Frontier Board Revises Capital Allocation Strategy, Reduces Quarterly Dividend

(RTTNews) - Frontier Communications Corp. (FTR) announced its Board has reduced the quarterly common stock dividend from $0.105 to $0.04 per share, beginning with the dividend payable on June 30, 2017 to shareholders of record on June 15, 2017. This change allows for reallocation of approximately $300 million annually, increasing to approximately $400 million annually in the second half of 2018 following the conversion of the mandatory convertible Series A Preferred Stock to common stock. Frontier plans to use these proceeds primarily to repay debt.

Frontier also announced its intention to issue secured debt in the second quarter of 2017, subject to market conditions, and to use the proceeds to address maturities and reduce interest expense.

Frontier also announced that its Board has made a determination that it will set the reverse stock split ratio at 1-for-15 if stockholders approve the reverse stock split proposal that is now before them and, following such approval, the Board decides to proceed with the reverse stock split. In addition to the reverse stock split, the proposal before Frontier stockholders would reduce the authorized number of shares of common stock from 1,750,000,000 to 175,000,000.