc. sold $48.3 million of common stock to shareholders, or about 23.6 million shares in recent weeks.
The company expects to use $10.5 million of of that to pay some of its senior secured term loan and the remainder for “operational and growth initiatives” but also general corporate purposes.
Waitr negotiated with lenders, including New York hedge fund Luxor Capital, that if it makes that payment its interest rate would drop by 200 basis points for one year to 5.1% while its existing convertible note would drop to 4% during the same time frame and the loans won’t be due until November 2023.
That brings that Louisiana company’s cash on hand to $79 million, a big change from several months ago when it was running out of cash and had only about $30 million in cash.
Waitr was $291 million in the red during 2019 compared to a loss of $34 million in 2018.
Waitr now projects its first profitable quarter since the company went public in 2018 which in part stems from a surge in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic but also a shift from employee drivers to independent contractors.
The company’s stock was trading around $3.74 per share as of Wednesday morning, down from its 52-week-peak of $5.57 per share in July 2019.