Intention to issue senior bonds

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Hastings Group Holdings plc

Hastings announces intention to issue investment grade unsecured senior bonds

10 May 2018

Hastings Group Holdings plc ('the Group', or 'Hastings'), the technology driven insurance provider, today announces its intention to conduct a series of credit investor meetings in the UK commencing 11 May 2018. Subject to market conditions, the issue of circa £250m of investment grade senior bonds (the 'Bonds') is expected to follow. The 7 year fixed rate unsecured Bonds are expected to be rated BBB by Fitch Ratings Limited.

Should the Group proceed with the issuance, the Bonds will provide longer term committed financing for the Group and reduce exposure to interest rate movements. The proceeds will be used to partly repay the existing short term Revolving Credit Facility and will not impact the stated target to reduce the net debt leverage multiple to 1.0 times during 2019.

The Bonds will be issued by Hastings Group (Finance) plc, a wholly owned subsidiary, and will be guaranteed by Hastings and certain other Group subsidiaries.

For more information, please contact:

Hastings Group  

Richard Hoskins

Chief Financial Officer

T: +44 (0)1424 738244 [email protected]

Louise Underwood

Director of Investor Relations

T: +44 (0)1424 738244 [email protected]

About Hastings

Founded in 1996 in Bexhill-on-Sea on the Sussex coast, the Hastings Group is one of the fastest growing general insurance providers to the UK market, with 2.7 million live customer policies and employing over 3,400 colleagues at sites in Bexhill, Leicester, Gibraltar and London.

Hastings provides straightforward products and services to UK car, bike, van and home insurance customers with around 90% of policies directly underwritten by its Gibraltar based insurer, Advantage Insurance Company Limited.

Hastings Direct is a trading name of Hastings Insurance Services Limited, the Group's UK broker, which also trades via 'Hastings Premier', 'Hastings Essential', 'Hastings Direct SmartMiles', 'People's Choice' and 'insurePink'.

The Group operates as an integrated insurance provider with two businesses. The Group's Retail business, Hastings Insurance Services Limited, is responsible for the end customer pricing, fraud management, product design, distribution and management of the underlying customer relationships. The Group's Underwriting business, Advantage Insurance Company Limited, engages in risk selection, underlying technical pricing, reserving and claims handling.

Retail is supported by, and benefits from, Underwriting's prudent approach to risk and reserving and also benefits from a panel of insurance partners who provide additional underwriting capacity. The Group's integrated model deliberately separates underlying product manufacturing from its distribution.

Forward-looking statements

This announcement may contain forward‑looking statements about current expectations, intentions or forecasts of future events, including statements about market trends and our strategy, investments, future operations, industry forecasts and regulatory framework. Forward‑looking statements include statements about expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, intentions, assumptions and other statements that are not statements of historical fact. Words or phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "ongoing", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "potential", "predict", "project", "target", "seek" or similar words or phrases, or the negatives of those words or phrases, may identify forward‑looking statements, but the absence of these words does not necessarily mean that a statement is not forward‑looking.

Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward‑looking statements. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements for many reasons, including the factors described in the section entitled "Managing our risks" in our 2017 Annual Report. In addition, even if our actual results are consistent with the forward-looking statements, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods.

Disclaimer

In the European Economic Area, with respect to any Member State that has implemented Directive 2003/71/EC and Directive 2010/73/EU (together with any applicable implementing measures in any Member State, the "Prospectus Directive"), this Announcement is only addressed to and is only directed at qualified investors ("Qualified Investors") in that Member State within the meaning of Article2(1)(e) of the Prospectus Directive.

The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or with any securities regulatory authority of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to US persons (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the Securities Act) except pursuant to an exemption from, or in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the US Securities Act. The issuer of the securities has not registered, and does not intend to register, any portion of the offering in the United States, and does not intend to conduct a public offering of the securities in the United States.

This Announcement is not intended to, and shall not, constitute or contain an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase the securities referred to herein by any person in any jurisdiction where it is unlawful to make an offer or solicitation. The distribution of the Announcement and the offer or sale of the securities referred to herein in certain jurisdictions is restricted by law. This Announcement may not be used for or in connection with, and does not constitute, any offer to, or solicitation by, anyone in any jurisdiction or under any circumstance in which such offer or solicitation is not authorised or is unlawful.

In the United Kingdom ("UK"), this Announcement is being distributed only to, and is directed only at, Qualified Investors (i) who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order") and Qualified Investors falling within Article 49 of the Order, and (ii) to whom it may otherwise be lawfully communicated (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). Any investment or investment activity to which this Announcement relates is available only to relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. Any person who is not a relevant person should not act or rely on this Announcement or any of its contents.